REFLECTIONS ON wHITE IMPERIALIST REACTION TO CHINESE LEADERSHIP CHANGE

President Hu Jintao at Communist Party Congress 2012

How will China confront next ten years of white imperialist onslaught?

Sukant Chandan
Sons of Malcolm
14 Nov 2012

Here below we can see an overview of the Chinese Communist and State leadership handover by one of the more thinking but right-wing media outlets of the british white power structure.

The west in general on the one hand is not happy at all with outgoing President Hu Jintao leaving the leadership with a clear left-ward rhetoric and strategy:

In a valedictory state of the nation address after a decade in power - called "Firmly march on the path of Socialism" and delivered beneath a huge hammer and sickle - he insisted that "public ownership is the mainstay of the economic system" and warned that the party must "resolutely not follow Western political systems".

The language was peppered with anti-reform code words and pointed references to "Mao Zedong Thought", as well as a warning not to fall into "wicked ways".

And speculates as to the 'reformers' - meaning those who seek to take China in a direction of liberal and western style capitalist reforms (let's call it 'white capitalism', which is very different from East Asian capitalist countries mainly in the role of the state towards the economy) - are being sidelined:


Mr Hu’s speech reflects a complex power-struggle behind the scenes as hardliners - some linked to former leader Jiang Zemin - reassert control, forcing the outgoing leader to change his message.

The ideological manouvering have profound implications as 70pc of top cadres in the party and the Chinese military retire, the most sweeping hand-over of power since the revolution in 1949.

Reformers have been left in deep confusion. The incoming premier Li Keqiang - a Hu protegee - was a key sponsor of the World Bank/DRC report. He offered his "unwavering support" for the findings at the time. It is unclear where he now stands.

As delegates scrutinised the seating arrangements, they spotted at once that leading reformer Wang Yang had been banished to the margins.



President Hu Jintao at the Congress address makes it clear that western-style reforms will create fundamental dangers to anti-imperialist and socialist China. These are quite clear and forthright words from Hu on this issue, which is interesting, however it is far from decided which way the party and state leadership will take China, as the white capitalist oriented leaders have been getting a lot of space in the leadership with the world bank/China development research council, which called for further white capitalist reforms, getting air time in the leadership.

However, to a large extent whatever happens internally to China is not the business of anyone apart from the people of China. From an anti-imperialist internationalist point of view however, China turning towards white capitalism will and does endanger the very nature of he Chinese anti-imperialist state, and China falling in a Arab spring type white imperialist operation would be a major blow to the world struggle for independence against imperialism on a massive historic level.

This again is reported in this article and quotes President Hu on this regard:

Mr Hu - a self-effacing, austere figure known for his theme of "social harmony" - said the growing gap between rich and poor is leading to social contraditions" and warned than unchecked corruption had become a mortal threat.


"If we fail to handle this issue well, it could prove fatal to the party, and even cause the collapse of the party and the fall of the state. We must thus make unremitting efforts to combat corruption."


Plain words there.

President Hu has also stated previously and correctly that the offensive of white imperialist cultural attack on China is a major and fundamental arena of defending Chinese socialism and anti-imperialism:

"We should deeply understand the seriousness and complexity of the ideological struggle, always sound the alarms and remain vigilant and take forceful measures to be on guard and respond,"

China and allied countries who are under the same onslaught, an onslaught which is probably the most important issue for our peoples to confront, resist and defeat, could easily launch an international campaign and smash this genocidal cultural offensive of white imperialism. But there is no sign whatsoever of this, and one can only but be confused as to why the Chinese leadership would state such a correct thing as Hu has, but seems to do nothing and its own Chinese independence is whittled away every hour and every second by white imperialist cultural offensives.

Interestingly there is very little in terms of China's internationalist strategy apart from importantly quoting Hu in developing China's maritime capability to face white imperialism's "pivot to Asia" which is a military containment police against China:


For geo-strategists, the bombshell was his call to "build China into a maritime power" to match its economic clout. Even clearer was Wu Xiaoguang, a delegate at the congress and the chief designer of China’s first aricraft carrier the Liaoning.

"The number of aircraft carriers a country has is linked with the pursuit of its national interests. What I can tell you is that the Liaoning is only just the beginning," he said.


Hardly a "bomb shell", just a very basic and simple approach to national self defence against the most vicious and violent white imperialist world presence, especially with the usa armed bases developing around the world, nato, etc.

While China is gradually building up its defences, anti-imperialist internationalism is not raised much in the reporting on the Congress, and although China has finally taken elemental steps of anti-imperialism by blocking white imperialism at the united nations on Zimbabwe and now Syria, China along with the rest of the GlobalSouth seems to lack the political will to lead a en effective and victory oriented anti--imperialist approach. The nato operation on Libya and the subsequent brits, yanks, and french recolonisation drive on Africa, as as such the whole GlobalSouth, in indicative of the absence of anti-imperialist political leadership in China and in the general GlobalSouth.

But all in all, China remains perhaps the most important anti-imperialist as well as socialist country for internationalists to support, as not only is it an example of a former colonised country 'standing up' and a marvel to the whole world, but is also the most important, despite its limitations, anti-imperialist country and bulwark in the world.

All in all I would agree with the summation of this Congress and President Hu's leadership of the last ten years with the world of an old brother of mine:

Farewell to Hu Jintao. His decade as premier has seen the People's Republic grow beyond expectations, lives transformed, millions lifted from poverty and a rate of growth and modernisation that has astounded the world and confounded critics. But also many old problems persisted, some deepened, and new ones have developed.

The next generation of leaders have much to live up to, and many deep problems and contradictions of development still to resolve. But China continues of its forward march and Hu will be remembered in balance as a good leader who did good things and helped not only keep Chairman Mao's declaration on the founding of the PRC, that "The Chinese people have stood up" but overseen the Chinese people charging forward with confidence and pride.

And finally, of President Hu himself who said on thurs 08 Nov 2012:

"The Scientific Outlook on Development was proposed by the 16th CPC Central Committee in 2003, against the backdrop of rapid economic growth and a series of problems including excessive consumption of resources, serious environmental pollution and a widening gap between the rich and poor.

The concept has championed people's interests and advocated comprehensive, coordinated and sustainable development. At the Party' s 17th National Congress, the concept was written into the CPC Constitution.

Over the past ten years, China's economy has risen from the sixth to the second place in the world. Its economic, scientific and technological strength have increased considerably. Its overall national strength and international competitiveness and influence have also been enhanced substantially.

Hu said these historic successes are attributable to the correct guidance of the Party's basic theory, line, program and experience.

The Scientific Outlook on Development was created by integrating Marxism with the reality of contemporary China and with the underlying features of our times, and it fully embodies the Marxist worldview on and methodology for development, he said."


Long live socialist and anti-imperialist China.

For China to play a more assertive socialist and anti-imperialist internationalist role in our world struggle.


related links:
Huey Newton on China
Malcolm X on China
Friends of China

CHINESE CHEAP GOODS GOING TO AFRICA?

Sino-African trade develops, 'west losing out'

Sukant Chandan,
Friends of China

It has been a long standing complain of some that China is dumping its cheap consumer goods into other nations of the Global South, including Africa, and in so doing it is negatively impacting those economies. What perhaps those who make these criticisms may not understand is that China is itself a young modern nation, only since 1949 has it become independent from colonialism and feudalism, and only really since the late 1970s has it had a stable internal economic situation so as to be able to focus on developing the country.

However much the west especially want to treat China like a 'developed country' so as to push it into situations where the west think then they can trip up and slap China down. China resists this pressure, and likes to remind people that it remains a country that is still at least three decades away from achieving a standard of living approaching anything to western levels.

If China was importing cheap goods and there was a massive problem with that, then it is primarily the duty of those recipient governments and consumers to decide otherwise. China has not broken any laws in exporting its cheap goods, and any country in a similar position would do the same. The days of cheap Chinese goods is developing into something else gradually, and China's trade relationship with Africa is also changing as the article from the paper of the British financial elites makes clear below, and changing in a win-win direction for both China and Africa.

Some western media is trying to educate some of its people that China is not at all only a producer of cheap counterfeited consumer goods, although this aspect is still there. China is fast becoming a exporter of affordable electronic goods, vehicles and machinery. The improving and developing trade between China and Africa is also in tandem with improving political relations: "Low prices undoubtedly help, but improvements in product quality and better co-operation between Chinese and African companies in tandem with political ties have also been crucial."

The west of course are the big losers. While the monpolised much of the economic relations with Africa for over a century in this period it ensured that Africa was the most exploited region in the world, and the west's continued policy to Africa is to do all that it can to ensure the continent cannot stand on its own two feet economically and militarily. Keeping Africa weak and divided was one of the main aims of nato's war on Libya, knocking out one of the pioneering nations in Africa that was contributing more than any other to a Pan-African economic political, economic and military strategy. The war saw China's investments and 130,000 Chinese workers flee Libya from nato attack. Ever since, China and Russia have said many a time that they were tricked over Libya, and that they wont fall for it again. For the sake of the whole Global South, one really hopes this is the case.

The article below states that it is countries like Britain, Spain, Germany and Italy who are the losers from China's improving trade and political ties to Africa. The west has tried to ensure that Africa remains without a industrial base, without basic national and continental infrastructure. Sino-Africa relations is revolutionising this situation and Africa can see a future where it will achieve a basic level of industry and growth to enable it to stand up for itself.

Africa's development is in mortal danger from the west who have stepped up their destabilisation strategies such as those in central Africa and in the Sahel, recolonisation (as in the case of Libya and sending troops to Uganda) and continued white supremacist media campaign, most infamously recently with the Kony2012 campaign.

South Africa, DRC, Zimbabwe, Algeria are some of the states which are priorities for the west to conduct regime change on, and all of these countries know it very well. Will Africa manage to accomplish a minimum level of development for its people and defend itself from western sabotage in the process? This depends in the final analysis of the level of unity and political will of Africa and its allies in Asia and Latin America. In the meantime, China is providing the pole of attraction if Africa wants to be treated with mutual respect; unlike the west, China provided a incomparable relationship of respect, China will not destabilise African nations, will not put sanctions on Africa, will not got to war with Africa, rather China is the facilitator to Africa standing up.






China moves up value chain in Africa

Financial Times

28 March 2012

When cheap Chinese goods started flowing in big numbers to Africa a decade ago, consumers benefited from lower prices, but local producers such as textile mills saw their businesses suffer.

Now, with Chinese companies moving up the value chain, that trade-off is changing. African consumers are still lapping up Chinese products, but these are more sophisticated. From smartphones to farm threshers, they are elbowing aside foreign, not local, competitors.

