The Somali coast, especially the Gulf of Aden, is supposed to be the most dangerous maritime route in the world at the moment. While this statement is pretty much borne out for 2008, Somalia is by no means the only site of regular piracy. Further, in 2007 the situation seems to have been far worse and was matched by piracy in the South China Sea-Indonesian area. The year before that, Southeast Asia was easily the most dangerous maritime area - at least as dangerous as the Somali coast is today.
Clearly it is not the level of piracy, in itself, that is causing all the fuss right now. The newsworthiness of Somali piracy is related instead to the strategic importance of the region to - dare I say it - the supply of oil to the USA, as well as the absence of any state authority in Somalia itself. Instead we have a number of proto-states in Somalia. The Islamic Courts Union seems to have some control in the far south (where a raped teenage girl was recently stoned to death for "adultery"). Mogadishu is in Ethiopian hands for the time being. Further north, in the province of Mudug or quasi-independent Galmudug is the port of Hobyo. Hobyo, once a major sea port, is now half-buried in sand drifts and controlled by armed pirate gangs. The supertanker Sirius Star is apparently moored not far away. Still further north is Eyl, in the southern part of Puntland. It is allegedly a boomtown due to the pirate industry and possibly where the Faina was taken. Then there is Bosaso (formerly Bender Qassim) in the Gulf of Aden - a city of roughly half a million which has also grown rapidly in recent years and the main port of Puntland. Apart from being named, along with Hobyo and Eyl, as the 'pirate capital', it is also the main departure point for Somali emigrants to Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
The Western fortunes that funded the industrial revolution were largely acquired through acts of piracy, or worse, so it's hard to get very excited about these latest episodes. Ordinary trade may be more efficient, but first you have to have something to trade and what seems to have happened in the Somali case is that Hobyo, Eyl and Bosaso were fishing ports whose fish were depleted by a mixture of over-fishing by foreign fishing boats and dumping of toxic wastes. Piracy is, I suppose, now supplying many of these people with jobs, albeit increasingly dangerous ones as Western navies become involved in policing efforts. It is certainly making considerable fortunes for their bosses and, in the long run, it will help to determine the shape of any states that emerge in the region.
Clearly it is not the level of piracy, in itself, that is causing all the fuss right now. The newsworthiness of Somali piracy is related instead to the strategic importance of the region to - dare I say it - the supply of oil to the USA, as well as the absence of any state authority in Somalia itself. Instead we have a number of proto-states in Somalia. The Islamic Courts Union seems to have some control in the far south (where a raped teenage girl was recently stoned to death for "adultery"). Mogadishu is in Ethiopian hands for the time being. Further north, in the province of Mudug or quasi-independent Galmudug is the port of Hobyo. Hobyo, once a major sea port, is now half-buried in sand drifts and controlled by armed pirate gangs. The supertanker Sirius Star is apparently moored not far away. Still further north is Eyl, in the southern part of Puntland. It is allegedly a boomtown due to the pirate industry and possibly where the Faina was taken. Then there is Bosaso (formerly Bender Qassim) in the Gulf of Aden - a city of roughly half a million which has also grown rapidly in recent years and the main port of Puntland. Apart from being named, along with Hobyo and Eyl, as the 'pirate capital', it is also the main departure point for Somali emigrants to Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
The Western fortunes that funded the industrial revolution were largely acquired through acts of piracy, or worse, so it's hard to get very excited about these latest episodes. Ordinary trade may be more efficient, but first you have to have something to trade and what seems to have happened in the Somali case is that Hobyo, Eyl and Bosaso were fishing ports whose fish were depleted by a mixture of over-fishing by foreign fishing boats and dumping of toxic wastes. Piracy is, I suppose, now supplying many of these people with jobs, albeit increasingly dangerous ones as Western navies become involved in policing efforts. It is certainly making considerable fortunes for their bosses and, in the long run, it will help to determine the shape of any states that emerge in the region.
The South African High Court today rejected the corruption charges against Jacob Zuma. The judge, Chris Nicholson, in Pietermaritzburg said there was reason to believe the decision to charge him was politically motivated. I haven't followed this case very closely, but I was earlier very disappointed and actually unwilling to believe his innocence when he was acquitted of a rape charge last year. The trouble with the British system of justice and its offspring is that being acquitted does not actually prove your innocence. It only says that the prosecutor could marshal insufficient evidence against you. In the rape case, I remain convinced of Zuma's guilt - mainly because his statements revealed that he hadn't a clue what the word means and neither, for that matter, did the judge in the case. Worse still, Zuma apparently either has no clue or no sense of responsibility in relation to the spread of AIDS. He lives in a world in which nobody requires him to be responsible.
