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ZimEye, an Zimbabwe magazine on Chinese neo-colonialism
thousands of Zimbabwean villagers have woken up to find their entire land taken away by Chinese businessmen. People in rural areas have been shocked, angered flabbergasted and deeply depressed by the freedom to destroy their livelihood and cultural bases given to the Chinese. Villages are being destroyed graves, defiled no consultation as people are reminded of the colonial horrors.
September 16, 2021: In eastern Congo (South Kivu province) six Chinese owned companies were ordered to leave Congo by the Chinese government after multiple instances of illegal mining and environmental destruction. The Chinese order came after South Kivu province ordered the Chinese companies to suspend operations. China said it would punish Chinese personnel responsible. The accused firms include BM Global Business, Congo Blueant Minerals, Groupe Cristal, Orientale Resource Congo, Yellow Water Resources and New Continent Mineral. The Chinese government is saying the right things but many Congolese believe the Chinese government is doing this so they can find out who to bribe and how much to make the problem officially settled. told Congo it will punish the companies. As has happened in the past, the legal and illegal mining operations will continue under the same management but there will be new names and the most identifiable Chinese held responsible will be moved to other Chinese operations in Africa or back to China to share their experience with Chinese planning to join the overseas minerals boom that the government encourages and supports, especially operators who can get production going and deal with any local obstacles. There are no rules because many of the mining areas are lawless and available to anyone able to do whatever it takes to extract the valuable minerals and get them back to Chinese businesses that depend on a steady supply of raw materials.
The China bashing industry is quite lucrative, no doubt Dr Masimba Mavaza of Little Oakley, England (author of the claptrap you’ve linked to above) is cashing in. Kooks such as him abounded during the last cold war too. Your credulity is almost touching, Alan.
You are correct that Masimba Mavaza is up to his neck in the internal partisan party politics and tribalist politics of Zimbabwe and its extensive diaspora.
But his report on Uzumba, Mashonaland East province, and the Chinese company, Heijin Mining appears to hold up from other sources.
https://www.newsday.co.zw/2021/09/its-wrong-for-chinese-miner-to-evict-villagers/
https://www.rosgwen24.com/2021/09/mnangagwa-opens-arms-to-zimbabwes.html
the Chinese company Heijin Mining started exploration in 2020 and pegged areas which cover a total of 300 hectares of communal lands and could possibly displace nearly 12,000 people.
“Affected villagers were informed of these developments a year after the arrival of the Chinese company.
“They were also informed that the majority of them would be displaced and should seek alternative settlement from their traditional leaders.
“But his report on Uzumba, Mashonaland East province, and the Chinese company, Heijin Mining appears to hold up from other sources.”
A legal dispute over a mining license. What of it?
In order to condemn China’s role in Africa Alan scours the internet for stories no matter how old or how ambiguous. He makes no mention of the fact that extractive industries account for the minority of Chinese investments in Africa. What of the other 60% of investments? Well, he conveniently fails to make mention of these or the benefits that have accrued to African people from them. For every decade old story he posts I can post ten telling of hospitals built:
“China to build 100 hospitals, clinics in Africa Wednesday, October 7, 2015 Cape Town – The Chinese government has announced that it will build 100 hospitals and clinics across the African continent has part of a plan to improve health systems and be prepared for future disease outbreaks.”
towns electrified:
“Now, it is emerging one of the biggest builders of power projects in sub-Saharan Africa, where some 635 million people are off grid. Over the past five years, Chinese companies built 7GW of generation capacity on the continent – 30% of new installations – according to a report published by the International Energy Agency on Tuesday.”
or ports established:
“at least 46 existing or planned port projects in sub-Saharan Africa with some Chinese involvement.”
Vijay Prashad sums up people such as Alan thusly…
“They’re using Marxism to push anti-Marxism and open a door therefore for left-wing people to become liberals.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
That is only a lie to cover up the Chinese capitalists. They continue doing illegal fishing in South America and Central America. It is not one of two ships, it is a group of 200 and 300 ships, and the Coast Guard of Argentina and Chile has been forced to shoot at them because they do not want to pay attention to the Coast Guard.
