Howard French’s new book, China’s Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa (2014) advances the notion that China is building a new empire. This is a country still admired by many workers in smaller capitalist countries for standing up to the old imperialist powers of Europe and North America. The Chinese government describes its activity in Africa as a “win-win” interaction, fraternal solidarity between developing countries.
Communists dismiss this as self-serving capitalist propaganda, based on the analysis of imperialism developed by Russian communist Vladimir Lenin nearly a century ago (see box on page 7). Even some African bosses fear the burgeoning Chinese presence as a form of “soft power” empire building. This would represent a dramatic change from China’s activities in Africa during China’s socialist period under Mao Zedong, a time when “third world solidarity” was more than an anti-colonialist slogan.
Chinese Workers and Businesses in Africa
This book provides the reader with a useful snapshot of a massive and poorly understood continent through a series of short profiles of people on the ground in a dozen African countries. The author spoke with Chinese immigrants and African workers, focusing on the reasons the immigrants moved to Africa, their role in the economy and the way their presence is viewed by African workers.
The Africans interviewed range from government and NGO operatives to ordinary African workers employed by Chinese enterprises. Since he speaks Mandarin, his interviews included Chinese working-class immigrants.
The attraction of Africa is intense for many of them. Some were drawn by wages higher than they could find for similar work in China. Some had accumulated money working on projects for big Chinese firms and when their contracts were finished, decided to stay in Africa, acquire a bit of farmland or open a shop. In Africa, which has roughly 60 percent of the world’s unused arable land, the prospect of setting up one’s own farm is much better than back home in China. These farmers or operators of Chinese restaurants or roadside stalls would appear to be the majority of the one million Chinese workers living in Africa today.
Much of the author’s critique of China’s growing presence in Africa focuses on interactions between Chinese business owners and the African workers they hire — or don’t hire because of racism. China’s capitalists are faulted for not contributing to the training of African workers, or guaranteeing technology transfers to the indigenous workers. Yet, the fault for this is often laid at the feet of African capitalists, who are described as all too eager to accept gifts in exchange for deals that hurt African workers.
Although French comes across as giving an even-handed account that alludes to exploitative behaviors of European and U.S. powers in Africa, it is the Chinese who are quoted calling the Africans “lazy.” It’s Chinese capitalists we hear berating or beating Black workers. No context or history from past colonizers is ever mentioned, such as the brutal Portuguese rulers who amputated the hands of mineworkers for not delivering enough gold. Rather, the supposed benefits of Western style “democratic reforms” are constantly touted and shown in contrast to the Chinese pragmatic business dealings that include ignoring abusive policies of the host governments. The list of U.S.-backed butchers in Africa and other parts of the world is long, but never mentioned once. Yet, the author scolds the Chinese capitalists for being unprincipled and uncensored with “human rights.”
China: A Serious Imperialist Rival
Besides the investment of private Chinese capital in Africa, there are official Chinese government infrastructure projects, often undertaken as part of a construction-for-raw-materials deal. In those deals, the Chinese imperialist bosses lock in prices for resources to be extracted over a number of years. One example is the $6 billion deal recently negotiated with Congo. The Chinese government will build new roads, railway lines, hospitals and schools and in return have access to one of the world’s largest deposits of copper and cobalt for the next 20 years.
In another copper-mining enterprise in Zambia, the falsehood of Chinese bosses’ “win-win” rhetoric emerges in the details of violent clashes between the Chinese bosses and African workers. During one clash on October 15, 2010, the bosses shot miners who protested dangerous and extremely harsh working conditions for little pay.
Two other important large resource deals supported by the Chinese government deserve mention. They involve development of petroleum resources in Sudan and Libya. In 2011, the Chinese government evacuated tens of thousands of Chinese petroleum industry workers from Libya during the conflict that led to the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi. The Chinese walked away from some $30 billion in investment by abandoning Libya.
In Sudan, the Chinese fared a little better. They first supported the Sudanese government in Khartoum fighting against the U.S.-backed separatist rebels in the south. When the rebels succeeded in splitting their oil-rich province from the Khartoum regime’s control, the Chinese deftly switched their “friendship” to the separatists, and continued their gas and oil projects. As part of their development of South Sudan’s petroleum industry, 80 percent of the oil exported from there goes to China. China has stationed Chinese troops in the region to guard the wells and pipelines through which the oil is exported.
Most of China’s Second Continent toys with the question of whether or not China’s bosses have become a true imperialist power in Africa. The book makes no real effort to answer the question until the Epilogue, in which the author finally but reluctantly says, “yes.” But he ignores or sidesteps the key feature of imperialism: the inevitable tendency toward war to divide and re-divide the world for capitalist exploitation.
In reference to the Chinese pull-out from Libya the author ignores that the U.S. and French imperialist forces intervened on the side of anti-Gaddafi rebels. The implications for military conflict between superpowers competing for Africa’s resources are clear, even if this author doesn’t mention them. Nowhere in the book does he even mention AFRICOM, the U.S. military’s command for Africa, established in 2008.
All Imperialist Powers Destroy Workers’ Lives
For Chinese workers, no less than African workers or workers in any country, the implications of a new imperialist power rising to challenge the current top dog in the African continent need to be understood. The main contradiction is not “good” exploiters versus “bad” exploiters, but workers versus the imperialists. Working-class youth from the U.S. who have been sent to kill and be killed by their class brothers and sisters in various resource wars from Vietnam to Iraq can attest to the fact that the working people of imperialist countries have nothing to gain and everything to lose from wars over natural resources, markets or trade routes. For a billionaire owner of an oil company, there is the potential for enormous gain. For the soldier in the bunker, there is death, dismemberment or post-traumatic stress disorder. It is the duty of communists to constantly raise a clear analysis of world-shaping developments — like China’s growing empire in Africa — for our friends so they don’t fall victim to “lesser-evil” capitalist propaganda.
Africa: Flashpoint for World War?
The key point for communists is that Africa is becoming a likely flashpoint where the rivalry between great powers could develop into an inter-imperialist world war. That would turn workers from all countries into potential cannon fodder (soldiers used as mere war expenditures). This is the main message workers around the world need to hear.
Comrades should organize forums and book groups to increase knowledge and understanding among our friends. We should also look for opportunities to unite Chinese, African and other workers in multiracial protests. This could take the form of solidarity demonstrations around specific incidents growing out of this intensifying U.S.-China rivalry in Africa. Our comrades from Africa and China and U.S. marching together on May Day is a good start!

