Andrea Worden, February 19, 2020 “Thank you, China” –– these words were often said by participants of the South-South Human Rights Forum –– Xinhua, 12/11/19 The Chinese Party-state held the second South-South Human Rights Forum (SSHRF) in Beijing on December 10-11, 2019.  Underlying the 2019 SSHRF was the Beijing Declaration, a manifesto encapsulating China’s vision of a human rights order for the developing world, which was adopted at the inaugural SSHRF in 2017. The Declaration challenges the universality of human rights, takes the rights to development and subsistence as the fundamental human rights, and promotes the view that each country should find its own country-specific human rights path. The 2019 SSHRF appeared to focus on ways to actualize the Beijing Declaration and to continue building […]

As we looked at yesterday, China may not be as welcomed in Africa as some authors might argue. My friends told me a few stories after reflecting on our first discussion that I thought should be shared, but didn’t quite fit into yesterday’s post.* Friend from Zambia You know, it’s probably not fair to think that the Chinese are only bad for Zambia. If they weren’t there many of the mines would have closed. Any job is better than no job. The people working in the mines just consider how much better things were for them when the mines were operated by the gov’t, rather than thinking about what it would be like without any job at all. If we were rational we’d probably be […]

I recently read Dambisa Moyo’s NYT op-ed “Beijing, a Boon for Africa.” After wrestling with a few questions that came up for me in the piece, I realized that this was a topic far beyond me and decided to ask my African friends here in China what they thought. The three men I chatted with come from Zambia (the same as Moyo), Zimbabwe, and Ghana. Even though they are not scholars like Moyo, their opinions reflect another valid view of how China is being perceived in their countries. Since they currently live in China, they prefered to remain anonymous. Do Africans really like China more than the U.S.? This question was met with chuckles from my Zambian and Zimbabwean friend (I didn’t get an answer […]

Yesterday we looked at how China can be rife with small crime, while still seeming safe to foreigners. Today we’ll be exploring a few of the ideas Chinese citizens hold about other countries, and why these views might be promoted by the state. I’ve honestly lost track of how many times I’ve been told that everyone in America has a gun, and that I come from a very dangerous country. While the US does have the highest gun ownership in the world, that doesn’t actually effect my daily life in the way my students might think. My wife actually takes a little joy in responding to this with her students, her grandfather sells antique guns and in the past had a room full of them. […]

The top story this week was the Shanghai metro crash which I covered in a recent post. The accident reignited the debate about the speed with which China is building infrastructure. Adam Minter reflected on the greater meaning of the crash for Shanghai residents who have no choice but to commute to work on the subway in his piece “Shanghai rail commuters get onboard with a prayer“. China also launched the first components of its new space station, which should be fully operational around the time the International Space Station is decommissioned. This great technological accomplishment coming on the heels of a needless crash creates an interesting contrast between technical achievements, and the ability to manage and maintain these systems. The cost of development was also […]

I stumbled across this short documentary about Chinese immigrants living in Senegal and thought some of you might enjoy another look at this topic. If you missed my 3-part series (The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly) on China’s Growing African Empire, I would suggest reading that along with this documentary. I found that this film focused much more on the micro-economic effects of Chinese immigrants’ push into Africa, that was a piece missing from my own posts on the situation.

Earlier this week I brought you the good and the bad that has come out of China’s role in Africa, today we are focusing on the truly ugly. Violence and Abuse A large portion of China’s investments in Africa have been targeted at the extraction of valuable metals. Over the past few years a number of disturbing reports have come out of several countries deploring Chinese mining practices. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, Chinese companies now own 60 of the 75 ore smelters in the Katanga region and 90% of the minerals go to China. The mines there are typical of Chinese mining operations throughout Africa, often employing child laborers, some as young as 13, to work in mines with no safety equipment, no […]

Yesterday we looked at the good coming out of China and Africa’s relationships, but today we are looking at a few of the conditions that seem less than desirable for Africa. One of the complaints about China’s development of infrastructure in African countries, is that it seems to be largely self-serving. China might build a freeway, but it heads straight to the oil field or diamond mine that China also owns. So even though these projects help to increase the country’s GDP (my thoughts on GDP), they do very little to help improve the living standards of the people of that country, nor do they provide means to support the country’s own industries. Often aid from western countries and the World Bank have several conditions […]

Today we’ll be looking at how China’s influence is growing in Africa, and what might be a few of the positives coming from this relationship. This will be followed up tomorrow with the downsides (the bad), and the next day with the ugly. Brief history The most important thing to remember in China’s current African Empire, and yes I mean it with all of the colonial baggage, is that it is not a recent development. China has been cultivating it’s presence there since the 1960’s when it started bringing aid projects to Africa when it was courting rulers for UN votes to oust Taiwan from its seat. Zhou Enlai, China’s Premier at the time, declared that these aid projects should have no strings attached to […]