The latest ruling is different, however, because it doesn't involve the same kind of prejudices that are involved when a woman's testimony is put up against a man's. This world of arms dealing and corruption is the man's world in which people are actually accountable for their actions. It is the man's world of COSATU in which the South African working class is up against the companies that make profits from South African workers and the government that provides the conditions in which they can do so. Zuma v. Mbeke. I have to say that my attitude towards Zuma also changed when I heard him condemn Robert Mugabe. Mugabe is fundamentally a Maoist and the MDC began life as a trade union movement in Zimbabwe. Mbeke and Mugabe come from the national liberation struggles, Zuma and Tsvangerai come from the class struggle. I think that there is nothing necessarily progressive about national liberation - it depends on the context (Ngo Dinh Diem, for example, was a nationalist opposed to French colonialism).
So, Zuma is an absolute dead shit who happens to be on the right (i.e. left) side in politics? Sarah Palin, on the other hand, is a victim of incredibly sexist BS who happens to be on the utterly wrong side of politics, including sexual politics. That woman is so outrageous that it hardly bears comment. Some fake war hero rings her up and says I want you to be my VP and she thinks he's already her commander-in-chief so she doesn't blink (I heard her say it: "I didn't blink"). She says "yessir" without even wondering if she has any qualifications at all for the job. The problem I'm having with all this debate is that she has actually got more "experience" (if that's what you can call it) of foreign policy than George W. Bush had back in 2000 when he was elected, not to the vice-presidency, but to the actual Presidency. She has actually been outside the US. She is also older than John F Kennedy was when he was elected (but, he'd been a patrol boat commander in a war so he was really highly qualified in foreign policy, yeah).* Sarah's big problem is not so much that she's an idiot, but that she's a girl. If she was a bloke people would not be asking how on earth she could juggle 5 kids with being VP. They would be covering up, not querying, her lack of experience (unless, of course, she happened to be coloured like BO). The failure of the police commissioner to sack her ex-brother in law who tasered one of his kids wouldn't even be an issue because which true Alaskan Man would query the right of another Alaskan Man to taser his kids?
I'm tired. I think I could extend this further and make more sense out of it, but I can't right now.
* A patrol boat has even fewer people in it than Wasilla, AK.
The latest ruling is different, however, because it doesn't involve the same kind of prejudices that are involved when a woman's testimony is put up against a man's. This world of arms dealing and corruption is the man's world in which people are actually accountable for their actions. It is the man's world of COSATU in which the South African working class is up against the companies that make profits from South African workers and the government that provides the conditions in which they can do so. Zuma v. Mbeke. I have to say that my attitude towards Zuma also changed when I heard him condemn Robert Mugabe. Mugabe is fundamentally a Maoist and the MDC began life as a trade union movement in Zimbabwe. Mbeke and Mugabe come from the national liberation struggles, Zuma and Tsvangerai come from the class struggle. I think that there is nothing necessarily progressive about national liberation - it depends on the context (Ngo Dinh Diem, for example, was a nationalist opposed to French colonialism).
So, Zuma is an absolute dead shit who happens to be on the right (i.e. left) side in politics? Sarah Palin, on the other hand, is a victim of incredibly sexist BS who happens to be on the utterly wrong side of politics, including sexual politics. That woman is so outrageous that it hardly bears comment. Some fake war hero rings her up and says I want you to be my VP and she thinks he's already her commander-in-chief so she doesn't blink (I heard her say it: "I didn't blink"). She says "yessir" without even wondering if she has any qualifications at all for the job. The problem I'm having with all this debate is that she has actually got more "experience" (if that's what you can call it) of foreign policy than George W. Bush had back in 2000 when he was elected, not to the vice-presidency, but to the actual Presidency. She has actually been outside the US. She is also older than John F Kennedy was when he was elected (but, he'd been a patrol boat commander in a war so he was really highly qualified in foreign policy, yeah).* Sarah's big problem is not so much that she's an idiot, but that she's a girl. If she was a bloke people would not be asking how on earth she could juggle 5 kids with being VP. They would be covering up, not querying, her lack of experience (unless, of course, she happened to be coloured like BO). The failure of the police commissioner to sack her ex-brother in law who tasered one of his kids wouldn't even be an issue because which true Alaskan Man would query the right of another Alaskan Man to taser his kids?
