“Unknown.” That was the shocking response from Ghana’s Foreign Affairs Ministry to the question: “How many Chinese are here in the country?” that I posed sometime ago. If, this weekend, you are travelling back home, you will, probably, be on board a flight with a dozen of Chinese bound for Kotoka. And, while concerns have started coming up in Ghana, the Chinese invasion has become even more bothersome in such countries as Namibia – a country of less than 5 million nationals but more than 100,000 Chinese. The spread of Chinese into Africa, Asia, South America, The Middle East and – indeed – the whole world is a matter of 1.4 billion people seeking survival.
So, the case of Aisha Huang, 31, the Chinese ‘Iron Lady’ at the centre of the illegal mining in Ghana’s Asante Region is only a microcosm of a bigger audacity of the Chinese people to seek and capture new resources, new wealth, and new settlements. Yesterday, the Newsday newspaper reported that on August 16, 2016, after the police had arrested and seized Aisha’s heavy duty trucks; the then Asante Regional Minister, John Alexander Ackon, ordered that the seized machines be released to her. And, as usual, the bureaucracy was ready and too willing to aid the minister’s act – even though it was clearly inimical to the national interest. The letter ordering the release was signed by the Asante Regional Coordinating Director who was secretary to the Regional Security Council; no resistance, no restraint advice. Talking about the daring of the Chinese, I am conversant with a story of a Chinaman entering a peasant farmer’s field to steal cobs of corn. Ghana, and Africa for that matter, is so lax, so open that foreigners can steal from gold to corn and grass for their livestock – with impunity!
The laxity can be sickening, if not a threat to national security. Sam P. Yalley, Ghana’s immediate-past High Commissioner to India, says he has since returning home learnt that Indians he gave passes to, to visit Ghana for a month each, have been allowed to stay for months and years. In the name of investment and out of our own negligence, we have allowed foreigners – first Europeans, and now Asians – to take over the best of our resources.
Just as some of our ancestors were so content with bottles of schnapps as to cede land and mine sites to Western European marauders centuries ago; many of our chiefs, local and central authorities are either too docile or too corrupt to stop the onslaught of the aggressive Chinese. And, unfortunately for us, this is a nation that has a hungry economy and population to feed. A recent New York Times publication noted that, besides oil and gas, which are a primary focus of its investments abroad, China’s state-owned companies have gobbled up mines around the world: copper in Peru, nickel in Papua New Guinea, iron ore in Australia. Hear this one too: “In Africa, Chinese mining investments have increased 25-fold in just 10 years, from stakes in a handful of mines in 2006 to more than 120 in 2015.”
China’s relationship with Africa goes back to the 1960s, when Chairman Mao Zedong promoted solidarity with the developing world — “Ya Fei La,” as he called it, using the first syllables for Asia, Africa and Latin America. A monumental project that stands in the name of that solidarity was built in 1976: a 1,156-mile railroad through the bush from Tanzania to Zambia. After a lull in the bilateral relations, and in the 2000s when Beijing recognised the need for foreign resources and allies to fuel its economic growth; China exhorted the nation’s companies to “go out” into the world. The result? In 2000, only five countries counted China as their largest trading partner; today, more than 100 countries do, from Australia to the United States. The catalogue of proposed projects seems endless, including a military operating base in Djibouti and an $8 billion high-speed railway through Nigeria, a construction site in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, a cotton-processing plant in Mozambique. China’s trade with African nations has increased fortyfold in the past 20 years.
In Ghana, examples of Chinese businesses include the Shaanxi Mining Company at Talensi; and BXC, a subsidiary of the Beijing Fuxing Xiao-Cheng Electronic Technology Company. Zanzibar, Hettysberg, Tip Top Chinese, Noble House Chinese, Pearl Chinese, City Garden, Golden Triangle, Imperial Peking, Majestic Mandarin, Wok Inn Chinese, Dynasty Chinese, Far East Chinese and Green Pepper Chinese are but a few of their hundreds of restaurants dotting Osu and other Accra suburbs and other towns. Very little production, many services and extraction of minerals and timber.
