Global Fraud

How Asia Fell Out of Love With China’s Belt and Road Initiative
Countries are discovering that the promise of Xi Jinping’s signature infrastructure program is too good to be true.

By Iain Marlow and Dandan Li

An aerial view of the new runway built by China's Beijing Urban Construction Group at the Velana International Airport in Hulhule Island, Maldives.

In late August, President Abdulla Yameen of the Maldives hailed the opening of a Chinese-built bridge connecting two islands in the archipelago as “the gateway into tomorrow and the opportunities beyond.”
One month later, Yameen was voted out and the new government of the palm-fringed nation off the coast of India began to uncover the mountain of debt with which he’d saddled the country. 

A pro-China strongman who jailed opponents and judges, Yameen borrowed heavily from Beijing to build a new runway for the main airport, housing developments and a hospital, as well as the 2.1 kilometer (1.3 mile)-long “China-Maldives Friendship Bridge.”
On a recent trip to New Delhi, Maldives officials opened up about their frustration over the scale of the debt to China—the equivalent of almost 20 percent of GDP—and the inexplicable preference given to Chinese financing under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). 

In just one example, the previous government rejected a $54 million hospital bid in favor of an “inflated” Chinese offer of $140 million.
“We have been burned,” said Economic Development Minister Fayyaz Ismail.
The tourist paradise of the Maldives isn’t the only Asian nation to discover that the promise of Chinese dictator Xi Jinping’s signature infrastructure program was too good to be true.
After an unprecedented run of funding large-scale investments in projects from railways to highways in poorer countries across Asia, governments are adopting a far more cautious approach to China’s grand plans for what it regards as its backyard. 

From Malaysia to Sri Lanka, simmering voter anger over deals perceived as unfair or corrupt are prompting close examination, investigation and even suspension of projects until recently taken for granted.
“The first phase of the Belt and Road is effectively over,” said Andrew Small, a senior fellow with the German Marshall Fund’s Asia program. 

“A new model has not yet emerged, but it is clear that the old one, almost entirely focused on speed and scale, is no longer sustainable.”
Chinese authorities have noted the examples of misconduct and are reassessing and tweaking their global infrastructure plans, said a senior Chinese official who asked not to be named discussing strategy. 

They are well aware that poorly executed projects can hurt China’s reputation and are alert to the potential for resentment to spread, the official said.
Asia is in desperate need of infrastructure upgrades and no country other than China has the appetite—or the ready resources—to meet the demand for large-scale investments. 

Yet the criticism in Asia comes at a sensitive time of growing international skepticism of China’s global intentions. 

While much of the focus is on President Donald Trump’s standoff with Xi over trade, technology and market access, governments across Europe, in Australia and in Japan are tightening up their vetting of Chinese investments, particularly in critical infrastructure such as key ports and network systems.
China has commissioned internal reports that have highlighted the backlash, with the aim of continuing Xi’s outward push at a time when the economy is struggling. 

Authorities have stepped up scrutiny of BRI projects and investment and are deliberating possible regulations, the official said, adding that China is ready to take measures to clamp down on misconduct.
That translates into “more willingness to renegotiate terms, more focus on project quality, more efforts to cooperate with third-country partners such as Japan, and greater sensitivity to political and macro-economic risk,” said the German Marshall Fund’s Small.

A bulldozer working on the Chinese-financed Gwadar Port in Pakistan.

The shift in sentiment among Asian governments is already tangible, and has burst into the open in recent months. 

In Pakistan, China’s all-weather ally for decades, militants angered by Chinese investment in a remote area bombed and attacked the Chinese consulate in Karachi last month, killing seven people.
In Sri Lanka, there is growing anger over China’s vast economic influence as a threat to the country’s sovereignty, while a Myanmar government adviser criticized as “absurd” the $7.5 billion price tag for its Chinese-backed port, which was agreed to under the previous military government.
In Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad was elected prime minister in May after questioning Chinese investments on the campaign trail. 

In office, he slammed a “new version of colonialism,” as his government moved to suspend a $20 billion Chinese railway project, and later cancelled three China-backed pipeline projects worth $3 billion.

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad.

Indian officials have long objected to the Belt and Road program because it funds $60 billion worth of infrastructure in Pakistan, including in parts of disputed Kashmir, which India claims as its own.
And though New Delhi lacks the cash to compete against Beijing, Indian diplomats insist countries have been lured into debt traps and view the recent criticism as legitimizing their long-standing position. 

Indeed, a report this year by the Washington-based Center for Global Development identified eight nations at risk of debt distress from Chinese financing, among them Pakistan, the Maldives, Laos, Mongolia and Djibouti, where China has its only overseas military base.
Vietnam’s clashes with Beijing in the South China Sea meanwhile mean security fears there risk overshadowing investment projects.
Increasingly, bashing China makes sound electoral sense in parts of Asia. 

Indonesia, where the campaign for an April ballot could bring heightened scrutiny of Chinese projects, is an example of how China’s investments are often pulled into emerging market elections, according to Kelsey Broderick, an Asia associate at the Eurasia Group.
“Candidates around the world have used public concerns over Chinese debt as part of their successful challenges to incumbent candidates who have embraced BRI with open arms,” said Broderick. 

He cited Jair Bolsonaro’s successful run for the Brazilian presidency on an anti-China platform, and said Kenya, Zambia and Thailand could face similar debates.
Part of the concern comes from perceptions that, apart from contributing to unsustainable debt levels, China’s loans serve Beijing’s strategic goals in the Indian Ocean region key to global shipping routes at a time when China is building islands in the South China Sea.

The construction site for a section of the China-Laos Railway built by the China Railway Group, near Luang Prabang, Laos.

In the Maldives, former strongman Yameen’s increasingly overt pro-China policies included ramming a free trade agreement with China through parliament and denying work visas for professionals from China’s rival India. 

The strong-arm tactics ultimately backfired: New Maldivian Finance Minister Ibrahim Ameer has asked for $200 million of Indian loans and pledged to pursue an “India-first” foreign policy, a sharp rebuke to Beijing.
The Trump administration meanwhile has honed its message against the Belt and Road. 

Vice President Mike Pence told leaders at the recent Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in Singapore that the U.S. doesn’t “offer a constricting belt or a one-way road.”
The U.S. has set up an agency to lend as much as $60 billion for infrastructure, and last month backed a plan to build a $1.7 billion electricity grid in Papua New Guinea as part of a push to provide countries with alternative lending schemes. 

Still, that number pales in comparison to the Belt and Road, which Morgan Stanley says may total $1.3 trillion by 2027.
Asia clearly needs more infrastructure: The Asian Development Bank forecasts the region needs $26 trillion worth of highways, railroads and other infrastructure over the next decade or so. 

In the absence of viable alternatives, China is likely to remain the first port of call. 

In any case, many countries in Asia and Africa still prefer Chinese loans that come with “no governance or accountability commitments,” said Broderick.
In the five years since Xi launched Belt and Road, “China has been on a learning curve,” said Pang Zhongying, an international relations professor from Macau University of Science and Technology. “It’s the right thing to do for China to reassess its BRI projects and put more emphasis on risk control.”

Chinese Colonialism

African countries have started to push back against Chinese development aid. Here’s why.

By Richard Aidoo

Senegal President Macky Sall, left, and Chinese dictatorXi Jinping inspect the honor guard during a state visit in Dakar, Senegal, on July 21, 2018. 

Just how entrenched is China in Africa these days? 

The Forum on China Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in Beijing in September highlighted China’s expansive economic diplomacy – and $60 billion pledge in “no-strings” attached development assistance.
But Zimbabwe’s historic election during the summer offered up a different view, and suggests that an increasing number of Africans have less enthusiasm for China’s assistance — and Chinese money. During the campaign, opposition candidate Nelson Chamisa of the MDC alliance evoked strong anti-China rhetoric in an effort to galvanize popular support against the incumbent, Emmerson Mnangagwa of the ZANU-PF. 