I'm tired. I think I could extend this further and make more sense out of it, but I can't right now.
* A patrol boat has even fewer people in it than Wasilla, AK.
I frittered away the afternoon looking at statistics on Africa because I keep hearing that things have been going comparatively well there in recent years. It seems that the rumours are true. According to the Penn World Tables, GDP per capita at Purchasing Power Parity has risen quite dramatically in many countries since 1990. The data only go up to 2003 or 2004 (always a difficulty with developing country data - you don't get it until things have already moved on) and some of them must be highly suspect (e.g. for Somalia and some other war ravaged areas), but they nevertheless paint a quite optimistic picture. Since these are per capita numbers and using PPP they are probably a reasonably good guide to changes in living standards, although of course they do not take into account the inevitable inequality of distribution (I don't think the Equatorial Guineans are seeing many of the petrodollars being pumped out of their economy). Out of 43 countries (I didn't include North Africa), well over half (24) grew very strongly over the whole 13-14 years from 1990 while others seem to have turned a corner since the later part of that decade. Only seven of them seem to be actually poorer in 2003-04 than they were in 1990 and only 4 have put in a truly catastrophic performance over the whole period. Apart from these, there is a grey area in which countries which looked OK in 2003-04 could be worse off or better off today.
In 2003 only six of the 43 countries had a per capita GDP of over 5475 international dollars (more than $15/day). 'International dollars' refer, very roughly, to what you could buy in the US for that amount. 31, or nearly three quarters, were still below $1825 ($5 a day). The number of countries with a GDP per capita of less than $1095 ($3/day) fell, however, from 28 to 19 (from 88% to 44%). And the very poorest group, with less than $730 ($2/day) went from 10 to 7 (23% to 16%). That seems to be quite a good result in less than 15 years.
For what it's worth, here is a table I made while doing all this.
I found the data for Botswana to be particularly interesting because it has suffered population decline on account of the AIDS epidemic. But apart from Equatorial Guinea, which obviously has a very high investment rate (29% of GDP average over 1990-2004), mainly in petroleum production which got going in 1994, Botswana has one of the highest investment rate in Africa (19% of GDP average over 1990-2004). The only other countries with moderately high investment are Lesotho (26%), Sao Tome & Principe (17%) and Cape Verde (15%). Zambia has also increased its rate recently (from 5% in the first half of the 1990s to 14% in the first half of the 2000s) and likewise Chad, from 7% to 19%. Other countries may be getting investment from foreign inflows which are not counted in GDP data.
Some of the growth can also be explained by institutional reforms - in Mozambique and Tanzania, for example. Other than that, I simply don't know enough.
In 2003 only six of the 43 countries had a per capita GDP of over 5475 international dollars (more than $15/day). 'International dollars' refer, very roughly, to what you could buy in the US for that amount. 31, or nearly three quarters, were still below $1825 ($5 a day). The number of countries with a GDP per capita of less than $1095 ($3/day) fell, however, from 28 to 19 (from 88% to 44%). And the very poorest group, with less than $730 ($2/day) went from 10 to 7 (23% to 16%). That seems to be quite a good result in less than 15 years.
For what it's worth, here is a table I made while doing all this.
