http://www.democratandchronicle.com/...7/1039/OPINION

While the United States is marred by the unabated war in Iraq, China is investing, profiting and helping Africa develop.

To me it is a frightening prospect that the United States might lose out in this last scramble for Africa because of an anachronistic foreign policy that advocates withholding aid to Africa due to the existence of corruption and the absence of Western-style democracy in several African countries. What kind of democracy can we realistically expect in countries like Zimbabwe, in which 60 percent to 70 percent of the people are unemployed? In some other African countries, half of the people are illiterate and many more are without electricity, piped water, television or decent housing.
To expect Western-style democracy under these conditions is a bit myopic and outright unrealistic, from the view of victims of global capitalism.

The fact is that corruption has been so deeply entrenched in Africa for so long that it has become the normal way of transacting business at all societal levels; it will take several years, even generations, for that culture of corruption to be eradicated. Western nations did not become democratic overnight, or even within a couple of generations.
I submit that democracy comes to those who can define it, or choose it. A people that expend most of their energies on survival are mostly concerned about what to eat and where to sleep today; they are not armed with the faculties to decipher the theory of no-democracy-no-aid.
On this score, I think the Chinese are ahead of the United States and even Europe, the former colonizers of all of Africa. According to the USA Today article "Chinese seek resources, profits in Africa" (June 22): "All across the continent, Chinese companies are building dams, repairing roads and running telecommunication systems. The modern scramble for Africa resembles the late 19th century, when European nations carved up the continent as they searched for minerals and slaves."
The Chinese are in Africa for profit, but they are also transferring tangible and intangible technologies and taking advantage of America's seeming reluctance to help a continent because it is mostly ruled by corrupt and undemocratic leaders.
Thus, while the United States and Europe wait until African corruption is eradicated, the Chinese are aggressively laying down some enduring foundations for continental African development.
This suggests that technology is no longer exclusively controlled by the West, and that there has been a paradigm shift in the competition for global dominance, different from the Cold War period that pitted the former Soviet Union against Western Europe and the United States.

How this last scramble for Africa will play out in the end should have concerned the G-8 leaders, and the United States in particular.

In the final analysis, the more China entrenches itself in Africa, the more continental African foreign policy will reflect that Chinese presence and prominence in African affairs.
Though President Bush and the other G-8 members last week agreed to cancel the debts of the poorest African countries and double their financial aid to the African continent from $25 billion to $50 billion by 2010, that is still no match for the Chinese strategy of jump-starting African economic development from the ground up, and without being overly concerned about high levels of corruption and the presence or absence of Western-style democracy.
I urge leaders of Western nations to pay close attention to this paradigm shift in the last scramble for Africa, in which China has already become a major player, in the contest for global economic and technological dominance.


Now i know chinas there for profit, but does this guy sound sad to see africa receiving infrastructure assistance which may help it *gasp* cut the blood sucking pipes of Europe and the USA?

This is interesting in itself. Even if the writer seemed more worried than happy this was happening.

This is something that is good to hear, but is CHina just looking for it's turn to carve up Africa as well? Europe and the US built roads and telecommunication lines into places that were beneficial to them. China may be doing the same thing. Hopefully the African nations are not as trusting to them as they were with the Europeans, then the US and USSR, and now CHina.

I mean the first two times they may not have seen it coming, the third time they have to keep a wary eye on this new form of help. Hopefully everything works out in the best of the continent, but judging history, I seriously doubt it. Hopefully I am wrong on my scepticism.

I know they are building four largenew airports and 3ports in Somalia, what profit are they getting from Somalia, NOTHING.

Well actually they could turn Somalia into a free port for themselves. I guess i just look at all large countries helping smaller countries as suspect. I hope that i am wrong, but I am sure they have some motive that we do not know about. Damn I sound like Taysense now.

Somalia is in a great place to due a lot of things worldwide. maybe china is going to take advantage of that. It could help Somalia build itself back up economically, I am not knocking that. I just wonder at what price is China secretly charging. They beat down their own people and now they are freely helping black people? Anyone in Africa that is not black is suspect to me, including my own country. I am sorry.

safetyblitz, Me and U will agree China ain't doing sh*t for free!!!!! The reason I mentioned that China ain't getting anythingby building these ports/airports is that, they have already built hospitals/roads and I haven't recieved dime or got anything from the Somalis.

