What China wants from Africa? Everything...
China wants everything from Africa:
Its strategic location, its oil, its rare earth metals, and its fish, leaving African nations indebted to Beijing forever.
In its long history, Africa has served the global ambitions of many foreigners. Foreigners have reached out to Africa as missionaries, financiers, and infrastructure builders. They have promised to place the continent on the globalization map and help its people grow out of poverty. But they ended up grabbing Africa’s riches, colonizing one nation after another, and letting their people steep in poverty.
That may end up being the case again, with China’s recent infrastructure investment projects in the continent. On the surface, these projects seem to serve the quest of African nations to build a sound infrastructure. But on closer examination, they serve China’s ambitions to write the rules of the next stage of globalization. China wants to use Africa as a location to secure maritime roads (and the OBOR projects) that facilitates Chinese exports, as evidenced by Beijing’s large military presence in Djibouti.
Then there are Africa’s resources, oil, rare earth metals, and fish.
“As a South African, I’ve seen China’s activities on the continent up close,” says 7HG %DXPDQ B6HQLRU 5HVHDUFK $QDO\VW at Banyan Hill Publishing. “It’s clear that China’s primary goal with foreign investment is geopolitical, not economic. The most consequential investments are undertaken by state-owned companies, not by Chinese private capital. They tend to focus on infrastructure like highways, ports and dams and on public networks like the electrical grid.”
That’s something many African countries desperately need in their bid to develop their economies.
The trouble is that “these investments help to bind countries to China politically, and through debt obligations,” explains Bauman.“it creates a form of leverage that China can use to force these countries to support Chinese ambitions globally. In some cases, such as the Angolan oil sector or Congolese rare earth mining, Chinese investment helps to lock-in supply relationships with essential commodities.”
Meanwhile, Chinese boats are reaching to West Africa, sweeping the sea of any kind of fish that tries to swim through the spread nets.