One of the major builders of hospitals around the world is the Vatican which they claim that they are for charity and they produce huge profits for the Catholic Church, to build 100 hospitals is nothing compared with the margin of profits obtained by the Chinese corporations, the difference between the USA and Chinese capitalists is the geographic location of the exploiter.
In Peru, peasants communities have been on a strike against Chinese mining corporations due to low pay jobs and the ecological destructions
I scour the internet to give fuller explanation to your claims.
The latest being “extractive industries account for the minority of Chinese investments in Africa. What of the other 60% of investments?”
Flooding the African market with cheap manufactured products that undercut the local makers thus driving them out of business.
BRIC member, South Africa’s proportion of exports of primary commodities to China in total from 2000-2018 rose sharply from 54% to 86%. South Africa’s top exports to China are rather basic, comprising of ores and concentrates of base metals, iron ore and concentrates, pig iron, copper, wool and other animal hair, pulp and waste paper, fruits, jewellery and articles of precious material and silver.
What of manufactured goods? The share of China’s exports of manufactured goods to its partner surged from 90 to 95%. Sadly, for South Africa, whereas in 2000 its share of exports of manufactured goods in total to China was a handsome 45%, by 2018 it experienced erosion to 14%.
China’s total exports of all goods of $ 104.5 billion in 2018, reveals that of the 55 African countries, 28 of them accounted for 95%, leaving the other 27 with only 5% or $5.0 billion in absolute values. In China’s exports of manufactured goods to Africa, 24 African countries accounted for 90% leaving 31 countries to account for only 10% or $9.0 billion.
Africa’s total exports of manufactured goods to China was only $2.3 billion in 2018, and, of this total 23 countries accounted for 99% leaving 32 countries with only 1% or $30.8 million.
Africa’s’ total exports of all goods to China of $54.4 billion in 2018, 16 countries accounted for 95% leaving the majority 39 with only 5% or $2.8 billion.
This is a huge trade imbalance – in favour of China and the extractive industry share is pretty much secondary and irrelevant to China’s economic dominance in their trading. Economists acknowledge that imports from China has affected South African manufacturing output and employment figures.
Of course, there is a lot of infrastructure being built by the Chinese in Africa. I already mentioned an unnecessary railway line in Kenya. But those ports and roads and factories aren’t gree gifts. African nations are borrowing from Chinese commercial banks and building huge debts and interest repayments.
China’s total loans to Africa during 2000-18 have been $148 billion, mostly in large-scale infrastructure projects that may benefit Africa’s elite but not its poor.
China presently is a leading bilateral lender in 32 African countries and the top lender to the continent as a whole. The list includes Angola ($21.5 billion in 2017), Ethiopia ($13.7 billion), Kenya ($9.8 billion), Republic of Congo ($7.42 billion), Zambia ($6.38 billion) and Cameroon ($5.57 billion)
China owns around 72 per cent of Kenya’s external debt which stands at $ 50 billion. Over the next few years, Kenya is expected to pay $ 60 billion to the China Exim Bank alone, sources informed.
Mombasa port can be lost if Kenya defaults on loan re-payment, according to Kenya’s own auditor general.In 2015, there was widespread discontent in Angola because of oil repayment against loans from China, leaving Angola with little crude oil to export.
Nigeria had to spend $195 million in 2020 as debt repayment to China.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking China philanthropic and benevolent. They insist on a hefty return for their investment.
It seems that ‘truescotsman’ doesn’t appear to recognise capitalism when it is from China.
However, below is conveniently as it happens, located under ‘C’ on our A to Z of MarxismCapitalism.
A system of society based on the class monopoly of the means of life, it has the following six essential characteristics:1. Generalised commodity production, nearly all wealth being produced for sale on a market.
2. The investment of capital in production with a view to obtaining a monetary profit.
3. The exploitation of wage labour, the source of profit being the unpaid labour of the producers.
4. The regulation of production by the market via a competitive struggle for profits.
5. The accumulation of capital out of profits, leading to the expansion and development of the forces of production.
6. A single world economy.
Capitalism is not synonymous with free markets. Taken literally, free markets have never existed anywhere in the modern world. Even in what historians call ‘the age of laissez-faire’ (mid-nineteenth century Britain and North America), this period was characterised by increasing government intervention to overcome the problems thrown up by laissez-faire capitalism. Capitalism in practice can vary from time to time and from place to place – more or less market freedom and more or less state intervention – depending on the historical circumstances.