| Average annual growth of GDP p.c. 1990-2003/04 | Average annual growth in GDP p.c. over most recent 5 years | GDP p.c. most recent year/1990 | |
| Strong growth | |||
| Benin | 4.9 | 4.0 | 164 |
| Botswana | 8.3 | 10.4 | 208 |
| Burkina Faso | 5.7 | 7.3 | 174 |
| Cameroon | 3.2 | 6.8 | 142 |
| Cape Verde | 12.9 | 9.3 | 268 |
| Chad | 4.3 | 4.2 | 155 |
| Cote d'Ivoire | 2.8 | 2.7 | 136 |
| Equatorial Guinea | 73.1 | 67.2 | 1050 |
| Ethiopia | 5.9 | 3.8 | 176 |
| Gabon | 2.0 | 3.0 | 125 |
| Ghana | 4.8 | 4.7 | 163 |
| Guinea | 4.9 | 5.5 | 163 |
| Lesotho | 8.0 | 5.7 | 204 |
| Malawi | 6.4 | 6.2 | 166 |
| Mali | 6.2 | 4.6 | 180 |
| Mauritania | 4.9 | 4.6 | 163 |
| Mozambique | 6.9 | 12.0 | 190 |
| Nigeria | 2.8 | 5.3 | 136 |
| Sao Tome & Principe | 2.0 | 3.6 | 126 |
| Senegal | 2.7 | 5.9 | 135 |
| South Africa | 4.2 | 6.0 | 154 |
| Swaziland | 5.6 | 4.8 | 172 |
| Tanzania | 10.8 | 6.6 | 241 |
| Uganda | 7.3 | 4.3 | 195 |
| Running out of steam? | |||
| Gambia | 2.5 | -5.3 | 133 |
| Kenya | 2.1 | 0.6 | 127 |
| Namibia | 2.9 | 1.2 | 137 |
| Sudan | 2.1 | -2.0 | 128 |
| Recovering | |||
| Burundi | 0.1 | 1.7 | 102 |
| Guinea-Bissau | 0.4 | 5.4 | 106 |
| Madagascar | 1.1 | 1.7 | 114 |
| Rwanda | 0.1 | 5.7 | 101 |
| Zambia | 0.2 | 5.7 | 103 |
| Going nowhere | |||
| Central African Rep. | 0.8 | 1.3 | 111 |
| Eritrea | 0.5 | -1.5 | 106 |
| Niger | 0.4 | 0.6 | 106 |
| Long-term immiseration, recent signs of life | |||
| DR Congo | -3.9 | 0.9 | 49 |
| Liberia | -1.5 | 0.4 | 91 |
| Somalia | -0.8 | 1.4 | 88 |
| Ongoing disaster | |||
| Congo Rep. | -1.1 | -0.9 | 86 |
| Sierra Leone | -2.3 | -1.7 | 70 |
| Togo | -1.1 | -0.2 | 85 |
| Zimbabwe | -0.8 | -2.8 | 90 |
I found the data for Botswana to be particularly interesting because it has suffered population decline on account of the AIDS epidemic. But apart from Equatorial Guinea, which obviously has a very high investment rate (29% of GDP average over 1990-2004), mainly in petroleum production which got going in 1994, Botswana has one of the highest investment rate in Africa (19% of GDP average over 1990-2004). The only other countries with moderately high investment are Lesotho (26%), Sao Tome & Principe (17%) and Cape Verde (15%). Zambia has also increased its rate recently (from 5% in the first half of the 1990s to 14% in the first half of the 2000s) and likewise Chad, from 7% to 19%. Other countries may be getting investment from foreign inflows which are not counted in GDP data.
Some of the growth can also be explained by institutional reforms - in Mozambique and Tanzania, for example. Other than that, I simply don't know enough.
There was a discussion on Radio Netherlands last night about aid. The speakers were William Easterly and two Dutch guys whose names I didn't catch, but one of them works for the Dutch aid program and another had written a book on the subject. At the beginning, I became so angry with Easterly that I switched the thing off, then curiosity got the better of me so I started listening again.
What made me angry was that Easterly began with a two totally false premises. First he said that the West had poured $2.3 trillion into aid in the past 50 years and achieved nothing. Like $2.3 trillion is supposed to be a large amount of money??? Over 50 years. It is something like 23 cents per poor person per year. A drop in the ocean: compare it, for example, to what the US alone has spent on killing people in Iraq during the past 4 years. As somebody once said: "pay peanuts and you get monkeys". He didn't deny, in the end, that something has been achieved "but it's not enough" - I can agree with that part anyway.
The second false premise was that all the countries that have developed rapidly have done it on their own resources, without aid. This is an outrageous claim. Japan, Taiwan and South Korea all had massive US aid programs in the early stages of development/post-war rehabilitation. The only countries I can think of that fit his category are China and Singapore.
Now Easterly used to work for the World Bank, so I can understand where he is coming from, but he really needs to be a bit less sweeping. The two Dutch guys basically battered him into submission - he ended up admitting that small-scale aid programs e.g., run by NGOs are capable of doing really good stuff (as well as total crap) and he ended up agreeing with the Dutch government official that accountability of the spending agencies (in both donor and recipient countries) is key to the whole problem. The thing is that the Dutch run one of the best aid programs in the world and, incidentally, are one of the very few countries that have met the target of 0.7% of GDP for aid that the developed countries have all agreed to (the number used to be 1%, but gets more modest over time). The World Bank, on the other hand, runs one of the worst. So it's not aid itself that is a problem it's the type of aid. In particular, it's a problem of accountability and the WB doesn't have it. Technically, it is accountable to its member states, but that means there are no real controls - there is no parliamentary scrutiny, just a board made up of representatives of the various donor governments. These governments use the Bank to push their various foreign policy agenda rather than to actually aid the poor.