Chamisa promised to expel Chinese businesses if he won, though it’s unclear whether this threat influenced his 44.3 percent to 50.7 percent loss to Mnangagwa.
Opinion surveys and research on China-Africa ties are generally positive about Chinese engagements. So election rhetoric offers a way to chart anti-Chinese sentiment in Africa, which is increasingly harnessed for electoral gain. 

One often-cited example is Zambia’s 2011 election, when challenger Michael Sata frequently denounced Chinese businesspeople as “profiteers.” 

Sata’s anti-Chinese sentiment struck a chord with voters, and helped him defeat incumbent President Rupiah Banda. 

But is this an emerging pattern — or a sporadic political occurrence in African elections?
With China as a popular development partner for many African countries, and provider of infrastructure and financial resources, here are four reasons why anti-China rhetoric nevertheless has some appeal:

1. African elections are essentially about the economy, and China is a significant economic player.
Beijing has edged out Western economies to become the most crucial economic partner to many African countries — which have diverse needs and resources. 

With South Africa’s unemployment rate expected to reach more than 26 percent in 2018, even the continent’s top performers and Beijing’s major partners need to increase trade and investments, and build resilient economies that provide and protect jobs. 

The stakes are high, as over one-third of African workers fall below the poverty line of $1.90 a day.
For pro-China African politicians and incumbents, China-Africa engagement means immense job creation, much-needed infrastructure and, most significantly, the chance to meet electoral promises with an injection of foreign capital with few conditions. 

The anti-China view, alternatively, sees the opportunity to remind voters of high rates of unemployment, particularly among the youth, and stir up popular anger to defeat incumbency.
Opponents can blame the incumbent’s willingness to accept an expanding Chinese economic influence that fails to address the country’s economic woes — but if they win, they may decide to follow through with their anti-China pronouncements, or not. 

Recently, newly installed President Julius Maada Bio of Sierra Leone canceled a Chinese-funded airport project signed by his predecessor, after referring to Chinese projects as “a sham” during a campaign debate.

2. African economies are largely extractive, and China is heavily engaged in this sector. 

According to the China Africa Research Initiative, the top three Chinese imports from Africa in 2015 were oil, copper and other ores. 

China’s oil purchases come from Angola, Congo and South Sudan, for instance. 

Zambia’s exports to China largely consist of copper, and its neighbor Zimbabwe sends nickel and other precious stones to China.
As extractive sectors are often at the core of African economies, foreign involvement or domination of such sectors can easily elicit popular discontent. 

China’s increased interests in these sectors no doubt sparks intense political debates, especially when there are reports of mistreatment of local mine workers or increased Chinese involvement in unregulated mining activities. 

Sociologist Ching Kwan Lee, for example, details the hardships of Zambian mine workers in Chinese-owned mines, which explains the anti-China popular fury that fueled Michael Sata’s victory in 2011.
In Ghana, Chinese involvement in illegal artisanal gold mining incurred local resentment, which featured in the 2016 vote that elected Nana Akufo-Addo — who promised to deal with the situation. While some research shows that local population in proximity to Chinese-operated mines enjoy better infrastructure and social services, anti-Chinese sentiments are also highest around these areas, making the local residents prime anti-incumbent constituencies.

3. China has flooded African markets with poor-quality products.
A 2016 Afrobarometer survey of 35 African countries indicated an average of 35 percent of respondents perceived the quality of Chinese products in Africa as problematic for China’s image. Despite the benefits of providing cheaper options of products to African consumers with meager incomes, consumers don’t want to see substandard materials in infrastructure building, or risk purchasing fake pharmaceutical products.
And some African politicians often like to remind voters that cheap Chinese textiles and other goods compete with local products. 

African governments and their monitoring institutions may be complicit in this China-Africa issue, but this is an issue that can be exploited on the campaign trail to influence voters at the polls.

4. The ghost of colonialism hangs over China-Africa relations.
To some Western politicians, China’s increased engagement in Africa is nothing more than “new colonialism,” and growing indebtedness to Beijing should be a bigger concern. 

Deborah Brautigam, who directs the China Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, argues against the notion that Africans are powerlessly dependent on arrangements skewed in China’s favor. 

African politicians tend to make this association not only as a cautious reminder, but because this is a deeply emotive claim that encourages Africans to challenge a repeat of the continent’s not-too-distant history.
What does this mean for China, and for African nations? 

For a global China, the benefits of increased economic engagement in Africa and becoming the continent’s preferred development partner comes with the burden of ensuring the viability and sustainability of these projects. 

A politically stable Africa would likely enhance these benefits — but Africa’s vibrant democratic cultures may sometimes feature not-so-friendly political rhetoric. 

For Africans in an economically and politically dynamic continent, the current increase in Chinese investments and loans mean China may remain a major factor in future African elections.

Rogue Nation

Backlash against China jeopardizes its free ride
By BRAHMA CHELLANEY 

On a recent official visit to China, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad criticized his host country’s use of major infrastructure projects – and difficult-to-repay loans – to assert its influence over smaller countries. 

While Mahathir’s warnings in Beijing against “a new version of colonialism” stood out for their boldness, they reflect a broader pushback against China’s mercantilist trade, investment and lending practices.
Since 2013, under the umbrella of its Belt and Road Initiative, China has been funding and implementing large infrastructure projects in countries around the world, in order to help align their interests with its own, gain a political foothold in strategic locations, and export its industrial surpluses. 

By keeping bidding on BRI projects closed and opaque, China often massively inflates their value, leaving countries struggling to repay their debts.
Once countries become ensnared in China’s debt traps, they can end up being forced into even worse deals to compensate their creditor for lack of repayment. 

Most notably, last December, Sri Lanka was compelled to transfer the Chinese-built strategic port of Hambantota to China on a 99-year, colonial-style lease, because it could longer afford its debt payments.
Sri Lanka’s experience was a wake-up call for other countries with outsize debts to China. 

Fearing that they, too, could lose strategic assets, they are now attempting to scrap, scale back, or renegotiate their deals. 

Mahathir, who previously cleared the way for Chinese investment in Malaysia, ended his trip to Beijing by canceling Chinese projects worth almost US$23 billion.
Countries as diverse as Bangladesh, Hungary and Tanzania have also canceled or scaled back BRI projects. 

Myanmar, hoping to secure needed infrastructure without becoming caught up in a Chinese debt trap, has used the threat of cancellation to negotiate a reduction in the cost of its planned Kyaukpyu port from $7.3 billion to $1.3 billion.
Even China’s closest partners are now wary of the BRI. 

In Pakistan, which has long worked with China to contain India and is the largest recipient of BRI financing, the new military-backed government has sought to review or renegotiate projects in response to a worsening debt crisis. 

In Cambodia, another leading recipient of Chinese loans, fears of in effect becoming a Chinese colony are on the rise.
The backlash against China can be seen elsewhere, too. 

The recent annual Pacific Islands Forum meeting was one of the most contentious in its history. Chinese policies in the region, together with the Chinese delegation leader’s behavior at the event itself, drove the president of Nauru – the world’s smallest republic, with just 11,000 inhabitants – to condemn China’s “arrogant” presence in the South Pacific. 

China cannot, he declared, “dictate things to us.”
When it comes to trade, US President Donald Trump’s escalating trade war with China is grabbing headlines, but President Trump is far from alone in criticizing China. 

With policies ranging from export subsidies and non-tariff barriers to intellectual-property piracy and tilting the domestic market in favor of Chinese companies, China represents, in the words of Harvard University’s Graham Allison, the “most protectionist, mercantilist, and predatory major economy in the world.”
As the largest merchandise exporter in the world, China is many countries’ biggest trading partner. Beijing has leveraged this role by employing trade to punish those that refuse to toe its line, including by imposing import bans on specific products, halting strategic exports (such as rare-earth minerals), cutting off tourism from China, and encouraging domestic consumer boycotts or protests against foreign businesses.
The fact is that China has grown strong and rich by flouting international trade rules. 

But now its chickens are coming home to roost, with a growing number of countries imposing anti-dumping or punitive duties on Chinese goods. 