Reading A. Buick & J. Crump, The Alternative to Capitalism, 1987 Arthur J. Taylor, Laissez-faire and State Intervention in Nineteenth Century Britain, 1972Capitalist class (or Bourgeoisie). Capitalists personify capital. Because they possess the means of production and distribution, whether in the form of legal property rights of individuals backed by the state or collectively as a bureaucracy through the state, the capitalist class lives on privileged incomes derived from surplus value.
The capitalists personally need not – and mostly do not – get involved in the process of production. Social production is carried on by capitalist enterprises which are overwhelmingly comprised of members of the working class.
Reading Hal Draper, Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution, Vol. 2: The Politics of Social Classes, 1978
China. Mao Zedong (or Mao Tse-tung) helped to form the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1921. After the Second World War all the major Chinese cities, previously controlled by the Japanese, fell into control of the nationalists, the Kuomintang, led by Chiang kai-shek. However, the Kuomintang soon became discredited in the eyes of the peasants and by 1947 civil war broke out between the Communists and the Kuomintang. In September 1949 Chiang kai-shek and other Kuomintang leaders fled to Taiwan. On 1 October 1949 Mao proclaimed the inauguration of the Peoples’ Republic of China.
Mao launched the disastrous Great Leap Forward (1958-61) in an attempt to hasten economic development. He also instituted the Cultural Revolution (1966) to re-establish revolutionary fervour and get rid of his opponents. Mao modelled the development of Chinese industry on Russian State capitalism, and this model of development continued after the Sino-Soviet split in 1960. Since Mao’s death in 1976 the development of capitalism in China, on a more market-orientated basis, has continued under the tight control of the CCP.
Reading History of China John Keay, China: A History, 2008In Africa China is the new International Monetary Funds, it produces the same effect as the IMF which is to create dependency, austerity, and the exploitation of natural resources for big capitalist corporations, and the creation of Banana Republics like used to be done by the Americans corporations, but in this new stage they sell cheap manufactured goods to destroy the local production, they displace the small farmers, and the local fishermen, the same thing is being done in Latin America. There is no difference between Chinese capitalism, European capitalism, and US capitalism
Vijay Prashad sums up people such as Alan thusly…
“They’re using Marxism to push anti-Marxism and open a door therefore for left-wing people to become liberals.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
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What Liberals and liberalism is he talking about? I do not think that he know what liberals and liberalism were, or the actual meaning of both
In our actual world liberalism and liberals do not exist, it did not even exist in its purity in the original countries which promoted it, such as England and France, and in England it was known as Manchesterism because it was the original place of its birth, and it claims for no intervention of the state on the economic affairs of the society but they were the first one to ask for state intervention when others capitalists interfered with their own economic interests.
Liberalism has nothing to do with right wings or left wings and both are irrelevant, and leftism means reformism, and in essence is the same as rightism, both are wings from capitalism, and liberalism is part of capitalism.
These politicals teachers should take a pencil, a notebook and a school desk and start to relearn, the blind guiding the blinds
https://www.worldsocialism.org/wsm/2019/12/08/neo-liberalism-old-religion-repackaged/
I have read a lot of Vijay Prashad and much I found useful. But he also writes much I disagree with.
He is a leftist anti-imperialist and the Tricontinental Institute is a Havana-based thinktank with offices in Buenos Aires (Argentina), Johannesburg (South Africa), New Delhi (India) and São Paulo (Brazil)that presents its ideology on world events. It is as partisan as the organisations TS rejects. Perhaps someone can explain the source of its funding to me.
Our criticism of anti-imperialism remains sound even if such ideas of nation V nation are promoted by Prashad and not class V class
As an aside, Tricontinental magazine was one of the earliest I acquired in my youth
It looks like the Chinese government has not done anything on the illegal fishing fleets, up to today my contacts in Argentina and Chile have informed me that they continue doing that illegal pirates practices, and they are silencing their tracking system to avoid being tracked by the Coast Guard which means that they know what they are doing, and they continue doing their illegal practice at night time, and millions of giants octopus have been fished from the ocean, and nothing has been left for the small fishing industry, and for the life of others ocean life. They are not a few, it is a crew of 400 fishing ships. The newspaper insight crimes are also informing about the same situation
The concept of the Third World is outdated, and Cuba was part of that concept.