So of course Easterly is not totally wrong about aid, but he is actually following the latest WB line which is that poor institutions in developing countries are at the root of the problem - so we only need to help them get their institutions right and that will presumably be cheaper than throwing more trillions at them. But this transparency and accountability of institutions gig is a two-way street. In the 1980s, for example, I met a WB guy in Manila. He was in charge of a $60 million road program, but half the money had disappeared without trace the moment it was paid into the Philippine Central Bank. Stuff like that didn't mean the WB stopped lending to the Philippines because that wasn't the point, the point was to prop up a regime that the donors approved of. Australian aid programs in the 1990s were aimed at supporting Australian businesses via contracts (or in the case of scholarships, the fact that all the money would be spent in Australia) and any benefits to the developing countries were incidental to the main aim of the program. It's probably still the same, but I haven't checked lately. The Hawke government actually cut back aid programs to Africa because they didn't produce enough benefits to the Australian economy. It's not aid that's a problem, it's bad aid. And this is at least as much (if not more) a donor problem as a recipient problem.
One of the other things they discussed was the fact that at least some parts of Africa, or quite a lot of it, have been growing very fast in the last decade. Even earlier basket cases like Malawi (though obviously not Zimbabwe). Easterly's argument is that it's the result of throwing off bad governments, not aid and therefore we shouldn't go around like Jeffrey Sachs and Bono demanding more money be thrown. I do agree that Sachs is a bit indiscriminate in who he wants to throw money at - I was in Cambodia when he proposed it as a solution for that country and I just thought 'god, how simplistic can you get'. But that doesn't excuse being simplistic in the other direction. The Dutch guys were saying that getting rid of bad government is precisely the reason to throw more money in - to make sure the poor benefit from the growth. I don't know enough about what's happening in Africa, but I suspect that in southern Africa at least, a large part of the reason for growth is the end of apartheid and its wars against black Africa - that was another regime that we in the West propped up for decades. Another reason could be Chinese investment which doesn't ask questions about human rights, transparency, etc, and thereby gives the African states a bit more bargaining power than they had before. I need to find out more about this issue of African growth and who is gaining from it.
What made me angry was that Easterly began with a two totally false premises. First he said that the West had poured $2.3 trillion into aid in the past 50 years and achieved nothing. Like $2.3 trillion is supposed to be a large amount of money??? Over 50 years. It is something like 23 cents per poor person per year. A drop in the ocean: compare it, for example, to what the US alone has spent on killing people in Iraq during the past 4 years. As somebody once said: "pay peanuts and you get monkeys". He didn't deny, in the end, that something has been achieved "but it's not enough" - I can agree with that part anyway.
The second false premise was that all the countries that have developed rapidly have done it on their own resources, without aid. This is an outrageous claim. Japan, Taiwan and South Korea all had massive US aid programs in the early stages of development/post-war rehabilitation. The only countries I can think of that fit his category are China and Singapore.
Now Easterly used to work for the World Bank, so I can understand where he is coming from, but he really needs to be a bit less sweeping. The two Dutch guys basically battered him into submission - he ended up admitting that small-scale aid programs e.g., run by NGOs are capable of doing really good stuff (as well as total crap) and he ended up agreeing with the Dutch government official that accountability of the spending agencies (in both donor and recipient countries) is key to the whole problem. The thing is that the Dutch run one of the best aid programs in the world and, incidentally, are one of the very few countries that have met the target of 0.7% of GDP for aid that the developed countries have all agreed to (the number used to be 1%, but gets more modest over time). The World Bank, on the other hand, runs one of the worst. So it's not aid itself that is a problem it's the type of aid. In particular, it's a problem of accountability and the WB doesn't have it. Technically, it is accountable to its member states, but that means there are no real controls - there is no parliamentary scrutiny, just a board made up of representatives of the various donor governments. These governments use the Bank to push their various foreign policy agenda rather than to actually aid the poor.