Chinese exporters have more than tripled their market share in Africa since 2002, supplying 16.8 per cent of the continent’s total imports last year, according to a report published this month by Standard Bank. Over the past four years Chinese companies recorded their biggest gains in selling machinery, vehicles and electronics.

European and Japanese companies have been the losers. African imports from Italy, Spain, Germany, Britain and Japan were all lower last year than they were in 2008. Meanwhile, imports from China surged 38 per cent over that same period.

This data “confirm some of the mature economy fears” that they are losing ground to Chinese exporters in Africa, Standard Bank economists Simon Freemantle and Jeremy Stevens say.

The success of Chinese companies is about more than being cheap. Low prices undoubtedly help, but improvements in product quality and better co-operation between Chinese and African companies in tandem with political ties have also been crucial.

The Ideos phone from Chinese electronics group Huawei is a prime example. Already billed as the world’s most affordable smartphone running Google’s Android system, it is subsidised in Kenya by Safaricom, a mobile network operator, to improve internet penetration.

At 8,000 Kenyan shillings – less than $100 – it is seven times cheaper than other similar smartphones.
“The features sell the phone,” says Martin Muraya, who owns a mobile phone stand in a chemist and has sold all his Ideos stock.

The Ideos was launched in 2010 and had a 45 per cent share of Kenya’s smartphone market less than a year later.

Shipments of Chinese goods to Africa have followed a path ploughed by Chinese money. Chinese companies have invested about $13bn in Africa, most since 2000, according to Standard Bank.
“It complements the competitiveness of Chinese firms in Africa,” the report says.

Zhenjiang Shenglong Machinery Manufacturing, a medium-sized maker of farming equipment in China’s Jiangsu province, gained exposure to Africa by contributing to aid missions.

“We were doing well in the Chinese market, but we realised that our products would die out domestically eventually. We had to break into other under-developed countries,” Luo Min, chairman of Zhenjiang Shenglong, says.

His company made about $3m in sales to Africa last year. For big purchases, Zhenjiang Shenglong sends trainers to teach farmers how to use and maintain the machines.

“Our competitors, some of which make better equipment, offer no training. No matter how good the machine is, without farmers knowing how to use it, it’s nothing but a waste,” Mr Luo says.

But even as Chinese companies fight to move up the value chain, the old guard of the country’s exporters – those making cheap and often shoddy goods – still cast a long shadow.

In Nairobi, Chinese-made goods fill market stands and shop shelves, but many are counterfeits, such as “Nokla” and “Sumsang” phones. So prolific are the imported fakes, locals give them the catch-all tag, “China phones”.

In One World Networks, an electronics shop in central Nairobi, staff say customers regularly return Chinese-made laptops and printers. Yet sales assistant Eunice says they have no choice but to keep buying them.

“The African market is Chinese. They help us because it’s the only one we can afford,” she says. “But they fail more. It works two days and fails the third.”

bRIT NEWSPAPER RELUCTANTLY ADMITS CHINA MAJOR FACTOR IN MOZABIQUE (AFRICAN) RENAISSANCE

'Chinese loans are funding many of the infrastructure projects changing the face of the continent'

This is an article from the left-liberal Guardian newspaper in Britain. It is an article about the economic developments in Mozambique, and is quite lengthy, I have produced just a clip of it below. For some reason the word 'basket-case' is often used by the west when they are talking about African states.

It's just a shame that writers like this don't also admit that the negative aspects of African states are in overwhelming large part to do with how the west has ensured that Africa does not unite, and does not develop itself for its people, and the most violent and obvious example of this attitude is their destruction through last year of the African state which has the highest human development index - Libya.

The writer sees rather reluctant to state in the article that it is thanks to the nature of relations with China that has resulted in Mozambique seeing some positive indicators to its economic development. What the article doesn't explore is the issue that if it is relations with China that is giving Africa a massive boost, why hasn't the same been the case with Africa's relations with the west? Going into that just wouldn't wash with the white man's burden types who run the newspaper.

A uniting and economically rising Africa is what the west fears, and the west will and is doing all it can to ensure this does not happen, and it is definitely alarmed that this is developing with a increasingly close partnership with China.

Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrkhan said in his latest speech that the usa is planning a war with China, but is already involved in a war on China, and cited the case of nato's war on Libya being also a war on China with the resultant departure of Chinese involvement in Libya and the 130,000 Chinese workers there.

Sukant Chandan, Friends of China



Boom time for Mozambique, once the basket case of Africa

The shells of stylish colonial-era buildings, like shipwrecks on the ocean floor, still give Maputo a distinct character. But the capital of Mozambique no longer feels like an urban museum. Amid the crumbling grandeur rumble cranes and mechanical diggers, carving out a different skyline.

A construction boom is under way here, concrete proof of the economic revolution in Mozambique. Growth hit 7.1% last year, accelerating to 8.1% in the final quarter. The country, riven by civil war for 15 years, is poised to become the world's biggest coal exporter within the next decade, while the recent discovery of two massive gas fields in its waters has turned the region into an energy hotspot, promising a £250bn bonanza.

The national currency was the best performing in the world against the dollar. Investment is pouring in on an unprecedented scale; as if to prove that history has a sense of irony, Portuguese feeling Europe's economic pain are flocking back to the former colony, scenting better prospects than at home. Increasingly this is the rule, not the exception in Africa, which has boasted six of the world's 10 fastest-growing economies in the past decade. The first oil discovery in Kenya was confirmed on Monday, while the British firm BG Group announced that one of its gas fields off the Tanzanian coast was bigger than expected and could lead to billions of pounds of investment. Bankers, analysts and politicians have never been so bullish about the continent, which barely 10 years ago was regarded as a basket case.

From Cape Town to Cairo, there are signs of a continent on the move: giant infrastructure projects, an expanding middle class, foreign equity scrambling for opportunities in telecoms, financial services and products aimed at a billion consumers. Growth is no magic bullet for reducing inequality or fostering democracy, but the stubborn truth that it is still the world's poorest continent has done little to dull the confidence and hype about the African renaissance.

Africa has 16 billionaires, topped by Nigerian cement tycoon Aliko Dangote with an estimated fortune of $10.1bn (£6.5bn), according to Forbes magazine. Economic growth across the continent will be 5.3% this year and 5.6% in 2013, the World Bank predicts, with some countries hitting double digits. "Africa could be on the brink of an economic take-off, much like China was 30 years ago and India 20 years ago," the bank says. Many of the African lions are already outpacing the Asian tigers.

Africa exports its natural resources with the price and demand for them determined by growth in China, whose bilateral trade with Africa has grown tenfold in a decade, eclipsing that of the United States.

In return, Chinese loans are funding many of the infrastructure projects changing the face of the continent.

There are an estimated 1 million Chinese in Africa: trading, investing, building, labouring, running micro-businesses and, critics say, exploiting its wealth of natural resources.

On a recent afternoon at the Southern Sun hotel in Maputo, overlooking the Indian Ocean, the arrival of a delegation of Chinese businessmen in smart suits surprised no one. Mozambique is now an immensely attractive prospect as it emerges from a traumatic past of colonialism and civil war.

[...]

GHANA HAILS SINO-AFRICAN STRATEGIC ALLIANCE

[Ghanaian and African revolutionary leader Kwame Nkrumah with Chinese revolutionary, Mao]

Interview: Ghanaian official hail Africa-China relations

ACCRA, Jan. 30 (Xinhua) -- A senior Ghanaian official has hailed the friendship between African countries and China, saying that the relations had brought benefit to the whole African continent.

In an interview with Xinhua here on Monday, Martha Pobee, Director for Information and Public Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, said that the huge headquarters of the African Union (AU), donated by the Chinese government, showed that the ties between Ghana and China since the west African nation attained independence in 1957 had inured to the benefit of, not only Ghana, but the whole continent.

"China's role in African development today is not coincidental, nor is it coincidental that they have built the AU building with the bust of Kwame Nkrumah (the first president of independent Ghana) in the foreground, but a relationship that has been nurtured over a long time," Pobee explained.

Pobee and many other high profile Ghanaians have expressed joy for the AU to honor Ghana's founding father, Kwame Nkrumah, with a bust at the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

African leaders, including Ghanaian President John Evans Atta Mills and the chairman of the AU Commission Jean Ping, unveiled a huge bronze bust of Nkrumah at the courtyard of the magnificent AU headquarters in the Ethiopian capital last Saturday.

It was extremely welcome news for the country, Pobee said, adding that "Ghana, and for that matter Nkrumah, championed the decolonization of Africa and also fought hard for continental unity, and our first president linked Ghana's independence to the total liberation of Africa and so the honor being done to him today is well in place".

FINANCIAL TIME's ASIA EDITOR EXPLAINS CHINA IS NOT FOLLOWING COLONIALISM's EXAMPLE IN AFRICA

Africa is getting a better deal from Beijing

By David Pilling
Financial Times

A few years ago, Lukas Lundin, a mining executive, rode his
motorbike 8,000 miles from Cairo to Cape Town. His journey,
which took just five weeks, meandered through 10 countries,
including Sudan, Ethiopia, Malawi, Zambia and Botswana. He
was amazed to discover that 85 per cent of the roads he
travelled were tarred and of high quality. Many had been
built by Chinese companies.

That was 2005. Since then, China’s interest in Africa has
intensified. In November 2006, Beijing hosted a lavish
Sino-African summit at which it promised more than 40 of
the continent’s leaders a new era of co-operation. Giant
elephants and giraffes appeared on hoardings across the
capital to mark the occasion.

Beijing has offered more than long-necked symbolism. In
2006 alone, it signed trade deals with African countries
worth $60bn. Investments, which often include a
resources-for-infrastructure element, have poured in thick
and fast. China’s stock of foreign direct investment has
shot well past $120bn (€81bn, £74bn). In 2006, Angola
temporarily overtook Saudi Arabia as China’s main supplier
of oil, and Africa now accounts for nearly 30 per cent of
China’s oil imports.

Nor is China’s interest limited to oil and minerals. In
2007, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the biggest
bank in the world by deposits, paid $5.6bn for a fifth of
South Africa’s Standard Bank. Only last month, at yet
another Sino-African jamboree, this one in Egypt, Beijing
pledged $10bn of new low-cost loans to Africa. It also
promised to eliminate tariffs on 60 per cent of exports and
to forgive the debt of several countries. Trade between
Africa and China has already risen spectacularly: last
year, it jumped 45 per cent to $107bn, a tenfold increase
over 2000.

