CHINA IN AFRICA VS. USA IN IRAQ

Partner, Competitor
or Hegemon?

The economics of failure, by Stephen Fox

I am no fan of China, due to genocide of Tibetans and Islamic Uighurs. Yet China IS doing the correct thing in Africa by investing in resources, factories, and agriculture, while the USA's billions of dollars go down the drain of Iraq. Our "investment" in Iraq is an unprecedented bloody kleptocracy orchestrated by Halliburton, Kellogg Brown and Root, and Dick Cheney as former Halliburton CEO, to the tune of $20 billion per month, while China, with its monstrous balance of payments, has invested $40 billion in 2006 in Africa and another $50 billion in 2007.

By comparison, the USA will soon do a $20 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia. How does that help anybody? Iraqis die to make the point that they don't want us there. No American could conclude that USA is "investing" in Iraq any more than Nazi Germany was "investing" in Czechoslovakia by lumping it into Germany as the Sudetenland or that China is "investing" in Tibet by killing millions and suppressing all Buddhist culture. These are really the economics of failure, whether or not you accept that the US presence in Iraq is a deranged Hegelian devolution of imperialism and a perversion by corporate greed.

Imagine waking every day to military checkpoints, random shootings, deafening bombs, and the slaughter of civilians, rapes and murders of 14- year-old girls or executions of innocent adult males, just because your squadron failed to prevent a terrorist from escaping and the squadron needs a "kill," and Marines, Army officers, and even the torturing miscreants at Abu Ghraib, all generally get a slap on the wrist: this is what life in Iraq has become.

China certainly points this out in its dealings with Islamic Africans already horrified by TV News from Iraq, where the war has reached unparalleled depths of stupidity and irrationality, comparable to LBJ in Vietnam, where 250 Americans died daily.

In 2002, Bush promised to rebuild Afghanistan in a speech detailing a new quasi-neo-Marshall Plan, yet this nation actually received less aid per capita than did post-conflict Bosnia and Kosovo, and even less than the poorest of the poor nations: Haiti. Who could blame other nations for being baffled and insulted by these apparent economic and foreign policy contradictions?

In 2006, Chinese trade deals included an aluminum plant in Egypt, a highway upgrade in Nigeria, and a copper plant in Zambia. China's Export- Import bank, which reports to the State Council in Beijing, has projects including $1.2 Billion in loans to Ghana, $2.3 Billion for financing a dam and hydroelectric plant in Mozambique, $1.6 Billion for oil development in Nigeria, $2 billion line credit line to oil rich Angola, and export credits for projects in Congo-Brazzavile, Sudan, and Zimbabwe. Africans appreciate China's investments resulting in improved infrastructures.

"There is no doubt China has been good for Zambia," said Felix Mutate, Zambia's minister of finance. "Why should we have a bad attitude toward the Chinese when they are doing all the right things? They are bringing investment, world-class technologies, jobs, value addition. What more can you ask for?"

"China knows what it means to be poor, and has evolved a successful wealth creation formula that it is willing to share with African nations," wrote former Nigerian Finance Minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. Genocidal regimes like Sudan's Al Bashir's or repressive regimes like the astro- inflationary aegis of Zimbabwe's Mugabe welcome China's capacity to offer cash, technology, and political protection from international pressures.

"The solution to all kinds of development challenges is to have economically sustainable growth," said Li Ruogu, President of ExImBank. "We welcome understanding and opportunities for collaboration toward this end that it represents." China's Xinhua News Agency estimates that at least 750,000 Chinese entrepreneurs are involved in Africa. This has caused Western influence to dwindle. China is building new railroad lines in Nigeria and Angola, large dams in Sudan, and new roads everywhere. China Road and Bridge Construction has 29 projects in Africa, many financed by the World Bank.

African Perspectives
on China in Africa

South Africa has manganese mines, Niger has Uranium pits, Sudan oil fields, and Congo has cobalt mines, all Chinese projects. As micro-entrepreneurs rather than investors, the Chinese are sometimes resented since some are petty traders selling flip-flop sandals and T-Shirts as well as opening restaurants and massage parlors.