BOX:

 A Communist Definition of Imperialism

In Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism,  Lenin quoted Cecil Rhodes, the British financier for whom the colony of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) was named, who made the following comment after hearing angry protest speeches by unemployed London workers: “I became more than ever convinced of the importance of imperialism. … My cherished idea is a solution for the social problem, i.e., in order to save the 40,000,000 inhabitants of the United Kingdom from a bloody civil war, we colonial statesmen must acquire new lands to settle the surplus population, to provide new markets for the goods produced by them. … If you want to avoid civil war, you must become imperialists.”
Lenin listed these key developments that define imperialism in the capitalist epoch:
The concentration of production and capital into monopolies;
The merging of bank capital with industrial capital, creating a financial oligarchy;
The export of capital (as distinguished from the export of commodities) to other countries;    
The formation of international capitalist monopolies which share the world among themselves;    
The territorial division (and periodic re-division through war) of the whole world among the great capitalist powers.

TEXAS, April 20 —  In December 2014, the racist Obama government opened a new prison in Dilley, a small southern town in Texas to hold up to 2,400 immigrant women and youth who have been crossing into the U.S. since last summer. The new prison space was justified by Obama’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) lawyers because, they claimed, that the women and youth pose a “threat to U.S. national security” by their mass migration. Therefore all are held without bail even if they have a potential claim for asylum for fleeing persecution in their native countries.
The U.S. government has a profound racist fear of Latin and Black workers, who have the potential to lead a new wave of struggle. Almost all of these women and youth are fleeing violence, especially sexist attacks and killings, in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.
U.S. Bosses Fear Rebellion
The U.S. rulers know that the inmates of Dilley prison and their family members across the U.S. and in their home countries represent a threat of rebellion against capitalism. The act of crossing the border itself is an act of rebellion. Because these families are part of the most exploited sections of the world’s population, they are the most likely to fight back hardest throughout their lives. The situation is the same for Black working-class families in the U.S., who are increasingly subject to police murder in the streets and who face the very highest rates of arrest and incarceration.
 Racism is a divide-and-conquer strategy that only benefits the bosses, because super-exploitation of different sections of the working class guarantees that wages and conditions of all workers will remain low and be forced lower. Each group is brainwashed to accept the worsening conditions of the other. By keeping wages and conditions horrible for Black, Latin and Asian women workers, the system keeps millions of workers below a poverty level. Racism hurts the entire working class. It allows white and citizen workers’ wages and conditions to be driven down further. That is why the standard of living for workers in the U.S. worsens every year, except for the very rich. Racism is the key to capitalism’s profits!
Increased Rivalry Leads to Imperialist War
The U.S. capitalist class backs Central and South American governments to secure continuing U.S. imperialist domination there, where these countries are sources of profit and resources. In these countries, as in the Middle East, the U.S. imperialists must counter European, Chinese and Russian bosses’ investment and expanding influence. The U.S. recently assisted the present government of Honduras in suppressing a movement to align Honduras with Venezuela, which is in the Russian imperialist orbit.
Currently, the rulers of the U.S., Europe, Russia and China are intensifying their imperialist competition with each other for the world’s wealth. As the U.S. prepares for wider war with their imperialist rivals, it needs to build racist fear of immigrants along the southern border. Thus Dilley is part of an effort to build nationalism, as well as to convince citizens that “foreign” workers seek to steal jobs. This was a foundation of Hitler’s brand of fascist ideology in the 1930s, which taught that Jews were stealing jobs and property from non-Jews. It went from rhetoric to concentration camps, to mass exterminations.
 Dilley, and the intensification of racism at the U.S. Mexican border today, is at the cutting edge of 21st century U.S. fascism. Since 2000, the number of Border Patrol agents has doubled to 18,000 and fencing multiplied nine times to 700 miles. Predator drones now patrol a stretch of 900 miles along the border, with over 10,000 flights in the past two years. This, along with government-backed attacks on immigrants by border vigilantes such as the Minutemen, demonstrates the ability of capitalism to use fascist tools of the state to perpetuate racist terror on a mass scale.
“Deporter-in-Chief” Obama has deported more people than any other president — 2.4 million immigrants since taking office — and separated even more. Now he is imprisoning thousands at Dilley. Today, as in Germany in the 1930s, the liberals are paving the road to fascism.
March on May Day!
The bosses are looking to the 2016 presidential election in order to pacify workers’ anger over unemployment and racism. All the clowns in the electoral circus are enemies of the working class whether they are socialist, liberal, or conservative. The mass deportations and mass incarceration of Black and Latin workers is not the byproduct of a “ broken”  immigration system. It is the product of a racist capitalist system, a system that depends on racist super-exploitation to survive. Capitalism cannot be fixed. The U.S. bosses want these immigrant workers to be cannon fodder for larger and deadlier imperialist wars looming on the horizon through programs like the Dream Act.
Many churches and activist groups are calling for marches to release the inmates, and the Progressive Labor Party will be there to march with them! However, PLP fights for something more. In the past, Russian and Chinese workers and peasants, led by communists, defeated capitalism and ran society, and defeated German and Japanese fascism. Today, learning from past victories and failures of the old communist movement, and with the communist leadership of PLP, we can build a mass Red Army of the working class that will not only smash Dilley prison, but the entire capitalist system with communist revolution. MARCH ON DILLEY PRISON ON MAY 2, 2015!