So of course Easterly is not totally wrong about aid, but he is actually following the latest WB line which is that poor institutions in developing countries are at the root of the problem - so we only need to help them get their institutions right and that will presumably be cheaper than throwing more trillions at them. But this transparency and accountability of institutions gig is a two-way street. In the 1980s, for example, I met a WB guy in Manila. He was in charge of a $60 million road program, but half the money had disappeared without trace the moment it was paid into the Philippine Central Bank. Stuff like that didn't mean the WB stopped lending to the Philippines because that wasn't the point, the point was to prop up a regime that the donors approved of. Australian aid programs in the 1990s were aimed at supporting Australian businesses via contracts (or in the case of scholarships, the fact that all the money would be spent in Australia) and any benefits to the developing countries were incidental to the main aim of the program. It's probably still the same, but I haven't checked lately. The Hawke government actually cut back aid programs to Africa because they didn't produce enough benefits to the Australian economy. It's not aid that's a problem, it's bad aid. And this is at least as much (if not more) a donor problem as a recipient problem.
One of the other things they discussed was the fact that at least some parts of Africa, or quite a lot of it, have been growing very fast in the last decade. Even earlier basket cases like Malawi (though obviously not Zimbabwe). Easterly's argument is that it's the result of throwing off bad governments, not aid and therefore we shouldn't go around like Jeffrey Sachs and Bono demanding more money be thrown. I do agree that Sachs is a bit indiscriminate in who he wants to throw money at - I was in Cambodia when he proposed it as a solution for that country and I just thought 'god, how simplistic can you get'. But that doesn't excuse being simplistic in the other direction. The Dutch guys were saying that getting rid of bad government is precisely the reason to throw more money in - to make sure the poor benefit from the growth. I don't know enough about what's happening in Africa, but I suspect that in southern Africa at least, a large part of the reason for growth is the end of apartheid and its wars against black Africa - that was another regime that we in the West propped up for decades. Another reason could be Chinese investment which doesn't ask questions about human rights, transparency, etc, and thereby gives the African states a bit more bargaining power than they had before. I need to find out more about this issue of African growth and who is gaining from it.
Had an interesting discussion at work today about China's role in Africa and other underdeveloped regions. It was prompted by an article in The Economist on Chinese investment in Africa. The Chinese characters for Africa apparently mean 'wrong continent'. Note: the Vietnamese translation Chau Phi, has always mystified me - I thought it might be an attempt to replicate part of the sound of the European word - but now I realise that it's much older (which of course makes more sense). 'Phi' is a Vietnamese word meaning something similar to 'wrong' - more like anti- or non-. But 'phi' also has other meanings, so I never made the connection.
Anyway, the article discusses the new Chinese presence in Africa in typical Economist terms:
China already buys a tenth of sub-Saharan Africa's exports and owns almost $1.2 billion of direct investments in the region..... A Chinese diaspora in Africa now numbers perhaps 80,000, including labourers and businessmen, who bring entrepreneurial wit and wisdom to places usually visited only by Land Cruisers from international aid agencies.
I mean wow! How big is the European 'diaspora' in Africa by comparison? Who bought the Landcruisers? "In the cold war Maoists dotted Africa with hospitals, football stadiums and disastrous ideas." And, if I remember correctly, infrastructure projects (the TanZam railway). Now China only wants access to raw materials. Oh dear! what bastards. The West never tried any such thing. 'We' never undermined African efforts with our protectionism and our support for apartheid, Ian Smith, Mobutu, the Nigerian junta or Tubman "our aircraft carrier in Africa".
Sadly, China's success is an obstacle, as well as an inspiration. Its rise has bid up the price of Africa's traditional raw commodities, and depressed the price of manufactured goods. Thus Africa's factories and assembly lines, such as they are, are losing out to its mines, quarries and oilfields in the competition for investment....
China is doing its bit to improve infrastructure, building roads and railways. But it could do more to open up its own markets. China is quite open to yarn, but not jerseys; diamonds, but not jewellery. If it has as much “solidarity” with Africa as it claims, it could offer to lower tariffs on processed goods...
Competition from whom? Here we get to the nub of the question, which is: how dare those Chinese upstarts encroach upon our territory. How dare they not lower their trade barriers while demanding that we lower ours! What hypocrisy.
Discussion of the Economist article segued into a discussion of Burma, one of our pet topics. China (and India and Thailand) are playing an increasing role in that country, to the detriment of Western efforts to boycott. Asia Times:
Foreign investment into Myanmar surged to a record high US$6 billion in the fiscal 2005-06 year that ended in March, up from the paltry $158.3 million recorded the previous year...