And as countries worry about China bending them to its will by luring them into debt traps, it is no longer smooth sailing for the BRI.
Beyond Trump’s tariffs, the European Union has filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization about China’s practices of forcing technology transfer as a condition of market access. 

China’s export subsidies and other trade-distorting practices are set to encounter greater international resistance. 

Under WTO rules, countries may impose tariffs on subsidized goods from overseas that harm domestic industries.
Now, Chinese dictator Xi Jinping finds himself not only defending the BRI, his signature foreign-policy initiative, but also confronting domestic criticism, however muted, for flaunting China’s global ambitions and thereby inviting a US-led international backlash. 

Xi has discarded one of former Chinese strongman Deng Xiaoping’s most famous dicta: “Hide your strength, bide your time.” 

Instead, Xi has chosen to pursue an unabashedly aggressive strategy that has many asking whether China is emerging as a new kind of imperialist power.
International trade has afforded China enormous benefits, enabling the country to become the world’s second-largest economy, while lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. 

The country cannot afford to lose those benefits to an international backlash against its unfair trade and investment practices.
China’s reliance on large trade surpluses and foreign-exchange reserves to fund the expansion of its global footprint makes it all the more vulnerable to the current pushback. 

In fact, even if China shifts its strategy and adheres to international rules, its trade surplus and foreign-currency reserves will be affected. 

In short, whichever path it chooses, China’s free ride could be coming to an end.

Malaysia wrestles with Chinese colonialism

By Shibani Mahtani

A saleswoman talks to visitors at the Country Garden Holdings property showroom in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. Malaysia’s new government has moved to block or amend rules for major Chinese projects.

FOREST CITY, Malaysia – On a recent morning, cleaners rushed to sweep around the models showing the future dreams of Forest City developers: residential skyscrapers, malls, parks, a Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course.
The hopeful buyers, busloads of Chinese for a Chinese-built project, were guided around the showroom. 

They all got the pitch about how a new city of 700,000 people – “jade carved out of the ocean” – would rise out of coastal palm plantations and reclaimed land just north of Singapore.
But there was one important element left out of the glowing promises for Forest City.
Malaysia’s new government, led by senior statesman Mahathir Mohamad, has swiftly moved to block or amend the rules for major Chinese-led works in the country, canceling a slew of projects including a $20 billion railway and two gas pipelines totaling $2.3 billion.
For the $100 billion Forest City project, it could mean no sales for foreigners, effectively killing the target Chinese market for the planned development.
The tougher line by Malaysia – and the 93-year-old Mahathir – marks perhaps the most powerful slap yet at China’s fast-moving economic expansionism in the region and beyond.
Beijing calls it the “Belt and Road” initiative. 

Critics, like Malaysia’s Mahathir and others in Asia, call it an attempt by China to become the unchallenged economic big brother in the region and indirectly influence political affairs through its spending.
There are also long-term fears that Chinese-funded projects will leave countries with decades of debt – on the hook to maintain the ports, railways and other points on what many call Beijing’s modern Silk Road.
“You don’t want a situation where there’s a new version of colonialism happening because poor countries are unable to compete with rich countries,” Mahathir said during a visit to Beijing in August.
The blowback from Malaysia is particularly worrisome for Chinese leaders.
Malaysia is wealthy and strategically located, making the projects more important to China’s broader agenda of developing new trade routes. 

China also cannot come down too hard on Malaysia, one of its largest Asian trading partners.
To rub it in, Mahathir announced the policies at a joint news conference with Li Keqiang during his talks in Beijing.
Days after his return to Malaysia, he took aim at Forest City, announcing that no foreigners will be allowed to live there even as crews rush to complete some residential towers before buyers move in later this year.
This was a surgical strike against Country Garden PacificView, China’s largest property developer by sales. 

About 80 percent of buyers of the 18,000 units so far have been Chinese. 

Sales galleries for Forest City are scattered all over China.
Signs across the island are in Mandarin, and a branch of a Minnesota-based private school there offers only two languages: English and Mandarin.
The project is tantamount to “building a huge Chinese city in Malaysia,” said Lim Guan Eng, Malaysia’s finance minister. 

“That leads to questions about not only our national sovereignty but the social contract, [which will] have to be worked out or there will be imbalances.”
Country Garden says it has “complied with all laws and regulations with the necessary approvals to sell to foreign purchasers” and is “in talks” with the prime minister’s office.
The company “is unable to provide any information as discussions are in the initial stage,” a spokesman for Country Garden said. 

Malaysia’s Housing Ministry has also formed a committee that will “review whatever terms that were agreed to previously” and decide how to move forward.
Privately, though, the Chinese developer is worried it may be too late.
Speaking to The Washington Post, a Country Garden official said his company “was kind of forced” to bill its projects as part of Chinese dictator Xi Jinping’s broad “Belt and Road” initiative in a bid to gain Beijing’s support.
Promotional banners at Forest City’s showroom boast of the support the project has from the Chinese embassy in Malaysia and senior Chinese government figures. 

Forest City’s website describes the duty-free zone as the “standard demonstration zone of ” ‘One Belt One Road’ in Southeast Asia.”
Mahathir, in a campaign speech before his opposition coalition reclaimed power in the May elections, said he would rather the Forest City project turn into an actual forest, with baboons and monkeys living there instead.
Malaysia does not “want to see the Chinese taking over Malaysian land,” said the Country Garden official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to the media. 

“They hate the way we do business. It is clear that the price of the property is too high for Malaysians, and [we have] specifically marketed toward the Chinese.”
“Things,” he added, “have been tense.”
Malaysia is not the first country to turn against Chinese-backed projects. 

Pakistan, Nepal, Myanmar and other nations are working to scale back efforts pushed by Beijing, some under new political leadership.
“The domino effect certainly is something to worry about,” said Tan Chong, a professor at Jinan University who studies the relationship between China and Malaysia.
“It does serve as an alarm to other projects,” he added. 

“We need to have contingency plans.”
China has responded by trying to "gently" reframe the Belt and Road Initiative. 

In a recent speech, Xi described the projects not in economic terms, but rather as a diplomatic tool that could unite much of the world.
China “should be considerate of image issues” around Belt and Road, said Yanmei Xie, an analyst in Beijing.
In Forest City, the contrast is stark.
Country Garden says it has awarded contracts to 150 local companies and created 1,200 job opportunities for Malaysians since beginning in 2014. 

Company officials claim buyers from almost 30 countries have purchased Forest City property.
It is hard to see anything but Chinese links at the city-in-progress.
Sales strategies included offering free trips to Malaysia and Singapore to Chinese nationals who purchased Country Garden property back home, according to multiple buyers interviewed by The Washington Post.
Showrooms were set up across major Chinese cities and, in 2016, a new flight route was launched between Guangzhou and Johor Bahru, adjacent to Forest City’s headquarters in Foshan.
In August, a Forest City branch of Shattuck-St. Mary’s school, a hockey powerhouse in Minnesota, opened in Forest City. 

Sixty percent of 78 students enrolled here are Chinese. 

Tuition for a day student between grades 6 and 12 average $24,000 per year – about four times the average annual wage in Malaysia.
The school’s Olympic-size pool, tennis courts, basketball court, yoga studio and boarding facilities – all deserted on a recent visit – were built for 1,000 students.
“The people who are working in the area can’t afford to live here,” admitted one salesperson, declining to be named as he was not authorized to speak to media. 

“The majority of our buyers are foreign, and we are worried it would be an empty city if they don’t come.”
The shift in sentiment in Malaysia have spooked Forest City buyers, some of whom have sold businesses back in China and moved their families in the hope of a better education for their children or to have a second home for retirement.
“I thought it was a good investment, and I could live there in the future,” said Zhan Xinwu, a 24-year old from Shenzhen who bought a two-bedroom apartment in 2016, using all his savings for the down payment.
Even if he chose not to live in Malaysia, he hoped to sell the flat in a few years for a profit, but thinks that might be “impossible” now.
The Country Garden official said Malaysian government officials now are pushing them to market their project to Vietnamese, Indonesians and those from the Persian Gulf states to diversify Forest City’s residents, and change perceptions that this is a Chinese-developed project for the Chinese market.
“We aren’t very good at doing that,” he admitted. 

