China--a half hour after you read about it, you have to read about it again
- this post is actually serious
- here’s a lengthy extract from an article to which the Stumblng Tumblr linked here, describing the article as “particularly interesting about China in Africa”:
In February 2007, Hu Jintao proudly announced the creation of a new special economic zone complete with the usual combination of export subsidies, tax breaks and investments in roads, railways and shipping. However, this special economic zone was in the heart of Africa—in the copper-mining belt of Zambia. China is transplanting its growth model into the African continent by building a series of industrial hubs linked by rail, road and shipping lanes to the rest of the world. Zambia will be home to China’s “metals hub,” providing the People’s Republic with copper, cobalt, diamonds, tin and uranium. The second zone will be in Mauritius, providing China with a “trading hub” that will give 40 Chinese businesses preferential access to the 20-member state common market of east and southern Africa stretching from Libya to Zimbabwe, as well as access to the Indian ocean and south Asian markets. The third zone—a “shipping hub”—will probably be in the Tanzanian capital, Dar es Salaam. Nigeria, Liberia and the Cape Verde islands are competing for two other slots. In the same way that eastern Europe was changed by a competition to join the EU, we could see Africa transformed by the competition to attract Chinese investment.
As it creates these zones, Beijing is embarking on a building spree, criss-crossing the African continent with new roads and railways—investing far more than the old colonial powers ever did. Moreover, China’s presence is changing the rules of economic development. The IMF and the World Bank used to drive the fear of God into government officials and elected leaders, but today they struggle to be listened to even by the poorest countries of Africa. The IMF spent years negotiating a transparency agreement with the Angolan government only to be told hours before the deal was due to be signed, in March 2004, that the authorities in Luanda were no longer interested in the money: they had secured a $2bn soft loan from China. This tale has been repeated across the continent—from Chad to Nigeria, Sudan to Algeria, Ethiopia and Uganda to Zimbabwe.
- here, the Stumblng Tumblr posted about those foreign countries that were the largest holders of US Treasury securities as of February this year: China was the second largest holder; its holdings exceeded those of the following seventeen countries combined: the UK, Brazil, Ecuador, Venezuela, Indonesia, Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Gabon, Libya, and Nigeria
- here, the Stumblng Tumblr posted about Cuban buses and quoted the following from an article about them (bold added):
The camello was born in response to fuel shortages in the early 1990s, when the Soviet Union collapsed and Cuba lost its annual $6 billion in subsidies. The economy has since recovered thanks to heavy borrowing from China and nearly 100,000 barrels of oil a day from Venezuela.
- finally, an event about which the Stumblng Tumblr hasn’t posted; you can read about it here; the (landlocked) Mugabe government has been attempting to import from overseas US$1.245M worth of ammunition, rockets and mortar bombs, the purpose of which importing it’s not difficult to imagine
- any guesses as to the country from which they were exported or the flag of the ship that’s been trying to find an African port at which to offload them?
- the Stumblng Tumblr’s seen nothing about the terms pursuant to which the Zimbabwe government was to receive the materiel, but he’s willing to bet his gold chopsticks that they weren’t ordinary commercial ones
- now the Stumblng Tumblr’s no foreign affairs expert, but what do all of these things suggest to you about China’s increasing influence in the world?