Since last June, I've become a devotee of Fast Company's giddy boosterism for creativity in the world of commerce; their all-star line up of quirky columnists and irreverent cover stories make for a thoroughly fun monthly read.
It is, in other words, an unlikely home for hard-hitting investigative reporting. Certainly not the place for that rare sucker punch of a story, the kind that leaves you unmoored, reeling, and horrified. And yet, Richard Behar's June special report on China in Africa is exactly that.
Read it. Seriously. Read all of it, all six parts exhaustively documenting "the scene of one of the most bare-knuckled resource grabs the world has ever seen," and one of the most sobering realities of environmental and human degradation you didn't know you didn't know.
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2 comments:
Great series with a lot to think about.
Can we manage to craft a long term, forward thinking integrated policy blueprint (both domestic and international) for sustainability and peace to rival China's rabid resource grab and economic explosion as opposed to our current piecemeal, self-interested, and essentially corrupt policy? Or is the Pentagon the only place in the U.S. govt. where people are thinking decades ahead (and not necessarily planning for peace)? Does the West have the credibility to even propose such a thing? Or are we simply hypocrites a few generations removed from our past transgressions to which the emerging nations of the world will scoff at? I hate to fall into Malthusian gloom and doom about humanity and its ability to sustain itself (he was certainly wrong the first time), and I'm searching for some sort of thread by which the doomsday scenario unravels, but humanity, it seems, needs either some sort of silver bullet or unprecedented collective effort to assure some sort of comfortable survival on the planet.
I found this article quite interesting - not least because I just returned to NC yesterday from a last-minute work trip to South Sudan, which is sorta at the center of this whole America/China scramble for resources.
Africans know perfectly well that the Chinese could care less about them or their development - that all they're looking for is oil or timber or minerals. Interestingly, Africa is actually one of the (few) places on Earth where America has not really lost its "moral authority." Most Africans, in most places (guarding against overgeneralization here) do not aspire for their country to become more like China as it develops, but rather like a Western nation - with rights, rule of law and transparency. So it's not as if we've lost all credibility there, and it's important not to get too caught up in silly Westerner guilt for colonialism 50 years after the fact.
It's tempting to simply say that the U.S. should get off its ass and join the fray - and certainly, we should be much, much more aggressive in promoting trade with Africa; but with an eye towards long-term development, not how many barrels of oil we can squeeze out next week. Sudan's a great example, where America's backing of the South in the civil war although the North could sell us oil won us tremendous, and valuable, goodwill for the future. Equatorial Guinea's government, on the other hand, might be at the brink of what we can tolerate. EG really is getting better, though, so maybe our engagement could be constructive. (I lived about ten minutes away from the border, and visited a couple of times, since I didn't need a visa.)
Bottom line, China's investment in these places is, on balance, a great thing, insofar as just about any investment is a great thing for destitute nations. But it isn't "development," and isn't meant to be. What it is, is a chance for African governments to constructively use high natural resource prices to benefit their countries long-term... though I'm not terribly optimistic that most of them will.
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