
Chinese entrepreneurs in Africa, land of a billion customers - bluesmoon
http://www.danwei.org/china_and_africa/independent_chinese_entreprene.php
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muhfuhkuh
This is the fascinating thing about Chinese business investment in Africa:
It's business, not charity.

What the bug-eyed rock stars with the big heart for Africa don't tell you is
that Africans don't even _want_ their pity, or their charity. They want to do
business. Not the "colonial" business of old where resources were essentially
taken with almost nothing given in return (except for "teaching western
civilization to the natives" or some such nonsense). The Chinese couldn't
really care less about that.

All the Chinese want is a stable enough environment for doing business and
allowing their million+ workers living there live and work safely. One way
they achieve that is by actually living among the Africans, in high-rises that
seem to be erected by the day all over Africa, or in African neighborhoods.
Where before, Western emigres walled themselves off from the natives, the
Chinese actually build shops and restaurants and live in-town, which engenders
the notion of "guanxi" between the Africans and Chinese immigrants. It was
difficult early on, as the report suggests: First-wave immigrants living in
trailers on the worksite, never venturing out to eat or take in entertainment.
Now there are shops and karaoke bars all over, peopled with Chinese and
African clientele.

Fact is, they aren't there to turn Africa into something the Dutch Boers or
German Afrikaners envisioned, but more like whats been happening since the
spice routes opened 1000 years ago: You give me raw material, I give you
finished products. And, hey, it maybe a bit of a perversion of the Comparative
Advantage theory, but one thing it's not is abject exploitation the way it was
when the West colonized it.

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Synaesthesia
Great article, thanks! Very interesting

