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I have seen more of these than I can count in West Africa, and I am told the same is true in the East (I am going there next).

The scale of construction here is staggering - I wrote a little about it [1]. It is not only roads - it's dams, deep water ports, high-rise buildings, etc. Basically anything that requires a high degree of competency in engineering.

Western governments are now held to account when they make deals with African countries - the country must have fair votes, human rights, free speech etc. As you might guess, many African countries are not so hot on this.

China? They couldn't care less, and have no such requirements, so African governments are much happier to deal with them.

[1] http://theroadchoseme.com/chinese-road-construction

Maybe this is better as well, once citizens have more welfare they have more power to acquire human rights.

Who said anything about citizens getting more welfare?

China is stripping these countries bare, and the money goes straight into the pockets of the corrupt ruling class. It is staggering to see the countries with the multi-hundreds-of-billions in resources have the poorest citizens.

I think a distinction must be made between a completely extractive economy and one that is based on manufacturing. So if its simply raw materials being mined and shipped abroad, then yes I agree with the stripping the countries part. If they are actually manufacturing stuff....

Oh actually, if they're employing only Chinese citizens for manufacturing, then I agree with your assessment.

One of the major "problems" with African economies is they manufacture essentially nothing, and everything they export is completely unprocessed raw materials.

I think that's highly debatable; it's obvious human rights aren't a massive priority to China, and neither is transfer of wealth to those countries.

Even if Chinese money does end up in a rush of trade and business, without strong political systems, its debatable whether wealth will make it into the hands of people who will subsequently push for human rights.

Remember also that China is simultaneously creating a blueprint with its own country showing developing nations how to create economic transformations and a level of freedom and opportunity in society without political reform. It's quite likely that even if the push creates wealth and prosperity in a host nation that doesn't have strong democratic institutions, they might start adopting Chinese political norms and techniques.

* as a side note, the western aid model has huge drawbacks too and carries similar if/but criticisms. I think it's just too simplistic for the Chinese side to say "well, everything will be fine once we create wealth!"

It's a very long game, though. The end results of the British Empire seem to be a net positive, although in most cases it took several hundred years and numerous wars.

On the other hand, the Spanish empire doesn't seem to have been so beneficial.

For Britain? Yes.

India doesn't agree with your thesis.

India is one of the successes. (After, of course, the United States, Canada, and Australia). It's the largest democracy in the world, and set up to be one of the wealthiest and most powerful after the current crop of powers.

How much of the positive is the result of British empire? And does it offset poverty caused by centuries of colonialism?

Really? I wouldnt call India a democratic success. I worked in India for a few months doing recruiting and have seen more poverty than I’m comfortable with, and I’ve been to some really poor countries. Old women selling vegetables for pennies on the side of a slum can have all the vote she wants, but it won’t change a thing

I had a long discussion with a few Indian coworkers. And the main problem they mention is politicians will promise irresponsible amount of free stuff to the poorest untouchable that end up being terrible policies

Nothing against the country, but take a look at the GDP of India vs China. They started out both at the bottom of world development, and 2 decades later...

https://imgur.com/gallery/itzav

The difference between Chinese and Western imperialism is the Chinese bring their whole population with them while the west tries to use a complex proxy system to control things remotely without having to live there.

This strategy is just as transparent as it sounds. Eventually US/EU regulators will find out and shut it down. A similar thing recently played out when a Chinese company owned by the son of a major Chinese aluminum smelting magnate tried to cross ship about a ridiculous quantity of aluminum through Mexico. In this case, certain rules may need to be amended, but that is not outside the realm of possibility.

> But concentration of manufacturing know-how remains in China.

The US and EU had a monopoly on manufacturing know how for all sort of things until some executives voluntarily transferred that to the (then) third world in order to maximize short term profits. Their successors have spent the last decade shifting semiconductor production from China to lower cost countries like Vietnam, Malaysia, and Thailand.

You assume that the US and EU politicians aren't actually fine with it.

If they were fine with it, there wouldn't have been quotas for China in the first place.

Remember that the prime objective of a politician is to retain power. These quotas are responses to demands from electorate to do something to win their votes... not necessarily because they want or don't want them. In fact it's probably in their best interests to play it both ways as what the GP comment implies.

