Chinese Expansion To Africa Essay

• China’s inroads into Africa come at the expense of Africa’s citizens. Says Bremmer, “The Chinese quid pro quo typically involves lots of Chinese content, lots of Chinese labor that they’re sending over to these countries to work, which hurts local unemployment issues. And of course, the availability of commodities, including food, to be exported to China. There’s sometimes a Faustian bargain in these countries.”

The South-to-North Water Diversion Project in China, established by Moa Zedong in 1952, is a water diversion project that would divert 44.8 billion cubic meters of water annually to the drier north of China ("South-to-North Water"). The project would link China’s four main rivers the Yangtze, Yellow River, Huaihe and Haihe. China plans on doing this by constructing three diversion routes moving through the south to north ("South-to-North Water"). It would stretch across the central, eastern and western parts of the country ("South-to-North Water"). This project is expected to cost around $62 billion dollars and take around 50 more years to complete ("South-to-North Water"). By trying to divert the rivers and create an equal distribution of water, the project raises many environmental concerns but has many positives. This paper will evaluate the different perspectives of the ecomodernist and resilience theory. This will be shown by analyzing each perspective, evaluating the different concerns and analyzing how each perspective would respond to the water diversion project.

It is this that has sparked China’s vulnerability to external shocks. In 2011, China’s exports amassed almost $2 trillion, however in Feb 2012, China recorded a $31.5 billion trade deficit as a result of the European sovereign debt crisis in which China’s main trading partners plunged into recession. China’s severe BOGS decrease is an attempt to control growth and a sustained level of 7.5%. Investment policies are also critical for China to achieve economic growth and development. Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in China is being sought primarily in the redesign of State Owned Enterprises (SOE’s) and in the development of interior provinces. Between 75-80% of World Bank loans to China in 2008 were directed to the central and western regions, the most economically disadvantaged. This promotes increased wealth within China, leading to higher levels of development due to a more positive Human Development Index (HDI), which currently sits at 0.687, up from 0.677 in 2010. Thus, trade and investment are critical factors in ensuring that China’s growth remains sustained at 7.5% whilst still encouraging increases in development.

However, China accounts for 33% of the worlds Greenhouse gas emissions, mainly arising as a result of rapid urbanisation and industrialisation, and the deforestation that occurs in its wake. China is also suffering from desertification, coastal reclamation and severe climate change as are result of their long time blasé attitude towards environmental issues. While the Chinese Government now do acknowledge that environmental oversight has occurred, strict censorship within China deprives outsiders of receiving the full story of the environmental calamity that is occurring within China. Citizens within China are becoming increasingly concerned with governmental policy that regards further unnecessary degradation of the environment. A retired party official revealed that there had been 50,000 environmental protests within China in 2012 alone. China has amended numerous government acts and implemented strict new regulations in an attempt to curb pollution and Greenhouse gas production. However, the problem China faces cannot be swept under the 'bureaucratic rug' so to speak. The problem rests with the lack of an alternative clean energy to the fossil fuels currently used to fuel China's resource hungry industry. China has implemented numerous 'real world' measures to reduce environmental impact. Perhaps the most well known of these projects is 'Green Wall of China', which is a 4,500 km green belt

The globalization of china has detrimental affects on its environment and population. Globalization will eventually kill the earth and its people if it is not brought under control. It will cause global warming to accelerate and many environmental changes.

China is an example of an emerging superpower; its economy has doubled in size every eight years since 1980. Since 2000, China has been the largest recipient of overseas investment, and now foreign-owned companies . 60% of the world trade since 2004 has been as a result of Chinas industrialisation. So here we can see that China has developed due to industrialisation, which has increased its power. China use to be a low-income country, so we can see from a low-income country to an emerging superpower how powers can shift over time due to many factors that influence the world. However even though China is an emerging superpower, it has come with some cost to the environment for example China has 16 of the top 20 most air-polluted cities in the world. The polluted air was blamed for over 4000 000 premature deaths in 2003.

When people reflect on New Imperialism—the era when Europe colonized Europe—they recall the horrors perpetrated by France, England, and Belgium, and they are slow to forget the torture and the cruel injustice those countries labeled “progress.” However, no one seems quick to remembe rremember generous settlers who, like Mary Slessor , saved many childrens’children’s lives, and easily dismissed are the soldiers who prevented widowed women from being burned alive. Even though it may have had a large negative effect on much of Africa, New Imperialism also presented a positive impact as well; it welcomed an entire continent to international culture, put an end to the natives’ cruelty toward their own people, and, most importantly, furthered the work of the Lord.