Beijing’s engagement with Africa has caused much
hand-wringing. Western donors decry Beijing’s supposedly
scruples-free approach to investing in countries such as
Sudan. In some African countries, too, China’s growing
shadow has provoked anger. Nigerian radicals likened an
attempt by the China National Offshore Oil Corporation
(CNOOC) to secure 6bn barrels of oil to being attacked by
locusts.

Such objections are overdone. They are often disingenuous.
China is no philanthropist, but its rise may still
represent Africa’s best hope of escaping poverty. In the
eight years to 2007, before the financial crisis, African
countries were growing, on average, by more than 4 per cent
a year, far higher than previously. That was thanks partly
to better economic management, debt relief and increased
capital flows (some from China), but also to the higher
commodity prices driven by Chinese demand. Dambisa Moyo,
the Zambian economist who riled western donors with her
book Dead Aid, says: “China’s African role is wider, more
sophisticated and more businesslike than any other
country’s at any time in the postwar period.”

Much of the criticism of China’s influence rings hollow. As
Chinese – and Japanese – officials point out, the west’s
record is less than exemplary. European contact with Africa
can best be summed up as decades of naked rapaciousness
followed by a spectacularly unsuccessful attempt to make
amends. During the cold war western governments supported
dictators and kleptomaniacs across the continent, from
President Mobutu Sese Seko of what was then Zaire to
Uganda’s murderous British-trained Idi Amin. More recently,
in the name of conditionality, benefactors have rammed
frequently disastrous economic fads down the throats of
hapless recipients. With donors like that, who needs
enemies?

China’s pragmatism may produce better results. First, an
emphasis on infrastructure means that, even if deals are
corroded by corruption, at least the recipient country ends
up with a road, port or hospital. (OK, or perhaps a soccer
stadium.) Much Asian growth, including that of China
itself, was predicated on infrastructure. Officials in
Tokyo often contrast Japan’s own business-oriented approach
to south-east Asia – where countries such as Thailand,
Malaysia and Indonesia benefited greatly from Japanese
trade and investment – with dubious development strategies
pushed by the west in Africa.

Second, China’s approach is built on trade. Ms Moyo argues
that genuine business opportunity is more likely to
catalyse development than government-to-government aid that
is prone to being siphoned off. Robert Zoellick, president
of the World Bank, told the FT there was Chinese interest
in helping to create low-cost manufacturing bases in
Africa.

Third, and crucially, China is not alone in seeking
opportunities on the continent. As well as the west, India,
Brazil and Russia are also vying for business. That ought
to give resource-rich African countries the ability to
haggle for better terms, though of course there is no
guarantee that increased funds will not simply line bigger
pockets.

It would be wrong to be wide-eyed about China’s
investments. Some Chinese businesses are rightly condemned
for lax safety standards and for shunning African labour.
Critics are doubtless right that Chinese money has helped
prop up unscrupulous regimes in Khartoum and Harare. Yet
China is hardly alone in dealing with thieves and villains.
Whatever its side-effects, a scramble to invest in Africa
has got to be better than the European precedent; a
scramble to carve it up.

david.pilling@ft.com

OBAMA, CHINA AND AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT AND INDEPENDENCE

China doubles down in Africa

By Peter Lee
Asia Times Online

"Obama to Africa: Drop Dead," echoing the famous admonition
of president Gerald Ford to a cash-strapped New York City
in the 1970s, was, for all practical purposes, the message
the American president delivered to the African continent
in Ghana on Saturday. Barack Obama, mindful of the shaky
United States domestic constituency even for the bailout of
the American economy, and loath to display favoritism to
his father's home continent, decided against investing any
political capital in a call to provide significant amounts
of assistance to sub-Saharan Africa during the current
global recession.

His rather empty declaration, "We must start from the
simple premise that Africa's future is up to Africans,"
provided little consolation or inspiration for the poorer
nations of Africa, which are reeling from the balance-of-
payments, aid, investment and developmental consequences
of the West's catastrophic exploration of the extremes of
sophisticated financial leverage.

Obama's speech was also a remarkably cynical piece of
diplomatic triage, given what is widely recognized to be
the genuine state of economic affairs on the African
continent.

However, China appears to have made a strategic decision to
funnel in more aid and investment, as the West struggles
with the consequences of the global recession and fights a
losing battle to focus on Africa's needs for aid, trade and
investment.

For Africa, it couldn't come at a better time.

Even before the current crisis, with optimistic pre-crash
assumptions about exports, inward remittances, financial
reform and reduced capital flight, the United Nations
estimated that sub-Saharan Africa would need tens of
billions of dollars per annum in external funding if it
were to make any headway in its struggle to alleviate
widespread poverty.

Post-crisis, the African Development Bank projects that the
continent's exports will drop a staggering 40% by 2010
compared to pre-crisis projections. This shortfall, a loss
of a quarter trillion dollars in revenues, will throw the
aggregate current account into deficit, create a dire food
and fuel import crisis for cash-strapped countries and put
paid to the idea of servicing any normal external debt for
infrastructure construction.

Therefore, much of the perhaps US$50 billion in
infrastructure investment needed per annum to sustain
Africa's economic growth will have to come from outside in
the form of investment or aid.

However, the message in the alphabet soup of international
finance is not encouraging: Foreign Direct Investment (FDI)
and Official Development Aid (ODA), at least from the
Development Assistance Committee of the Organization for
Economic Co-Operation and Development, will not be
forthcoming in significant amounts.

ODA to SSA (sub-Saharan Africa) peaked at $22.5 billion in
2008 and is expected to drop by 15-20% in 2009; forget
about achieving the growth targets announced at the Group
of Eight summit at Gleneagles in 2005.

FDI to SSA looks like it's DOA; it reached $30.6 billion in
2008 but is going way down and nobody knows how far; a
recent estimate pegs the decline in FDI to all emerging
markets at a colossal 60% as commercial banks pull in their
horns.

Foreign remittances to the continent - a staple of many
African economies - are expected to drop by a third from
pre-crisis levels of roughly $10 billion per annum.

If billions in desperately needed investment and aid for
Africa is going to materialize in the next two years, it
looks like it will have to come from the BRIC countries
(Brazil, Russia, India and China).

And China is ready to step up.

Since the crisis began, China has announced its intentions
to maintain its existing levels of aid to Africa, promoted
its $1 billion mini development bank, the China-Africa
Development Fund, and sent the Industrial and Commercial
Bank of China - its designated investment bank for Africa
and the 20% partner (at the tune of US$6 billion) in South
Africa's Standard Bank - on the road to look for investable
projects.

More notable, China has undertaken significant
post-recession initiatives to advance its interests on the
continent through government-to-government resources,
infrastructure and financial mega-deals.

In recent months, Beijing has taken major steps to secure
its relationships with Zimbabwe, Uganda, the Democratic
Republic of Congo, Zambia, Angola and Botswana.

Its only conspicuous setback to date appears to be a train
wreck of a deal in Nigeria - a $3 billion modernization of
the Lagos-Kano railroad line that mysteriously acquired a
price tag of $8.5 billion under the presidency of Olusegun
Obasanjo and attracted the unfavorable scrutiny of the
incoming administration this year ... and that deal may
even go ahead in a truncated form.

China's willingness to finance resource and infrastructure
projects without the nagging conditions demanded by the
West is well known - and often derided as a willingness to
"deal with dictators". The German government decided to
make that point to Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni during
his recent state visit.

In what might be a sign of changing times, Museveni decided
not only to make his disagreement known during the visit;
he publicized his views in a press release on June 17.

In the follow-up entitled "China is not a threat to Africa
- Museveni", the Ugandan media painted an amusing picture
of the Chinese bankers doing everything short of joining
the Ugandan president on the plane to Berlin to demonstrate
their eagerness to cooperate:

[Germany's President Horst] Kohler observed that Africa had
opened its doors wide for Chinese investments because the
Beijing authorities do not put conditions in terms of
democracy or human rights.

Museveni, accompanied by the First Lady, Janet, said unlike
in colonial times, African leaders have identified their
priorities and are capable of protecting the continent's
interests.

"Therefore, no power can exploit Africa," a press release
from the State House quoted him.

Kohler's remarks come two days after the Industrial and
Commercial Bank of China expressed interest in building an
oil refinery and pipeline in Uganda. Meeting Museveni at
Entebbe Airport just before his departure for Germany, the
Chinese bank's chairperson also said they were keen on
constructing hydro-power stations and transmission lines.

On July 6, President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, the target
of Western outrage for his inflationary, power-grabbing
ways, was gratified by China's unconditional extension of a
$950 million credit tranche, even as the United States was
seeking to embarrass and isolate his regime and channel
economic aid directly to [non-governmental organizations]
NGOs:

The Chinese package, the president said, was well meant as
it was coming to the government not NGOs, to assist in
national development and economic revival.

"That is the kind of help we would want to get, and not the
Western dictates," he said.

The president said Western countries never give the
developing world development funds that promote economic
growth and prosperity as that would put them at par with
the West and negate grounds for dominance.

"There is no funding with an investment capacity from the
West that will enable us to move from primary agriculture
to secondary stages of development. They do not want us,
the West, to be that. They do not want us to be their
equals, they enjoy being masters over us and this is what
Zimbabwe rejects," he added.

What is striking about the Chinese experience in Africa is
that it is beginning to look like engagement, and not
simply exploitation. To a significant extent, it is driven
by Beijing's need to deal both with the fallout of the
global recession, and the political and economic
consequences of its push into Africa.

With the collapse in commodity prices, many Chinese
investors who are either fly-by-night or profit-driven,
depending on your point of view - and helped power the
Chinese investment push into Africa in flush times - have
literally disappeared, as the Financial Times reported in
February 2009:

More than 40 Chinese-run copper smelters are standing idle
in the Democratic Republic of Congo after their owners fled
the country without paying taxes or compensating staff at
the end of the commodity boom…

The abrupt downturn has released resentment over the
conduct of some Chinese businesses in Africa, where hard
bargaining and a lack of warmth towards local people won
them few friends.

"Some serious companies remain with metallurgical plants. I
don't have any problem with them. But they are 10% of the
Chinese who were here. Ninety percent have gone," [Governor
of Katanga Province] Mr Katumbi said, dismissing them as
"speculators".

In the Democratic Republic of Congo (previously Zaire), the
Chinese government is not counting on Chinese speculators
to manage its relationship with the DRC's copper industry.

Instead it has pinned its hopes on perhaps its biggest
strategic investment on the continent: a $9 billion project
designed both to produce copper and rebuild the DRC's
war-shattered infrastructure.