Present day Somalia, needs all it can get. Your right it's location as cross-roads of Asia, Africa and Europe gives it very important location. This is one of the reasons why the civil war has taken place, and still is ravaging the country. By the way, it's very important to African growth by lookining intoboth Asia and Europe for it'strade agreements. Doing it, both eyes wide open, and keeping in mine what had happened when the Europeans first came to Africa and said, we will trade with U; Slavery.

No one is helping Africa; they are all helping themselves to Africa.

Board,

Time for a geography lesson.Look on the map and see where Somalia and Djibouti are located.Then you'll see the strategic importance of both.In the form of trade both offer little or nothing outside of khat.SDo, ,China is seing this also as a backdoor into another region.

Good point spear, I had not even thought about the possible military ramifications.....

BEIJING, Friday, July 15 - China should use nuclear weapons against the United States if the American military intervenes in any conflict over Taiwan, a senior Chinese military official said Thursday.

"If the Americans draw their missiles and position-guided ammunition on to the target zone on China's territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons," the official, Maj. Gen. Zhu Chenghu, said at an official briefing.

General Zhu, considered a hawk, stressed that his comments reflected his personal views and not official policy. Beijing has long insisted that it will not initiate the use of nuclear weapons in any conflict.

But in extensive comments to a visiting delegation of correspondents based in Hong Kong, General Zhu said he believed that the Chinese government was under internal pressure to change its "no first use" policy and to make clear that it would employ the most powerful weapons at its disposal to defend its claim over Taiwan.

"War logic" dictates that a weaker power needs to use maximum efforts to defeat a stronger rival, he said, speaking in fluent English. "We have no capability to fight a conventional war against the United States," General Zhu said. "We can't win this kind of war."

Whether or not the comments signal a shift in Chinese policy, they come at a sensitive time in relations between China and the United States.

The Pentagon is preparing the release of a long-delayed report on the Chinese military that some experts say will warn that China could emerge as a strategic rival to the United States. National security concerns have also been a major issue in the $18.5 billion bid by Cnooc Ltd., a major Chinese oil and gas company, to purchase the Unocal Corporation, the American energy concern.

China has had atomic bombs since 1964 and currently has a small arsenal of land- and sea-based nuclear-tipped missiles that can reach the United States, according to most Western intelligence estimates. Some Pentagon officials have argued that China has been expanding the size and sophistication of its nuclear bombs and delivery systems, while others argue that Beijing has done little more than maintain a minimal but credible deterrent against a nuclear attack.

Beijing has said repeatedly that it would use military force to prevent Taiwan from becoming a formally independent country. President Bush has made clear that the United States would defend Taiwan.

Many military analysts have assumed that any battle over Taiwan would be localized, with both China and the United States taking care to ensure that it would not expand into a general war between the two powers.

But the comments by General Zhu suggest that at least some elements of the military are prepared to widen the conflict, perhaps to persuade the United States that it could no more successfully fight a limited war against China than it could against the former Soviet Union.

"If the Americans are determined to interfere, then we will be determined to respond," he said. "We Chinese will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all the cities east of Xian. Of course the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese."

General Zhu's threat is not the first of its kind from a senior Chinese military official. In 1995, Xiong Guangkai, who is now the deputy chief of the general staff of the People's Liberation Army, told Chas W. Freeman, a former Pentagon official, that China would consider using nuclear weapons in a Taiwan conflict. Mr. Freeman quoted Mr. Xiong as saying that Americans should worry more about Los Angeles than Taipei.

Foreign Ministry officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment about General Zhu's remarks.

General Zhu said he had recently expressed his views to former American officials, including Mr. Freeman and Adm. Dennis C. Blair, the former commander in chief of the United States Pacific Command.

Nuclear threats? that will surely give them US lawmakers blueballs for war.

i dont see really the difference...i dont know about the sums which have to be paid so wtf...maybe china is willing to do real business not just exploitation unlike the US....so better keep the US out of Africa....it might be a good start for Africa