French journalists Serge Michel and Michel Beuret [les deux Michels, ed.] made a grand tour of Africa a couple of years ago, visiting 12 countries as well as China. Their purpose was to discover what the Chinese are doing in Africa, and what might be their grand plan for the Dark Continent.
Out of their research they created an eminently readable book: China Safari: On the Trail of Beijing's Expansion in Africa. The book contains many interviews with Africans, great and small, who work with or for the Chinese.
One such is the very prosperous and urbane Claude Alphonse N'Silou, the Congolese* minister of construction and housing. Here are two quotes from M. N'Silou.
"[The Chinese] come from so far away, yet look how quickly they adapt. They live modestly, as we do, and we all get along very well with one another. And why? The Chinese build things and the Europeans don't.
"For Europeans, democracy is synonymous with progress. But the Chinese, like many Africans, think that more than a sprinkling of democracy is a dangerous thing. They worry that if China becomes too democratic too quickly and implodes, then the world will suffer the consequences. That's why the Chinese don't demand reforms from the African regimes they deal with: they understand that a little harshness is necessary. They sympathize."
I would suggest that the second quote reveals just as much about this African government official and his attitude to democracy as that of the Chinese. But it's the next quote that is really telling.
"They're dangerous, the Chinese. You watch out -- in ten years the world will be theirs."
* referring to Congo (Brazzaville), not the so-called Democratic Republic of the Congo, formerly Zaire.
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