The International Monetary Fund, egged on by the United
States, is demanding a renegotiation of the project on the
grounds (which the Chinese deny) that the financing
increases the DRC's sovereign debt.

Fortunately for China, the DRC - which currently has only
enough foreign exchange on hand for a few weeks of import
cover - is maintaining its enthusiasm for the proposed
megadeal.

However, neighboring Zambia, which shares in the immense
bounty of copper ore crossing the southern Congo, presents
a greater challenge for the traditional Chinese way of
doing things in Africa.

The wake-up call for China probably came in 2007, during
the flush years of the commodity boom, when China's
President Hu Jintao was met by protesters in Zambia's
capital of Lusaka, and the government cancelled a trip to a
China-run copper mine at

Chambeshi to spare him the embarrassment of further
protests.

For several years, anti-Chinese sentiment has been central
to Zambian opposition leader Michael Sata's electoral
platform.

A July 2008 report quoted Sata as follows:

"It is not only Zambia - it's all Cape to Cairo where the
Chinaman is," Sata says. "That's the way they look at us.
They have no regard for us. They have no regard for our
independence. They have no regard for any black person as a
human being. Those are very abnormal conditions, very
abnormal conditions. Very abnormal conditions, which a
civilized society, in this century, cannot accept."

Sata came to the United States to play the human-rights and
democracy card at Harvard, and also threatened to play the
nearly-defunct Taiwan card:

"…the Patriotic Front in Zambia finds it more prudent to
cultivate relations with Taiwan, a democracy and a more
advanced country than China, which can provide high quality
investment and more equitable trading opportunities."

Sata's provocative stance on Taiwan prompted China to make
an exception to its principle of non-interference in local
politics and state. In 2006 there was a chance of severing
relations if Sata was elected.

China is acutely aware that Sata may gain the presidency in
his fourth try, in 2011, and that his defeat in 2006
occasioned anti-Chinese looting and rioting in one of
Sata's electoral strongholds, the capital of Lusaka.

In the midst of the recession - and undoubtedly at the
prodding of President Hu, who is accustomed to very
friendly and deferential welcomes in African capitals -
China has stepped up its efforts to repair the damage and
ingratiate itself with public opinion in Zambia.

Beijing is confronting two hot-button issues for Sata's
base: domination of the domestic textile and garment trade
by Chinese traders and imports, and Chinese abuses in the
Copperbelt, where a combination of generally miserable
working conditions, violent and at times deadly
union-busting at the China-run Chambeshi mine and Sata's
demagoguery have created a toxic atmosphere of resentment
and labor unrest.

A conspicuous political albatross for the pro-Chinese
ruling party has been the closure of the Zambia-China
Mulungushi Textiles enterprise. Originally a symbol of
state-run benevolence, the Chinese interest was turned over
to the Qingdao Textile Corporation in 1997 and run along
time-tested sweatshop principles, including demanding,
abusive managers who locked the employees into the plant at
night.

The plant closed in 2006 amid intense rancor and resentment
against the Chinese management and turned into a symbol of
the Zambian government's unwillingness to protect Zambians
against Chinese exploitation.

In March 2009, Zambia's defense minister (the Ministry of
Defense holds Zambia's interest in the plant) announced
that China and Zambia were jointly studying the re-opening
of the plant and the expected creation of 2,500 presumably
desirable jobs:

"The team of experts have so far captured a comprehensive
factor of what we need to ensure the company is back into
serious business and further strengthened. For us as
government this is a significant development," said Mr
[George] Mpombo.

The defense minister pointed out that Zambia and China
would like to ensure the company is utilized to its full
capacity.

"For the last two years there have been serious hiccups in
operations and a yawning capacity of that company. That
company has the capacity to export and do miracles for the
country," said Mr Mpombo.

Furthermore, on June 25, it was announced that China
Non-Ferrous Metal Corporation would take over operation of
the Luanshya Copper Mine, which had been shuttered due to
low global copper prices.

The Zambian government was quite frank about the political
background to the transaction:

Minister of Mines and Minerals Development Maxwell Mwale
said at the official handover in Zambia's Luanshya District
on the Copperbelt province that the coming of a new
investor was an indication that the government was
committed to bringing development to the district because
the closure of the mine was turned into a political
platform.

China bid $50 million for the controlling foreign interest
in the mine, and promised $400 million in investment,
including the seemingly mandatory hospital, school and
sports facilities infrastructure outlays.

It appears that China's posture in Zambia has quickly
evolved from old-style socialist solidarity to unfettered
Wild West capitalism run by entrepreneurial Chinese
enterprises to adult supervision - strategic engagement
directed by the Chinese government.

It remains to be seen if Beijing's public relations and
financial efforts are enough to stem the Sata tide in 2011.

China also displayed its commitment to strategic engagement
in Angola, site of its most conspicuous triumph in its post
9/11 drive into Africa.

The basic objective of the $6 billion
oil-for-infrastructure deal has been met; as Angola has
joined Saudi Arabia and Iran as one of China's three
biggest suppliers of crude.

The notoriously independent and prickly Angolan government
is determined to keep channels to the West open, and
recently denied China's Sinopec petrochemical corporation
the opportunity to invest in an $8 billion new refinery at
Lobito; instead Angola decided to come up with the money
itself and give the design and build contracts to former US
vice president Dick Cheney's old outfit, KBR.

Nevertheless, since the global recession and the drop in
international oil prices has punched a hole in Angola's
balance sheet, China has stepped forward with new credits:
$1 billion from its Export-Import Bank in December 2008,
and another $1 billion from the China Development Bank in
March of this year.

Additionally, China purchased almost one million barrels of
oil from Angola for its strategic petroleum reserve, which
can be interpreted simultaneously as an opportunistic move
to take advantage of low prices, an attempt to find a
better home for its bloated forex reserves than US T-bills,
and an expansion of oil imports in tough times that Angola
would appreciate.

Nancy Corkin of South Africa's Center for Chinese Studies
at Stellenbosch University writes in the March 2009 China
Monitor that the new credit appears to illustrate Beijing's
efforts to develop policy-driven engagement with Angola
beyond the narrower self-interest that drove the original
oil-backed loans:

"The size of the loans and the eagerness of several Chinese
financial institutions to lend to Angola signify the
strategic importance with which Beijing views Luanda as
Chinese banks vie to engage with Angola to curry favor with
the Chinese State Council."

In a sign that China is interested in promoting indigenous
financial development and integration, and not just writing
checks to interested governments, on June 16 the
ICBC/Standard Bank joint venture concluded the largest
Chinese investment banking transaction to date in Africa -
an $825 million loan (plus $140 million in bridge
financing) to finance the expansion of Botswana's Marupule
power station.

Not unsurprisingly, supply and build for the project will
be handled by China National Electric Equipment
Corporation.

Jiang Jianqing, the president of ICBC - which now bills
itself as the largest bank in the world in terms of market
capitalization - flew out from Beijing for the signing
ceremony to emphasize that China was open for business to
Africa in these tough times:

"Africa is a huge market with massive potential," Jianqing
said. "Africa needs urgent foreign investment, especially
after the impact of the global crisis, so we will look at
more projects to invest [in]."

"The financing of the Morupule B Power Station is just one
of 65 projects that the ICBC is currently funding on the
African continent and is evidence of China's strong
appetite for African investment opportunities," said Jiang.

Hu Jintao's 2009 tour of Africa - which covered the
distinctly non-strategic states of Senegal, Mali, Tanzania
and Mauritius - was apparently designed to demonstrate that
China was not just in Africa for the oil, cobalt and
copper, as Peking University's Zha Daojiang told Reuters:

"The itinerary appears intended to show that we treat all
the African countries, big and small, equally," said Zha.
"There's also the implicit message that China's
relationship with Africa isn't solely defined by resource
and energy investments."

It appears that China hopes to emerge from the global
recession not only with its economic standing intact; it
intends to enhance its position and present itself in
Africa as the responsible, perhaps indispensable
stakeholder that the West has claimed to yearn for but is
perhaps not anxious to see materialize.

Peter Lee writes on East and South Asian affairs and their intersection with US foreign policy.

CHINA ASSISTS AFRICA'S INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT, HELPING TO FREE IT FROM CRIPPLING DEPENDENCE FROM THE WEST

AU Commission Chairperson lauds China's
role in Africa's infrastructure development

ADDIS ABABA, Jan. 28 (Xinhua) -- Chairperson of the
Commission of the African Union (AU) Jean Ping has spoken
highly of China's role in Africa's infrastructure
development, saying that the Chinese "dragon" has played a
fundamental part in the improvement of the infrastructure
facilities across African countries.

In an exclusive interview with China's official Xinhua News
Agency on the eve of 12th AU Summit to be held here from
Feb. 1 to3, Ping said China is Africa's key strategic
partner and has made significant contributions to the
growth of infrastructure in Africa.

The theme of this summit is infrastructure development in
Africa with a particular focus on the transport and energy
sectors.

The AU chief said Chinese firms have rich experiences in
overseas contract business, praising the quality of the
roads, railways, bridges and airports constructed by
Chinese firms.

Due to China's involvement in Africa, the infrastructure
facilities have been greatly improved, Ping said,
mentioning China's participation in Ethiopian and Algerian
roads construction.

In Ethiopia, Chinese firms have built the Ring Road in the
capital city of Addis Ababa, and in Algeria, Chinese firms
have won the bid to construct the Algerian East-West
Highway, according to Ping.

The backward infrastructure is severely hampering the
development of Africa, he bemoaned.

Some African sub-regional groups, like SADC (the Southern
African Development Community) and ECOWAS (the Economic
Community Of West African States) have a big population and
variety of consumer groups, but inadequate infrastructure
facilities have hindered the population migration, Ping
said, adding that the backward infrastructure has been a
bottleneck curbing the development of Africa.

Ping urged African countries to share China's experience in
infrastructure development.

The Chinese people understand the role of infrastructure in
national economic development more than any other, he said.

China's success in economy lies on increasing
infrastructure construction, he added.

The Chinese people are now proud of excellent
infrastructure in their country, and because of excellent
infrastructure facilities developed over the years, China
has therefore made tremendous economic achievements, said
Ping, who was also former deputy prime minister and foreign
minister of Gabon.

The AU chief lauded China's promise not to cut aid to
Africa despite international financial crisis.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, when meeting with Angolan
President Jose Eduardo dos Santos in December last year,
said China would not reduce assistance to Africa because of
the international financial crisis.

Such a promise from China will play a very active role to
offset the impact of financial crisis on Africa, he said.

