Latest update April 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
May 29, 2011 Editorial
As the Chinese economic juggernaut keeps rolling on at its heady double digit rate for over two decades, it has been accompanied by some developments that have sparked quite a heated debate that rages from Africa to Suriname.
There is, of course, the massive growth in trade between Africa and China that is still tilted in favour of the former as China’s insatiable demand for raw materials just keeps on increasing.
Oil, gas, diamonds, bauxite, copper, and primary agricultural products just scratch the surface of what is flowing to China while the Chinese ship back the cheap manufactured merchandise – including the textiles and clothing that have been Africa’s forte – that has become their signature and helps to return the money they have shelled out for the raw materials.
So far so good: this is precisely what the west had done with Africa since the sixteenth century. What has raised the eyebrows has been an evidently conscious policy of the Chinese government to encourage massive Chinese migrations into the underdeveloped countries.
Questions have been asked as to whether the Chinese are interested not just in the economic neo-colonial relationship that the west had pioneered after WWII but actually intend to use these countries as a vent for Chinese overpopulation and in effect create Chinese-dominated colonies across the third world.
Unlike the western nations China typically packages its raw material deals with infrastructural projects. These are sorely needed since the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) seemed to have given up on loans to Africa, and in effect are shutting off private financing for such projects.
The World Bank (WB) estimated that as of mid-2006, China’s Export-Import Bank infrastructure loans to Africa were over $12.5b. In 2007, this bank pledged $20b in infrastructure and trade finance loans related to Africa over the next three years, on top of the $5b China-Africa Development Fund, announced in 2006 at the third Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, to encourage PRC investment in Africa.
But most significantly, these loans are typically tied to the participation of Chinese contractors, who insist on importing massive numbers of Chinese workers. Quite a significant number of these workers stay behind in what they perceive to be a more conducive environment than their native villages in China for moving up.
While the actual numbers of these new Chinese settlers in Africa may have been exaggerated by the western media, 750,000 appears to be most realistic. In addition to the spigot being kept open with the increased infrastructural loans, the chain migration of relatives and friends joining their cohorts in Africa will certainly multiply that number by several factors in the coming decades.
Whatever may be the intentions of China, one does not have to be an alarmist to predict that this development will have significant effects in the near future.
But one does not have to go as far as Africa to appreciate the impact of the new Chinese influx that accompanies its infrastructural and trade drive on a third world country. We just have to look next door at Suriname.
In the Dutch colonial period a couple thousand Chinese were brought into the colony as indentured servants. As in the other Caribbean territories, these gravitated into commerce at the end of their indenture. But in the last decade, they have been joined by at least 40,000 new Chinese immigrants – amounting at 10 per cent of the population of Suriname, as China has opened up credit lines of billions of dollars.
This influx has precipitated a vigorous debate in Suriname. For instance, in the eastern province of Marowijne so many Chinese were brought in to work in a Chinese palm oil project that opposition leader Ronnie Brunswijk was forced to demand that Chinese should only be brought in for management positions in their projects.
Ironically, the most visible sign of the new Chinese presence is the ubiquitous takeover of the supermarket and grocery trade that had long been dominated by the older Chinese population descended from the days of indentureship.
Please share this to every Guyanese including your house cats.
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