That's five times the amount of Chinese investment in the whole of Africa!
Myanmar has significantly managed to bypass the Western-controlled multilateral lending agencies, including the World Bank, which has in the main observed the US and EU sanctions, and accessed capital investment directly from private-sector Asian sources. While various US and European companies closed down their Myanmar-based investments because of the sanctions, Chinese and Indian - mainly energy - companies have rapidly filled the gap.
Western sanctions' failure to achieve economic collapse and political change in Myanmar significantly underscores both the United States' and Europe's waning and China's and India's growing economic influence in the region. As Asia's economies become more integrated, particularly through greater Chinese- and Indian-inspired trade and investment links, Western-led economic threats clearly no longer strike fear into the region's roguish regimes.
Myanmar's ruling junta last year abruptly moved the national capital from the coastal city of Yangon to the inland, mountainous redoubt of Naypyidaw. Ironically, perhaps, the junta is now pumping profits earned from China and India into building up a new military-industrial complex, where the ruling generals are living comfortably and hunkering down against a possible US military rather than economic threat.
All this raises interesting questions. Burma has become the new locus of competition between local powerhouses - China, India and Thailand. The West seems to have an outdated notion of its own importance, but sanctions no longer work - if they ever did. What is the right way to go in a situation like this? Realistically, I suspect the only possibilty is to compete. Aung San Suu Kyi might ask us to boycott, but she has no power and the boycott has no effect. An alternative scenario is that we invest in Burma with as much vigour as China and India. Not in extractive industries, but in manufacturing and services that require education - it would encourage them to reopen schools and universities. I don't believe in the mantra that markets create democracy, but if you look at Korea, Taiwan and Brazil, economic development does bring about changes. It also seems more simple (not to mention logical) to end a dictatorship by internal processes than to try to impose 'democracy' from without.
The Burmese generals are bent on enriching themselves, but in the long-run they cannot succeed without the co-operation of the people. To date their opposition has mainly come from the university-educated class - so they closed the universities. But once you start to educate the masses, and provide them with the means to see alternatives, it's no simple thing to keep them down.
Anyway, the article discusses the new Chinese presence in Africa in typical Economist terms:
China already buys a tenth of sub-Saharan Africa's exports and owns almost $1.2 billion of direct investments in the region..... A Chinese diaspora in Africa now numbers perhaps 80,000, including labourers and businessmen, who bring entrepreneurial wit and wisdom to places usually visited only by Land Cruisers from international aid agencies.
I mean wow! How big is the European 'diaspora' in Africa by comparison? Who bought the Landcruisers? "In the cold war Maoists dotted Africa with hospitals, football stadiums and disastrous ideas." And, if I remember correctly, infrastructure projects (the TanZam railway). Now China only wants access to raw materials. Oh dear! what bastards. The West never tried any such thing. 'We' never undermined African efforts with our protectionism and our support for apartheid, Ian Smith, Mobutu, the Nigerian junta or Tubman "our aircraft carrier in Africa".
Sadly, China's success is an obstacle, as well as an inspiration. Its rise has bid up the price of Africa's traditional raw commodities, and depressed the price of manufactured goods. Thus Africa's factories and assembly lines, such as they are, are losing out to its mines, quarries and oilfields in the competition for investment....
China is doing its bit to improve infrastructure, building roads and railways. But it could do more to open up its own markets. China is quite open to yarn, but not jerseys; diamonds, but not jewellery. If it has as much “solidarity” with Africa as it claims, it could offer to lower tariffs on processed goods...
Competition from whom? Here we get to the nub of the question, which is: how dare those Chinese upstarts encroach upon our territory. How dare they not lower their trade barriers while demanding that we lower ours! What hypocrisy.
Discussion of the Economist article segued into a discussion of Burma, one of our pet topics. China (and India and Thailand) are playing an increasing role in that country, to the detriment of Western efforts to boycott. Asia Times:
Foreign investment into Myanmar surged to a record high US$6 billion in the fiscal 2005-06 year that ended in March, up from the paltry $158.3 million recorded the previous year...
That's five times the amount of Chinese investment in the whole of Africa!