Ping also praised the new type of Africa-China strategic
partnership, based on mutual benefit and win-win
cooperation. He said that statistics can prove the
much-increased cooperation between Africa and China.

The Africa-China trade volume has surpassed 100 billion
U.S. dollars and China has now become Africa's second
largest trade partner, he said.

Due to China's huge imports from Africa, Africa now runs a
trade surplus against China, he added.

Ping advised Chinese firms to develop Africa's processing
industry, stressing that the development of processing
industry in Africa will add the value of Africa's raw
materials.

Chinese firms will also benefit from processing Africa's
raw materials, he said.

Ping took Africa's timber trade for example, and said
logging processing on one hand increases the value of logs,
on the other hand lowers the cost of maritime transport.

PRC - VENEZUELA - AFRICA - MULTIPOLAR STRATEGY

Foreign Policy with a Multipolar Vision
Noticias

The Venezuelan Foreign Affairs Vice-minister for Africa
Reinaldo Bolívar mentioned the multipolar vision of the
Bolivarian Government’s foreign policy and stressed that
“Venezuelan will be always willing to provide the greatest
possible humanitarian help to Africa in the event that this
continent be victim of natural disasters or wars.”

Bolívar informed that Venezuela has recently talked to the
authorities of the People’s Republic of China in order to
develop triangular relations in favor of Africa’s political
and economic development.

“The result has been positive; we have even received
specific gestures through the Chinese Embassy to Ethiopia,
which has cooperated with the school equipment of the
schools sponsored by Venezuela,” Bolívar explained.

The Venezuelan official highlighted that the importance of
an alliance with China is due to the huge presence of this
Asian nation in the African continent.

“China buys 40% of its oil form Africa, and in the recent
years it has considerably invested in infrastructures,
construction of bridges, hospitals and roads,” assured
Bolívar.

CHINA CLOSER TO AFRICAN JUSTICE THAN THE WEST

Behind the reluctance of China and Africa to criticize Mugabe
By Howard W. French
Thursday, July 3, 2008
IHT

SHANGHAI: For a crisis involving African despotism, the
decibel readings in the West over Zimbabwe have reached
almost unprecedented levels.

Beyond the din of condemnations of Robert Mugabe, that
country's aging, power-obsessed tyrant, however, a great
many questions have gone unexamined.

Western governments led by London and Washington look at
Mugabe's rule and see such a clear-cut case of evil that
they are at a loss to understand why the rest of Africa -
or China, for that matter, a Security Council member with
fast-deepening ties with the continent - doesn't rush to
join in on their condemnation.

The Zimbabwe case should be more, though, than a tragedy
for its own people, for it presents an invaluable
opportunity to think about how differently the world can
look from different vantage points. And far from an idle
thought exercise, this might helpfully lead to a rethinking
of diplomatic strategy in Africa and in other parts of the
world.

As the second most important country in southern Africa,
Zimbabwe, like that region itself, has long functioned like
a kaleidoscope, serving up dramatically different
perspectives to different viewers.

I was reminded of this fact by the recent news that a South
African citizen of Chinese ancestry, Patrick Chong, had won
a lawsuit enabling him to be legally considered black. The
outcome was a triumph over a history of double
discrimination. Like other ethnic Chinese, the plaintiff,
who is chairman of the Chinese Association of South Africa,
was denied many basic rights during the apartheid era, and
he had also been denied the compensation won by the
country's black majority with the demise of a system of
legally enshrined racism.

As the perverse language of apartheid would have put it,
Chong has now become an "honorary black."

What does this all have to do with Zimbabwe? Before
Zimbabwe became a majority-ruled, independent country in
1980, and during the long years of apartheid in South
Africa, both of those countries were treated with similar
perversity as honorary members of the West.

While China was building the Tazara Railroad, to connect
Zambia's mines to Tanzania's ports in order to loosen
white-ruled South Africa's economic grip on the southern
half of the continent, the United States and Britain were
running diplomatic interference for apartheid rule in
Pretoria.

Washington often went further, backing South African
guerrilla proxies in places like Angola, prolonging
devastating wars there and elsewhere, and staving off
independence for South African-occupied Namibia in the name
of fighting communism.

Short memories abound, but in Africa this is not yet
ancient history. In 1987, while South Africa was actively
pursuing a policy of sabotage against its neighbors,
devastating vital infrastructure and supporting mass
killers like the Renamo rebels in Mozambique, Washington
reserved most of its indignation for "necklacing," a
small-bore terror tactic practiced by blacks in South
Africa. An amendment passed with overwhelming support in
the U.S. Senate requiring southern African countries to
condemn these lynchings or lose American aid.

Mugabe said it himself when he wrote in Foreign Affairs in
1987: "Political and material support of desperate bandit
groups, dissidents and self-seeking, discredited
individuals by a superpower like the United States is a
prescription for chaos and instability in the international
political system. Calling such a hodgepodge of individuals
'freedom fighters' does not make them any such thing."

Looking back, it isn't hard to conclude that China was in
many ways closer to being on the right side of history in
southern Africa than the United States, for all of
America's vaunted attachment to freedom, democracy and
human rights.

It is anything but clear that China has maintained that
position today, as it pursues neo-mercantilist policies and
abstains from pressuring Mugabe to end the campaign of
terror and economic devastation waged against his own
people.

Still, if one pauses to consider, it is relatively easy to
grasp why African leaders might question the good faith
behind the West's admirable sounding values and abstain
from the chorus of condemnations, or why the Chinese might
themselves be skeptical.

An African journalist wrote me this week, comparing the
vociferous Western response to Mugabe to the customary
silence that attends atrocities, political hijackings and
despotism on the continent, especially where critical
Western interests are in play. A former U.S. ambassador to
Zimbabwe had told her: "Everyone felt they had invested
something in the success of Zimbabwe, so when it all began
unraveling, everyone felt personally disappointed and let
down."

This looks too easy by half, and it is hard to avoid the
heretical question whether the vociferous response,
especially by Britain, isn't somehow related to race?

Unlike most of the continent, Rhodesia, like South Africa
and Kenya, were places where whites settled and became
attached.

Ivory Coast, another erstwhile showcase, was allowed to
cycle through stolen elections, coups, ethnic cleansing and
civil war, registering scarcely a ripple on the global
agenda.

But telling Africans they will be judged by how they line
up on Zimbabwe is counterproductive for other reasons, too.
The West's constant search for African leaders to anoint or
vilify is resented on the continent, and its track record,
moreover, is riddled with spots.

Paranoid African dictators look at the calls to denounce
Mugabe and worry they might be next. The more
democratically inclined know better. They see Washington's
embrace of dictators in places like Equatorial Guinea, or
even former enemies, like the robber baron former Marxists
who run Angola, and see a pattern of highly selective
outrage. Might the fact that these countries - to name but
two - are swimming in oil have something to do with
escaping the Mugabe treatment?

China looks at this inconsistency, too, and naturally
suspects it is being discriminated against. The only
African country that has drawn more Western critical fire
than Zimbabwe recently is Sudan, for its genocidal campaign
in Darfur. It's an emerging oil power, too, but unlike so
many African kleptocracies, its product flows east, not
west.

CHINA FOR THE DIGNITY AND INDEPENDENCE OF AFRICA

China supports good governance based on respect over African countries' sovereignty, dignity

www.chinaview.cn
2008-06-04

June 4 (Xinhua) -- China fully supports good governance,
human rights and rule of law in Africa, but African countries'
national sovereignty and dignity have to be respected, Liu Guijin,
China's Special Envoy on African Affairs, said Tuesday.

It is the Chinese government's long-standing policy to
encourage and support good governance, human rights and
rule of law, but we have to respect African people's own
choice for their way of development, he said in an open
speech at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs
(NIIA).

Any country, no matter with any reason, should not impose a
particular "value" or way of life on African countries, he
added.

"I am here to discuss with my Nigerian friends on how to
promote Sino-Africa relations and how to strengthen
bilateral ties between China and Nigeria," he said.

"We will not impose our model of development on any of
country in this continent, otherwise, we want to share our
experience on opening-up and economic development with
African brother nations, who may adopt its own suitable way
of development," he said.

On Sino-Africa economic cooperation, the senior Chinese
diplomat rebuffed some "western countries' accusations that
China is robbing natural resources" from this continent,
saying that China's investment not only flows to natural
resources sectors, but also to manufacturing, finance,
human resources, infrastructure construction, healthcare
and agriculture.

He attributed some western countries' "over-reaction" to
their "fear of the losing traditional monopoly" over Africa
affairs.

"The international community should make joint efforts to
help African countries to go ahead. Any measures and
actions, only if they benefit Africa, we will render our
full support," he said.

According to Liu, China's direct investment stood at about
11.1billion U.S. dollars by the end of 2007.

Actions have been taken to implement the agreements reached
between China and African countries since the 2006 summit
in Beijing, especially projects to build schools,
hospitals, agriculture cooperation, debt-cancellation and
governmental development loans, which were illustrated in
Chinese President Hu Jintao's guideline on Sino-Africa
cooperation.

On answering a Darfur question in the interactive section,
Liu said the decades-old question was very complicated and
talks among different groups are necessary to the process.

China would work closely with the international community,
African Union and major peace-keeping countries like
Nigeria to encourage a quick solution to the problem, he
said.

MOZAMBIQUE HELP CHINA AS A 'BROTHER COUNTRY'

CPC senior official meets Mozambican guests
www.chinaview.cn 2008-05-27

"Paunde [Frelimo Gen Sec] said the revolution and
construction of Mozambique have been strongly
assisted by China and Mozambican people always
bore deep feeling towards Chinese people, especially
those from Sichuan, where the first medical team
China sent to the country hailed from."

BEIJING, May 27 (Xinhua) -- Wang Jiarui, a Communist Party
of China (CPC) senior official, met with Filipe Paunde,
Mozambique's Frelimo Party secretary general, here on
Tuesday, and the two discuss further party-to-party
exchanges.

Wang, head of the International Department of the CPC
Central Committee, spoke highly of exchanges between the
CPC and the Frelimo Party in recent years, and hailed the
important role played by the party-to-party exchanges in
promoting relations between the two countries.

He believed Paunde's visit would deepen relations between
the two parties and make fresh contributions to
China-Mozambique cooperation in various fields.

Wang updated Paunde on the latest news about the
devastating earthquake and relief efforts in Sichuan
Province and other affected areas. He expressed his thanks
to the international society, including Mozambique, which
sent its sympathy and assistance following the May 12
quake.

Paunde said the revolution and construction of Mozambique
have been strongly assisted by China and Mozambican people
always bore deep feeling towards Chinese people, especially
those from Sichuan, where the first medical team China sent
to the country hailed from.

