China's Rush Into Africa, Explained.

It's January 2017 at the African Union headquarters here in Ethiopia, an IT engineer is looking at the servers in this building and something seems wrong. The engineer notices that often in the middle of the night these servers connect to some server in Shanghai and upload files. emails and audio files the headquarters of the

africa

n union was built in 2012. but it was not paid for by any

africa

n nation the impressive new headquarters of the african union funded entirely by the chinese government this building was a gift of 200 million dollars from the Chinese Government was designed and built by Chinese companies with Chinese money and yes, the servers were installed by Chinese engineers who apparently left an intentional backdoor in the servers so they were easily accessible.

The African Union's IT team eventually removed these Chinese servers and installed new ones. The Chinese government literally offered to install them, but they rejected the local request. People also swept the building and found microphones embedded in furniture and walls. The entire building was bugged and had been sending audio and internal emails to China for five years. years since the building was built China building a headquarters for the African Union and then spying on it is a good symbol of what China is doing in Africa and that's what this video is about, it's about how a growing China has

rush

ed towards Africa mainly.

By building a lot of things: roads, trains, dams, mines, ports, these projects are part of China's growth as a superpower and shows how this country is projecting its power on the African continent, but there are questions here about why the headquarters of such an important company. The African organization is entirely the work of Chinese construction labor and money, okay, so there is something very predictable that you see over and over again as countries become powerful, as a country becomes richer. , they often begin to look outward, both economically and militarily. Let me explain what I mean. Here, 50 years ago, China was a very poor country with a huge population, but eventually they opened up to the world, opened up their huge population as a workforce for cheap labor, and their economy exploded.

China's agrarian urbanization is rapid but it is still agrarian in terms of land not population come on Michael no no you are wrong about this so now China is a very rich country and remember rich countries start Looking outward, how can you project your power? Connect with other countries to continue your growth. They do this for a couple. of reasons the first is the economic reason in the same way that the United States became really rich and prosperous and began to look to China for cheap labor. China also became rich and its labor eventually became expensive.

Wages rose and China needed its own option. Looking for cheap labor and new growth opportunities, they then began investing huge amounts of money, like $300 billion, in Africa. Well, that's the economic reason why China is growing very fast, their growth is slowing down, so they need to invest in emerging economies, that's what economists will do. Call them economies that have not yet developed very quickly but with a little investment could begin to develop untapped markets, but the economic explanation is only half the story here in China, the economy and government power are not very separated, so to understand what China really depends on you, you have to understand the geopolitical reasons and to do that we have to look at a map.

Here are all the countries where China has projects and yes, I just highlighted every country on the African continent, I mean. Apart from this small country of Swaziland, they are the ones holding out in all of this. These projects range from transportation projects such as roads and trains to energy such as oil and dams, to real estate projects such as housing developments and then mining. like copper, you have everything from a shoe factory in Ethiopia to a six billion dollar Chinese-funded dam in Nigeria to a massive suspension bridge in Mozambique, the longest in Africa. I mean, these projects are everywhere, even here on this little island off the coast where China has invested millions of dollars to build housing, a stadium, an auditorium, a library and its national parliament, China built it all.

There are too many of these projects to even count and honestly, if you take it as a whole, many of these projects have been a huge benefit and economic stimulus to the economies of these countries, but why is China doing this? What are they doing besides all the economic value of investing in emerging markets? China's president also claims that they are doing this in the name of cooperation and friendship. African way, let's dig into this and really see what these projects look like and how they're built, and if it really is African way, whatever that means, okay, so there's this really impressive railway system that China built in Kenya, It goes from Nairobi to Mombasa. in just under four hours, which is faster than any train in the United States, which, let's be honest, isn't saying much because here in the United States we no longer know how to build trains that we used to be very good at.

Not anymore, it's a shame and anyway, look at this train in Kenya. This rail system was a $3.6 billion project, the most expensive infrastructure project since Kenya's independence and was largely paid for with a giant loan from the Chinese state. -run by a bank so it was financed by China, designed by Chinese engineers and then built by Chinese construction companies who sent Chinese workers to hire locals and manage the project and now it is a Chinese company that actually manages the project . If you travel on this train, you will see all safety announcements and all documentation in Chinese in Mandarin.

It is very clear who financed and built this. It seems like China just parachuted in and dropped this on Kenya and now Kenya is sitting on billions of dollars of debt. they will eventually have to pay China, in fact 72 of all Kenya's debt is owed to China and this railway was meant to reduce congestion on the highway that runs parallel to it but has not, in fact this railway It passes through both of these national parks, while the train will offer passengers a unique view as it passes through the national park. Conservationists are concerned that this construction will affect the ecosystem and the wildlife that lives here and is not actually doing what it said it was going to do.

