I just read another Howard French article. Yes, Ive been reading a lot of his stuff recently, and theyve got me thinking... The West does not appear to understand why the Chinese are making inroads into Africa, and that is because they are being wilfully blind. Some of the attitudes of Westerners can be summarised as Look at Evil China taking advantage of Helpless Africa unlike we the Good West!. For a start, many Westerners dont know that China was trading in East Africa long before Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope. They dont know that this Chinese trade was in stark contrast to slavery and colonialism later propagated by Arabs and Europeans in Africa. Caught up in their own success of the last 500 years, they fail to realise that before Constantinople, China was the worlds largest economy. The Western ascent, aided by the Industrial Revolution and the Opium Wars is a historic Chinese humiliation, and they have a name for it. The Qing Dynasty referred to the treaties signed with Britain after the Opium Wars as the Unequal Treaties, and China is reversing them. Where did Africa go wrong in all this? There is evidence that we were on an almost equal footing with the West at the end of the Dark Ages. Heck, Portuguese explorers arrived in Benin and found it more metropolitan than Lisbon, this in the 15th century! I have seen pictures of Africans performing a Caesarian Section, independent of European medicine! I think what killed us was secrecy. The existence of nsibidi script proves we independently developed a means of chronicling. We did not democratise it, so knowledge was lost. This brings us back to the Chinese: when two cultures meet, and they have something to share, there is mutual respect, not enslavement. When Zheng He arrived on African shores long before any white man, he started trade between Africa and China on mutual respect, equal terms. One thing that you must give to the Chinese is that they have a very long institutional memory, and a realism that is better than most. Despite the hiccups of the 500 year interruption, there is no basis for any comparison between Chinese and Western engagement in Africa. Building infrastructure is thousands of times more effective in addressing poverty long term than funding NGOs and dictating policies to us. The Chinese have in the last few years been bringing practical solutions such as Tecno and Huawei, the West, have brought Oxfam and WEF. Poor men cant eat democracy. Rights are important but look at Maslows hierarchy of needs. Practical solutions, work better, not talk shops.
Posted on: Sun, 03 Aug 2014 16:41:28 +0000
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