China goes to great lengths to differentiate its engagement in Africa from the continent’s former European colonizers by emphasizing so-called “win-win development.” Chinese leaders regularly visit Africa where they emphatically reject the accusation of neo-colonialism and that Beijing is only interested in exploiting the continent’s natural resources.
The reality, though, is much more complicated, according to Financial Times Investigations Correspondent Tom Burgis. The Chinese, writes Burgis in his new book “The Looting Machine” are just the latest entrant in Africa’s “Looting Machine” where, through collusion with corrupt African elites, the continent’s wealth and resources are plundered on a staggering scale.
Burgis emphasizes that it would not be accurate to equate China’s participation in the “Looting Machine” to that of the former imperial powers that once ruled Africa. Instead, he says, the Chinese in Africa are often operating within the parameters of global capitalism, a system that implicates all of us who buy goods in today’s borderless market.
Burgis joins Eric & Cobus this week to discuss the darker, more nefarious side of China’s engagement in Africa.
Show Notes:
- Financial Times review of “The Looting Machine”
- The New York Times review of “The Looting Machine”
- Financial Times: “China in Africa: How Sam Pa Became the Middleman” by Tom Burgis
Tom Burgis is a London-based Investigations Correspondent for the Financial Times. He has covered Africa for the Financial Times for over six years, in particular the natural resource industries and the corruption and conflict that often accompany them. He was a correspondent in Johannesburg from 2008-2009 and west Africa correspondent, based in Lagos, from 2009-2011. Before joining the FT he worked in South America and as a London-based freelancer covering, among other things, the anti-globalisation movement.
