I agree with GARVEYS AFRICA.. This is establishment propaganda.. The basic force fed line: "Anything western is bad, everything China is good"..
A quick look: "China’s relations with Africa, while vast and expanding, are undermined by cultural and sometimes rather extraordinary political insensitivity.
Two recent Chinese action films are set in African nations. With the archetype of the Chinese Savior firmly established, attitudes within China are showing a lack of racial sensitivity at best, and a sense of superiority over other races at worst.
China’s exploitative relationship abroad with African nations became most evident earlier this year. In late January, the French daily Le Monde reported that the Chinese government’s gift of a headquarters building and computer network for the African Union in Addis Ababa contained a back door to facilitate the transfer of data to servers in Shanghai.
The myth of Chinese support for African nations has been perpetuated both at home and abroad, with the $200 million AU complex in Addis as the crown jewel within the narrative of international cooperation fostered by Chinese public funds. But the charm in Beijing’s Africa blitz doesn’t hide the profiteering and wrangling for influence that follow.
Just next door to Ethiopia, China’s move into Djibouti is a prime example. The tiny east African nation sits along one of the world’s major maritime shipping lanes, and is home to American, French, German, Italian, and Japanese military bases, with the latest addition of a Chinese “logistics and supply center” to the many foreign military installations already there. The Chinese naval facility was inaugurated last summer, and is part of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s plan to modernize his country’s military, expanding its navy’s blue-water capabilities.
Beijing shells out $20 million a year to lease the real estate for its base in Djibouti, and has already stationed over 1,000 troops there, with sufficient space for 10 times that number if needed. On top of that, the Chinese government has given the host nation loans topping $1.1 billion to upgrade its commercial port, build an additional airport, a railway that stretches to Addis Ababa, and a water pipeline that moves water from Ethiopia.
Djibouti officials have expressed concern about their country’s ability to repay those loans—failure to channel funds back to China would place the nation in an undesirable position in the very near future.
Over in Kenya, controversy is unfolding around the country’s largest infrastructure project since its 1963 independence. A Chinese-built railway has been designed to be extended through the wildlife reserve just outside of Nairobi. A court ordered that construction be halted as the case is reviewed, but builders and engineers from the China Road and Bridge Corporation have already begun work, with protection from armed guards.
Chinese industrialists—often with the state’s backing—are eyeing their moves to a new continent as the economic and governance models at home switch gears.
Ethiopia, for instance, has received a cash injection of nearly $11 billion to bulk up its industrial infrastructure, transforming farmland into industrial parks that can house factories that churn out fast fashion clothing items and consumer electronic goods. The country has opened four such parks since 2014, and plans to launch eight more before 2020. Hundreds of Ethiopian farmers have complained of land grabs, displacement, and lack of compensation, as the government clears space for newcomers from Beijing.
It doesn’t matter how many Friendship Bridges are built, or how many Cooperation Summits are organized. As long as attitudes toward other races—and nations—do not change within China, the relationships that are cultivated abroad will be exploitative, with only rapacious advancement of one party as a result."
|
|