Africa is an extremely vast land comprised of unimaginable wealth in natural resources, and an even richer history. Sadly its exiguous population, whom many believe to be the oldest in the world, is completely impoverished, underdeveloped and marred with limited and corrupt governance. The people of Africa have been the victims of cultural rape time and time again-by Arab slave traders, adventurous European explores who found that the African people are worth more than gold and forced them to pay with their soul, exploited by colonial “do-gooders”and ravaged by self-serving neighbors, just to name a few. Strategies of Western nations to help bring salvation to the African people from earth’s torture and misery, always seemed to fail. Therefore it’s hard to believe anyone in Africa had any hope left in them at all. For a good majority of African people China’s entry and immersion into their land couldn’t have come fast enough, yet there were many others, foreign and domestic whom only harbored suspicion, and doubt regarding their new colonizers and for good reason, history has not been kind. This essay will first explore the driving forces behind China’s immersion into Africa, next I will delve into explaining the differences in how Western nations and China are handling African problems. Next I will discuss the pros and cons of Chinas neo-colonization and conclude the essay with why I believe China is just a wolf in sheep’s clothing denying imperialistic objectives.

1) With reference to theories of growth and development, explain the contrasting growth experience of China and Sub Saharan Africa post 1980.

By 2006 there were 6000 registered environmental groups in China. They are growing in numbers, influence and assertiveness. These groups are made up of people that are now beginning to understand the consequences of rapid growth and

Many know that China does not have the most positive background towards climate change, and being one of the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases, something has to be done. Furthermore, their initiative to this negative title and better their carbon footprint is questionable. With a substantial population, countless factories, and unfathomable waste disposal, it may be difficult to regulate or attempt to improve their ecological standpoint; however, little efforts have been presented. Recently, China has addressed their impact on climate change and plan to make drastic measures in order to, literally, clean up their act; however, have they dug a hole too deep to get out of?

While relations with China are not in themselves a recent phenomenon, the extensive amount of trade that the two partake in is. Actually, the affiliation between China and Africa stretches back centuries. Some scholars try to establish the starting point based on “the discovery of ancient Chinese ceramics on the east coast of Africa, or to the trading ties begun under the Song dynasty” (Raine 13). Trying to trace ties back this far is important in increasing a sense of loyalty. After all, people tend to have stronger feelings of fidelity towards someone they have known for years, as compared to someone they have just met. Another frequently cited encounter is when the Chinese explorer Zheng He “reached the east coast of Africa where…Zheng came, saw and never conquered…[leaving only a legacy] of trade, stimulating a local market for Chinese silk and porcelain” (Raine 13). This incident is important in further establishing solidarity between the two nations. China refers to this history to prove “it has interacted commercially without further agenda and without detriment to Africa” (Raine 14). It uses this point to relate to Africa – they are both Third World nations that have faced oppression from the First World, and therefore need to stick together.

Most of the developing countries are mired deeply in economical obstacles, which prevent them from development significantly. In order to overcome those embarrassments world’s society struggles to find the efficient solution for poor countries’ economies. Historically, developed countries undertook policy of giving aid to their colonies, afterwards by the end of The Second World War the United States and United Nations embarked the global sponsorship to the developing countries and countries of the Third World due to humanitarian considerations. Since then many other countries have joined in the effort to provide financial aid to lesser developed or poverty ridden countries. But none of those countries that received an aid had experienced a prosperity phase and rapid economic growth.

According to Mary-Françoise Renard, who is the Head of Research Institute on Chinese Economy and Vice-President of the Economic and Administration Facility at the University of Auvergne in her working Paper No.126 May 126 “China’s Trade and FDI in Africa” (PDF version) wrote that Chinese firms are less averse to risk than their Western counterparts and less constrained by environmental and social concerns (Kapinski and Morris 2009).

have been carefully examined from multiple sources, mostly official, and supported by interviews and field surveys. Figure 1 below illustrates the development of how the topic was researched step by step across time. While the earlier book (Brautigam,2009 ) shows the general map of how China take actions in terms of finance in Africa, which is theoretic and lack of data support, the later article(Brautigam and Gallagher,2014 ) collects the officious data from 2003 to 2011 and focuses on the particular commodity-backed finance which is more specific in explaining the finance pattern: the Chinese government usually allows borrowers to repay these RMB loans with export goods, such as Tanzania's exported cashews, which are used to pay for