As the earthquake happened, China quickly responded and
mobilized all the society to fight against the catastrophe.
Now, related work was progressing smoothly and the society
was being maintained in an orderly fashion, something that
left Mozambicans quite impressed, Paunde said.

While Mozambique was not wealthy, it wanted to provide help
within its capabilities to its brother country, Paunde
added.

The two sides also briefed each other on the building of
party and exchanged views on further party-to-party
cooperation.

SINO-AFRICA RELATIONS POSITIVELY REASSERTED (SOUTH AFRICA & ERITREA)

China doesn't use Africa as dumping ground

www.chinaview.cn 2008-05-23

ASMARA, May 22 (Xinhua) -- Eritrean President Isayas
Afewerkion Thursday slammed those allegations that China is
using Africa as a dumping ground.

"Is China using Africa as a dumping ground? That is not the
case," Isayas said in an exclusive interview with Xinhua,
on the eve of the 15th founding anniversary of the State of
Eritrea.

"There may be incidents, there may be mistakes here and
there, but this should not be the way we judge this
partnership," he said.

"At the moment what you can do, even the purchasing power
does not allow people to go for expensive cars like
Porsche, Ferrari. That is not the kind of thing people can
afford now, may be the one or two out of millions can
afford that," said Isayas.

"I would say those, who are saying this, have no moral
authority or high ground to lecture us on what China should
do, and what China should not do," he said. "This is a
matter for Africa and China."

"These people have been the worst example, not only a bad
example in partnership, they cannot come to lecture on what
China should do, and what China should not do," said the
Eritrean president.

"We cannot make judgments by those who had been doing the
wrong things all the way and now coming to lecture us on
how China-Africa relationship should be governed."

Isayas calls for a stronger partnership between Africa and
China.

"I think the healthy relationship that should develop
between China and Africa will have to be partnership to
solve the immediate problems now," he said.


Chinese official: Sino-S. African cooperation experiences fast development

www.chinaview.cn 2008-05-22

PRETORIA, May 21 (Xinhua) -- The strategic partnership
between China and South Africa has experienced fast
development in all aspects and has become one of China's
most important and dynamic bilateral relationships with
other African countries, said a senior Chinese official
here on Wednesday.

With the joint efforts of China and South Africa and other
African countries, the China-African relations have taken
on a new look and has brought tangible benefits to both
sides, said Ji Peiding, vice chairman of the Foreign
Affairs Committee of the Chinese National People's
Congress, at the seminar commemorating the 10th anniversary
of the diplomatic ties between China and South Africa.

Maintaining the overall friendship between China and Africa
is the goal and basis of strengthening the strategic
cooperation between China and South Africa, said Ji at the
seminar held in Pretoria on Wednesday.

China-African cooperation belongs to South-South
cooperation which has become more complementary,
diversified and flexible, Ji said, adding that the two
sides hold identical or similar positions on many major
international issues.

China sincerely hopes to see a peaceful, stable, developing
and united Africa with a bigger role in international
affairs, he said.

China-African cooperation is all-dimensional, involving all
countries which are willing to cooperate with China and
Africa. Such cooperation has been based on complementarity,
mutual benefit and win-win progress throughout its growth,
Ji said.

Mutual investment between China and Africa has injected new
vitality into the economic cooperation and development
between China and African countries, Ji said.

Eritrean president hails China's competition in world markets

2008-05-23

ASMARA, May 22 (Xinhua) -- Eritrean President Isayas
Afewerki on Thursday hailed China's competition in world
markets, saying that China's competition improves the lives
of those customers everywhere in the world.

"It is hypocrisy. They talk about free market, free trade,
when they control everything," Isayas said, referring to
some Western politicians who are jealous of China's growing
influence in Africa.

"When someone reaches a level where he can compete with
that, then free market and free trade does not work for
them. Free market, free trade, free competition or
competition in the market only suit them when they control
everything, when there is no one in the market to compete
with them," said the Eritrean president.

"Now China is emerging, other markets in Asia are emerging,
they don't like that competition," he said.

"We have been lectured on what capitalism is, what markets
are, what free trade is, but when it comes to stiff
competition, then all these values are abandoned."

DUBOIS ON AFRICA & CHINA

My Tenth Decade

The Autobiography of W.E.B. DuBois:
A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the
Last Decade of Its First Century

[PIC: Mao and DuBois meet, circa 1959]

My 90th birthday was a surprising occasion. Friends wanted
to celebrate it, but I recoiled. Who would sponsor such an
event? There had, I admitted, been some pleasant
occurrences. I had a successful television interview over
the Dumont Broadcasting system; my bust by Zorach had been
accepted by the New York Public Library and installed in
the Schomburg Collection at the 135th Street branch. At the
dedication Franklin Frazier, Judge Jane Bolin and Van Wyck
Brooks took part. Tablet, the official organ of the
Brooklyn diocese of the Roman Catholic church, naturally
added one sour note, writing the library: "This corporation
writes to enquire whether you would accept a bust of
Benedict Arnold, which we would be happy to present to
you."

I spoke at Paul Robeson's 60th birthday:

The persecution of Paul Robeson by the government and
people of the United States during the last nine years has
been one of the most contemptible happenings in modern
history. Robeson has done nothing to hurt or defame this
nation. He is, as all know, one of the most charming,
charitable and loving of men. There is no person on earth
who ever heard Robeson slander or even attack the land of
his birth. Yet he had reason to despise America. He was a
black man; the son of black folk whom Americans had stolen
and enslaved. Even after his people's hard won and justly
earned freedom, America made their lot as near a hell on
earth as was possible. They discouraged, starved and
insulted them. They sneered at helpless black children.
Someone once said that the best punishment for Hitler would
be to paint him black and send him to the United States.
This was no joke. To struggle up as a black boy in America;
to meet jeers and blows; to meet insult with silence and
discrimination with a smile; to sit with fellow students
who hated you and work and play for the honor of a college
that disowned you--all this was America for Paul Robeson.
Yet he fought the good fight; he was despised and rejected
of men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief and we
hid as it were our faces from him, he was despised and we
esteemed him not.

Why? Why? Not because he attacked this country. Search
Britain and France, the Soviet Union and Scandinavia for a
word of his against America. What then was his crime? It
was that while he did not rail at America he did praise the
Soviet Union; and he did that because it treated him like a
man and not like a dog; because he and his family for the
first time in life were welcomed like human beings and he
was honored as a great man. The children of Russia clung to
him, the women kissed him; the workers greeted him; the
state named mountains after him. He loved their homage. His
eyes were filled with tears and his heart with thanks.
Never before had he received such treatment. In America he
was a "nigger"; in Britain he was tolerated; in France he
was cheered; in the Soviet Union he was loved for the great
artist that he is. He loved the Soviet Union in turn. He
believed that every black man with blood in his veins would
with him love the nation which first outlawed the color
line.

I saw him when he voiced this. It was in Paris in 1949 at
the greatest rally for world peace this world ever
witnessed. Thousands of persons from all the world filled
the Salle Playel from floor to rafters. Robeson hurried in,
magnificent in height and breadth, weary from circling
Europe with song. The audience rose to a man and the walls
thundered. Robeson said that his people wanted Peace and
"would never fight the Soviet Union." I joined with the
thousands in wild acclaim.

This, for America, was his crime. He might hate anybody. He
might join in murder around the world. But for him to
declare that he loved the Soviet Union and would not join
in war against it--that was the highest crime that the
United States recognized. For that, they slandered Robeson;
they tried to kill him at Peekskill; they prevented him
from hiring halls in which to sing; they prevented him from
travel and refused him a passport. His college, Rutgers,
lied about him and dishonored him. And above all, his own
people, American Negroes, joined in hounding one of their
greatest artists--not all, but even men like Langston
Hughes, who wrote of Negro musicians and deliberately
omitted Robeson's name--Robeson who more than any living
man has spread the pure Negro folk song over the civilized
world. Yet has Paul Robeson kept his soul and stood his
ground. Still he loves and honors the Soviet Union. Still
he has hope for America. Still he asserts his faith in God.
But we--what can we say or do; nothing but hang our heads
in endless shame.

On my 90th birthday, my friends invited my well-wishers to
a party at the Roosevelt Hotel. No body of sponsors could
be found, but Angus Cameron acted as chairman, and Eslanda
Robeson as treasurer. Two thousand persons were present
including my own great-grandson, who behaved with exemplary
decorum. I addressed my remarks to him. I quote from the
National Guardian:

The most distinguished guest of this festive occasion is
none other than my great-grandson, Arthur Edward McFarlane
II, who was born this last Christmas Day. He had kindly
consented to permit me to read to you a bit of advice
which, as he remarked with a sigh of resignation,
great-grandparents are supposed usually to inflict on the
helpless young. This then is my word of advice.

As men go, I have had a reasonably happy and successful
life, I have had enough to eat and drink, have been
suitably clothed and, as you see, have had many friends.
But the thing which has been the secret of whatever I have
done is the fact that I have been able to earn a living by
doing the work which I wanted to do and work that the world
needed done.

I want to stress this. You will soon learn, my dear young
man, that most human beings spend their lives doing work
which they hate and work which the world does not need. It
is therefore of prime importance that you early learn what
you want to do; how you are fit to do it and whether or not
the world needs this service. Here, in the next 20 years,
your parents can be of use to you. You will soon begin to
wonder just what parents are for besides interfering with
your natural wishes. Let me therefore tell you: parents and
their parents are inflicted upon you in order to show what
kind of person you are; what sort of world you live in and
what the persons who dwell here need for their happiness
and well-being.

Right here, my esteemed great-grandson, may I ask you to
stick a pin. You will find it the fashion in the America
where eventually you will live and work to judge that
life's work by the amount of money it brings you. This is a
grave mistake. The return from your work must be the
satisfaction which that work brings you and the world's
need of that work. With this, life is heaven, or as near
heaven as you can get. Without this--with work which you
despise, which bores you and which the world does not
need--this life is hell. And believe me, many a
$25,000-a-year executive is living in just such a hell
today.

Income is not greenbacks, it is satisfaction; it is
creation; it is beauty. It is the supreme sense of a world
of men going forward, lurch and stagger though it may, but
slowly, inevitably going forward, and you, you yourself
with your hand on the wheels. Make this choice, then, my
son. Never hesitate, never falter.

And now comes the word of warning: the satisfaction with
your work even at best will never be complete, since
nothing on earth can be perfect. The forward pace of the
world which you are pushing will be painfully slow. But
what of that: the difference between a hundred and a
thousand years is less than you now think. But doing what
must be done, that is eternal even when it walks with
poverty.

