Amilcar Cabral and Fidel Castro in Guinea Bissau
The problem
with those leftists celebrating the People's Republic of China's role in Africa
is not that they're unknowingly lifting their talking points from the
Economist, but rather that they don't show the nasty flip side of the coin to
this involvement - as even the Economist does.
They also happen mostly to be white and fall into that chauvinism that anything a white person, or a white nation, does or believes to be done, for the lesser races, is a good thing. Even when they fuck up [viz., the narrative the US had "good intentions" by invading Vietnam, which still pollutes newsfeeds and Ken Burns].
These supporters will cite such things as hundreds of billions "invested," but may not mention it was for things like an extensive railroad. If they mention the railroad, they won't mention that it's to move raw materials from Addis Ababa to coastal Djibouti and to a port that China has built.
Further, how much of this investment billions comprises the low wages of imported Chinese laborers that bristle the rising unemployed African laborer? (Locals often assume because these Chinese laborers are dressed in identical jumpsuits that they are prison labor, which bristles even more). Investment is a pretty broad, ideologically blank page on which one can put almost anything - like a loan to a bank to repay a loan held in Paris.
In places like SOWETO in South Africa and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, local vendors and craftspeople are anxious as Chinese investment comes, their own markets are downgraded or dry up completely. Opposition movements are getting more vocal against the Chinese while their governments continue to make more and more deals.
The ongoing convention of the Communist Party of China has been watched closely, President Xi Jinping's words measured by left and right as closely as we used to measure Federal Reserve chairman Allan Greenspan's riddles. Analysis is interesting. Rhetoric indicative. But so are actions.
They also happen mostly to be white and fall into that chauvinism that anything a white person, or a white nation, does or believes to be done, for the lesser races, is a good thing. Even when they fuck up [viz., the narrative the US had "good intentions" by invading Vietnam, which still pollutes newsfeeds and Ken Burns].
These supporters will cite such things as hundreds of billions "invested," but may not mention it was for things like an extensive railroad. If they mention the railroad, they won't mention that it's to move raw materials from Addis Ababa to coastal Djibouti and to a port that China has built.
Further, how much of this investment billions comprises the low wages of imported Chinese laborers that bristle the rising unemployed African laborer? (Locals often assume because these Chinese laborers are dressed in identical jumpsuits that they are prison labor, which bristles even more). Investment is a pretty broad, ideologically blank page on which one can put almost anything - like a loan to a bank to repay a loan held in Paris.
In places like SOWETO in South Africa and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, local vendors and craftspeople are anxious as Chinese investment comes, their own markets are downgraded or dry up completely. Opposition movements are getting more vocal against the Chinese while their governments continue to make more and more deals.
The ongoing convention of the Communist Party of China has been watched closely, President Xi Jinping's words measured by left and right as closely as we used to measure Federal Reserve chairman Allan Greenspan's riddles. Analysis is interesting. Rhetoric indicative. But so are actions.
Xi Jinping is General Secy of the Central Committee of the CPC and President
The visuals of
the auditorium are a thing of beauty to a communist. The red flags. The giant
hammer and sickle. Lenin. This contrasts sharply to Cuba's Communist Party
congresses, where only the Cuban flag is prominent, no hammer and sickles, and
the images are of Cuban liberation fighters.
From the visuals alone, one might conclude the PRC is staunchly Marxist-Leninist and that revolutionary Cuba has centered itself on a purely nationalist, anti-imperialist fight.
But actions mean things too, like Cuba's renowned internationalism, and how even after the collapse of the USSR it sustained its support of armed liberation forces in the Americas. Almost 40 years since the death of Chairman Mao, the PRC has not only not lent its support to liberation movements of the global South but has made these business deals and lucrative “investments” with the shady characters that Western capitalism has installed in power, as reliable African leaders.
A good place to start a wakeup call is to read Marxist historian Walter Rodney’s HOW EUROPE UNDERDEVELOPED AFRICA to get a sense on the various tactics employed by Europeans to rape Africa and build its capitalist super world. Then read some of Kenyan historian and African Pan-nationalist Ali Mazrui, author of THE AFRICANS: A TRIPLE HERITAGE, THE AFRICAN CONDITION, etc. Mazrui was no communist, but he was able to distinguish, like other communists and nationalists on the continent, “development without industrialization.” He was decrying this at least as far back as the 80’s and would find, for instance, the malls in Namibia filled to the brim with Chinese manufactures indistinguishable from what the French, Portuguese, and USAID were implementing over a generation ago.
From the visuals alone, one might conclude the PRC is staunchly Marxist-Leninist and that revolutionary Cuba has centered itself on a purely nationalist, anti-imperialist fight.
But actions mean things too, like Cuba's renowned internationalism, and how even after the collapse of the USSR it sustained its support of armed liberation forces in the Americas. Almost 40 years since the death of Chairman Mao, the PRC has not only not lent its support to liberation movements of the global South but has made these business deals and lucrative “investments” with the shady characters that Western capitalism has installed in power, as reliable African leaders.
A good place to start a wakeup call is to read Marxist historian Walter Rodney’s HOW EUROPE UNDERDEVELOPED AFRICA to get a sense on the various tactics employed by Europeans to rape Africa and build its capitalist super world. Then read some of Kenyan historian and African Pan-nationalist Ali Mazrui, author of THE AFRICANS: A TRIPLE HERITAGE, THE AFRICAN CONDITION, etc. Mazrui was no communist, but he was able to distinguish, like other communists and nationalists on the continent, “development without industrialization.” He was decrying this at least as far back as the 80’s and would find, for instance, the malls in Namibia filled to the brim with Chinese manufactures indistinguishable from what the French, Portuguese, and USAID were implementing over a generation ago.
Guyanese-born Walter Rodney [left] and Kenyan-born Ali Mazrui [right]
Someone told me
I was obscene for comparing the PRC with Western imperialists. The PRC has no
invading armies, I was told. Besides the fact that there are PRC troops in Africa – like,
the 10,000 in Eastern Africa – has no one heard of neocolonialism? The PRC
needn’t shoot communists and labor militants if the post-apartheid South
African government will shoot them instead. This is what neocolonial
governments do. This is why they are well funded and handpicked by Western
power brokers to secure “our interests.” It cannot be beyond consideration that these same regimes benefit the Chinese designs in Africa, and this is counter-revolutionary.
Whatever Xi Jinping says of Mao and Marx and Lenin and Stalin from the floor of the CPC conference, whatever the PRC’s domestic policy, these results remain to be seen within China itself. But I see none of these luminaries influencing the PRC’s foreign policy where it regards Africa, which disempowers workers and communities and can at best be called a grossly reformulated Maoism Lite..
Whatever Xi Jinping says of Mao and Marx and Lenin and Stalin from the floor of the CPC conference, whatever the PRC’s domestic policy, these results remain to be seen within China itself. But I see none of these luminaries influencing the PRC’s foreign policy where it regards Africa, which disempowers workers and communities and can at best be called a grossly reformulated Maoism Lite..
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