> executives voluntarily transferred that to the (then) third world in order to maximize short term profits

They gave China their secret sauce (well, actually, China demanded it as a prerequisite) in return for access to one billion new customers.

China then cloned the tech and under-priced the foreign competition. See: High-speed rail, wind-turbines etc.

Can't say if it was the 'right' thing to do for Western companies. But it was brilliant for China, who are now, in turn, buying up Western manufacturing companies.

The US did similar to Europe back in the 1800s, and plenty of evidence to suggest they are still at it today e.g. NSA etc.

Not trying to be confrontational but is there any evidence that that NSA is engaged in industrial espionage?

Those billion consumers had no money to buy anything. They gave away their secret sauce for cheap workers and bad ('good') labor laws, and lost all internal expertise, had their products cloned.

The Chinese market started becoming a thing a decade or two after Made in China became a thing.

> Eventually US/EU regulators will find out and shut it down.

As I said in another comment in this thread, in the EU (e.g. Prato in Italy) there are examples of this strategy that date back to the 80's, so I wouldn't be so sure about the willingness of the EU regulators to shut them down.

Some background info here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/13/world/europe/13prato.html

I think this is an urban legend, or at least a major hyperbole. The Chinese businesses (at least the ones I know in Kenya) all employ lots of locals. What is Chinese is management and most of the highly skilled workers.

It's more about keeping the value-add than creating jobs for Chinese. We can argue that it's bad for locals, but unlike western colonialism, this happens under the rules the local governments have set them self. As the article points out - this might change if the Chinese government feels it needs to protect it's interests abroad - which could happen if a populist anti-chinese movement appears.

Western colonialism happened pretty much among the same lines. Start as law-abiding traders, get pissed off by some local lord, build a fort, train a local army. Local army is better supplied and trained than local lords army, so now you engage in military games (either protection or outright conquest).

Certainly I don't see this happening in any of the African countries. What China can do is what most Western countries do today to get debtor countries in line: refuse access to credit, or increase the interest rates on future loans.

I'm interested to see if China plays regime-changing games that the US and (then) Soviet Union did when its interests were under threat. So far, it doesn't seem to be employing that strategy, but I wonder if they will...

China does a similar thing with agriculture. Huge plots of land in Australia and New Zealand are controlled by Chinese farming companies and staffed by Chinese. All the food they produce goes back to China.

It is not true that they mainly (or even significantly) employ chinese on Australian Farms - these farms are generally managed by the previous owners or managers and staffed by Australians, with australian Agronomists. In actual fact, very little changes on a day to day basis, except there is more funds available for infrastructure and capital goods purchase (and property values are driven up).

Which, when you think about it, makes the best managerial sense - What the hell is a chinese person going to do coming to australia and farming - they don't know the conditions, they don't know the land - that's a quick way to destroy all the value they hope to create. Local know-how is essential in agriculture. + they wouldn't be able to get enough on 457's to come in and run it even if they wanted to import all their workers.

Source: Australian, from a farm, neighbouring farms have been purchased by chinese buyers

to the dead post: Australia has always relied on capital inflows for infrastructure and capital improvement. in the 30s-50s it was from the UK, the 60s and 70s from the US (especially with the growth and introduction of Cotton in Australia), the 80-90s from Japan, and now China. All those waves of investment have come with fears of 'takeovers' and all of them have passed. maybe the current one will go for longer, who knows. Fear of foreign ownership are a little overhyped; they can't take the land with them and they must be good stewards of it in order to earn good returns. And they must employ locals in order to do that too - which has brought revitalisation to some regional areas that have gone through downturns.

Well Shepparton and Mooroopna has quite a substantial number if Chinese farm workers. In Safeway, nearly whole Saturday is busy with Chinese farm workers shopping. I haven't really enquired on which specific farm they work, because they generally shun interaction and also due to language barrier.

Also, Shepparton has a substantial Punjabi farming population and I can tell you from experience that the farmers do take inputs from Tatura Agricultural institute but the management to production to packing is all Punjabis. Your comment is significantly false information. Shepparton is filled with people who don't have local know-how, but have developed it.