And I care not to garner while others

Know only to harvest and reap

For mine is the reaping of sowing

Till the spirit of rest gives me sleep.

A purse of $7,500 was given me. Later in Chicago, Truman
Gibson and Margaret Burroughs arranged another birthday
celebration and gave me $1,700 more. After talks in
California, I was able to take a trip to the West Indies
and see the beginnings of the new British West Indian
Federation.

I was invited to attend the All-African Conference at
Accra. At the Fifth Pan-African Congress at Manchester,
England in 1945, a Sixth Congress on the continent of
Africa had been projected. When Ghana gained her
independence it was planned. I was not allowed to attend
the inauguration. If I had been present undoubtedly the
matter would have been further discussed. Meantime George
Padmore, secretary of the Pan-African Congress, was called
to Ghana as chief adviser to the Prime Minister, and he
published a book called Pan-Africanism or Communism in
which he said:

"In our struggle for national freedom, human dignity and
social redemption Pan-Africanism offers an ideological
alternative to Communism on one side and Tribalism on the
other. It rejects both white racialism and black
chauvinism. It stands for racial co-existence on the basis
of absolute equality and respect for human personality."

I ventured to advise Nkrumah:

I have your kind invitation of January 22, 1957. In behalf
of myself and of my wife, Shirley Graham, I thank you for
it and want to say how great was our desire to accept it.
But since the United States government refused to issue us
passports, we must with deep regret inform you of our
inability to accept. I have recently also, and for the same
reason, been compelled to my sorrow to decline a trip to
China for lectures and participation in the celebration of
the 250th anniversary of the birth of Benjamin Franklin.
However, because of the fact that I am now entering the
90th year of my life and because of my acquaintanceship
with you during the last 12 years, which cover the years of
your imprisonment, vindication, and political triumph, I
trust you will allow me a few words of advice for the
future of Ghana and Africa.

Today, when Ghana arises from the dead and faces this
modern world, it must no longer be merely a part of the
British Commonwealth or a representative of the world of
West Europe, Canada, and the United States. Ghana must on
the contrary be the representative of Africa.

The consequent Pan-Africa, working together through its
independent units, should seek to develop a new African
economy and cultural center standing between Europe and
Asia, taking from and contributing to both. It should
stress peace and join no military alliance and refuse to
fight for settling European quarrels. It should avoid
subjection to and ownership by foreign capitalists who seek
to get rich on African labor and raw material, and should
try to build a socialism founded on old African communal
life, rejecting the exaggerated private initiative of the
West, and seeking to ally itself with the social program of
the Progressive nations; with British and Scandinavian
Socialism, with the progress toward the Welfare State in
India, Germany, France and the United States; and with the
Communist States like the Soviet Union and China, in
peaceful cooperation and without presuming to dictate as to
how Socialism must or can be attained at particular times
and places.

Pan-African Socialism seeks the Welfare State in Africa. It
will refuse to be exploited by people of other continents
for their own benefit and not for the benefit of the
peoples of Africa. It will no longer consent to permitting
the African majority of any African country to be governed
against its will by a minority of invaders who claim racial
superiority or the right to get rich at African expense. It
will seek not only to raise but to process the raw material
and to trade it freely with all the world on just and equal
terms and prices.

Pan-Africa will seek to preserve its own past history, and
write the present account, erasing from literature the lies
and distortions about black folks which have disgraced the
last centuries of European and American literature; above
all, the new Pan-Africa will seek the education of all its
youth on the broadest possible basis without religious
dogma and in all hospitable lands as well as in Africa for
the end of making Africans not simply profitable workers
for industry nor stool-pigeons for propaganda, but for
making them modern, intelligent, responsible men of vision
and character.

I pray you, my dear Mr. Nkrumah, to use all your power to
put a Pan-Africa along these lines into working order at
the earliest possible date. Seek to save the great cultural
past of the Ashanti and Fanti peoples, not by inner
division but by outer cultural and economic expansion
toward the outmost bounds of the great African peoples, so
that they may be free to live, grow, and expand; and to
teach mankind what Non-violence and Courtesy, Literature
and Art, Music and ; Dancing can do for this greedy,
selfish, and war-stricken world.

Meantime big business in America, surprised by the success
of the Ghana revolution set itself to influence Nkrumah.
Nkrumah was invited to the United States in 1958, and
treated as never a Negro had been treated by the
government. Hershey, a great manufacturer of chocolate,
sent a special plane to take him to his factories; and the
New York Cocoa Board of Trade dined him at the
Waldorf-Astoria. I saw Mr. Nkrumah briefly. He was most
cordial and I expected soon to be invited to the Sixth
Pan-African Congress in Accra. No invitation came, but I
received my passport and sailed for Europe. While I was in
Tashkent an invitation arrived but not from Nkrumah nor for
a Pan-African Congress. It was from a new "All-African"
body for an African conference in December and it said
nothing about my expenses. I sensed immediately that
opposition had arisen in Africa over American Negro
leadership of the African peoples. This had happened in
1920, when the West African Congress acknowledged no tie
with the First Pan-African Congress in Paris which sparked
it. American Negroes had too often assumed that their
leadership in Africa was natural. With the rise of an
educated group of Africans, this was increasingly unlikely.
I realized how natural this was and knew that neither
Nkrumah nor Padmore were calling a Sixth "Pan-African
Congress" but that this "All-Africa Conference" was taking
its place. However, later Padmore sent me a cordial note
emphasizing the invitation and offering to pay expenses.

By this time, however, my long travel was beginning to tell
on me and I was in a Soviet sanitarium near Moscow. I
prepared to leave for Africa, but the council of physicians
advised against the trip as too taxing. I had prepared
three messages for Africa. One I delivered at Tashkent, one
I sent by my wife Shirley, who attended the conference at
Accra, and the last I broadcast later from Peking on my
91st birthday.

At Tashkent, before my invitation to Accra had come, I
warned Africa about borrowing capital from the West.

"Boycott the export of big capital from the exploiting
world, led by America. Refuse to buy machines, skills and
comforts with cocoa, coffee, palm oil and fruit sold at
ridiculously low prices in exchange for imported food,
liquor, refrigerators and automobiles sold at exorbitant
prices. Live simply. Refuse to buy big capital from nations
that cheat and overcharge. Buy of the Soviet Union and
China as they grow able to sell at low prices. Save thus
your own capital and drive the imperialists into bankruptcy
or into Socialism."

Shirley, my wife, took my speech to Accra. She was shown
rare courtesy and was the only non-African allowed to
address the Assembly. She read my words:

My only role in this meeting is one of advice from one who
has lived long, who has studied Africa and has seen the
modern world. I had hoped to deliver this word in person,
but this was not possible. I have therefore asked my wife,
Shirley Graham, to read it to you. It is simple and direct.
In this great crisis of the world's history, when standing
on the highest peaks of human accomplishment we look
forward to Peace and backward to War; when we look up to
Heaven and down to Hell, let us mince no words. We face
triumph or tragedy without alternative. Africa, ancient
Africa has been called by the world and has lifted up her
hands! Which way shall Africa go? First, I would emphasize
the fact that today Africa has no choice between private
Capitalism and Socialism. The whole world, including
Capitalist countries, is moving toward Socialism,
inevitably, inexorably. You can choose between blocs of
military alliance, you can choose between groups of
political union, you cannot choose between Socialism and
Private Capitalism, because Private ownership of capital is
doomed.

But what is Socialism? It is disciplined economy and
political organization in which the first duty of a citizen
is to serve the state; and the state is not a selected
aristocracy, or a group of self-seeking oligarchs who have
seized wealth and power. No! The mass of workers with hand
and brain are the ones whose collective destiny is the
chief object of all effort. Gradually, every state is
coming to this concept of its aim. The great Communist
states like the Soviet Union and China have surrendered
completely to this idea. The Scandinavian states have
yielded partially; Britain has yielded in some respects,
France in part and even the United States adopted the New
Deal which was largely socialistic, even though today
further American Socialism is held at bay by 60 great
groups of corporations who control individual capitalists
and the trade-union leaders.

On the other hand, the African tribe, whence all of you
sprung, was communistic in its very beginnings. No
tribesman was free. All were servants of the tribe of whom
the chief was father and voice. Read of the West Coast
trade as described by [J. E.] Casely-Hayford: There is
small trace of private enterprise or individual initiative.
It was the tribe which carried on trade through
individuals, and the chief was mouthpiece of the common
will.

Here then, my Brothers, you face your great decision: Will
you for temporary advantage--for automobiles, refrigerators
and Paris gowns-- spend your income in paying interest on
borrowed funds, or will you sacrifice present comfort and
the chance to shine before your neighbors in order to
educate your children, develop such industry as best serves
the great mass of people and makes your country strong in
ability, self-support and self-defense? Such union of
effort for strength calls for sacrifice and self-denial,
while the capital offered you at high price by the colonial
powers like France, Britain, Holland, Belgium and the
United States, will prolong fatal colonial imperialism,
from which you have suffered slavery, serfdom and
colonialism. You are not helpless. You are the buyers of
capital goods, and to continue existence as sellers of
capital, the great nations, former owners of the world,
must sell or face bankruptcy. You are not compelled to buy
all they offer now. You can wait. You can starve a while
longer rather than sell your great heritage for a mass of
western capitalistic pottage.

You cannot only beat down the price of capital as offered
by the united and monopolized western private capitalists,
but at last today you can compare their offers with those
of socialist countries like the Soviet Union and China,
which with infinite sacrifice and pouring out of blood and
tears, are at last able to offer weak nations needed
capital on better terms than the West. The supply which
socialist nations can at present spare is small as compared
with that of the bloated monopolies of the West, but it is
large and rapidly growing. Its acceptance involves no bonds
which a free Africa may not safely assume. It certainly
does not involve slavery and colonial control which is the
price which the West has demanded, and still demands. Today
she offers a compromise, but one of which you must beware:
She offers to let some of your smarter and less scrupulous
leaders become fellow capitalists with the white
exploiters, if in turn they induce the nation's masses to
pay the awful cost. This has happened in the West Indies
and in South America. This may yet happen in the Middle
East and Eastern Asia. Strive against it with every fibre
of your bodies and souls. A body of local private
capitalists, even if they are black, can never free Africa;
they will simply sell it into new slavery to old masters
overseas.

