Yes. And in the Netherlands, that arable land is the land on which they grow the non-permanent crops.
This link may make it clearer to you, as it describes the different types of land use more explicitly. (Note, though, that the percentages in it, from 2005, are slightly different from the 1996 figures quoted in my previous link.)
I don’t know about Britain, but there are plenty of Chinese engineers, IT people, and scientists living in the United States. Perhaps China has 9 times the population of Nigeria. My general sense is that Chinese-born engineers, IT people, and scientists outnumber Nigerians by a lot more than 9 to 1. At least in the US.
By the way, I don’t think it makes much sense to compare Egypt and the Netherlands by percentage of arable land. Egypt contains a lot of sparsely populated desert regions. In terms of total square miles of arable land, Egypt has a lot more arable land than the Netherlands. It also has a bigger population, but I bet the difference was a lot less 50 years ago.
Hey Kimstu, no need to apologize to me if you are castigating me but attributing what I said to someone else…I feel like the other kid took my whupping, mom. 
Yes I did read up on Botswana. And I pulled my own (non-Wiki) statistics on it before I posted my judgment. I suppose we’ll disagree on crummy as an appropriate adjective.
Interestingly, I happened to have lunch today with a South African friend. He spoke highly of Botswana. Among the points he made is that much of their success can be attributed to business relationships with SA and according to him, the preference for SA businesses in recent years to relocate to Botswana because they like the business climate there better since the big SA reorg. I have no idea how much truth there is in this, although I did find some references which seemed to indicate that Botswana’s successes have been furthered by their ability to partner with SA businesses.
From http://www.sarpn.org.za/documents/d0001250/index.php e.g :
"As in the case in other countries in the SADC region, the dominance of South African business in Botswana (especially in the highly visible sectors) is very apparent. Some companies that have been in the country since the 1960s are now considered Botswana businesses; however, many of the newcomers are strongly associated with South Africa. Careful management of local sensitivities, combined with good corporate practice, is required to ensure the positive reception of South African investors in Botswana, as it is in the other countries on the continent in which South Africa has business interests. "
In any case, thanks for helping me get educated. I went to China last fall looking for (personal) investment opportunities, and SA/Botswana is on my hit list of places to visit for game preserves–Chobe comes highly recommended by my friend. I’ll take a business card with me.
Kimstu - if you’ll agree that farmland is not the basis of Dutch wealth, I’ll agree with whatever definition of ‘arable’ you propose.
Hell, I’ll even give you all of Holland, if you’ll agree that Iceland, Singapore, and Norway (among others) are examples of countries with lots of wealth, but hardly any farms at all.
Deal?
Sure, if you’re not counting livestock raising as “farms”. Otherwise we’d have to rule out Iceland, with its 23% permanent pastures.
In any case, I already said (back in the first post where I brought up the land-use issue) that I agree with the general principle that there is not necessarily a connection between usable farmland and wealth in modern societies. I just don’t think your specific examples were all that persuasive.
Not all that much, actually, if we compare all agricultural/livestock land use, as I’ve been doing. Egypt has about 19,900 square km of land used for crops and pastures (2% of 995,450 square km total land area). The Netherlands, on the other hand, use around 50% of their total 33,883 square km for crops and pastures, or about 16,942 square km. And as you note, the population of the Netherlands at about 16.5 million is much less than that of Egypt at about 78 million—only a little over one-fifth, in fact. So I think that despite the popular perception of the abundantly fertile Nile Valley, there’s no question that the Netherlands is actually much more of a farming country than Egypt is.
Africa hasn’t a hope in hell of being like China. I’m not sure what’s most important amongst:
[ul]
[li]China is a single country, subdivided into provinces, regions and dialects which are noticeably different. But Chinese people are still Chinese first, and Szechuanese or Suzhouese second. Africa is a whole bunch of countries, subdivided into tribes and suchlike. So the chance of any large-scale coordination or cooperation is pretty much zero.[/li][li]People in China have seen things get better and better for a generation or two. They are on an upward trend, ready to believe in and invest in the future. In Africa, anyone with half a brain keeps a suitcase packed, ready to scarper with all the assets they can carry, because the last couple of generations have taught that no matter how good things look, they can (and almost certainly will) turn to shit overnight.[/li][li]China is a huge country with lots and lots of people, and a large and growing economy. Africa is a vast continent, with hardly any people, and dozens of crappy little economies that grow and shrink all the time. Whenever a country starts to prosper, it finds that one or more of its neighbours craps out and knocks away part of the underpinnings of its economy. The infrastructure and distances simply make it too hard to get a decent number of people within x hours of your factory or whatever. Shenzen alone probably added more roads, railways, ports and airports in the last decade than the whole of Africa.[/li][/ul]
I think Confucianism largely provides a sense of order to the greater China in the way Christianity did for the West, a unity that Africa singularly lacks.
