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China was collapsing into misery, decay and despair, in the midst of that 109-year period (1840-1949) known as the semi-wild, semi-colonial China era. Already in 1840, the year of the opium war, declared by Britain to China to introduce the drugs that the Chinese rejected, the history of China had been in rapid ruin.
The ruin was not only material, caused by the vampirism of the colonial power exploiting the Middle Empire with weapons, forcing it to accept unfair treaties, burning down the buildings of Beijing, beating and massacring the people with the British Sikh policemen, claiming huge “compensation” for the wars fought against it. It was also spiritual ruin. None of the old values and traditions could hold back that wave of destruction.
However, in the past seventy years things have changed and the main contradiction between the pious sermons of Western democracy and the contemporary indiscriminate exploitation of China disappeared with the expulsion of Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek). He disappeared in all fields.
On 6 December 2019, during the 5th South Africa Science Forum (Pretoria, 4-6 December 2019), Chinese Ambassador Lin Songtian was invited to participate in the parallel workshop of the Forum, “China-Africa Science and Technology Cooperation: Impact and Perspectives”, and gave the speech of opening. The mainstream media widely and proactively reported the diplomat’s words, arguing that China’s investment in Africa was second to none.
Ambassador Lin Songtian said the Belt & Road initiative proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping has effectively promoted the development of Africa. China’s cooperation with Africa has always followed the principle of truthfulness and honesty, justice and mutual benefit. China has always been committed to win-win cooperation and joint development with Africa. This is in stark contrast to Western countries which primarily pursue their own interests and not those of equal and mutual benefit.
The US, Japan and the EU are not involved in all large-scale infrastructure. Only China has invested and provided huge amounts of funds. Ethiopia, for example, once one of the poorest countries on the African continent, has become one of the fastest growing economies in the world after more than ten years of development.
Several well-known scientists from the Republic of South Africa attended the Forum, arguing that China – also a developing country – fully understands Africa’s needs and its willingness to open the doors to cooperation in scientific and technological innovation on encouraging basis.
The joint scientific research conducted by China and Africa is able to strongly promote the development of the African continent. Africa has skipped the first three industrial revolutions and cannot miss the fourth. China has many useful experiences gained with Africa for teaching.
If China can create scientific and technological societies for the training of African entrepreneurs, the Black Continent will certainly be able to offer candidates of value; with the hope that Africa will also achieve scientific, technological and managerial independence.
Some scholars also pointed out that the investigation conducted by Afrobarometer showed that because Chinese aid and investment in Africa have promoted the construction of infrastructure, Chinese products are of high quality and cheap, and that 63% of Africans believe that China has a positive influence on Africa. 15% of Africans have a negative attitude towards China because they know very little about it and are influenced by the irresponsible news of the ex-colonial media criticizing the People’s Republic of China.
The imperialist drug dealers, exploitative colonialists and pimps of the past, in new forms, lament the lack of democracy, only because they have seen their centuries-old banquet at the expense of the Chinese people foreclosed.
At the same time, Africa, as China’s economic and trading partner, has brought enormous mutual benefits. Africa possesses the 53 most important minerals on the planet and some rare strategic resources, but the rate of development and use of arable land is less than 30%. Although China is the richest country in the world in mineral resources, its per capita share is less than half the world level. Hence, along with the regular distribution of mineral resources, it is also necessary to establish greater China-Africa relations to expand the trading channels of these resources.
Although the African market has a high rate of return, it also has a certain degree of risk, which requires foreign companies to have better conditions to withstand the fluctuations of the African market.
The benefits of China’s investment in Africa are indisputable. However, the Belt & Road Initiative has always been questioned by Western countries.
Beyond the politically correct dispute over the Asian country’s lack of democracy, the main controversy has opportunistically focused on whether China has increased its debt risks to beneficiary countries and whether these projects have adequate environmental protection plans.
Some Western theories argue that China uses “debt trap diplomacy”, a means of providing large amounts of loans that beneficiaries cannot repay, in order to influence the policies of developing countries.
However, in reality, the external debt profile of the beneficiary countries is very diverse. Before Africa was hit by the Covid-19 epidemic, the average debt of the ten largest beneficiary countries was 36.5% of China’s total income, close to 37.2% of the rest of Africa. Furthermore, the situation in each country is different: these ten countries include high debtors like Zambia and other countries with very low debt like Angola, Kenya and Nigeria.
The loan initiative has always been in the hands of African countries which – when funds and blackmail from multinational financial institutions do not meet their needs – have the right to rely on China to build the necessary infrastructure.
Therefore, to some extent, the high demand for loans adapts to the development needs of African countries, which would be blocked by the inaction of the West and its financial institutions.
At present, the method of financing the construction of infrastructure is relatively simple. Generally, governments get preferential loans from Export-Import Bank of China or the China Development Bank, with the hiring of Chinese construction contractors.
In addition, the Chinese government and private companies are paying more and more attention to environmental protection. For example, in April 2019 the Chinese Ministry of Ecology and Environment published Guidelines on the promotion of works and a cooperation plan for environmental protection.
China has understood the importance of the eco-environmental issue in transforming the green economy and promoting the sustainable development goals developed by the United Nations, and has further improved and implemented a number of risk prevention policies and measures.
The Chinese government is also making greater efforts to regulate the behavior of private companies. The number of these companies is much higher than reported by the statistics of the Ministry of Commerce and almost all use their own capital. If the Chinese government can provide more funding channels for private companies, it will have more say in encouraging private companies to pay attention to social responsibility.
According to the report from the International Energy Agency, nearly 70% of the energy-deficient world population lived in Africa in 2019, and energy development is a huge driving force for economic growth. This means that the energy market will become an important area of China-Africa economic cooperation.
In a situation where sustainable development has become a global trend, China-Africa economic cooperation will inevitably have to adapt: from the extraction of traditional energy to the development of alternative energies; from large loans to human capital development. The focus on sustainability will not only lead to short-term contractual relationships, but also to long-term partnerships.
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