User:Toussaint/China and Africa

Yes, the Western democracies are going ga-ga (either with fear or congratulation) over the PRC's increasing ties with sub-Saharan Africa. Yes, China has human and environmental issues, as does the geographical majority of the African continent.

However, I have different issues with this current affair.

1. China is building itself constantly, with a regimen that is tight in some regions but wildly flimsy in others. 2. China has an inferiority complex that manifests itself in its relations with other states, namely Taiwan and Japan, as well as concerning its own history of turmoil and humiliation. 3. China seeks to make up for its past issues and "failings" by extending itself into other regions, and keeping itself rooted into those regions for as long and as strong as possible. 4. Africa is in deep economic and political shite. 5. Africa is desperate for whoever is willing to give it a cheaper ride than that which is being offered by Europe and North America. 6. Africa is getting lots of dirt-cheap products - toys, motorcycles, shoes, houses, roads - from China. 7. For the time being, China seems like the brother - rather than the mother - country that all 49 countries in sub-Saharan Africa never had post-independence. 8. Africa is mostly ruled by kleptocrats, while China is ruled by bureaucrats.

However, the criticism of current Sino-African relations by the Western democracies make little sense in the fact that such countries as the United States continue to do, and have a history of doing business with dictatorships and one-party states in other regions, namely the Middle East and Latin America.

So how can we get anything out of this pot-vs-kettle debate?

First off, I expect governments to lie, steal and murder their own citizens. So for one government to criticize another, no matter how moral and enlightened the critical government may be, is hypocrisy, no matter whether its Mugabe criticizing Brown, or Bush criticizing Assad.

I think that NGOs, no matter their political or economic affiliation, are a bit more qualified (but not by much, since they're still influenced by money) to criticize any government.