The full-page, comprehensive account by the chairperson of the China Africa Development Fund, Shaodan Wang, (Business Report, September 2) extolling the virtues of China’s investment and development projects is significant for its silence on the intentions of China’s strategy.
The ‘Belt and Road’ initiative, sometimes called the New Silk Road, is a geopolitical strategy to achieve international trade choke points by having regional control over countries and resources. Africa is a key piece in the strategy. As Shaodan Wang points out, there are now 3,000 Chinese enterprises in 50 African states. Globally, 147 states have agreed to Chinese development projects.
Packaged as “a shared future,” the range and appeal of the China Africa Development (CAD) programme are indeed rosy and alluring: industrial, agricultural, digital, infrastructural, medical, green energy, financial funding, favourable trade cooperation. But like all contracts, the returns should be weighed against the trade-offs.
The core of the initiative is the long-term goal of international Marxism facilitated by redrawing global trade maps. In effect, the CAD programme is a geopolitical Trojan horse. A Council of Foreign Relations position paper published in 2023 viewed the CAD programme as laying a debt trap for borrowing governments.
It pointed out that contract clauses restricted debt restructuring to 22 creditor nations called the Paris Club. Moreover, China had the right to demand repayment at any time if it found a borrower’s politics or leanings objectionable. In other words, the silent part of the CAD programme is that its recipients become vassal states.
India opposes the Belt and Road initiative for those very reasons. Japan has a long-standing suspicion of China’s intentions.
Historically, the CAD programme represents the repetition of a cycle which saw Africa colonised by European states. Whereas they robbed and exploited Africa, China is at least providing constructive development. But this time around, besides the debt trap, the colonisation stakes involve ideological compliance and subservience.
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