Third World Countries were defined as those nations that were not aligned with the Soviet Union blocks, or the USA and Western Blocks, but Cuba was part of the Soviet blocks which is a contradiction, The Soviet Block does not exist any longer
the concept of Banana Republic is also outdated, the concept was that one single corporation was the owner of all the lands and resources of one nation and they were able to influence the political life and the controlled the government, and the name started with Bonita Bananas.
That situation does not exist any longer. The Land in Brazil and Argentina has been divided into several corporations
Cuba sent troops to Africa to comply with the agreement made by becoming a member of the COMECON, it had nothing to do with proletarian internationalism and anti-colonialism when they were part of the Soviet block
“I scour the internet to give fuller explanation to your claims.”
Alan looks for decade old ambiguous stories to give an explanation? No, he does so because he is a reactionary. He ignores the mountain of benefits stemming from Africa/China relations instead like a rat on cheese focusing on the minority of negative interactions.
“Flooding the African market with cheap manufactured products that undercut the local makers thus driving them out of business.”
Right, because Africa has a cell phone manufacturing industry, an electronics manufacturing industry, a white goods manufacturing industry, etc, etc? I’m sure Alan doesn’t mind consuming products manufactured cheaply thanks to China’s massive economies of scale but those Negroes in Africa, well, they shouldn’t be allowed.
“Of course, there is a lot of infrastructure being built by the Chinese in Africa. I already mentioned an unnecessary railway line in Kenya.”
Alan did mention the railway but fails to explain that it was Kenya’s president who was pushing for the project, not the Chinese and that the funding for the third stage of the line, thought necessary to make it fully commercially viable, was withheld because Uganda was refusing to cooperate.
“Concerns over SGR’s viability arise from the fact that Uganda has shown little enthusiasm for the grand project and has more recently been spending millions of dollars in the refurbishment of its rusty metre gauge railway network.
It is Beijing’s assessment that without Uganda, whose participation is key to connecting South Sudan and Rwanda to the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa, the SGR’s viability is grossly undermined.”
Why Uganda cut off its nose to spite its face is anybodies guess but I think it’s probably got something to do with the wily US and its military presence in the country.
“But those ports and roads and factories aren’t gree gifts.”
Yet one more lie Alan tells as he froths against China like Cujo the rabid St-Bernard. Indeed China has gifted Africa hundreds of millions of dollars worth of free infrastructure. Alan’s brain, stewed in a lifetime of hatred of all socialists, can’t imagine actual socialists actually acting socialist. He’s a fraud. Anyone who considers him a mentor should seriously reconsider.
China’s gifts to Africa: Governmental buildings and stadiums
“African nations are borrowing from Chinese commercial banks and building huge debts and interest repayments.”
I’ve already exposed the “Chinese debt trap diplomacy” lie. A lie cooked up in Washington that Alan credulously vomits up like a bad batch of leftover sushi.
“Don’t make the mistake of thinking China philanthropic and benevolent. They insist on a hefty return for their investment.”
Imperialist propaganda debunked a thousand times over. That’s Alan, faux-socialist, spreader of disinformation, maker of liberals.
Our case is very easy to comprehend. We say that the policy of China is not so very different from that of other imperialist nations.
It is to acquire sources of raw materials and it is to acquire markets for its products or it to secure trade routes. Those three criteria determine a nation’s diplomacy and foreign policy.
Unlike TS, we are not taking sides and selecting which is the lesser evil.
A plague on all of them. None gets a get out of jail free card
For the chicken, there is little difference between the fox and the wolf.
Our position is simple, the conditions of a fellow worker anywhere are our concern. We are internationalists, world socialists.
All competing imperialists say they bring benefits to the undeveloped and developing nations and can provide long lists of the “generosity” of their “humanitarian aid”.
But the poverty levels of the African people has always remained constant, the standard of living stagnant.
“O foolish and senseless people, who have eyes but do not see, who have ears but do not hear.” -Jeremiah 5.21
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