“We basically rely on the Chinese market.”

Chinese Colonialism

What Is China Doing In Africa?
By Panos Mourdoukoutas

Chinese corporations are all over Africa.  

In June 2017 a McKinsey & Company report estimated that there are more than 10,000 Chinese-owned firms operating in Africa.

What are Chinese corporations doing in Africa? 

That's a highly controversial issue.
The reason Chinese corporations are in Africa is simple: to exploit the people and take their resources. 

It’s the same thing European colonists did during mercantile times, except worse. 

The Chinese corporations are trying to turn Africa into another Chinese continent. 

They are squeezing Africa for everything it is worth.
This is the view several African politicians have. 

The Zambian politician Michael Sata was one of them. 

At least he was before being elected President of Zambia in 2011. 

He wrote a paper presented to Harvard University in 2007 that said “European colonial exploitation in comparison to Chinese exploitation appears benign, because even though the commercial exploitation was just as bad, the colonial agents also invested in social and economic infrastructure services. Chinese investment, on the other hand, is focused on taking out of Africa as much as can be taken out, without any regard to the welfare of the local people.” (quoted in Scott D. Taylor's The Nature of Chinese Capital in Africa, Current History, May 2018, p. 197)
Sata's bold position got some support by a deadly blast at an explosives factory partly owned by the Chinese state killing 50 Zambian workers.
Globalization managed to skip Africa by for years. 

There were several reasons for this. 

Africa was considered to have poor infrastructure, political instability, and low income. 

"The trade in oil, gas, gems, metals and rare earth minerals wreaks havoc in Africa. During the years when Brazil, India, China and the other “emerging markets” have transformed their economies, Africa's resource states remained tethered to the bottom of the industrial supply chain," writes Tom Burgis in The Looting of Africa (New York: Perseus Books Group, 2015). 

While Africa accounts for about 30 per cent of the world's reserves of hydrocarbons and minerals and 14 per cent of the world's population, its share of global manufacturing stood in 2011 exactly where it stood in 2000: at 1 percent.
Everything changed when China came along. 

The country was desperate for raw materials and energy to power their growing manufacturing capacity. 

They put Africa on the globalization map. 

The continent was placed right next to Shanghai in terms of Beijing’s business priorities.
Africa was at the top of the Beijing economic agenda. 

It was an easy and convenient target. 

Chinese leaders sent business delegations to every capital in Africa year after year. 

These delegates secured infrastructure projects and proposed trade deals, converting Africa into a “second continent” for China. 

Metaphorically, that is.
Howard W. French describes the situation in the book China’s Second Continent (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015), explaining; “Sensing that Africa had been cast aside by the West in the wake of the Cold War, Beijing saw the continent as the perfect proving ground for some Chinese companies to cut their teeth in international business. It certainly did not hurt that Africa was also the repository of an immense share of global resources—raw materials that were vital both for China’s extraordinary ongoing industrial expansion and for its across-the-board push for national reconstruction.”
The long arm of globalization had touched Africa. 

Trade between China and the “second continent” of Africa reached close to $300 billion in 2015.
Not everyone feels that China is attempting to turn Africa into a Chinese colony though. 

One such person is Ching Kwan Lee, a professor at the University of California. 

Lee argued in the Specter of Global China: Politics, Labor, and Foreign Investment in Africa (University of Chicago Press, 2017) that the investments the Chinese state made in Africa weren’t made as “imperialists” or “colonialists”. 

China is helping Africa to stand by themselves, rather than making Africa dependent on them.

Maybe it would be best to avoid sharing this opinion with the Pakistanis and Sri Lankans that are heavily indebted to China. 

These are the people that are most at-risk of becoming modern-day colonies for Beijing.

Chinese Colonialism

China Is Doing The Same Things To Sri Lanka Great Britain Did To China After The Opium Wars
By Panos Mourdoukoutas 

China is turning Sri Lanka into a modern day “semi-colony,” the same way Great Britain and Portugal turned south China into their own semi-colonies back in the mid of 19th century.
Sri Lanka didn’t lose a war to China. 

It never ceded any of its territory officially to China. 

But it handed over economic control of its deep sea Hambantota port to China Merchants Port Holdings (CM Port).
Last week, CM Port made a $584 million payment as part of a $1.12 billion deal to operate Sri Lanka’s deep-sea Hambantota port, according to a Reuters report. 

Under the agreement, signed in July 2017, CM Port will run the $1.5 billion Chinese-built port on a 99-year lease.
The $1.12 billion total price is to be used to reduce the Sri Lankan government’s debt to China.
In economic terms, this agreement is similar to that China signed back in the aftermath of Opium Wars with the British and the Portuguese, ceding control of its Southern ports to the British and the Portuguese.
China's growing presence in Sri Lanka began back in 2007, when Beijing provided President Rajapaksa both military and diplomatic support to crush the Tamil Tigers. 

Then followed high profile construction projects and high interest loans that left Sri Lanka heavily indebted to China.
Sri Lanka government debt was standing 77.60% of the country's GDP in 2017, well above the 69.69% average for the 1950-2017 period, according to Tradingeconomics.
Meanwhile, Sri Lanka’s Government Budget deficit stands at 5.5% of the country’s GDP, adding to its indebtedness.
Rising indebtedness comes at a time when Sri Lanka is already living beyond its means, as evidenced by persistent current account deficits, which stand at 2.60% of the country's GDP in 2017.
To cope with a rising debt to China, Sri Lanka has signed agreements with China that swap loans for equity, transforming China into an owner to major infrastructure projects like Sri Lanka’s major port— and a key outpost in the Indian Ocean for Beijing.
This development has irked India, which is slowly becoming encircled by China; and India’s allies that are concerned about China’s aggressive moves to control maritime trade from the South China Sea to the Indian Ocean.
That’s something investors in Southeast Asian markets should keep a wary eye on, as it opens yet another front between the two Asian giants, raising the geopolitical risk of investing in the region.
Markets, for the time being, seem to be ignoring these risks.

Cultural Genocide

Tibet activist jailed in China over language campaign
BBC News

A volunteer holds placards of detained Taiwanese activist Lee Ming-cheh (L) and Tibetan education advocate Tashi Wangchuk (R)

A Tibetan activist has been jailed for five years in China for "inciting separatism," after he spoke to the New York Times about efforts to preserve his native language.
Tashi Wangchuk was arrested in 2016, after featuring in a video by the newspaper.
In the interview, he spoke of his fear that Tibetan culture was being destroyed in China.
Amnesty International denounced the verdict as "beyond absurd".
Tashi, who pleaded not guilty to the charges, will be due for release in 2021.
His lawyer told the AFP news agency that he planned to appeal the decision.
"I believe he committed no crime and we do not accept the verdict," Liang Xiojun told AFP.
Tashi appeared in a New York Times documentary in late 2015, where he voiced concerns that Tibetan culture was being destroyed in China.
He attempted to file a lawsuit in Beijing against local officials in his hometown, Yushu, saying they were sidelining the Tibetan language in favour of Mandarin in schools.
Mr Liang told reporters at Tashi's trial earlier this year that the video was used as a key piece of evidence by the prosecution.
"He doesn't believe he's incited separatism," Mr Liang said. 

"He only wants to strengthen Tibetan language education."
Joshua Rosenzweig, East Asia research director at Amnesty International called the verdict a "gross injustice".
"He is being cruelly punished... To brand peaceful activism for [the] Tibetan language as 'inciting separatism' is beyond absurd," he said in a statement.
Tibet, a remote and mainly Buddhist territory known as the "roof of the world", is governed as an "autonomous" region of China.
Rights groups say China continues to violate human rights, accusing Beijing of political and religious repression.

Chinese Colonialism

China’s Campaign Against Uighur Diaspora Ramps Up

In its attempts to control Uighurs abroad, the Chinese government is holding families hostage.
BY MARTIN DE BOURMONT
People hold placards and flags during a demonstration of France's exiled Uyghur community on July 4, 2010 in Paris.