It’s hard to appreciate exactly what an “unindustrialized” nation is before you’ve been to one. I can only talk for where I live- small town north Cameroon- and it’s important to remember that Africa is huge and encompasses thousands of cultures and economic systems.
The amount of manufactured goods for sale in a medium sized town here would be put to shame buy a well stocked 7-11. I could write down a list of everything it is humanly possible to buy in my town, and it wouldn’t take up more than a page. And few of those things are actually manufactured within the country. There are no companies. Next to nobody has a formal job. There are no factories except ones run by foreigners to extract natural resources and send the profits overseas. Even public works like roads are maintain by foreign companies- but not with anyone’s goodwill in mind, just the easy transport of resources to Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Roads are left to wash out the second harvest season is over.
There are a lot of steps between this and modern-day China. China has had factories and industry for generations now. My neighbors are still substinance farmers who build their houses out of mud they dig up with their own two hands, eat what they grown in their fields, and see money only on rare occassions. And to get land to grow, they just walk out into the bush until they find a clear spot, and then ask the local traditional leader if it’s okay to build a field or hut there. Meanwhile, nomadic cowherders pass through now and then. It’s been a while since China’s been like that. We are talking fuedal times here.
The bigger question is, is there a future for African business? The answer is wholeheartedly “yes”. All you have to do is look at the success of cell phone companies (just about the only non governement run “big business” you find). They are everywhere. I’d guess about 3% of the nation of Cameroon is wearing a cell phone company tee shirt at any given time. There are call boxes every few feet, even in isolated villages. And all this grew in just a few years.
But is “like China” really such a great goal? I wish people had more access to health care, education, and women’s rights. But besides those things, people arn’t too miserable (obviously this varies by countries). They are self suffiecent, close to their familes, free to find their land and build their houses and run their small businesses as long as they don’t cause trouble, and seem to have a fair amount of leisure time between work-intensive agricultural periods. Would my neighbor Ousamou really rather work forty hours a week under flourescent lights at the widget factory so he can buy gas to put in his car that he has to have because his once small walkable town is now a city? Would Halimatou really rather sit in an office staring at a computer than spend her days surrounded by her family and friends selling peanuts and follare leaves?
I’d venture no.
All you have to do is ask them if they’d prefer to be a middle class person in Nigeria, just an hours drive away.
I don’t think you’ll find any takers. Nigeria is pretty “developed” but it’s a crappy place to live. Living as a peasant with nothing on ample and fertile land (and there is plenty of fertile land- famines are usually because the government screwed up, not because the land didn’t produce) is much better than having some stuff, but living in a crowded, crime ridden, unhygenic slum.
Anyway, just like how Asia is not Latin America is not Eastern Europe, African countries will develop it’s own way to develop based on it’s own circumstances. Time will tell.
Yes, but there are far more highly educated people in China, which has countless universities and churns out doctors and scientists by the thousand. Nigeria has only a handful of universities, serving a tiny tiny percent of the population, and will only graduate a few doctors and the like any given year.
Yes, I think this is very telling. Chinese parents constantly nag and harp on their kids to study hard in school so they can get 1) get good grades and 2) get a high paying job as a doctor or engineer (or whatever pays well). It’s built into the society… all of the other Chinese are competing against each other and it’s very much a rat race / keeping up with the Jones. I think African families don’t do this to the degree of the Chinese. Africans find joy in the moment and want to maximize that joy. In that sense, it really doesn’t matter what possessions someone else has over in the next city, country, or continent since it has nothing directly to you and envy is “bad”.
I think an interesting story idea might be what happens if the Chinese govt could take over the African continent consequence-free. Without the West stopping them, I think they wouldn’t have any qualms about military invasion, enslaving the natives, turning Africa into a model of Chinese society, and sending resources back to the mother land. They would justify it by the fact that their new world order improves life for the average native.
I think the main problem with Africa is that it will never get to economic “takeoff” (W.W. Rostow). that is, you need a “critical mass” of educated people, open markets, transport, and infrastructure, to make it as a manufacturing economy. Africa can’t make the grade, because many of its educated people leave-and resource extraction (mining, oil wells0 doesn’t creat a lot of high-skill jobs. The Chinese model makes it worse, because Chinese companies bring in Chinese labor, to build the mines, docks, railheads, roads, etc. So local African owned firms are shut out. I would imagine this would cause quite a bit of resentment over time-I would not be surprised to see anti-Chinese riots from time to time.
Oh-and transport between African countries is difficult-the rail systems are breaking down 9and not repaired).
In many countries, the rail system no longer exists. Everything coming from ‘the rest of the world’ goes to somewhere like Mombasa, where it gets unloaded from its ship onto a rusty decrepit dock, then into a rusty decrepit warehouse, then onto a rusty decrepit deathtrap lorry, which spends a week chugging its way along a potholed, clogged, broken-down two-lane highway to a border crossing, and then it transfers onto the really bad infrastructure.
