The New York
Times has an article posted in the Today paper titled ‘China extends global
reach with loans and strings attached’ giving a pretty good picture of what
China is doing in Ecuador. While the South East Asian countries are still
shying away from Chinese infrastructure development, due to centuries of
western demonization of China, the picture is very different in Latin America
and Africa. The southern American countries have had enough of western
colonization, domination and American Imperialism and are striking out on their
own to be free. They are embracing China’s offer of trade and development with
open arms, better to pay a little more interest than to be robbed by the
colonialists and imperialists. Both did not charge higher interest rates, they
just came and carted away whatever resources from these countries for free. Which
is a better deal?
The Latin
Americans are not stupid. They negotiated freely with China for loans and
infrastructure development. And they are paying in kind, mainly oil, and other
raw material, that the Chinese would have to pump up themselves. In turn, the
Chinese have pumped in billions of dollars into Latin American countries.
Ecuador alone is receiving tens of billion in dam building that would provide
enough electricity to light up one third of the country, according to the NYT
article. China is also helping Ecuador to build an oil refinery that would make
Ecuador ‘a global player in gasoline, diesel and other petroleum products’. Bad
deal, cheated by China?
The Chinese
are also building ‘roads, highways, bridges, hospitals, even a network of surveillance
cameras stretching to the Galapagos islands’. These infrastructure developments
are badly needed by Ecuador to transform itself into a modern industrialized
country, something that the west and their formal colonial masters refused to
do while extracting all the natural resources for free.
When Ecuador
takes off, it would be a show piece to show to the world what Chinese money,
technology and engineering could do to rebuild a country. Singapore taught the
Chinese how to build an industrial park. China learnt from it and is helping
the world to rebuild their countries’ infrastructure and industrial parks.
China is helping the developing nations to move up the economic ladder on fair
and equitable terms. China is doing everything, providing financing, technology
and manpower. The West would not do that. Obama just visited Kenya and talked
about helping Africa to develop after the West had colonized and looted African
for centuries. And they are the good guys.
The NYT did
not miss the opportunity to sabo the Chinese effort in these countries by
playing up on higher interest rate, which was anytime better than letting the
western powers robbed them for free and meddling with their domestic politics.
It also complained about Chinese methodology that would harm the environment
and what not. The NYT is assuming that the Latin Americans are daft and could
not understand what they are going into and their agreements signed with
Chinese companies. If these were bad deals, why would they agree to them when
China did not bring their warships and guns like the colonialist and the
Americans?
The hard
truth, and testimonies to the value Chinese companies are offering to the rest
of the world was when they held an economic development conference in
Beijing. Global financial and corporate
elite and heads of major banks and pharma, auto and oil companies came to
mingle with the Chinese officials. And according to Christine Lagarde, MD of
IMF, China’s effort to engage globally through investment and trade and
economic reforms, ‘is good for China and good for the world – their fates are
intertwined’.
China is all
over the world investing in infrastructural developments. Just to quote a para
from the NYT article, ‘Chinese companies are at the centre of a worldwide
construction boom, mostly financed by Chinese banks. They are building power plants in Serbia,
glass and cement factories in Ethiopia, low income housing in Venezuela, and
natural gas pipelines in Uzbekistan.
Not really
all over the world as many South East Asian countries are still pondering on
what China could offer under the dark cloud of doubts spun by their former
colonial masters and the West, that China is bad, China is bad like Red Indians
were bad, Red Indians bad. They could not remember that the centuries of
colonialism and western domination did not do them much good except being
robbed by the very robbers that are telling them China is bad and filled them
with imaginary fears and hate against China.
On the other hand, the rest of the world, Eastern Europe, Africa and
Latin America did not have the same fear and apprehension and are welcoming
Chinese developments in full force on a complimentary basis. The West are
telling the South East Asian countries to demand China to go it for free, and
China to pay for it as well.
It would
take a long time before the South East Asian countries could break free from
their colonial mindset, fixed and implanted by their colonial masters and the
West over centuries to look at China objectively. China is not there to
colonise them but to trade, to help them rebuild their countries with a proven
blue print, successfully implemented in China and now sharing with the rest of
the world. What did their colonial masters left them after centuries of
colonial rule and looting? What have their colonial masters and the West to
offer them today other than military pacts and more weapons of war?
The joke,
they trust their ex colonial masters more than a China that has never stepped
foot on their shores. They trust their conquerors more than China that never
had a soldier in their land nor kill any of their people.
