[Epoch Times December 03, 2021]This year’s China-Africa Cooperation Forum was held in Dakar, the capital of Senegal, a West African country. Compared with previous years, the level of the forum has been reduced, and the scale has also become smaller. Many heads of state of African countries did not participate at all, and most of them sent ministerial-level officials, taking it as a working meeting. The Chinese Communist Party was attended by two ministers, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Commerce, and Xi Jinping participated by video. The Chinese Communist Party’s media report on the meeting said that China-Africa economic exchanges are “seeking new opportunities.” Why did the exchanges find that opportunities are gone after decades, and new opportunities need to be found? Obviously, the CCP’s strategy in Africa has encountered new challenges; the CCP, which is in trouble internationally, is losing its traditional allies; the CCP’s painstaking efforts in Africa may be completely unsuccessful and face a loss of human and financial resources.
The CCP’s “One Belt, One Road” project has put Southeast Asian countries such as Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Malaysia into the dilemma of high foreign debt. African countries see it in their eyes and remember them in their hearts. More and more African countries are beginning to realize that behind the CCP’s aid are the features of neo-colonialism, coupled with the CCP’s ambition to suppress politics, cannibalize sovereignty, and worry about the possibility of becoming a colony of CCP’s resources, making Africa The government began to draw a clear line with the CCP.
The governments of Congo and Uganda began to publicly criticize the CCP, saying that the CCP’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative in Africa plunged their countries into a debt crisis. The Republic of Congo will also take back the mineral development rights granted to the CCP to prevent the CCP from continuing to grab local resources. The CCP mines cobalt mines in the Republic of Congo, but fails to fulfill many large-scale contracts, including 31 hospitals and 2 universities! The CCP’s abuse of indiscriminate construction and bragging in the country has spread to Africa. Uganda is unable to repay the CCP’s huge loan, and the CCP does not plan to renegotiate loan terms. Control of the country’s only international airport may soon belong to Beijing.
Of course, there are also those who are prepared to fall back on their accounts, which makes the CCP a headache. Sources say that the CCP wants to take over the port of Mombasa in Kenya, but the Kenyan government earlier this year denied using the port as a mortgage and borrowing money from the CCP to build a railway. The Kenyan government said that even if the repayment is in arrears, the port of Mombasa will not fall into the hands of the CCP. Will the CCP send several war wolves and aircraft carriers to foreclosure and take it back? I’m afraid the CCP doesn’t know what to do, and it doesn’t dare to do it.
French “Le Monde” said that the “feast of cooperation between the CCP and Africa is over”. For Chinese and Africans, it feels a bit “disillusioned”. Everyone realizes that spending money is not enough to stimulate economic development. In the eyes of African countries, the CCP is not helping them at all, but after the retreat of the British and French colonial forces, it has become another new colonial empire. To make matters worse, this new colonialist is much worse than the old and veteran colonialists. There is no concept of the rule of law and human rights at all, and it has brought many bad habits and bad habits!
The CCP entered Africa in 2000, began to invest heavily, and used the “Belt and Road” initiative to trap African countries into debt traps in order to obtain resources such as minerals, ports, and airports in Africa. According to data from the International Development Center, from 2000 to 2011, the CCP’s investment in Africa was mainly concentrated in natural resources, minerals, oil fields and infrastructure. Right, Mauritania’s US$4 billion in oil, iron ore and road construction, Equatorial Guinea’s 2.6 billion oil loan, Ethiopia’s 2.2 billion dam project loan, and South Africa’s 2.2 billion financial cooperation plan.
According to data from the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute, the CCP’s largest investment target countries in Africa are Nigeria, Angola, Ethiopia, Kenya, Zambia, South Africa, Congo, Cameroon and Mozambique. Together, these countries account for 65% of the CCP’s investment in Africa.
In the past 20 years, the import and export trade between China and African countries has increased from about US$20 billion in 2002 to more than US$200 billion in 2014, a tenfold increase in 12 years. For China’s imports from Africa, in 2017, for example, fossil fuels (petroleum) amounted to 35 billion U.S. dollars, followed by other minerals and potash (10 billion), copper ore (4 billion), and wood (22 billion). Billion), iron ore and cermets (cermets, 2 billion). At the same time, although China’s imports from Africa increased in tandem with China’s exports to Africa from 2002 to 2014, China’s exports to Africa have remained strong since 2014, while China’s imports from Africa have fallen rapidly. In other words, the CCP basically regards African countries as its sources of raw materials and energy, and exchanges a large amount of exported industrial products for these energy and minerals. It is not based on assisting African countries in developing smelting and high-value-added industrial production systems. Basically it is to “exploit” these “African compatriots” by teaching people to fish instead of teaching people how to fish.
