Chinese trade with Africa keeps growing; fears of neocolonialism are overdone
The Economist
Mar 23rd 2013 | NAIROBI
A GROUP of five tourists from Beijing passes low over Mount Kenya and
into the Rift Valley in their private plane before landing on a dusty
airstrip surrounded by the yellow trunks and mist-like branches of fever
trees. They walk across a grassy opening where zebras and giraffes
roam, snapping pictures while keeping an eye out for charging buffaloes.
When they sit down at a table, they seem hungry but at ease. “Last year
I went to the South Pole with some friends,” says one of two
housewives, showing off iPhone pictures of a gaggle of penguins on
permafrost.
Chinese are coming to Africa in ever greater numbers and finding it a
comfortable place to visit, work in and trade. An estimated 1m are now
resident in Africa, up from a few thousand a decade ago, and more keep
arriving. Chinese are the fourth-most-numerous visitors to South Africa.
Among them will be China’s new president, Xi Jinping, who is also going
to Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo on his first foreign
outing as leader.
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