Myanmar has significantly managed to bypass the Western-controlled multilateral lending agencies, including the World Bank, which has in the main observed the US and EU sanctions, and accessed capital investment directly from private-sector Asian sources. While various US and European companies closed down their Myanmar-based investments because of the sanctions, Chinese and Indian - mainly energy - companies have rapidly filled the gap.
Western sanctions' failure to achieve economic collapse and political change in Myanmar significantly underscores both the United States' and Europe's waning and China's and India's growing economic influence in the region. As Asia's economies become more integrated, particularly through greater Chinese- and Indian-inspired trade and investment links, Western-led economic threats clearly no longer strike fear into the region's roguish regimes.
Myanmar's ruling junta last year abruptly moved the national capital from the coastal city of Yangon to the inland, mountainous redoubt of Naypyidaw. Ironically, perhaps, the junta is now pumping profits earned from China and India into building up a new military-industrial complex, where the ruling generals are living comfortably and hunkering down against a possible US military rather than economic threat.
All this raises interesting questions. Burma has become the new locus of competition between local powerhouses - China, India and Thailand. The West seems to have an outdated notion of its own importance, but sanctions no longer work - if they ever did. What is the right way to go in a situation like this? Realistically, I suspect the only possibilty is to compete. Aung San Suu Kyi might ask us to boycott, but she has no power and the boycott has no effect. An alternative scenario is that we invest in Burma with as much vigour as China and India. Not in extractive industries, but in manufacturing and services that require education - it would encourage them to reopen schools and universities. I don't believe in the mantra that markets create democracy, but if you look at Korea, Taiwan and Brazil, economic development does bring about changes. It also seems more simple (not to mention logical) to end a dictatorship by internal processes than to try to impose 'democracy' from without.
The Burmese generals are bent on enriching themselves, but in the long-run they cannot succeed without the co-operation of the people. To date their opposition has mainly come from the university-educated class - so they closed the universities. But once you start to educate the masses, and provide them with the means to see alternatives, it's no simple thing to keep them down.
I heard an interview with the above while driving home. He has written a novel called The Darling. Anyone heard of it?
The interviewer asked why he set it in Liberia and he launched into a long answer on Liberian history (about which I know extremely little) which was fascinating. He describes 'race' as the 'core narrative' of American history since 1492. I missed something (due to avoiding some cars piled up by the side of the road) about an unholy alliance between northern anti-slavists and southern plantation owners, but it was to do with the reasons for the foundation of Liberia. How absurd to plant Americans in Africa simply on the basis of their colour.
What happened was that they recreated the southern plantation system in Liberia, turning the local population into serfs in their service. This was not stopped until 1920, when the World Court ruled it illegal. In the Cold War it was America's aircraft carrier (longest runway in Africa) and the CIA's listening post. When the cold war ended the US left and civil war broke out. Unlike the Europeans who at least recognise that they had colonies, the US denies it - they therefore claim no responsibility for the mess that became Liberia after they left. They sent only 40 Marines to evacuate their embassy. He compared this with the French response in Cote d'Ivoire, to which they sent a whole peacekeeping force.
I suppose many black Americans have also bought this guff about being African. The movie When we were kings (is that the right name?), about the 'rumble in the jungle', showed very clearly how crazy that notion is.
Anyway, I'm tempted to read the novel in case it tells more.
The interviewer asked why he set it in Liberia and he launched into a long answer on Liberian history (about which I know extremely little) which was fascinating. He describes 'race' as the 'core narrative' of American history since 1492. I missed something (due to avoiding some cars piled up by the side of the road) about an unholy alliance between northern anti-slavists and southern plantation owners, but it was to do with the reasons for the foundation of Liberia. How absurd to plant Americans in Africa simply on the basis of their colour.
What happened was that they recreated the southern plantation system in Liberia, turning the local population into serfs in their service. This was not stopped until 1920, when the World Court ruled it illegal. In the Cold War it was America's aircraft carrier (longest runway in Africa) and the CIA's listening post. When the cold war ended the US left and civil war broke out. Unlike the Europeans who at least recognise that they had colonies, the US denies it - they therefore claim no responsibility for the mess that became Liberia after they left. They sent only 40 Marines to evacuate their embassy. He compared this with the French response in Cote d'Ivoire, to which they sent a whole peacekeeping force.
I suppose many black Americans have also bought this guff about being African. The movie When we were kings (is that the right name?), about the 'rumble in the jungle', showed very clearly how crazy that notion is.
Anyway, I'm tempted to read the novel in case it tells more.
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