But in the last ten years, the CCP’s investment in Africa has shifted more to the Data Center and Smart City Initiative. From Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Kenya in Eastern Africa, to Zimbabwe and South Africa in Southern Africa, to Ghana, Nigeria, Mali and Morocco in Western Africa, along the outer edge of the African continent, there are all over the CCP’s data centers and networks. The power of the Chinese Communist Party almost occupies most countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Although the CCP does not have the most advanced digital technology that can rival Europe and the United States, the CCP’s technology, such as Huawei’s equipment, is sufficient to occupy the African market at a competitive price.
According to data from the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute, the CCP’s investment in South America, the Middle East and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, Europe and Asia-Pacific during the 14 years from 2005 to 2018 and from 2005 to 2016 , From more than 20 billion U.S. dollars in 2005, all the way to a rapid growth of nearly 300 billion U.S. dollars in 2016, and then from 2017 to 2018, there was a sharp decline, reaching about 70 billion U.S. dollars. Obviously, the US President Trump’s trade war and tariff sanctions against the CCP at the time led to a sharp decline in the CCP’s foreign exchange income and investment capabilities, which played an important role.
Basically speaking, the CCP’s African strategy has not only caused dissatisfaction among Africans, but also caused dissatisfaction among the entire planet. African countries have awakened and realized the Chinese Communist Party’s strategy of swallowing Africa. Europe and the United States have come to realize that they are now beckoning to Africa. The “Build Back Better for the World” (B3W) program initiated by Biden is ready to invest in 5-10 large-scale infrastructure projects around the world next year to contend with the CCP’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative. The difference between the US plan and the Chinese Communist Party’s plan is that in addition to assisting Africa in infrastructure construction, the US is also committed to strengthening local industrial upgrading. This is very attractive to visionary politicians in African countries.
Europe is also well aware of the CCP’s deployment in Africa and the world, and has taken corresponding measures. The European Commission announced a plan in early December to invest 300 billion euros (about 340 billion U.S. dollars) globally in infrastructure, digital and climate projects by 2027, to “true” replace the CCP’s “Belt and Road” initiative. . This program, called the “Global Gateway”, covers Europe’s supply chain, digitalization, health, climate and energy and transportation, as well as education and research. The “Global Gateway” will provide funding to recipient countries in the form of grants, loans and guarantees. Funds will be provided under “fair and favorable conditions” to avoid third-country governments facing debt problems.
Many African governments, especially dictatorships and rogue governments that are close to the CCP and accept bribes and bribes from the CCP, have their own rogue governments when dealing with the CCP regime. Of course they know the CCP’s purpose, know that the CCP lacks international support and needs small partners to support it in international forums, so that they can live in strange goods and demand prices. The behind-the-scenes operation of the China-Africa Forum is that the little hooligans demand the share of the loot from the big hooligans. The CCP is now short of foreign exchange, unable to do what it wants, and when the little gangsters are hard to fill, they will turn their faces very quickly. The political situation in African countries is unstable. There will be more and more high-level people who need to buy, and more and more people will eat official food. The inside story of bribery and buying will eventually leak, and the people at the bottom will eventually rebel because of dissatisfaction.
Larry Sanger, the co-founder of Wikipedia, when talking about why Wikipedia failed and how to respond, said, “You cannot reach a consensus with people who are ideologically hostile.” The governments of African countries, although There are many corruptions and dictatorships, but none of them are as evil as the CCP, and they have no deep-seated elements of communism. They are more or less influenced by the original Western colonialists, and they have some democratic concepts and habits. Many politicians and senior figures in African countries are well-educated in Europe and the United States. The people of African countries, the United States and European countries are basically open, not as highly closed as the CCP and North Korea. The understanding and requirements of the African people for the contract system, contract ideas, fairness ideas, the rule of law and human rights are far higher than those of “West Korea.” The communist nature and anti-human behavior of the CCP will eventually be spurned by the African people, and now it is just the beginning.
People over the age of 40 or 50 in China should remember almost the only cross talk in China in the 1970s. There is probably the only Swahili word known to the Chinese-“Rafik” in the cross talk. . Rafik means “friend”, and it is the story of Chinese workers who helped build the Tanzania-Zambia Railway and made friends with Africans. 2022 is approaching, and it is said that the new year will be even more troublesome. I hope this is not the case. However, the life of the Chinese Communist regime will definitely not be easy. It has feuds with its neighbors Japan and South Korea, it has been at odds with India in the west, and it has been at war with the United States. To ensure that African operations are facing complete failure, the prospects are indeed not very good.
(Dr. Xie Tian is Professor of Marketing and John Olin Palme Chair Professor at the Aiken School of Business, University of South Carolina, USA)
Editor in charge: Zhu Ying#
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