Get it done, yes Kenya has this big shiny railway but it wasn't really solving African problems the African way, meanwhile the Chinese construction workers who came to build this were caught treating the local workers very badly, making them sit at separate tables during meal breaks. punishing them when they didn't meet deadlines or take out the trash on time, which was mixed in with the fact that some of these Chinese workers were taking bribes as part of a huge corruption scheme with this railroad and it's clear that this project was not It was actually about supporting the local environment, it just left Kenya with a huge debt and a big shiny railway, but listen, that's not always the case, there are tons of these projects and some of them are actually helping The locals, like this big beautiful shiny road here.

In Lesotho this used to be a bad gravel road and now it's a beautiful shiny road that helps locals get around their country so it's definitely a mix and listen I get it. China wants to give a loan of 5 billion to Nigeria. build a dam because Nigeria has 200 million people, many of them young, and you want to help them become a booming economy so you can share in some of that growth. Oh and you love the fact that you don't have to meet any environmental standards while doing these projects, I know you love China, I know, that's the reason for the business, we are looking for new economies to invest in and be part of your growth, but if you look at a deeper level, you will win.

Not only do I see a lot of investment projects, you'll see a lot of gifts from China and I'm especially intrigued by the political ones, like when China shows up and builds a new parliament building, something they've done for seven countries. in Africa or when China offers $32 million for free to build the new ECOWAS headquarters, which is basically the economic union in West Africa, they do it for free, we will build them a new headquarters. Well, let me clarify that there is no such thing as a gift in international relations everything has conditions, so an important part of all this investment in Africa is China investing in its future as a global superpower that needs to have friends and historically has not had a lot of friends all over the world because the big guy, the united states has been doing all the friendship work giving things to people and improving their lives so they can be allies, so

china

is getting involved in this and

china

has used your checkbook to make friends with literally every country in Africa, of course, too.

Swaziland, the small country in the south that has been the only country that has resisted all this by funneling all this money to these countries. China has been able to get all of these countries, plus Swaziland, to no longer recognize Taiwan and support China instead, the tl dr about that is that you can't support Taiwan and China because they both think they are China, so you have to support one or the other, so China has managed to get everyone to denounce Taiwan and say Support China, that's another thing I'm making videos about. Suffice it to say that China has been using its checkbook to make all these people its friends.

It's kind of like the rich kid from high school that brings you. an mp3 player because he wants you to be his friend and you're sweet if you give me your mp3 player I'll be your friend I grew up in the early 2000s my high school had mp3 players sorry for the throwback but remember when China built the headquarters of the African Union and then placed microphones throughout the building so that he could spy on the leaders, their emails and their conversations. That's a perfect representation of the conditions that are generally tied to these projects, but perhaps the least obvious, but the most dangerous ties are deaths.

John Adams said it best when he said: There are two ways to conquer and enslave a country, one is with the sword and the other with debt. It's a pretty intense quote, but it really applies here to many of These projects have been paid for with Chinese money through loans. African nations are deeply in debt. We all know that when you owe someone money, that person has a lot of power over you, especially if you get to the point where you can't pay them back. and this is not just theoretical: a few years ago, China helped Sri Lanka build a port here on the southeast coast.

It was obtained with a Chinese loan. Over time, Sri Lanka had difficulty repaying that loan, so in 2017 China stepped in and said, "I can't." Don't pay your debt, don't worry, just lease us this port, let us have it for 99 years and Sri Lanka is like that, it doesn't sound very good to give a part of our sovereign territory to China, which they could potentially use for military purposes, but we are. They are so in debt and they are offering to relieve some of that debt if we give them this port. So this port now partly belongs to China.

This sets a dangerous precedent that could apply to many of these nations in Africa that have gone under. They are deeply indebted to China and may not be able to pay it back in the future, so China is growing and honestly behaving like any superpower would when it is growing so fast. I mean, if we wanted to make a video about how America has projected itself. power over the years, it would be a much worse video, okay, so let's make it clear that China is a superpower, they are doing their superpower things, this is very normal superpower behavior, it doesn't make it right, it just makes it very normal and Typical China has shown a specific interest in Africa, leading to countless infrastructure projects that have honestly been an impressive site to behold, but have raised questions about what the real motives are here;

It's not just business and economics and the most important question is that What I want to keep an eye on in the future is how all this debt will play out, how the African nations that are so deeply indebted to China will have to pay that debt in the future and what It will happen if they can't pay it. Before you go, I want to tell you about the sponsor of today's video, expressvpn. The way I think about a VPN is like you can connect to the Internet, but you can route it through a different country, so any site youDon't do it.

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Thank you expressvpn for sponsoring this video. Thank you all for being here and listening to this story about China and Africa. I wanted to do it for a long time. Really a long time and honestly I'm interested in making more videos about China, not just about Chinese aggression and all that, which I think is a very American-centric way of thinking about China, but also about really dealing with China and what China really depends on is a rising power, China is going to be an important part of our world for many years to come and I really want to understand it as I understand it.

I will share everything with you, so have a good day and we will see you very soon in the next video