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Comment by grecy | Hacker News Reader

I'm in West Africa now, and it's staggering to drive out of a tiny jungle track onto a highway equal in size and quality to anywhere in the world. It's also staggering to catch up to the road crew and see they are all Chinese.

Same goes for the hydo plants, railways, etc.

Of course, almost all of the roads and railways are to extract resources, not to help locals in any way.

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Were it all about resources it would show up in the data with more investment in resource-rich nations, which it doesn't [0]:

> According to her data, the top 20 African nations in which China is involved include not only commodity-rich nations such as Nigeria and South Africa, but commodity-poor nations like Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda.

> the largest deals — which tend to be government-to-government — do in fact involve infrastructure projects and natural resources. Those are the deals that make headlines. But, she asserted, they tend to skew the total reality. When looking at all Chinese firms that invested in Africa between 1998 and 2012, she said a picture emerges of small- and medium-sized private Chinese firms whose activities have nothing to do with commodities. “The number-one industry, in fact, is in services. It’s business services; it’s wholesale and retail,”

There's a separate question of how robust the environmental controls, etc. are - but a lot of that is up to the local governments.

They're going to take the sweet deals rather than the more onerous US terms and all their requirements.

The article below is a great read - it talks about how the African nations are including more stipulations in deals - such as quotas for local employment, educational investment etc.

[0] http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/chinas-investment...

Sure, the roads and railways are not built with the explicit intention to help locals but it's hard to imagine that they're not helping anyways (e.g. you did drive on that highway after all). Also, it's not like those countries are just handing out their resources for free.

By the way, where in West Africa are you? I'm asking because the perception of China in West African countries is among the highest in the world, with only 10-20% unfavorable view, compared to 45-70% in Europe and North America [0].

Is it possible that you are projecting your own perception of China? Is it possible that your perception is influenced by Western media?

Color me skeptical...

[0] http://www.pewglobal.org/2014/07/14/chapter-2-chinas-image/

> Of course, almost all of the roads and railways are to extract resources, not to help locals in any way.

That's a very sinister comment, when China builds a road, it's all about grabbing resources and can not help the locals in anyway? Are the locals banned from using these roads? Are there no jobs created in those country because of these projects?

Could be a win-win situation for both the Chinese and the local.

China stripping all the resources at a fraction of the international price, raping the environment, hiring zero locals, and building roads and railways that go from some place useless to another place useless.

No, It's really not helping locals.

Yep, I forgot about the masses of Chinese workers currently there (e.g. Ghana). One can only hope rising Chinese standards and wages will eventually convince them to hire local instead.

Ideally for West Africa, China will move their production eventually to them, through heavily unfavorable deals and low wages. However this will help the population get trained and (economically) on their feet to start their own companies. The only problem for most countries in West Africa is that they have weak governments. While China has a despotic, unfavorable to human rights government, it is also very protective and tends to be quite partial to the national companies interests. Without it, foreign companies would steal resources and cheap mass-produce without improving the country on the long run, as it happened in other regions.

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