Mahmut, a Uighur living in a Scandinavian country, describes 2017 as the “saddest” year for his family.

Born to secular Muslim parents, Mahmut, who asked to be identified by a pseudonym, says his family’s troubles began in late 2016 when the Chinese government pressured a cousin and his wife to return to East Turkestan from Egypt.
Local authorities threatened to imprison his parents and confiscate their property if his cousin, who was studying theology, did not return. 

When Mahmut’s cousin arrived in East Turkestan, the authorities jailed him and his wife.
Then, in early summer 2017, Mahmut tried to call his mother, who was recovering from a recent hospitalization. 

No one picked up, and Mahmut feared for the worst.
Communication with his parents was already sporadic, and when his father finally picked up the phone, Mahmut could sense fear in his voice. 

“Your mother went to study,” he told Mahmut, saying that community service officials had instructed her to go.
As Beijing continues its clampdown on East Turkestan, the state is using overseas Uighurs’ families in China as a way to pressure them.
And over the past year, the Chinese government has intensified its campaign to surveil and intimidate the diaspora, according to Uighurs and outside experts following the issue.
“This is clearly part of the determined push to silence overseas critics,” says Kevin Carrico, a lecturer in Chinese studies at Macquarie University in Sydney. 

“Whether Uighurs, Tibetan, Han, Australian, or American, anyone who is outspokenly critical of the party-state’s increasingly ridiculous policies is going to eventually feel pressure.”
A Turkic-speaking minority, Uighurs in China and abroad have faced increasing repression from the state over the past few years in response to a low-level insurgency in East Turkestan, a reaction rights advocates argue is vastly disproportionate.
In East Turkestan, the government has established a sophisticated surveillance network that mixes informers, guards, and high-tech measures such as a DNA database, and thousands of Uighurs — potentially up to 10 percent of the ethno-national group — now languish in re-education camps.
With East Turkestan locked down, China is now looking to rein in the Uighur diaspora, often outspoken in its opposition to Beijing’s rule. 

Last year, China ordered some Uighurs studying abroad to return home or risk having their families punished. 

In Europe, Chinese police contacted Uighurs in France demanding personal information, and China also detained relatives of six U.S.-based reporters working for Radio Free Asia’s Uighur service.
Parhat, an American citizen — who also asked not to be identified by his real name — faced problems similar to Mahmut. 

In October 2016, police arrested Parhat’s niece under the pretext that her laptop contained copies of forbidden Islamic texts.
She was released after a month, only to be arrested again in June 2017.
Parhat decided to return, in part to arrange new care for his sister, who was ill and had been cared for by his niece. 

Landing at a major airport in eastern China, security personnel detained him for more than three hours with no explanation.
When he finally arrived at the small city in East Turkestan where most of his family lives, Parhat’s older brother told him that police officers had paid him a visit a few days before his arrival. 

The police had asked Parhat’s brother to “take him to us.”
Two days later, Parhat was detained by public security officials, who took him to a squalid hotel room, where they confiscated his phone and personal documents, including his passport. 

Holding a packet of what seemed like hundreds of names, the officials began reading them out loud and asking if he knew people who worked at the Uyghur American Association.
“The guy was telling me how big a crime I committed because I helped those people to escape and join ISIS,” Parhat says.
Parhat was released later that evening on the condition that he agree to continue talking to security officials. 

Instead, he fled East Turkestan, intending to book an earlier return flight to the United States from a city in eastern China. 

As Parhat waited to go through security at the airport, officials began to pull Uighurs out of the line. Terrified, Parhat pretended not to speak Chinese and showed his American passport.
After passing for a foreigner, Parhat got through the checkpoint.
Parhat’s brother-in-law was not so lucky. 

Following Parhat’s escape from East Turkestan, his brother-in-law was arrested. 

“Nobody knows where he is,” Parhat says.
Alongside the surveillance and detention system, the Chinese government applies another tactic that seeks to turn loved ones and trusted confidants against one another, says James Millward, a professor at Georgetown University and the author of Eurasian Crossroads: A History of East Turkestan. 

“There are cases of Uighurs communicating, clearly under duress, and saying scripted things to deliver a message to relatives or friends abroad,” Millward says.
According to Ilshat Hassan, a prominent Uighur activist in the United States, this practice goes back many years.
In 2009, Hassan — who left East Turkestan in 2003 — received word from his now ex-wife that he would be offered a good job with a high salary, among other benefits, if he returned home.
Later, a former university classmate of Hassan’s, now working as a police officer, called him in 2012 and said he would be reunited with his wife and son if he behaved well.
The pressure campaign may not be entirely new, but technology has made it more powerful.
“It’s the technological element that was not there before,” Millward says. 

“So many people communicate via WeChat and phones and Skype, [and] because the internet is so controlled now, the Chinese state can know of all communications like that. They know and can visit a family within hours or minutes even of a contact from abroad. Many families have had to delete contact information from their phones.”
For those like Parhat, the consequences of the Chinese government’s policies in East Turkestan reverberate far beyond its borders. 

“The whole of East Turkestan was like a prison,” Parhat says. 

“Once you get in, it’s very hard to go out.”
“Relatively few people who have made it through these [re-education camps] and made it out have felt it wise to share that information internationally,” says Sophie Richardson, Human Rights Watch’s China director. 

“Most of what we know about, from a small handful of sources, really, is people being obliged to sit for hours at a time and listen to lectures about the merits of Xi Jinping thought, for example.”
For those abroad, such as Mahmut, answers about what has become of their relatives sent to the camps are hard to come by.
Sending coded messages to a cousin outside of East Turkestan, Mahmut learned that his mother had been placed in a re-education camp.
Mahmut began to call relatives in East Turkestan, only to find they were too afraid to speak to him. “They don’t answer,” Mahmut says. 

“Or they hear my voice and don’t talk and cut the connection.”
The cousin also told Mahmut that the Chinese government had recently recalled a distant relative from Turkey, only for the relative to die under mysterious circumstances in a East Turkestan prison.
Then, in January, Mahmut lost contact with his father. 

Neighbors reported that he, too, was in re-education.

East Turkestan

Uighurs Around the World Protest China's Aggressive Security Crackdown
By GERRY SHIH

BEIJING — Members of the Uighur Muslim ethnic group held demonstrations in cities around the world to protest a sweeping Chinese surveillance and security campaign that has sent thousands of their people into detention and political indoctrination centers.
Overseas Uighur activists said they planned demonstrations Thursday in 14 countries in total, including the U.S., Australia and Turkey.
More than a hundred Uighur protesters gathered at a plaza near the United Nations in New York to call on the body to protect their culture against Chinese government efforts to assimilate the Turkic-speaking people. 

Elsewhere, hundreds of Uighur women on Istanbul’s Istiklal Street and in front of Sydney Town Hall chanted and waved blue flags, the symbol for East Turkistan.
China has rolled out one of the world’s most aggressive policing programs in the Uighurs’ homeland of East Turkestan, a vast region in the country’s northwest. 

Chinese officials say the crackdown is necessary to stamp out a decades-long separatist movement and, more recently, Islamic extremism seeping into the region. 

Hundreds have died in violent clashes in recent years that the government blames on "separatist" militants.
Growing resentment against authorities in China, and the call of Islamist Uighur militant groups, has also attracted thousands of Uighurs to travel to Syria in recent years. 

But Uighur activists and international rights groups say the far-reaching security campaign, which has accelerated markedly since 2016, exacerbates tensions and unfairly targets the entire Uighur population of more than 10 million.
“The Chinese government is using the war against terrorism very effectively, using that to portray the Uighur as a terrorist,” said Rushan Abbas, the organizer of the New York protest who showed up with her children. 