Sounds like you might be unsure whether they are foreign contract workers or immigrants. Punjabis would almost certainly be immigrants

Punjabis are from India and Pakistan, not from China, if that wasn't clear to you.

They have a reputation as good workers in agri businesses. See this article about how they invigorated Italy's cheese business: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/08/world/europe/08iht-italy08...

(The article references most workers as being Sikhs. Sikhs are adherents of the religion of Sikhism, but I believe nearly all of them are ethnically Punjabis)

> What the hell is a chinese person going to do coming to australia and farming

Met 2 Chinese guys from China in a hostel in Melbourne who could speak little, they said there going to work on a farm somewhere in rural Aus and lot of other other people from their village where working there.

I didnt ask if they were working legally or not.

You want to cite a source on that?

Somewhere between 5-10% of NZ farmland and forestry is owned by foreign interests. That's not just China, but all other countries, of which Australia is a large investor in NZ. A large amount of this land is owned by super funds.

Fonterra has an 84% market share in the dairy sector, Fonterra is a collective, owned by the individual farms.

Now, the Chinese are building milk powder factories exclusively for export to China, and owned by Chinese companies. But they are employing local people, and constructed by locals, they aren't staffed by Chinese, because the hassle of trying to get a factory worth of workers immigrating to New Zealand isn't worth it, when you could just as easily pay locals. At the end of the day, you can't pay Chinese workers less, because there is a minimum wage.

The suppliers to these factories are independent dairy farmers, there's little vertical integration here.

In the end, these plants grow the economy and create jobs. Sure, in an ideal world, it would all be NZ owned, but nobody wants to cough up the cash here to build more plants.

New Zealand is a small country, it has always relied heavily on foreign investment and ownership, and always will. The population and economy is too small to do it any other way, NZ has to turn to globalism in order to have a healthy, functioning economy.

Well you could just pay them illegally under the table. I'm ignorant about NZs economy, and you have good points/questions but I felt that it needed to be said.

In the US we have huge migrant groups that are responsible for a large amount of the harvesting in this country, and most are paid well under minimum wage. Not saying it's right... just how it is.

Illegal migrants are easy to pay under minimum wage, because they're under the radar. However, illegal immigration to NZ is (comparatively) minuscule and you don't really hear about payments under the table, except in small businesses like restaurants, massage etc.

How would you get sizeable groups of illegal farm helps into NZ? How would they live/send money back home/travel back home etc? NZ is a remote island, this is not a Mexico/Arizona situation. NZ native farmers are very in control of their farms and NZ's agriculture industry in general.

This happens in Africa, not Australia.

Link? Please?

I know there are at least two in Italy, and they're coming to the United States. One is under construction in the desert just north of Las Vegas. (Apex area, IIRC - near the now abandoned Faraday Future Chinese electric car factory. The groundbreaking was on local TV news.)

This gives companies ability to get the coveted "Made in USA" label on their products, but they're built by Chinese nationals in a Chinese-owned factory in a Chinese-only compound to Chinese quality standards.

This is discrimination and wouldn't be possible in the EU

This is not a recent phenomenon. The Italian city of Prato has had that type of businesses for at least 20 years now, this is common knowledge in Italy (I grew up there) and I could also find a NYT article about it: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/13/world/europe/13prato.html

Do you have an example of one of these compounds? An article about them?

I have one about Italy http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/13/world/europe/13prato.html

>I have one about Italy

Prato is a case on its own, there is no "large company" or "compound".

The Chinese have come on an individual basis, after the first few came (which dates much before, in the 80's) they brought families, friends, etc., and replaced - little by little - the native artisans (largely in the textile sector).

But even before they arrived, Prato's economy was different from any other Italian textile district, there have been traditionaly very few large factories (there were some, but not like - say -northern Italy), besides the workers in the factories everyone worked in small laboratories or at home, often involving all the family members in the production. (and it was not at all uncommon that factory workers had anyway a couple looms at home that they worked on the evenings or night, while their wives operated them during the day, while doing the normal household chores).

The Chinese simply replaced the natives, adopting the exact same "individual" approach.

Am I the only one thinking of the Snow Crash novel when reading this ?