Your point? And it better not be that I claimed to speak for all Africans or that SA is the be-all-&-end-all of Africa, because I claimed neither.
How is China investing in development in Africa going to lead to a “New Cold War”?
We don’t get upset when German companies invest in South America, or when French companies invest in North America, so why should we be upset that Chinese companies are investing in Africa?
If the problem is that the investment could have been made by western companies, and the profits therefore could have returned to western countries, well, haven’t western companies been trying that? And if they haven’t, and China is just swooping in and taking opportunities that western companies wouldn’t touch, well, what’s the complaint again?
Is the complaint that the Chinese are going to extract raw materials that rightfully belong to westerners, even though those materials somehow by mistake ended up underground in the wrong continent? If God wanted Americans to have all the oil and diamonds and tungsten, he should have buried it in America in the first place, rather can carelessly dumping it in Africa.
Is the complaint that Chinese companies will use their relatively greater wealth and organization compared to Africans to extract an unfair share of the profits and costs from this development? Well, that’s probably going to happen, but how is that different than development financed by westerners?
I’m aware of this.
*Suuuuure *they were:rolleyes:From 1987. 3 years before Mandela was released from his 27-year sentence. When even an idiot could see which way the wind was blowing, and Israel’s US allies had *finally *started sanctions (over Reagan’s veto). In *1981 *it was still “SA needs weapons!” and Israel inviting SA observers to watch the video of them attacking the Osirak reactor.
What is the main point of Chinese labor in Africa? Is that to give unemployed Chinese a (lower paying) job in Africa? Or, is it because China simply feels Chinese workers are easier to work with, and find them worth the money?
If you don’t know, South American companies also invest in Europe, the U.S. and China. And again, if you don’t know, Chile invest more money in South America than China. :rolleyes::rolleyes:
The point is not foreign investment. The point is who regulates the predatory practices of foreign companies when they aren’t supervised and controlled. :smack:
Some western companies are. Canadian-based Barrick Gold just fought off a Chinese attempt at buying copper miner Equinox which has massive mine in Zambia. They paid 7.3 billion vs. the Chinese offer of 6.3.
Chinese companies are not just sticking to Africa and other developing nations. The BC government has been making some big noises about a Chinese coal company firing up three underground coal operations in Northeastern British Columbia. China’s record in underground coal mining notwithstanding, the company wants to import a shit-load of Chinese workers to man the mines in lieu of hiring local guys. Unfortunately, the BC government seems to think this is a great idea…
For me, that right there highlights one of the biggest differences in Chinese investment vs. western investment. Their often insistence on importing large workforces to run the entire operation.
China is more willing to play the long game, and is willing to take a small return on investment with fairly high risk. They are also willing to work with the few governments we’ve deemed too evil to work with. This is probably not a testament to Chinese morals as much as it is a reflection of the fact that that’s really all China has to work with. The good stuff has already been snatched up.
Individually, Chinese entrepreneurs are more willing to actually live in Africa. A neat little African cinderblock house with a yard may even be a step up from a crowded Chinese apartment. Chinese people cook without a lot of processed food, and are probably more patient with electricity outages, etc. So Chinese people looking for a simple middle class life are often fine running a small shop in Africa, whereas you and I would complain endlessly about the lack of supermarkets and inconsistant air conditioning. Certainly most of us wouldn’t consider moving to Africa without a seriously bloated paycheck behind us (and this includes yours truly.)
I dunno, this doesn’t sound so bad. Maybe high crime in the more urban areas should be a more notable concern.
Also, the Chinese entrepreneurs may constitute a closed group that helps its own learn the ropes. If all of a sudden a bunch of Brazilian or whatever entrepreneurs were to start moving there, they would have ended up learning from scratch. The Chinese would not have been helpful while the locals might even have trouble giving a coherent answer to “so how do you do business here”.
Um…their SA relations went back and forth and are relatively stable now. I don’t think that Israel’s relations with apartheid South Africa (the apartheid itself was unpopular) is any worse than our love affair with Saudis. (: Actually, after the Yom Kippur War, most new African nations distanced themselves from Israel. From a realist standpoint, Israel needs to build those relationships again.
Don’t we send American contractors overseas?
I wouldn’t say “Back and forth”, I’d say “closer than married…until that wasn’t diplomatically tenable.” Let’s put it this way - the Israelis and the Apartheid regime shared nuclear tech. Do you see the US doing that with Canada or Korea or suchlike?
Prove it. Actions speak louder than words.
That’s not a very good comeback, given how completely wrong any support of the Saudi regime actually is. All you’re saying is that the Israelis are as bad as the US when it comes to foreign policy. That’s a pretty low branch to aim for on the tree of “States with worthwhile foreign policy”. It may even be subterranean.
No, but we did it with Iran.
I can’t speak for Africa, but in Angola a significant amount of the work projects that China is doing are related to infrastructure repair and they got a very sweet deal from the government. Angola is trading oil for work and the deal lets China source 70% of the work to Chinese firms. That is probably why much of the supplies and workers are from China.
The Cold War was a weird time. If you remember what your country’s foreign policy was, you weren’t there.