“In actuality, the Chinese government is the one who’s acting the terrorist against the Uighur.”
Many overseas Uighurs say that their relatives in China have been sent to an extrajudicial network of political indoctrination centers for months at a time without formal charges or for reasons unrelated to separatist activity — such as communicating with relatives abroad.
“Can you imagine a place where millions are taken into camps without the involvement of courts?” said Seyit Tumturk, who helped organize the Istanbul rally.
Allegations of widespread abuse in the centers, including unexplained deaths, have been rife but are almost impossible to confirm, given the extreme level of surveillance and government obstruction of independent reporting trips by foreign media. 

Associated Press reporters were detained for 11 hours by police in East Turkestan in November while investigating the reported death of a 26-year-old in an indoctrination center.
Tumturk, a Turkey-based activist who is backed by some Turkish political parties, has been meeting with various governments including Japan and Australia in recent months to seek support for a new overseas Uighur political group.
His movement would call for the establishment of an independent Uighur state allied with Turkey and Central Asian states and distance itself from the World Uighur Congress, the historically dominant, U.S.-funded Uighur lobby that advocates worldwide for greater autonomy for East Turkestan but not outright independence from China.
Tumturk said he was motivated by a sense of urgency.
“We have received a lot of bad news that the situation in China is getting worse and worse,” he said.
China has tightened restrictions over the instruction of Islam and the Uighur language and even what Uighurs are allowed to name their babies in an effort to swiftly assimilate the minority group into the Chinese mainstream, which is dominated by the Han ethnic group.
Government officials say the assimilation process will bring economic benefits to poor parts of East Turkestan, promote secularism and reinforce a sense of “patriotism” among Uighurs. 

Uighur activists warn that the heavy-handed methods could render traditional Uighur culture practically extinct in a matter of a few decades.
Uighurs face a raft of other hurdles not imposed upon the Han: they have difficulty procuring passports and those who have them are required to leave them with the police. 

In East Turkestan, frequent road blocks and checkpoints enable authorities to stop people and check their mobile phones for content that might be deemed suspicious.
International groups including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have called East Turkestan, an area half the size of India, one of the most tightly policed regions in the world.

Chinese Peril

Africa should avoid forfeiting sovereignty to China over loans: Tillerson
By Aaron Maasho

African Union (AU) Commission Chairman Moussa Faki, of Chad, and U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson hold a news conference after their meeting at African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia March 8, 2018.

ADDIS ABABA -- U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Thursday that African countries should be careful not to forfeit their sovereignty when they accept loans from China, the continent’s biggest trading partner.
Tillerson is using his first diplomatic trip to the continent to bolster security alliances on a continent increasingly turning to Beijing for aid and trade.
He may also seek to smooth relations after U.S. President Trump reportedly dismissed some African nations as “shithole countries” in January. 

Trump later denied making the comment.
“We are not in any way attempting to keep Chinese dollars from Africa,” Tillerson told a news conference in the Ethiopian capital. 

“It is important that African countries carefully consider the terms of those agreements and not forfeit their sovereignty.”
The United States is the leading aid donor to Africa but China surpassed it as a trade partner in 2009. Beijing has pumped billions into infrastructure projects, though critics say the use of Chinese firms and labor undermines their value.
Tillerson said Chinese investments “do not bring significant job creation locally” and criticized how Beijing structures loans to African government.
If a government accepts a Chinese loan and “gets into trouble”, he said, it can “lose control of its own infrastructure or its own resources through default.” 

He did not give examples.
The growing Chinese lending to the continent has also attracted criticism from some Africans, who say China’s agenda is to feed its appetite for African raw materials like oil, timber and minerals, and secure contracts for its firms.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, visiting Zimbabwe on Thursday, told reporters it was inappropriate for Tillerson to criticize China’s relationship with African countries.
“It was not appropriate to criticize the relations of his hosts — when he was a guest there — with another country,” he said. 

Many African governments enjoy close ties with both Washington and Beijing.
Kenya, for example, inaugurated a $3.2 billion railway funded by China last year. 

For the last three years, Kenya has received more than $100 million annually in U.S. security assistance.
Asked about Tillerson’s criticism of China’s approach on the continent, Kenya’s foreign affairs minister Monica Juma said: “This country is engaging with partners from across the world driven by our own interests and for our own value.”

OPAQUE CONTRACTS
Tillerson arrived in Ethiopia, Africa’s second most populous nation, on Wednesday and visited the African Union headquarters on Thursday. 

The complex was funded and built by China and is seen as a symbol of Beijing’s thrust for influence and access to the continent’s natural resources.
Ethiopia is home to some of Beijing’s biggest investments, from a railway to Djibouti that opened last year to factories and industrial parks.
Earlier this week, Tillerson criticized China’s approach to Africa which encouraged dependency through opaque contracts and predatory loan practices.
Ethiopia’s prime minister resigned suddenly last month and a state of emergency was imposed but protests in the restive Oromia region have continued.
The secretary of state met Hailemariam Desalegn, who resigned as prime minister but is still acting in the post awaiting a replacement. 

Details of their discussions were not released.
Tillerson said after meeting his Ethiopian counterpart Workneh Gebeyehu that the answer to political turmoil in Ethiopia was greater freedoms.
“It is important that the country moves on past the state of emergency as quickly as possible,” he said.
Tillerson reiterated previous calls for African states to cut ties with North Korea.
North Korea has more than a dozen embassies on the continent. 

The Trump administration has said that Pyongyang earns hard currency from arms deals with African government and the trafficking of wildlife parts from Africa.
Tillerson is due to fly to Djibouti, host to military bases owned by the U.S., China, Japan, France, and Italy.
He will then visit Kenya, a key U.S. ally in the fight against al Shabaab Islamist militants in Somalia, before traveling to Chad and Nigeria, which are also battling to contain Islamist insurgents.
Analysts say Trump has focused mainly on security concerns in Africa at a time when China, Turkey and other nations are ramping up diplomatic and business links.
“When you look at the set of countries that are being visited I think it kind of reinforces the perception that security, indeed, is the overwhelming focus,” said Brahima Coulibaly, the director of the Africa Growth Initiative at Brookings Institution.

Han Racism

China’s Ugly Exploitation of Africa—and Africans
By BRENDON HONG

HONG KONG—This week, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is visiting five nations on the African continent—Chad, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Nigeria—to discuss how the United States and these countries can collaborate in counter-terrorism, trade, and investment.
Beijing is watching the trip closely, because these and other African nations are considered by the Chinese Communist Party to be stepping stones for the PRC’s rise as a superpower.
But China’s relations with Africa, while vast and expanding, are undermined by cultural and sometimes rather extraordinary political insensitivity.
Two recent Chinese action films are set in African nations.
Wolf Warrior 2, which was released last July, tells the story of a Chinese soldier-turned-mercenary who defeats Somali pirates in underwater combat, and protects aid workers and Chinese nationals from rebels and arms dealers.
Operation Red Sea, which was released in February and is still in theaters, is loosely based on the peaceful evacuation of 600 Chinese nationals from Yemen during the early days of the ongoing war there, but with the addition of gunfights and explosions galore.

Both films have lavish action sequences in the overblown style of Michael Bay. 

Both were massive commercial successes. 

The former is the highest-grossing Chinese film ever.
With the archetype of the Chinese Savior firmly established, attitudes within China are showing a lack of racial sensitivity at best, and a sense of superiority over other races at worst.
In an infamous incident last month during the Chinese New Year break, a gala show on state television included a skit that involved an Asian woman in blackface and oversized butt pads and an African actor in a monkey suit. 

Criticisms of the skit were censored. 

In 2016, an advertisement for a laundry product showed a black man being shoved into a washing machine, only to emerge as a boyish-looking Asian man—with skin of a much lighter hue.
Moving off-screen, we can see those attitudes play out in Guangzhou’s Little Africa, derogatively called “Chocolate City” by locals. 

Once a vibrant hub where traders from Guinea, Mali, Nigeria, and other African nations gathered or even settled, the neighborhood has been “beautified” by the city government: street markets that once were abuzz with commerce and camaraderie have been banned; the police maintain a constant presence, checking the passports and visas of the foreigners they encounter; locals often hold the mistaken belief that these outsiders are involved with drug trafficking or prostitution. 

