Is China DESTROYING Africa?

hello guys and welcome to another video today I'm talking about something that's kind of dear to my heart and that is Africa as most of you know I'm South African although I'm a British South African I grew up in Africa my parents being British of course I grew up in a British household but I still grew up in Africa and that means I was exposed to Africa the African bush all through my childhood you know I used to go out and have these adventures through Africa and it's kind of near and dear to my heart even though I don't talk very favorable about favorably about South Africa Africa itself is still always going to be a big part of me and that's why this particular subjects like I said really hits close to home and it's what's happening in Africa with China what China's doing to Africa so let's just cut to the chase and talk about what's happening in Africa right now you know Africa has always had this sort of corrupt warlord thing going on dictatorships you know governments including the country I come from South Africa always very corrupt and on the take so they're very easily bought up with money and this makes things like the environment always take a sort of second place to money and that's where the Chinese succeed very well in Africa because they can approach these corrupt governments and line their pockets and then just be given access to all of the the natural wealth minerals animals plants trees etc so what you're seeing is in Central Africa we'll start there a huge amount of deforestation and logging things like that and it's quite detrimental in fact I'll show you a quick video it's taken by an African guys very upset about this so let's quickly go to that now when people are talking of timber harvesting this is what they mean look this I'm at the site now the activist going to chain do we really need to blame the Chinese on this they got these payments from forestry to cut these things our traditional authorities involved it's our government nobody else Chinese were given this pin and they are taking advantage of our our forests we need to blame the government I mean the Chinese know our country is going to the dogs look at this tree diameter of more than 1 meter diameter this is mostly one is called the basic takaki it's gone gone gone to the dog you can separate the video this tree stakes here to replace and they were cut now they have been trimmed to be put into containers and goes to valleys in then China another big thing of course is illegal gold mining and this is something legal and illegal but this especially illegal goes on in Africa you often see to have these big arrests where they go and capture a bunch of sort of illegal Chinese gold miners so they go there illegally mined the gold but in the process they divert river systems they use a lot of chemicals of course for the whole mining process which is very bad to the local environment and there are other things as well that happened here a lot of the illegal immigrants and migrants to go work there they end up having children with the locals and then when they finished and they leave they just abandon their families which has become a huge issue of course this is very unfortunate because you get a lot of these abandoned families and they're from very poor rural areas they've got no way to contact the outside world and they're kind of just waiting for their Chinese father you know to come back so not only do you get the illegal migrants having children in abandoning their families and it is a problem there news articles all about this in Africa but you also get the the guys who get married for a visa they get married because obviously it's you to have a visa then they can work legally there but they also kind of at the end of their work when they've earned what they need to her and they just bugger off and leave the families alone and it's it's a pretty bad problem and I mean bad enough that it makes the media all the time another thing which is a huge problem is of course the the insatiable hunger for rare animals you know TCM or traditional Chinese medicine calls for the use of rare animal parts in fact the rarer the animal the more prized - the parts are so rhino horns Tiger parts you know tiger tendons and claws and Tiger penises and you know weird things like this Pangolin scales are in huge demand not only in China of course but all over Asia so Vietnam Thailand you name it because they all have a very similar belief system the thing is because the Chinese are very wealth wealthy these days there's a massive demand so when you have somebody from the traditional background let's say fairly uneducated but very traditional background in China what will happen is they will grow up with these beliefs that if you have rhino horn or something it's good for your libido then what happens next is they earn a little bit of money and what do they spend their money on well they're gonna spend it on everything that they could never afford so they spend it on houses cars and of course rare animal parts and the worst part about it is that there are people out there in Asia that will pay huge amounts of money to be able to eat or use the parts from the last animal on earth because they're rarer the animal the more sought-after its bits are of course this all plays into the whole corruption that I was talking about earlier and you very often find like the ivory Queen that's just recently been arrested in Africa who of course knew all the local government people and she had all of her connections and guanxi and things like that and so was able to operate for years and years and years basically causing the near extinction of certain animals just because they know how to get the supply chain up through Hong Kong into China or wherever they do it and she can grease the palms of all the local politicians and customs agents and stuff and get it up from East Africa and buyers from the Asian countries so she has a very big network here in Tanzania in East African Kenya and Uganda also so it is a huge problem that we have to acknowledge is that the thirst for these TCM rare animal parts is coming almost exclusively from China these days of course Asia - and making it illegal is something that you can do but it's never going to stop the corruption in the bribery and the demand so until the demand goes away rare animals especially in Africa are a huge risk of extinction there is one other big thing that's happening in Africa through this whole belt and road initiative not only that but just these huge debt traps because the Chinese government right now is putting a lot of money into infrastructure but it's weird how they do it they'll approach an African country and say hey you guys need railroads you guys need schools you guys need highways we'll build them for you it's going to be good for your economy we're also going to inject a lot of money and lend you a lot of money so of course that suits the local government very very well they accept these terms and then the Chinese companies come in but what they do is they end up hiring Chinese laborers from overseas not local laborers and if they do they only hire them a little bit and pay them very little so this leads to a lot of you know discontent with the local people in Africa in these African countries and it ends up getting the money that's being spent they're sent back to China anyway and then these governments in these countries end up with a huge debt to China and this is very strategic from China's part because what they can then do is they could take over the airports they can take over the stretchy strategic ports if there any seaports there and they can take over mining for instance the mining industries things like that and so basically it's a honey trap they allow the the the country to get into debt and then they come in and take what they want this is a huge problem that's currently facing Africa now everybody can agree that the whole sort of colonization of Africa by Europeans and different European nations in the past didn't really come to a very favorable outcome you know if you look at Africa today a lot of it's still in sort of a very chaotic state you've got a lot of civil war a lot of starvation famine a lot of bad things going on I mean that's just the nature of Africa let's be honest that's the way it is but every single time a colony was basically abandoned and left to the locals it descended into chaos now you can point the blame at the Europeans you can point the blame at the Africans it doesn't actually matter the problem is that now China is basically neo colonizing Africa it's basically the same thing all over again Chinese police or the south end police the community policing is very beneficial for for the whole police work and we had both of us aware the security in South areas not so good as we expect so with more and more please local police of South African to study Chinese and that they can get along with the local Chinese community and if they can understand basically understand the Chinese culture the Chinese language and easy for them to get along with the Chinese shoppers or Chinese shop owners and easy for them to carry out their please walk with Europeans although they did exploit the land did terrible things in the past in Africa they they carry a very big guilt this very big burden of guilt and that's why you'll see all these sort of charitable organizations sending aid to Africa you'll see you know at least the attempt for reparation with China they're pumping money in there but Africa hasn't dealt with China before they don't really understand how China operates and unfortunately China is not one of these places that feels charitable they will take everything from the land and then they will leave when there's nothing to take and they will never give anything back although I have a lot of fondness and love for China I don't have any fondness for what China has done to the environment both in China itself and across the globe I hope you guys found this informative I'm not trying to stir hatred here or any problems between Africa China or Europe or whatever it is I just want to point it out that my African friends are now really feeling the crunch they're really not happy with what China is doing and China's extending itself more and more into Africa and at the end of the day I think this is going to end very poorly for everyone involved so until next time guys you know the drill as always stay awesome also don't forget every single Friday you can catch another serpent today video 1:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time over here up there on Wednesday you can take a look at a lo 86 video and of course most importantly every single Monday ATV China down here

