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Comment by pastor_elm | Hacker News Reader

Colonizing Africa is a futile effort. The Chinese should look at South Africa to see how Africans will deal with unjust ownership.

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With due respect, South Africa returned to majority rule / democracy when the apartheid government willingly stepped down. If they had not decided too, it is very probable that they would still be in power today. The odds of a China with its multi decades long plans and wealth stepping away from territory they have taken under their wing is very slim. China is being smart about it, using wealth (loans) and technology to build an economic foothold instead of strength. Once they are in though I could see it transitioning to something else in the long term.

> using wealth (loans) and technology to build an economic foothold instead of strength.

To be fair, that has been pretty much the world bank playbook for decades. I dont see why an exploitation in that form would revert back to more classic forms of colonialism. Upholding a colonial regime is simply not worth the effort if you have similar financial benefits with loans with horrible conditions.

Maybe... In most cases western colonialism didn't end because of resistance, but because the west decided it didn't like colonialism.

More to the point, the West could no longer afford colonialism in the post-WWII era. Empires were impractical.

"If you keep getting in fights with your white buddies, you won't have the energy to push around brown people." Now there's a message for our time.

Sad but true.

I am not sure how the rest of Western colonization was just. Check out King Leopold II of Belgium [1]; it's but an example.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocities_in_the_Congo_Free...

I don't think Chinese investment in Kenya (or the rest of Africa) is the same as colonization, at all. International trade and investment is a much more mutually beneficial relationship, with a strong track record of success. What's mostly different here is that China, rather then the US or Europe, is the dominant financial partner.

It's pretty much textbook neo colonialism.

What does that even mean? Are there Chinese troops in Kenya? Is the government a puppet state? Don't just string buzzwords together, make a real argument that this is harmful, or comparable.

I'm not stringing buzzwords together, it's a concept that's more than fifty years old talking about colonialist effects via economic power instead of direct military or political power.

> Neocolonialism, neo-colonialism, postmodern imperialism, or neo-imperialism is the practice of using capitalism, globalization and cultural imperialism to influence a developing country in lieu of direct military control (imperialism) or indirect political control (hegemony). It was coined by Kwame Nkrumah in the context of African countries undergoing decolonization in the 1960s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neocolonialism

People make those broad claims because they never been colonized themselves, and it may not be worth your time educating them on the difference since they haven't experienced anything else.

In my humble experience, they are disproportionately likely to be the descendants of colonizers and are sometimes uncomfortable with their own privilege.

Lol, so Kwame Nkrumah has never been colonized? He's the one who defined the term.

It's a learning experience too, for both China and African societies. I believe Chinese people and institutions working in these countries are finding themselves in positions of responsibility and connectedness that they didn't expect, and they seem to be (sometimes slowly) be finding creative ways forward.

Interesting perspective! And it makes some sense.

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