Many shops have been shuttered.
Although Little Africa was once estimated to be the temporary home of over 100,000 people, few Africans walk its streets now. 

Sections of the once culturally diverse neighborhood have been paved over to build parking lots and erect pristine residential units; often, the new landlords will not allow Africans to sign a lease.
A 2008 diplomatic cable obtained by Wikileaks suggests that a decade ago local authorities were “extremely concerned about the high degree of concentration of Africans into a few Guangzhou neighborhoods.”
The many entrepreneurs who sought their fortunes by obtaining cheap, sometimes fake, goods in the Pearl River Delta region and shipping them home have been displaced. 

Even those who have Chinese nationals as spouses aren’t guaranteed the right to remain in the country with the families they have built.
In December, The Telegraph published an article penned by Liu Xiaoming, the Chinese ambassador to the United Kingdom, titled “China’s role in Africa is as an equal partner.” 

But as Chinese state-owned conglomerates enter the continent, Africans in China face incessant police raids, harassment, and racist attitudes. 

Even if they once saw China’s rise as a model to emulate, and came to trade, learn, and grow, a flight back home now seems like the only option.
China’s exploitative relationship abroad with African nations became most evident earlier this year. In late January, the French daily Le Monde reported that the Chinese government’s gift of a headquarters building and computer network for the African Union in Addis Ababa contained a back door to facilitate the transfer of data to servers in Shanghai.
China’s ambassador to the AU, Kuang Weilin, responded to allegations that China is spying on the AU by calling the findings “absurd” and “preposterous.”
The myth of Chinese support for African nations has been perpetuated both at home and abroad, with the $200 million AU complex in Addis as the crown jewel within the narrative of international cooperation fostered by Chinese public funds. 

But the charm in Beijing’s Africa blitz doesn’t hide the profiteering and wrangling for influence that follow.
Just next door to Ethiopia, China’s move into Djibouti is a prime example. 

The tiny east African nation sits along one of the world’s major maritime shipping lanes, and is home to American, French, German, Italian, and Japanese military bases, with the latest addition of a Chinese “logistics and supply center” to the many foreign military installations already there. 

The Chinese naval facility was inaugurated last summer, and is part of Xi Jinping’s plan to modernize his country’s military, expanding its navy’s blue-water capabilities.
Beijing shells out $20 million a year to lease the real estate for its base in Djibouti, and has already stationed over 1,000 troops there, with sufficient space for 10 times that number if needed. 

On top of that, the Chinese government has given the host nation loans topping $1.1 billion to upgrade its commercial port, build an additional airport, a railway that stretches to Addis Ababa, and a water pipeline that moves water from Ethiopia.
Djibouti officials have expressed concern about their country’s ability to repay those loans—failure to channel funds back to China would place the nation in an undesirable position in the very near future.
Over in Kenya, controversy is unfolding around the country’s largest infrastructure project since its 1963 independence.
A Chinese-built railway has been designed to be extended through the wildlife reserve just outside of Nairobi.
A court ordered that construction be halted as the case is reviewed, but builders and engineers from the China Road and Bridge Corporation have already begun work, with protection from armed guards.
The ranking member of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Jack Reed, has already warned of China’s influence in African nations.
After a recent trip to the region, he said, “Wherever we’re going in Africa, they seem to be there, or following close behind.”
Under a messy Trump administration, American policy has failed to keep up with the actions of the Eastern superpower.
It isn’t even clear whether America aims to cooperate with China on the continent, counter its clout, or implement a combination of the two options.
Beijing’s goals, however, are much clearer.
Chinese industrialists—often with the state’s backing—are eyeing their moves to a new continent as the economic and governance models at home switch gears.
Ethiopia, for instance, has received a cash injection of nearly $11 billion to bulk up its industrial infrastructure, transforming farmland into industrial parks that can house factories that churn out fast fashion clothing items and consumer electronic goods.
The country has opened four such parks since 2014, and plans to launch eight more before 2020. Hundreds of Ethiopian farmers have complained of land grabs, displacement, and lack of compensation, as the government clears space for newcomers from Beijing.
It doesn’t matter how many Friendship Bridges are built, or how many Cooperation Summits are organized.
As long as attitudes toward other races—and nations—do not change within China, the relationships that are cultivated abroad will be exploitative, with only rapacious advancement of one party as a result.

Chinese surveillance is the dystopian future nobody wants

Monitoring tech pioneered in East Turkestan is spreading across China and the world.
By Nithin Coca

Security cameras are seen on a street in Urumqi, East Turkestan.

In July 2009, deadly riots broke out in Urumqi, the capital of East Turkestan. 

Nearly 200 people died, the majority ethnic Han Chinese, and thousands of Chinese troops were brought in to quell the riots. 

An information battle soon followed, as mobile phone and internet service was cut off in the entire province. 

For the next 10 months, web access would be almost nonexistent in East Turkestan, a vast region larger than Texas with a population of more than 20 million. 

It was one of the most widespread, longest internet shutdowns ever.
That event, which followed similar unrest in neighboring Chinese-ruled Tibet in 2008, was the sign of a new phase in the Chinese state's quest to control its restive outer regions. 

The 2009 shutdown was the first large-scale sign of a shift in tactics: the use of technology to control information.
"East Turkestan has gotten little attention, but this is where we're really seeing the coming together of multiple streams of technology [for surveillance] that just hasn't happened in other contexts before," said Steven Feldstein, fellow in the Democracy and Rule of Law Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Nine years later, East Turkestan has seen the widespread implementation of sophisticated high-tech surveillance and monitoring technology, what BuzzFeed called "a 21st century police state." 

But what happens in East Turkestan does not stay in East Turkestan. 

The technologies piloted there are already spreading across all of China, and Chinese companies are beginning to sell some of this technology to other authoritarian-minded countries. 

If this trend continues, the future of technology, particularly for those in the Global South, could more resemble what's happening in East Turkestan than developments in Silicon Valley.
East Turkestan is the home to the Uyghurs, a Turkic people who mostly follow Islam and have a distinct culture and language. 

Not surprisingly, the region has a tenuous relationship with Beijing, which is more than 1,400 miles away. 

Protests, riots and even terrorist attacks have been connected to the Uyghur struggle, which gives cover to Chinese authorities to implement the harshest strategies there.
"Abuses are most apparent in East Turkestan because of the lack of privacy protections but also because the power imbalance between the people there and the police is the greatest in China," said Maya Wang, China researcher at Human Rights Watch.
That is why security investment in East Turkestan skyrocketed after the riots. 

According to Adrian Zenz, a lecturer at the European School of Culture and Theology who has written extensively about the police presence in East Turkestan and Tibet, the region's security forces doubled between 2009 and 2011 to more than 11,000 people. 

And it kept growing: In 2017, he documented more than 65,000 public job advertisements for security-related positions in East Turkestan, and last year Amnesty International estimated that there were 90,000 security staff in the region, the highest ratio of people to security in any province in China.
Several new tools and tactics accompanied this rise in security personnel, most notably the implementation of "convenience police stations," a dense network of street corner, village or neighborhood police stations designed to keep an eye out everywhere and rapidly respond to any threat, perceived or real. 

But there were also corresponding investments in security technology on a globally unprecedented scale. 

It started with a drive to put up security cameras in the aftermath of the 2009 riots before evolving into something far more sophisticated, as East Turkestan turned into a place for state-connected companies to test all of their surveillance innovations.
"The rule of law doesn't exist," said William Nee, China researcher at Amnesty International. "They are able to pioneer new methods of control that, if successful, they could use elsewhere in China."
Today, East Turkestan has both a massive security presence and ubiquitous surveillance technology: facial-recognition cameras; iris and body scanners at checkpoints, gas stations and government facilities; the collection of DNA samples for a massive database; mandatory apps that monitor messages and data flow on Uyghurs' smartphones; drones to monitor the borders. 

While there's some debate over how advanced the system tying these technologies together is, it's clear that China's plan is for a fully integrated system that uses artificial intelligence to rapidly process massive amounts of information for use by the similarly massive numbers of police in convenience stations.
For Uyghurs, it means that wherever they go, whomever they talk to and even whatever they read online are all being monitored by the Chinese government. 

