Western Food Aid to Africa is Neo-Colonial Instrument- Says China
USA and China Competing for Africa's Natural Resources
By Shou Wang Mai Tian
The
West labels China’s presence in Africa as “neo-colonialism”, for the
trade between China and Africa is mainly composed of resources conducted
with state-owned enterprises. The West is doing so based on the fact
that its looting of Africa is mainly
for resources and conducted by the governments in history. However, this
writer believes that, In reality, such a label is an unfair distortion
of China-Africa relations, as actually what the West is doing in Africa is neo-colonialism, while China’s exchanges with Africa constitutes a relationship of friendship and win-win outcome in the rapidly changing world.
For
China-Africa relations, one should realize that China’s behavior is
fundamentally different from what the West did in the past. We shouldn’t
allow the ill-intentioned to displace the concept under disguise, as
hostile forces are trying to do with specious accusations. China has
business transactions with and makes investment in Africa in hard
currencies, such as US dollars, that Africa needs badly, while the West
went to Africa with swords and guns to colonize. More importantly, the
West used to purchase Africa’s resources at dirt cheap price while China
is paying for them fair and square. To meet China’s demand for resources, the resources-rich Western countries are competing with each other to sell to China, as China’s big demand for iron ores has made it Australia’s
pillar industry and Canadian mineral companies are exporting large
amounts of their products to China, the profitability of the three major
iron miners being many times higher than that of the steel making
companies in China. While
China’s fast development requires a large amount of precious resources,
the West doesn’t want Africa to sell to China and thus have a share of
the profiting right from the bloated prices that the West has fixed.
What the West is doing is allowing its resource-rich countries to export
at exorbitant prices while not allowing Africa to do the same to China.
In this sense, we have to ask if China is practicing colonialism in Canada and Australia,
also? All that makes us see that the so-called “China’s neo-colonialism
in Africa” is a major act of displacing the concept under disguise to
continue the old colonial rule.
What
has the West done in Africa? The West has always tried to glorify their
behaviour by bragging about their humanitarian aid to Africa in large
quantities of grains. In such a way, the West is seemed to hold a high
moral ground. However, it needs be pointed out that before the West
started providing food aid to Africa, the continent was self-sufficient
in food supply. Ironically, along with the provision of the West’s
aid, there has come widespread starvation in Africa. The West maintains
that it is the consequence of the wars in Africa. However, even if food
production was destroyed by a war, it could be restored very quickly.
For example, if the land is not tilled in one year, it can be tilled in
the next. The bad effects of war on agriculture do not last longer than
one year. What’s
more, fallow land usually yields more. Does Africa lack of arable land
and is it over-populated? These questions are making the situation even
more puzzling. Nearly 80% of Africa’s
arable land lies uncultivated. The total output of grain in Africa is
less than 100 million tons and the continent imports 50 million tons of
grains each year. The total consumption of grains in Africa is 150
million tons. Africa’s population is nearly equal to that of China’s, which is more than 1 billion. However, per capita grain consumption in Africa is less than 150 kg while that in China is 450 kg. Africa
has 270 million hectares of arable land, which is 2.17 times larger
than China’s, as one hectare is equivalent to 15 Mu in Chinese
measurement system. Compared with China, Africa has abundant water and
thermo resources, the majority of its arable land can produce 3 harvests
a year; its population is almost the same as China’s; and in the
meanwhile, Africa also has more than 900 million hectares of
uncultivated land that can be easily made arable. Nonetheless,unit yield in Africa is rather low, for instance, that of wheat, corn and rice is 18%, 25% and 38% of China’s, respectively. In Africa there shouldn’t be any starvation. But why whenever there is negative information about Africa, people think of starvation immediately?
In
addition to the abundance of farmland and agricultural resources,
Africa has no lack of labour either. The African unemployment rate is
very high but the West’s accusation saying the Africans are lazy doesn’t
hold water, as even the laziest person would be hard-working when
hungry. The real reason for the current situation of Africa is the West’s new colonialism policy in Africa. The emphasis of this policy is to destroy Africa’s agriculture by food dumping! In this way, the hungry Africans will have to depend on the West and Africa’s sovereignty independence has to give way to food for survival.
The word ‘dumping’is
not foreign to us. Dumping refers to selling at a price lower than the
costs. Are there any advantages in doing so? In monopolistic
competition, dumping is aimed at destroying a country’s
domestic industry to secure control over it. Therefore, the various
anti-dumping policies of Western countries are in fact of a major game
of interests among different countries. As Kissinger says it, “He who controls the oil controls the economy, and he who controls food controls everyone!”As the West controls a country’s food security and destroys its agriculture by food dumping, the control of the country is surrendered. The West’s
so-called food aid is dumping in a total way, more thorough than the
average dumping of merely selling below the costs. The West’s dumping under the disguise of aid has totally destroyed Africa’s agriculture.
The West’s
food aid to Africa is in fact surplus stored in the warehouses. When
new crop is harvested, the food in store needs be disposed of, which is
given to Africa as food aid. For the lack of infrastructure and sales
channels, the cost of transportation is extremely high for the African
farmers, so when they want to sell their products on the market, the
costs of transportation and intermediate links could be even higher than
the food price in the cities. As most
major cities in Africa are at harbours, it is cheaper to ship the
storage grain and food aid there. The agricultural products of Africa
are thus made uncompetitive and sales of domestically produced grain
unprofitable.
Even in the agricultural era of one thousand years ago, a farmer couldn’t
make a living by growing grains only and had to sell part of the
harvest to buy other daily necessities. However, under the West’s
food dumping mode, the African farmers are unable to buy any other
commodities by selling their agricultural products. They can’t
make a living by farming and that is the real reason why Africa is
suffering from high unemployment and starvation but leaves a lot of
farmland deserted at the same time. Farmers become urban slum refugees
because they can’t
make a living by farming. In Africa, there are many slums and abandoned
farmland. These slums pose a big threat to the stability of the cities
and society at large. As food security is controlled by the West, Africa’s
political stability is dependent on the latter which provides the food.
The recent turmoil in North Africa is closely related to the food
problem of the urban poor.
The West’s
food dumping is conducted for no other purpose but to make Africa
reliant on food produced in the West and thus dependent on it
politically and economically, so Africa has to sell its resources at low
prices to the West in exchange for food. Though the price is very low,
African countries even sometimes have to beg Western countries to buy
their minerals. That is neo-colonialism characterized by food dumping,
following the West’s bloody colonial rule in the past. China’s emergence and buying Africa’s resources at a fairer price has disrupted the West’s game of profiting from Africa through colonialism by increasing Africa’s
income, by having a share of the huge profitability of the
resource-exporting Western countries in selling to China. Therefore,
China-Africa cooperation is a win-win solution. In this context, it is
not hard to understand why the West should demonize China-Africa
cooperation by calling it “neo-colonialism”.
In fact, the West has been the real colonist in Africa, having replaced
the old form of colonialism with neo-colonialism, like putting old wine
in a new bottle. Theoretically speaking, we need be highly aware of
this kind of neo-colonialism.
Source: Focac
Africason
Africason is a die-hard believer in Africa.
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