China and Africa
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Over the last few years I’ve grown increasingly interested in the relationship between China and Africa, something I’ve discussed on and off in our forums.
I know that there is some debate as to whether or not China is “good” for Africa, and certainly we have to examine details on what exactly they are doing and how they’re doing it, but I think, overall, their presence is a positive one, as these two Christian Science Monitor articles seem to indicate. In my admittedly simplistic opinion, I think the white European powers are limited in their effectiveness there: there is simply too much history and exploitation and ignorance to move forward. As I’ve mentioned in forum posts before, I think China represents Africa’s best hope for effective aid.
I also want to emphasize that China’s self-aware (re-)rise to power represents a form of massive economic development that the world has not yet seen. This quote from one of the articles is apt:
“China is the most self-conscious rising power in history and is desperate to be seen as a benign force as well as to learn from the mistakes of the existing major powers and previous rising powers,” says Andrew Small, a Brussels-based China expert at the German Marshall Fund, a public policy think tank. “It sees its modern national story as anticolonial – about surpassing the “century of humiliation” at the hands of the colonial powers – and still thinks of itself, in many ways, as a part of the developing world.”
If this impression of China is accurate, as I hope it is, I find it to be a very beautiful thing.
China takes up civic work in Africa
Young Chinese idealists vie to join their ‘peace corps’ in Africa
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