According to The New York Times, "When Uighurs buy a kitchen knife, their ID data is etched on the blade as a QR code." 

BuzzFeed documented stories of family members too scared to speak openly to relatives abroad. 

And the combination of all of these tools through increasingly powerful AI and data processing means absolute control and little freedom.
"It's one thing to have GPS tracking. It's another thing to monitor social media usage of large populations," said Feldstein. 

"But to do that in combination with a large DNA database of up to 40 million people and to integrate those methods with other modes of surveillance and intrusion -- that represents a very new frontier and approach when it comes to online surveillance and oppression."
The result, at least for China, is a massive success. 

Violence in the region has fallen as riots, protests and attacks are now rare in East Turkestan. 

Part of that is due to the presence of the state, but it's also related to a rise in fear, as no one is sure how pervasive the Chinese surveillance apparatus is.
"People can never be sure if they are free from monitoring," said Nicole Morgret, project coordinator at the Uyghur Human Rights Project. 

"The fear is such that even if the surveillance is not complete, people behave as if it is. The technology is being rolled out so quickly."
That is because access to the actual platforms being used by the Chinese authorities is limited, and much of the knowledge about surveillance technology comes from observations by the few journalists who can report from East Turkestan or through looking at public tender and budget documents. 

Or, increasingly, the knowledge comes from observing how other regions in China are being monitored and how Chinese tech companies abroad are deploying or marketing similar tools.

While the East Turkestan model may be extreme even for China, it is starting to influence policing across the country. 

The advent of the surveillance state in East Turkestan has come alongside China's increasingly tightening control over national information flows, including the blocking or removal from app stores of many foreign apps, VPNs and platforms, most recently Skype.

"The question a lot of people have [is] ... to what extent is this going to be rolled [out] across the rest of China and packaged and sold to other repressive governments around the world?" said Morgret. "You can definitely see parts of it being implemented in China proper, such as the police database and collecting DNA samples from certain people. I certainly suspect the government has ambitions to create this type of total surveillance across the country."
The government has a powerful tool at its disposal, as last year, a new cybersecurity law went into effect that greatly broadens the power of the state to further control information. 

It requires foreign companies to maintain data centers in China, something Apple, for example, is complying with, leading the nonprofit watchdog group Reporters Without Borders to warn journalists working in China not to use iCloud anymore to store data. 

WeChat, China's do-everything app, is already sharing user data with the state.
There are other signs that East Turkestan's policing innovations are entering the rest of China. 

The country is planning to integrate footage from its estimated 176 million surveillance cameras into a "police cloud" system, linked to national identity cards, making it possible that in the near future, everyone in China could be tracked anywhere. 

A model of this was demonstrated earlier this month when news reports emerged that new facial-recognition glasses are being used by police in train stations and airports across the country, tracking travelers ahead of the Lunar New Year.
Considering all of this, it's no surprise that China is already the world's biggest market for surveillance software and hardware, estimated by industry researcher IHS Markit at $6.4 billion in 2016, a figure expected to triple by 2020. 

China's tech giants Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent are also jumping in, investing heavily in surveillance technology to take advantage of this boom.
These companies are starting to sell some of these tools abroad as well. 

In Ecuador, a Chinese ECU911 Integrated Security Service system, the development of which was connected to the state-owned China National Electronics Import and Export Corporation, was deployed in 2016 and credited with a 24 percent drop in crime. 

A more worrisome case was uncovered by Human Rights Watch, which found evidence that the Ethiopian government was using telecom-surveillance technology provided by the Chinese telecom giant ZTE to monitor the political opposition, activists and journalists.
Other companies are following ZTE's path. 

Yitu Technology, an AI facial-recognition company, has already set up offices in several African countries and is looking to expand to Europe, where it sees potential due to recent terrorist attacks -- the same rationale initially used to expand the surveillance state in East Turkestan. 

These examples are few and not yet a sign that the East Turkestan model is having a big global impact, but even if the overseas market for Chinese surveillance technology remains limited for now, many observers think that could quickly change.
"Now that China is delving into this new technology realm and is repressing very successfully and effectively, it is by nature that other dictatorial regimes would try to emulate this," said Feldstein.
"I think we're on the threshold of this exploding," said Zenz. 

"China wants to become a world leader in AI, and that includes a lot of these security applications that are already earmarked for exporting."
While the technology itself is not necessarily harmful, the concern is that in the wrong hands, it could empower repressive governments around the world to further abuse human rights. 

And the number of these regimes is growing, as recently released reports from the Economist Intelligence Unitand Freedom House show that around the world, free speech and democracy are falling and censorship, authoritarianism and autocracy are rising.
"The Chinese government is leading on thinking around mass surveillance, and it has the impact of influencing other countries to think, 'Well, we could have an authoritarian government but look outwardly stable by putting in these systems to make sure that even if people are discontented, we can still keep them down by ensuring that every move is monitored,'" said Wang. 

"As this technology becomes cheaper, that reality might become more possible even for countries without massive resources like the Chinese government."
Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar, East Turkestan

In East Turkestan, there are no signs that the massive buildup in both police presence and surveillance technology will recede anytime soon, despite the perceived success in limiting violence and protests thus far. 

If anything, it looks like things will get a lot worse. 

More and more Uyghurs, perhaps as many as 120,000, are being rounded up and sent to reeducation camps for minor offenses. 

Increasingly, any outward expression of religion or cultural expression is being seen as subversive, with even elderly intellectuals facing arrests, like the 82-year-old Islamic scholar Muhammad Salih Hajim, who died earlier this year in a reeducation camp. 

Now Uyghurs are also being forced to hand over DNA samples and put spyware on their phones. 

Meanwhile, spending on both technology and human-security presence is expected to rise even further.
"It is going to crazy heights and there are no sign of it abating ... quite to the contrary, the state officials are really into intelligent, big data processing, networking of information, storing all the information and linking it up, applying AI and predictive policing for it," said Zenz.
At least one facet of the East Turkestan model has gone global. 

Internet shutdowns, like what happened in East Turkestan in 2009, are now common around the world. 

Just this past year, there were widespread internet shutdowns in Indian-controlled Kashmir, the English-speaking region of Cameroon, Ethiopia, Kenya and more than 30 other countries. 

Often the causes are similar to what took place in East Turkestan -- ethnic tensions, riots or political events such as elections.
"It's an increase around the world," said Melody Patry, a spokesperson with Access Now. "Moreover, the phenomenon of repeat offenders is on the rise. ... When a government issues a first internet shutdown, they are more likely to issue others."
But China has moved on, and internet shutdowns are now rare. 

According to Access Now, there was only one documented shutdown in China in all of 2016. 

While uninformed observers could see this as a sign of progress, in actuality it shows that the next frontier of digital surveillance and state control is not blocking information access but harvesting it with a purpose.
"You don't need these blackout shutdowns anymore when you have much more fine-grained mechanisms of control ... that can very early on detect potential issues and problems, and in turn promote self-policing, self-censorship," said Zenz. 

"Because people know what consequences there are."
The shift in China is that the internet, which was initially seen as a threat due to its ability to allow users to access information, is now being perceived differently. 

What was back in 2009 blamed for the riots is now the source of information empowering the Chinese government to preemptively arrest and detain not only Uyghurs but also, increasingly, Chinese human rights lawyers, feminist activists and journalists around the country before they can post something inflammatory on a website or share sensitive content on WeChat.
"The internet ... has become a great source of information that can be intelligently processed at capacity and speed that was not possible 10 years ago," said Zenz. 

"What we see is a moving from a mere firewall that just blocks or an instant response, like the deletion of messages, to proactive self-censorship."
The global rise in shutdowns, which Access Now notes are getting more sophisticated and fine-tuned, shows that East Turkestan model has a market in an increasingly technological, authoritarian world. How quickly other countries follow China's move toward more total, personalized and data-driven control depends on both the need and the availability of the tools pioneered in East Turkestan on the global marketplace.