There is something about the school system that becomes so attractive to those in power. I suppose what they learned as children sets an example for adult behavior as colonialists.
For years, the World Trade Organization (WTO) and governments, especially those with the power, have preached about the socialization of barrier-free trade and the bringing of democracy by enforced free-trade agreements set by the elite in meetings of the G7, G8, G12 and recently the G20. With this promise of a global economy has come sterner lessons of government control through loans and manipulation of currency destined to keep the poorer nations friendly and poorer, oops, sorry, poorer nations “better able to export cheaper goods� thereby “bolstering their fragile economies.�
The end result of decades of expanding trade and diminishing barriers? The poorest nations are even more poor (the United Nations estimates they are poorer, in real terms, by 12 percent), they owe mountains of debt to the World Bank, are saddled with regulations devised and more appropriate for richer nations (like a silly WTO regulation for the thickness of ketchup) and, not least, they are made to live under a system of stern lectures and lessons from the developed nations — strictly enforced by economic and trade control.
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However, recently, the economic collapse of much of our Western economy has made many of these poorest nations laugh a little, refuse to make payments for a while and, honestly, think carefully about the shining example we all told them they were aspiring to. It is as if your professor lectured you for years on good manners and studious behavior and then you found out he was a delinquent and cheated on all his exams. The patronizing, colonial system the developed nations had in place is fraying, quickly, at the edges.
To make matters even worse there is a rogue lecturer out there who tells these countries they can provide a constant income, growing employment and thumb their noses at the WTO and World Bank. Okay, these poor nations know they are exchanging one master for another, but at least this new master is inputting cash and setting up industries in their countries, not merely exporting raw goods. China is busy.
In much of West Africa huge tracts of land are being purchased by Chinese companies. It is hard to track exactly how many square miles have been purchased because these “free-enterprise� companies often have a local holding company with local directors as a front. And then, of course, Chinese companies are hardly devoid of their government’s control: To transact business abroad a Chinese company has to have state permission and thereby state control. But the estimate is something approaching the size of New Jersey and New York combined.
For decades, Western business leaders have been sounding the alert of Chinese expansion in Africa. Primarily, the worry had been that China was cornering the mineral and gem markets, driving up prices. Then about eight years ago alarm bells started going off as virgin tropical forests were being felled and the raw wood sent to China (to make umbrellas and trivial things for the Wal-Marts of the world). The Chinese had attracted attention they did not want. The Chinese ethic is to succeed without drawing attention to oneself so they regrouped, rethought and took a leaf from our past in oil exploration.
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The Chinese have now reinvented themselves into the role of benefactor by investing (actually buying) farms, land, forests and even a lake or two in West Africa — and managing them to the benefit of the local population (and continuing, long-term profit and materials for their industries back home).
How much have they bought? One estimate coming out of Bamako is that they control about 20 percent of the resources of the country of Mali in direct ownership and another 35 percent in partnership. Like the U.S. oil companies of old, the Chinese are saying: “We’ll invest, take profits and provide financial stability for your poor country.�
And for a while this colonialist system works. It made America rich and the European nations before that. What is different is that the Chinese have identified the oil issues for the next decades: food and minerals. While we sit idly by and have G20 meetings to discuss how we are going to carve up our meager pie or seek to control world trade to our benefit, the Chinese are using our weakness to grab a huge stake in what may become the food and resources basket of the world — a world we used to control.
Peter Riva, formerly of Amenia Union, lives in New Mexico.