As I have said, this is a call for sacrifice. Great Goethe
sang, "Entbehren sollst du, sollst entbehren"--"Thou shalt
forego, shalt do without." If Africa unites it will be
because each part, each nation, each tribe gives up a part
of its heritage for the good of the whole. That is what
union means; that is what Pan-Africa means: When the child
is born into the tribe the price of his growing up is to
give over a part of his freedom to the tribe. This he soon
learns or dies. When the tribe becomes a union of tribes,
the individual tribe surrenders some part of its freedom to
the paramount tribe.

When the nation arises, the constituent tribes, clans and
groups must each yield power and much freedom to the
demands of the nation or the nation dies before it is born.
Your local tribal, much-loved languages must yield to the
few world tongues which serve the largest numbers of people
and promote understanding and world literature.

This is the great dilemma which faces Africa today; faces
one and all: Give up individual rights for the needs of the
nation; give up tribal independence for the needs of Mother
Africa. Forget nothing but set everything in its rightful
place: the Glory of the six Ashanti Wars against Britain;
the wisdom of the Fanti Confederation; the unity of
Nigeria; the song of the Songhay and Hausa; the rebellion
of the Mahdi and the hands of Ethiopia; the greatness of
the Basuto and the fighting of Chaka; the revenge of
Mutessa, and many other happenings and men; but above
all--Africa, Mother of Men. Your nearest friends and
neighbors are the colored people of China and India, the
rest of Asia, the Middle East and the sea isles, once close
bound to the heart of Africa and now long severed by the
greed of Europe. Your bond is no mere color of skin but the
deeper experience of wage slavery and contempt.

So too, your bond with the white world is closest to those
like the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, who support
and defend China and help the slaves of Tibet and India,
and not those who exploit the Middle East, the West Indies,
and South America.

Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O Zion; reject the
meekness of missionaries who teach neither love nor
brotherhood, but emphasize the virtues of private profit
from capital, stolen from your land and labor. Africa
awake, put on the beautiful robes of Pan-African Socialism.

You have nothing to lose but your Chains!

You have a continent to regain!

You have freedom and human dignity to attain!

The address was greeted with applause. Later Shirley and
Mrs. Robeson with the help of Tom Mboya, the chairman,
secured the removal of Chiang Kai-shek's Formosa flag from
the assembly hall.

When in Peking, my 91st birthday was given national
celebration. I pled for unity of China and Africa and my
speech was broadcast to the world:

By courtesy of the government of the 600 million people of
the Chinese Republic, I am permitted on my 91st birthday to
speak to the people of China and Africa and through them to
the world. Hail, then, and farewell, dwelling places of the
yellow and black races. Hail human kind!

I speak with no authority; no assumption of age nor rank; I
hold no position, I have no wealth. One thing alone I own
and that is my own soul. Ownership of that I have even
while in my own country for near a century I have been
nothing but a "nigger." On this basis and this alone I dare
speak, I dare advise.

China after long centuries has arisen to her feet and leapt
forward. Africa, arise, and stand straight, speak and
think! Act! Turn from the West and your slavery and
humiliation for the last 500 years and face the rising sun.

Behold a people, the most populous nation on this ancient
earth, which has burst its shackles, not by boasting and
strutting, not by lying about its history and its
conquests, but by patience and long suffering, by blind
struggle, moved up and on toward the crimson sky. She aims
to "make men holy; to make men free."

But what men? Not simply the mandarins but including
mandarins; not simply the rich, but not excluding the rich.
Not simply the learned, but led by knowledge to the end
that no man shall be poor, nor sick, nor ignorant; but that
the humblest worker as well as the sons of emperors shall
be fed and taught and healed and that there emerge on earth
a single unified people, free, well and educated.

You have been told, my Africa: My Africa in Africa and all
your children's children overseas; you have been told and
the telling so beaten into you by rods and whips, that you
believe it yourselves, that this is impossible; that
mankind can rise only by walking on men; by cheating them
and killing them; that only on a doormat of the despised
and dying, the dead and rotten, can a British aristocracy,
a French cultural elite or an American millionaire be
nurtured and grown.

This is a lie. It is an ancient lie spread by church and
state, spread by priest and historian, and believed in by
fools and cowards, as well as by the downtrodden and the
children of despair.

Speak, China, and tell your truth to Africa and the world.
What people have been despised as you have? Who more than
you have been rejected of men? Recall when lordly
Britishers threw the rickshaw money on the ground to avoid
touching a filthy hand. Forget not the time when in
Shanghai no Chinese man dare set foot in a park which he
paid for. Tell this to Africa, for today Africa stands on
new feet, with new eyesight, with new brains and asks:
Where am I and why?

The Western sirens answer: Britain wheedles; France
cajoles; while America, my America, where my ancestors and
descendants for eight generations have lived and toiled;
America loudest of all, yells and promises freedom. If only
Africa allows American investment!

Beware Africa, America bargains for your soul. America
would have you believe that they freed your grandchildren;
that Afro-Americans are full American citizens, treated
like equals, paid fair wages as workers, promoted for
desert and free to learn and travel across the world

This is not true. Some are near freedom; some approach
equality with whites; some have achieved education; but the
price for this has too often been slavery of mind,
distortion of truth and oppression of our own people.

Of 18 million Afro-Americans, 12 million are still
second-class citizens of the United States, serfs in
farming, low-paid laborers in industry, and repressed
members of union labor. Most American Negroes do not vote.
Even the rising six million are liable to insult and
discrimination at any time.

But this, Africa, relates to your descendants, not to you.
Once I thought of you Africans as children, whom we
educated Afro-Americans would lead to liberty. I was wrong.
We could not even lead ourselves much less you. Today I see
you rising under your own leadership, guided by your own
brains.

Africa does not ask alms from China nor from the Soviet
Union nor from France, Britain, nor the United States. It
asks friendship and sympathy and no nation better than
China can offer this to the Dark Continent. Let it be
freely given and generously. Let Chinese visit Africa, send
their scientists there and their artists and writers. Let
Africa send its students to China and its seekers after
knowledge. It will not find on earth a richer goal, a more
promising mine of information.

On the other hand, watch the West. The new British West
Indian Federation is not a form of democratic progress but
a cunning attempt to reduce these islands to the control of
British and American investors. Haiti is dying under rich
Haitian investors who with American money are enslaving the
peasantry. Cuba is showing what the West Indies, Central
and South America are suffering under American big
business.

The American worker himself does not always realize this.
He has high wages and many comforts. Rather than lose
these, he keeps in office by his vote the servants of
industrial exploitation so long as they maintain his wage.
His labor leaders represent exploitation and not the fight
against the exploitation of labor by private capital. These
two sets of exploiters fall out only when one demands too
large a share of the loot.

This China knows. This Africa must learn. This the American
Negro has failed so far to learn. I am frightened by the
so-called friends who are flocking to Africa. Negro
Americans trying to make money from your toil, white
Americans who seek by investment and high interest to bind
you in serfdom to business as the Near East is bound and as
South America is struggling with. For this America is
tempting your leaders, bribing your young scholars, and
arming your soldiers. What shall you do?

First, understand! Realize that the great mass of mankind
is freeing itself from wage slavery, while private capital
in Britain, France, and now in America, is still trying to
maintain civilization and comfort for a few on the toil,
disease and ignorance of the mass of men. Understand this,
and understanding comes from direct knowledge. You know
America and France, and Britain to your sorrow. Now know
the Soviet Union, but particularly know China.

China is flesh of your flesh, and blood of your blood.
China is colored and knows to what a colored skin in this
modern world subjects its owner. But China knows more, much
more than this: she knows what to do about it. She can take
the insults of the United States and still hold her head
high. She can make her own machines, when America refuses
to sell her American manufactures, even though it hurts
American industry, and throws her workers out of jobs.
China does not need American nor British missionaries to
teach her religion and scare her with tales of hell. China
has been in hell too long, not to believe in a heaven of
her own making. This she is doing.

Come to China, Africa, and look around. Invite Africa to
come, China, and see what you can teach by just pointing.
Yonder old woman is working on the street. But she is
happy. She has no fear. Her children are in school and a
good school. If she is ill, there is a hospital where she
is cared for free of charge. She has a vacation with pay
each year. She can die and be buried without taxing her
family to make some undertaker rich.

Africa can answer: but some of this we have done; our
tribes undertake public service like this. Very well, let
your tribes continue and expand this work. What Africa must
realize is what China knows; that it is worse than stupid
to allow a people's education to be under the control of
those who seek not the progress of the people but their use
as means of making themselves rich and powerful. It is
wrong for the University of London to control the
University of Ghana. It is wrong for the Catholic church to
direct the education of the black Congolese. It was wrong
for Protestant churches supported by British and American
wealth to control higher education in China.

The Soviet Union is surpassing the world in popular and
higher education, because from the beginning it started its
own complete educational system. The essence of the
revolution in the Soviet Union and China and in all the
"iron curtain" nations, is not the violence that
accompanied the change; no more than starvation at Valley
Forge was the essence of the American revolution against
Britain. The real revolution is the acceptance on the part
of the nation of the fact that hereafter the main object of
the nation is the welfare of the mass of the people and not
of the lucky few.

Government is for the people's progress and not for the
comfort of an aristocracy. The object of industry is the
welfare of the workers and not the wealth of the owners.
The object of civilization is the cultural progress of the
mass of workers and not merely of an intellectual elite.
And in return for all this, communist lands believe that
the cultivation of the mass of people will discover more
talent and genius to serve the state than any closed
aristocracy ever furnished. This belief the current history
of the Soviet Union and China is proving true each day.
Therefore don't let the West invest when you can avoid it.
Don't buy capital from Britain, France and the United
States if you can get it on reasonable terms from the
Soviet Union and China. This is not politics; it is common
sense. It is learning from experience. It is trusting your
friends and watching your enemies. Refuse to be cajoled or
to change your way of life, so as to make a few of your
fellows rich at the expense of a mass of workers growing
poor and sick and remaining without schools so that a few
black men can have automobiles.



Africa, here is a
real danger which you must avoid or return to the slavery
from which you are emerging. All I ask from you is the
courage to know; to look about you and see what is
happening in this old and tired world; to realize the
extent and depth of its rebirth and the promise which glows
on your hills.

Visit the Soviet Union and visit China. Let your youth learn
the Russian and Chinese languages. Stand together in this
new world and let the old world perish in its greed or be born
again in new hope and promise. Listen to the Hebrew prophet
of communism:
Ho! every one that thirsteth; come ye to the waters; come, buy and eat, without money and price!

Again, China and Africa, hail and farewell!


From W.E.B. DuBois, The Autobiography of W.E.B. DuBois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century.
New York, NY: International Publishers Co. Inc.,
1968, pp. 396-408.