Sometimes the Chinese fail, as in Zambia when a joint venture cotton mill failed: "We are back where we started," said Wilfred Collins Wonani, Chamber of Commerce director. "Sending raw materials out, bringing cheap manufactured goods in. This isn't progress. It is colonialism."

Thus, the battle is on - the domination of Africa involves neo-colonialism, mercantile trade, military prowess and intervention, and resource exploitation, pitting China's production and trade prowess against American military power. With its history of supporting African independence movements, China is winning the battle. Since Somalia in 1993 when 18 servicemen died, the Pentagon has been uninterested in Africa, as if knee jerk military response is all the USA is capable of. Many Saharan nations obtained help as part of a Trans-Saharan Counterterrorism Initiative focusing on Algeria, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, Nigeria, and Morocco. The Pentagon has been donning humanitarian roles formerly filled by the US Agency for International Development; this will prove to be a major mistake: adding aid to military support perhaps brings stability and better government, but with a catch transparent to all Africans: the goal of US national security is motivation for antiterrorism support.

Meanwhile, China is building more genuine friendships and a different kind of long term allies, by developing trade gains for its own national interest. The President of China, Hu Jintao, recently toured Africa to develop partnerships. In South Africa, where diplomatic ties have strengthened trade, Hu announced loans, increases in trade, and increases in South African tourism by Chinese. Agreements were signed in South Africa and Namibia to increase "brotherly friendship." Beijing grants unconditional loans to African countries to secure access to resources and markets. China is one of the world's premier arms suppliers; thus, nations not able to buy expensive Western arms buy from China. China has extensively invested in Sudan despite its internal genocide, fueled by Chinese arms deals, a point that has been repeatedly made by Bill Richardson of New Mexico. China claims to not want to obstruct or meddle in the internal affairs of countries; however, its arms deals massively impact internal affairs. China is concerned with being viewed as a "responsible world power," so it also makes efforts to invest positively.

Brazil has been quick to follow China's lead: President Lula da Silva apologized for 400 years of slave trade during a visit to Senegal. (Can you imagine George Bush ever saying this?) Brazil is in contention with China and India as superpowers; courting Africa is vital to Lula's diplomacy, with bilateral agreements with Ghana, Nigeria, and Mozambique. Lula is "digging beneath the layers of guilt and sorrow to find commercial and geopolitical issues."

This is all juxtaposed with the continuing and worsening idiocy of Bush's grudge match in Iraq, which is already having devastating effects on the internal USA domestic economy, and when used by nations like China and Brazil to prove their point in wooing Africa economically, acts to seal our nation's doom in the near to distant economic future. Surely, the Democratic candidates could help wake up our slumbering monstrous nation to the real truth of this looming economic catastrophe for the USA in all of Africa. "Who is winning? The Chinese are, for sure," said Michael Sata, a Zambian opposition politician." Their interest is exploiting us, just like everyone who came before. They have taken the place of the West as the new colonizers of Africa."

"Let the Chinese come," said Mahamat Hassan Abakar, lawyer in Chad, a former French colony with deepening ties to China. "What Africa needs is investment. It needs partners. All of these years we have been tied to France. Look what it has brought us." Iqbal Meer-Sharma, deputy director of South Africa's Department of Trade and Industry, said: "We've always known we have a dysfunctional relationship with the West. Now with China we have a relationship as equals. They don't look down on us. They are not condescending."

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Below are comments on this article by James Fallows, Washington Editor of Atlantic Monthly, former Chief Presidential speech writer for James Carter, and author of what I consider the best book on emerging economics of East Asia, Looking at the Sun: The Rise of the New East Asian Economic and Political System (1995), which is a timely, even prophetic, portrait of Asia's rise and the magnitude of its challenge to the West, a detailed examination and analysis of the historical and political underpinnings of the growth and development of Asian capitalism. Fallows aptly demonstrates that the socio- economic/political theories embraced by the West have prevented it from seeing the true nature and impact of the new Asian system. Fallows contributes to the debate on Asia by eloquently presenting his valuable insights and revealing theories as well as the often-overlooked historical- political-cultural foundations of Asian capitalism.