The Controvert I think the notion of China taking over Africa militarily is a bit of a fantasy, why would they want the trouble of governing it when they can just extract it’s resources? I think a military maneuver for Africa would definitely be met with a western response. It’s much easier to do it the way they are doing now, using the market to get in there, and once there defending their factories and mines, but letting the rest do what it will.
I think the tragic reality is that no one really cares about Africans, outside of individual sympathy pangs that is. Collectively we all just don’t give a shit. The Chinese don’t even pretend to, which is in some ways more humane than the western ‘we’re from the government, we’re here to help’ model.
As far as China’s education goes, I read a thread discussing the PhD. glut that is degrading the value of the Chinese PhD. in the world market, because its educational institutions have been growing at the same exponential rate as the rest of their infrastructure, creating some really poor quality educations that are getting ‘PhD.’ slapped on them. The quality control would appear to be up to the same standard as Chinese dogfood.
I do not agree with this sentiment. I think the reality is that very few actually think “Africa” can be helped. It is politically inexpedient to blame their plight on themselves or their inability to help themselves.
Therefore the most expedient reaction is to find and advance multiple different external explanations for why most African nations fare so poorly, and why their peoples find themselves at the bottom tiers elsewhere if they emigrate.
The darkest ‘secret’ is seldom openly admitted: most of the world has given up because of a sense that the peoples of African nations will never be able to compete openly on the world stage. Having blamed many of their problems on colonialism, we will now leave them to the vicissitudes of their own self-governance and simply stand by, for the most part, as they muddle along.
Chief Pedant I disagree. I don’t think the west or anyone has ever done a thing to help Africa that didn’t require a pound of flesh. There was no sincere effort ever to build the needed infrastructure without exacting heavy tolls in terms of unequal trade relations with the colonial power. I have seen no evidence that any nation ever went in for the long haul to help Africa at the expense of short-term gains for themselves. I don’t expect nations to be anything but self-interested actors, but the short term gains have always been too tempting, and it was only recently that white guilt kicked in and we started treating Africans as equal level humans, even though that is fraught with a lot of BS. Gotta love all the UN Summits where a bunch of rich fat cats meet at fancy hotels on exotic locales to talk about talking about solutions for Africa, while spending money earmarked for African development on the catering.
What western countries went in and helped China? Or Japan? Or India? Or Indonesia? Or any other third world country? Or first world country, for that matter? The idea that other parts of the world were “helped” but Africa was ignored is ludicrous, because it presumes that only westerners are economic agents, other people are merely objects, that everything good happens because westerners caused it to happen, and everything bad happens because westerners either caused it to happen or failed to prevent it from happening. It’s ethnocentric and chauvinist.
Sure, but it’s your ethnocentrism and chauvinism because I didn’t imply that.
If you look back up the thread, you’ll note that I pointed out distinct cultural differences in Africa that caused western influence to be highly disruptive, whereas other nations were more compatible with their colonizers, or more capabkle of pushing back or whatever. To deny the influence of western colonialism on the modern capitalism isn’t ethnically respectful, it’s naive. Adam Smith’s invisible hand reached out and pimp slapped Shaka Zulu.
As I have heard many a person say, “The Chinese are natural capitalists.”
Infrastructure is probably the big key. Get some commerce going with neighbors and get rid of warlords (getting rid of some particularly nasty diseases would also be nice) and anything’s possible, though excruciatingly improbable.
I suspect the answer would be rather different if you asked them if they would rather have the lifestyle of a middle-class person in the US or Europe. Very few people in first-world countries choose subsistence farming as a lifestyle, given the choice. In fact, very few people in first-world countries choose any kind of farming as a lifestyle- it’s a problem for farming families in the US (Jared Diamond discusses this in Collapse), who often find that their children, given a choice, aren’t interested in taking up the family farm for their career.
For that matter, more and more people everywhere in the world are choosing to live in cities, rather than in rural areas.
Well culture is the system of social networks that make infrastructure possible. One of the key features of developed nations is a culture that transcends ethnic loyalties. There is a direct correlation between strength of ethnic identity and ability to operate in a cosmopolitan environment. You see this in Afghanistan just as you see it in Africa. Tribal loyalties trump the ability to build a multi-ethnic coalition. The multi-ethnic coalition is what is required to build the centralized authority that will maintain roads, which are the circulatory system of a civilization.
There are only two examples of homogenous ethnic affiliation that are exceptions to this rule that I can think of. That is Israel and Japan. Israel is a singularity because it had a cultural identity that was able to survive diaspora over the course of 2000 years, and Japan was somehow capable of working with other ethnicities while remaining homogenous.
Africa is not just a matter of infrastructure, because there are major cultural movements that must occur prior to the ability to maintain that infrastructure.