Book review: China's Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa
Africa has entered a new age of Chinese imperialism, it is said. Prompted by that perception, foreign correspondent Howard French embarks on an epic trek across Africa to gauge the impact of investment by a million-strong Chinese business cohort.
by Howard French
Knopf
4 stars
David Wilson
Africa has entered a new age of Chinese imperialism, it is said. Prompted by that perception, foreign correspondent Howard French embarks on an epic trek across Africa to gauge the impact of investment by a million-strong Chinese business cohort. Despite the blurb's tactful talk of "nuance", French's findings are damning - forget China's "win-win" blandishments, he says.
"China had not so much broken with the paternalism of the West that it so often decried, as replaced it with a new one of its own. Africans were not really brothers. Not at all. Behind the fraternal masks, Chinese officials thought of them as children, capable only of baby steps, to be brought along with sugary inducements and infantilising speech," French writes.
His roving exposé suggests that the commercial colonists have an arrogant attitude. Branding local hires lazy, the Chinese pay peanuts, meanwhile trashing the environment, driven by greed, according to Mozambique-based analyst Joao Pereirah.
"They take everything down, from the big trees to the small trees, and they don't do any replanting. When you speak with a Chinese company, as I have with the directors of timber companies, they'll say, 'Our problem is not your environment. Your environment is a question for your future, not mine. Talk to me about money. I came here to make money and I have brought money to your country'."
China tries to counter its rapacious image in Africa by "parachuting hardware": pursuing giant construction projects that spawn bridges and stadiums. But development requires more than pouring concrete and building things, French says.