Like the Indians and Syrians before them, individual Chinese businesspeople arrive in Africa with very little money; they start modestly, but, soon grow into moguls capable of carrying the political elite in their pockets. They seem eager to venture into areas where not even the Koreans (you still remember STX Korea?) or Brazilians – and certainly not the Brits, Germans nor Yankees – would ever venture. If it is the Chinese government that is involved in the road construction or other project, it claims to attach no conditionality to the loans and other investments.
But, hold it; hold it: look carefully before you are fooled. They choose to own up to 90% shares in the projects, bring their top, middle-level and even lower-middle-level personnel – including prisoners – to do works Ghanaians, Nigerians, Namibians etc. could have easily done. And, they hardly cure the shortfalls of Western investments.
The pollution of the Tano, Ankobra, Birim, Offin and the tens of other rivers in Ghana is not one in isolation, but, the stock-in-trade of an aggressive race bearing the conviction that building empires abroad is in the supreme interest of the Republic of China.
In spite of China’s billions of dollars of investments in Namibia, that African country’s unemployment has risen above the 30% mark, while the debt-to-GDP ratio has zoomed past 40%. Ghana is, indeed, a gorier spectacle: with China leading as the foreign investor here, those without jobs form about one-half of the employable population, and, the debt ratio is at a staggering 70-plus percent.
Even if it is just now that you’ve read about the Chinese ‘expat’ or ‘tourist’ stealing green corn, I guess you are conversant with mud-drenched Chinese people stealing gold from the bowels of our lands, at times, at the backyards of police stations and palaces. That is for the wretched Chinese; for the rich and influential, many are known to carry our political elite in their pockets. Let a party be elected into power, and Chinese people become power brokers, lobbying for posts for Ghanaians and for Africans.
Is Chinese investment indispensable? Surely, not. Aren’t there better alternatives to the Chinese yen and dollars? Surely, softer loans and credit could be generated within the African countries or pooled among the African nations. What should be done? “Chase those crazy bald-heads out of town” might be misconstrued as xenophobic. But, tolerate the Chinese in Ghana and Africa in their current form is suicidal. In less than 20 years, Africa will have not a single wholesome water body to drink from. All the rosewood in northern Ghana will disappear before this nation turns 70. Whereas one of their best proverbs is “It is better to teach someone how to fish than to give him or her fish to eat,” the Chinese’ operations here transfer little or no know-how at all to Ghanaians and other Africans.
What the Chinese have done from a far less resourced continent carrying the burden of 1.4billion people in less than half a century, Africa with more abundant resources and a population of 1.2 billion can more than reply. Instead of handing them with our uranium, gold, nickel, cobalt, diamonds, bauxite and other deposits, let us set out to develop our regional and sub-regional economies together. The Congo River still begs to be harnessed to supply at least half of Africa’s electricity needs. Cocoa products beckon to be served in all schools and other state institutions in Africa to create wealth and health. Kantanka Automobile requires Ecowas collaboration and some protection to take West African markets nurtured over the last century for European, American and Asian cars and trucks.
The Chinese migrants venturing into Asia, Latin America and Africa especially are as diverse as China itself: young and middle-aged, unschooled and highly educated, working for private companies and state-owned enterprises — and even for themselves. “They are not a monolith. And yet, in these far-off places, they are connected to one another in a way that they never could be back home in a land of 1.4 billion people. It’s not just the shared food, culture or language – or the solidarity that comes from being thrown together in a harsh environment. What binds these individuals together is an abiding belief that their presence overseas is making China better and stronger.” That is the verdict of Brook Larmer, a columnist on the New York Times. That kind of spirit is all that Ghana and Africa should also marshal to build themselves into the last developed country and the last developed continent on Planet Earth.
Should the recolonisation of Ghana and Africa by the Chinese be stopped? If you ask me, my unrepentant answer is YES!
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