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Fallows' most recent book is Blind into Baghdad (2006). In the autumn of 2002, as Atlantic Monthly national correspondent, Fallows wrote an article predicting many of the problems America would face if it invaded Iraq. After events confirmed many of his predictions, Fallows went on to write some of the most acclaimed, award-winning journalism on the planning and execution of the war, much of which has been assigned as required reading within the U.S. military. In Blind Into Baghdad, Fallows takes us from the planning of the war through the struggles of reconstruction. With unparalleled access and incisive analysis, he shows us how many of the difficulties were anticipated by experts whom the administration ignored. Fallows examines how the war in Iraq undercut the larger "war on terror" and why Iraq still had no army two years after the invasion. He interviews soldiers, spies, and diplomats to imagine how a war in Iran might play out. This is an important and essential book to understand where and how the war went wrong, and what it means for America.

Fallows: I thought before the invasion of Iraq that it would be America's worst foreign policy mistake since Vietnam. I think it is now proving to be an even bigger mistake than Vietnam __ not as costly in American lives, of course, but more broadly damaging to America's interests, reputation, and ideals. So I agree with the argument that the people who recklessly entered this 'discretionary' war should be held accountable, as they will by history, and that the U.S. needs to limit the damage it is doing as soon as possible.

I also agree that China has, within its own borders, applied a remarkably effective way to bring tens of millions of rural people out of poverty. That is the process I tried to describe at length in last month's Atlantic Monthly article on China's emergence as the factory of the world. ('China Makes, the World Takes,' Atlantic Monthly, July-Aug 2007) But I'm not so sure that China is applying this policy outside its borders. I have not myself seen Chinese installations in Africa, but accounts I've read suggest that many are pure resource extraction operations, which yield oil, metals, minerals, and other commodities for Chinese manufacturers. If these Chinese ventures also bring some sustainable industry to other countries, of course that's too the good.

My sense is that the Chinese effort in Africa has had more mixed results that you argue here.

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Comment by JM of Uganda:

Thanks for your views about Iraq which were printed in New Vision in Uganda. It a saddening irony that increasingly many people feel might is right. I concur that the Iraq adventure was the worst political decision USA ever made and political historians will have a harsh judgment about BUSH. I bet USA deserved a better President than BUSH but that is the absurdity of voting, they chose him to be their leader and hence must carry his cross with him. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I live in Uganda where we have had a war for 20 years plus because our president felt that he could feel great if not greater in the region if he defeated the rebels militarily; albeit it has cost us dearly on all fronts and leaves us a broken , disjointed country divided sharply, and his legacy pales in significance when the northern Uganda question is brought it because he could have chosen to do other wise; he chose the military war, rather than diplomatic efforts. China has predecessors it is following , both in making mistakes and avoiding their mistakes but all wrapped in the same hands. China of course has its own agenda like Britain here during colonialism; America in the world politics and others, each must struggle to defend their own. China came in here and build our country a decent dwelling for the ministry of foreign affairs, but I mean by world city standards; it is nothing to write home about but never the less better than nothing because it is free.

Objectively speaking if China must be the next economic power, waking up from decades of poverty , they need resources to power that growth so to speak, otherwise where else are resources to come from Mars? This is the rule of the game that capitalism grows at the expenses of those in weak positions to defend their own or make use of it. Africa unfortunately is in that weak position that it can't utilize all of the minerals and other resources it has right now. If we think invading Iraq was a mistake we wait for the next one Iran. What will end the world will not be premeditated mistakes like North Korea or Russia doing the unthinkable but it will be reckless policies borne of pride and arrogance of the likes of Cheney. My Christian book tells me that a great calamity is preceded by a haughty spirit or arrogance like never seen

before.

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Comment by M. Kibuka of Uganda:

Thanks for the revelations about the US empire misdeeds in Iraq. When a river flows in a specific direction, it is hard to change it. The US empire is going down the drain, and the Chinese empire is on its way to replace it. You can advise the US as much as you like, but nothing is going to change their fate. Keep on educating us.

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