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Colonizing Africa is a futile effort. The Chinese should look at South Africa to see how Africans will deal with unjust ownership.
by pastor_elm 8y ago
Colonizing Africa is a futile effort. The Chinese should look at South Africa to see how Africans will deal with unjust ownership.
- nostromo 8y agoMaybe... In most cases western colonialism didn't end because of resistance, but because the west decided it didn't like colonialism.
- beat 8y agoMore to the point, the West could no longer afford colonialism in the post-WWII era. Empires were impractical.
- johan_larson 8y ago"If you keep getting in fights with your white buddies, you won't have the energy to push around brown people." Now there's a message for our time.
- beat 8y agoSad but true.
- wonderwonder 8y agoWith due respect, South Africa returned to majority rule / democracy when the apartheid government willingly stepped down. If they had not decided too, it is very probable that they would still be in power today. The odds of a China with its multi decades long plans and wealth stepping away from territory they have taken under their wing is very slim. China is being smart about it, using wealth (loans) and technology to build an economic foothold instead of strength. Once they are in though I could see it transitioning to something else in the long term.
- cf498 8y ago> using wealth (loans) and technology to build an economic foothold instead of strength. To be fair, that has been pretty much the world bank playbook for decades. I dont see why an exploitation in that form would revert back to more classic forms of colonialism. Upholding a colonial regime is simply not worth the effort if you have similar financial benefits with loans with horrible conditions.
- dingoegret 8y agoWell this is the west's strategy in the Middle East. By installing pro Western democracies they can extend their hegemony over that region.
- bonzini 8y agoI am not sure how the rest of Western colonization was just. Check out King Leopold II of Belgium [1]; it's but an example. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocities_in_the_Congo_Free_State https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocities_in_the_Congo_Free...
- beat 8y agoI don't think Chinese investment in Kenya (or the rest of Africa) is the same as colonization, at all. International trade and investment is a much more mutually beneficial relationship, with a strong track record of success. What's mostly different here is that China, rather then the US or Europe, is the dominant financial partner.
- monocasa 8y agoIt's pretty much textbook neo colonialism.
- beat 8y agoWhat does that even mean? Are there Chinese troops in Kenya? Is the government a puppet state? Don't just string buzzwords together, make a real argument that this is harmful, or comparable.
- monocasa 8y agoI'm not stringing buzzwords together, it's a concept that's more than fifty years old talking about colonialist effects via economic power instead of direct military or political power. > Neocolonialism, neo-colonialism, postmodern imperialism, or neo-imperialism is the practice of using capitalism, globalization and cultural imperialism to influence a developing country in lieu of direct military control (imperialism) or indirect political control (hegemony). It was coined by Kwame Nkrumah in the context of African countries undergoing decolonization in the 1960s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neocolonialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neocolonialism
- qiqing 8y agoPeople make those broad claims because they never been colonized themselves, and it may not be worth your time educating them on the difference since they haven't experienced anything else. In my humble experience, they are disproportionately likely to be the descendants of colonizers and are sometimes uncomfortable with their own privilege.