Bill wrote:I have a question.
China builds infrastructure, roads and railroads, in Africa and other countries in order to have access to their resources.
I read that China has little of their own oil and minerals and has to rely on importing huge amounts of each. What is keeping China from improving their own infrastructure to access their, I assume, huge reserves of oil and minerals?
Thanks.
China recently signed a contract worth $12 billion to build the Coastal Railway in Nigeria stretching 650 km across the country from Calabar in the east to Aba, Port Harcourt, Warri, Benin City and Lagos in the west. Never before in human history have we seen the spectacle of a continental-sized China, which was as poor as most African countries only 30 years ago, building up Africa’s infrastructure on such a scale that could help the world’s poorest continent catch up in development.http://www.europeanfinancialreview.com/?p=6110
Why Chinese Infrastructure Loans in Africa Represent a Brand-New Type of Neocolonialism
How will African countries repay massive debts to China?
The concept of “in-kind payments” smacks of colonialism in some ways. The historical precedent of European colonists comes to mind. Europeans built infrastructure in Africa at the turn of the century, purportedly also for local economic development, but in essence the projects were used for natural resource extraction. The predecessor of both the Nairobi-Mombasa and Addis Ababa-Djibouti railways can be categorized as such. Both connect inland regions with mineral deposits with major ports on the Indian Ocean.
During the period of the ninth five-year plan, international organizations and foreign governments
contributed $7.6 billion in loans for the highway and water transportation construction—including rural
roads. The World Bank was involved in the southwest, Qinba, and western projects covering 9 provinces,
91 poor counties, and more than 8 million poor people.
The Japan Bank for International Cooperation
(JBIC), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the Asian Development Bank (ADB)
also have cooperated with the Chinese government in poverty reduction and transportation infrastructure
construction.
International cooperation has also brought new management ideas and methods to the
construction of Chinese transportation infrastructure. Loans from international organizations and foreign
governments have strict requirements concerning planning, surveying, design, construction, and
maintenance. These not only ensure the quality and benefit of the projects, but also help to improve the
management capabilities of local governments and the professional capabilities of technicians.
While much progress has been made, much remains to be done. Some 30 million poor people in
the middle and western areas of China still must cope with poor transportation conditions
Peacedog wrote:Fracking, as a general rule, requires large numbers of people independently making decisions to work. Culturally the Chinese aren't really capable of pulling this off.
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