December 7, 2015
China's economic invasion of Africa
A million Chinese people, from engineers to chefs, have moved to work in Africa in the past decade. How has the trade boom changed their lives?
Sunday 6 February 2011 15.29 EST
The first Chinese reached Africa nearly 600 years ago during the Ming dynasty, when the armada of admiral Zheng He landed on the Kenyan coast. The next significant arrival was in the early 1900s, when 60,000 Chinese miners worked on the South African goldfields. Half a century on, Chairman Mao Zedong sent tens of thousands of agricultural and construction workers to Africa to enhance ties with countries emerging from colonialism.
But post-cold war migration concerns economics rather than politics. China-Africa trade grew from $6bn in 1999 to more than $90bn (£56bn) in 2009, roughly split equally between imports and exports: Africa's natural resources – oil, iron, platinum, copper, and timber – flowing east to feed China's factories, and finished goods, from flip-flops to trucks, travelling the other way. Last year, the trade is estimated to have topped $100bn.Chinese state involvement in the trade is crucial. Each year Beijing provides billions of pounds in grants and loans to African governments as a sweetener to secure raw material deals or to finance infrastructure projects that could benefit its companies.
China's move into Africa has not all been driven from the east. Countries such as Uganda have actively courted Chinese companies, to good effect: in 2010 China replaced the UK as the biggest source of foreign direct investment. One of the largest firms to have set up in Uganda is ZTE, China's second-biggest telecommunications equipment company. Zhu Zhenxing, 32, is its MD in Uganda. Growing up in Jiangsu, along China's east coast, Zhu was certain about two things: he wanted to learn English, and wanted to be an international businessman. He was recruited by ZTE at a job fair, with the promise of a job abroad.
Click on Link:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/feb/06/chinas-economic-invasion-of-africa