Channel: undefined

Views: 282,233

Rating: 4.6399169 out of 5

Keywords: Belt and Road, Ivory poaching, illegal gold mining, pangolin, traditional chinese medicine, debt traps, China Africa, China Africa debt trap, China Africa relations, China Africa colonization, China africa debt, China news, South Africa, investment, gold, China in Africa, exploitation, Chinese in Africa, Kenya, China, Africa, China Africa Summit, People's republic of China, Railway, infrastructure, ADVChina, Laowhy86, SerpentZA, Xi Jinping, belt and road initiative, cgtn africa, Diamonds

Id: rlAb-Gfeoyk

Length: 11min 42sec (702 seconds)

Published: Fri May 03 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Leon_Grotsky]

This is not going to be a popular comment (chain now) I suspect, but there is greater context to this story than just the exploitation of Africa's natural resources and Chinese Imperialism. A lot of this has to do with international financing, which I won't pretend to have more than a basic understanding of. So if there are any international financing nerds around please feel free to correct me on any of this.

Note: This is not a defense of the actions of the CCP, but rather trying to hash out the nuance of the situation and start a conversation about how international financing works; as well as point out that there are institutions in place trying to bake Capitalism and Colonialism into just how the world works. This is abhorrent, and something I find to be largely left out of our conversations on the Left.

Nothing in life can ever be boiled down to something as simple as "China bad."

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