Really? America gave *Iran *nuclear weapons technology (which was clearly the context, nitpickers)? Cite! :dubious:
**MrDibble **-
You know it’s not that simple. SA controlled the sole source of uranium in the world not under the control of either the West or the Soviet Block. If Israel wanted a nuclear program of its own, it *had *to provide them with nuclear technology.
What I mean to say is that Israel traded with SA not out of avarice or out of any love for the apartheid regime, but because it had made a serious strategic decision to do so in order to serve what it saw as the most vital national interests imaginable. Israel believed at the time - and still does - that it needed nukes to survive. This probably doesn’t absolve us in your eyes, and I’m not sure it should, but you should remember that it wasn’t a decision taken lightly.
I’m willing to believe that, certainly. But you know what I think about Realpolitik…IMO, a country that has to play nice with brutal racists in order to survive, doesn’t deserve to do so without being called on it.
I could understand this if it was *just *the nukes, but it wasn’t, was it? It was othermilitary tech too. Stuff I’ve, in fact, been on the wrong end of.
As the saying goes, in for a penny, in for a pound; if you aleady have a relationship, you might as well go all the way. If its any consolation, those old rifles were innacurate as hell.
Israel’s approach to moraility in terms of foreign relations is a bit unusual, in that it held the United States as its sole role model. Essentially, for years Israelis considered the U.S. the only moral country on earth. Every other country was either a dictatorship, under the control of the Soviet Union, or European… which basically left only the U.S. to set an example. Basically, all we had to be is as good as or better than the America, and everything would be cool.
Anyway, this isn’t a thread about Israel.
You said technology.
+1
Okay. I guess you have that right to criticize national safety initiatives and foreign policy from behind your computer. Doesn’t have much weight, though.
If you want to talk about helping ‘racist’ governments, who do you think gave the Arab nations weapons and aid in the earlier years? :o (Hint: Rhymes with Boviets.)
The U.S. depended on Israel in the Cold War. Israel had tried to remain neutral (and was first supported by both the US and the Soviets - the latter [Czechs] aided Israel in her War for Independence) but alliances with the U.S. and increasing threats from enemies won out.
Everyone loves to blame Israel for everything, yet Israel is probably the most valuable strategic ally we’ve had in the last two generations. Shit. Israel does a lot of things in its interest that probably don’t pass your moral judgment meter, you know, like how it helped support the Romanian government by purchasing Jews.
Show me a country that doesn’t survive on realpolitik.
Short answer to the OP: Most African nations don’t have a policy framework to stand on when dealing with major world powers. There’s no long history of autonomous government, democracy, or even relative stability. The region in question (generally speaking, since I hate to put ‘region’ on an entire continent) doesn’t have the standard agenda framework that [del]Western[/del] developed countries do.
Israel, France, Germany, U.S., U.K. (though not quite uniform) - these governments have established domestic and foreign relations policies. The African nations that the OP and others talk about don’t have that history. There’s a new thread on Africa every two days here. Why is Africa easy to exploit? Is everyone just racist? While the continent suffers from post-colonialism, the short answer is no. It’s because dominant countries see African governments as fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants desperados. Natural resources do not equal wealth or political capital.
Disclaimer: My old advisor and specializes in African foreign policy & economic relations. When we were talking about my career ambitions, he said he couldn’t be my mentor anymore if I went to DU (where he was once a classmate of Condi Rice). I argued for weeks because I didn’t want our mentor-student relationship to change. He kept telling me I couldn’t develop as a grad student under his influence, even if it was remote. I thought he was wrong because we shared the same political theory philosophies.
This goes on for awhile, and then he hands me an envelope with a four page recommendation letter that was dated a month prior. He had blatantly stated that my transfer of populist domestic policy ideals to foreign relations was a mark of immaturity. Then he outlined his responses to the things I had written - essays that showed how I changed as I shaped my position in international relations theory.
He ended with my Jr. yr essay on the Israeli-Palestinian problem. (“If Israel does not acknowledge the PA as legitimate…must reject the Bush doctrine on ‘dealing with terrorists’ and use Mubarak as an example…developing a viable Palestinian economy is crucial…access to water…continuous borders…it must refuse the Right of Return while acknowledging a new nationalism…no Arab country will absorb the Palestinian territories and it is not in Israel’s security interests for it to be so…without disengagement, the apartheid state accusations will soon ring true.”)
He supported my academic goals in examining Israeli-African (read: Arab) economic policies. [It had nothing to do with him and everything to do with Israel’s best interests.] He was impressed by my ‘potential to play a role in pragmatic foreign policy decision making’.
I’d traded idealism for realism.
I handed it back and said, “You can’t be my advisor.”
“I know.”
“We’re not on the same team.”
“No. We are not.”
I swear, that was one of the saddest days of my life.
South Africa is relevant to the discussion, in terms of its own industrialization.
In the days of the old apartheid regime, SA was an international pariah-so it had to develop its own industries.
I eventually developed to the point where it made everything from cars to shoes…but because of the small size of its home market, these products were not competitive on the world market. With the end of apartheid, SA found that it was flooded with cheap imports from Asia, with the result that it has sht much of its industries down.
Today, it remains a farming and mining based economy.
So, even with Chinese investment, I don’t see Africa becoming amanufacturing powerhouse anytime soon.