BOGOTA, April 22 — Teachers of a rural town in Bogota, Colombia, went on strike in response to the Ministry of Education’s racist policies against working-class students.
The school administration maintained overcrowded classrooms by assigning 50 students to a room which can hold a maximum of 30, creating a health hazard, and harassing the students. This abuse, when added to the lack of a budget to respond to students’ needs, motivated the strike.  
The ministry called on the teachers’ representative to stop the strike and begin negotiations. It also wanted to accept a parents’ representative. The union refused and demanded the presence of 17 parents, one for each rural district. The union demanded a negotiating committee be set up.
After several days of negotiations, it was agreed to use the budget to improve the school under parents’ supervision. This budget was already allocated but the dean had refused to spend it, a move that highlighted his sinister motives. The students will be placed in other schools.
This agreement was the product of working-class unity and forcefulness. It showed that the initial fear of several teachers — who argued nothing could be done and that they would get hurt — could be transformed by the struggle.   
The teachers, as well as the other unions, have been suffering the consequences of the capitalist crisis. Year after year, they lose what they’ve won in previous struggles. The union bosses are a bunch of collaborationist misleaders who are in bed with the government.
Participation in reform struggles is part of the training for communist leaders. We must be part of those struggles to influence and guide the revolutionary struggle. Exploiting and attacking the working class is part and parcel of capitalism. It takes away crumbs workers gained through years of struggle.
A united working class under the leadership of the PLP is truly indestructible and in the long run the just revolutionary struggle for communism will succeed. Everything you do, and neglect to do, matters. Join PLP.

Dallas, TX, March 29  — Several PL’ers attended a small conference here of members of the One Democratic State (in Palestine) group.
This group oppose the two-state proposal because of two basic reasons: 1) Given the use of the right-wing settlements by the Israeli government to divide up and take over more and more of the remaining West Bank, any “Palestinian state” will be a collection of geographically separated islands. 2) All residents of, and refugees from, Palestine of all ethnicities should be able to live together in peace, justice and equality. They also want to see the end of both the Zionist government and the Palestinian Authority, which they view as a puppet of the government of Israel.
At the conference the question of what kind of state should be implemented was raised by PL’ers. Whether there are two states or one state, as long as it is under capitalism there will continue to be inequality, racism, oppression, exploitation and wars. Only by building communist revolution will we ever have a world where working-class families can live together as one.
There was no agreement on what type of state there should be. It was left with the statement,  “We encourage continued discussion on the future economic system.”
At the conference we did meet some  people who are looking for ways to work for a better world. CHALLENGEs and flyers were distributed to people with whom we talked.  We plan to keep in touch with some of those we met. It is important that we not ignore opportunities to reach out to people with our politics and our actions. The working class has nothing to lose but our chains.