Beijing: China’s rapid economic growth was referred to as a “miracle” that would not have occurred without the high corruption. China poured billions of dollars into Africa and so in that sense has disseminated the same model of corruption to Africa, Jianli Yang writes in the Washington Times.
According to Washington Times, through state-owned and state-funded enterprises, China has poured massive sums of money into sub-Saharan Africa. This was further accelerated by Chinese President Xi Jinping’s launch of China’s Belt and Road Initiative in 2013 to create more “international collaboration.”
China had poured billions of dollars into Africa in efforts to dominate the continent’s natural resources sector and use its presence in Africa to promote the Chinese Communist Party’s anti-Western foreign policy agenda.
China’s rapid economic growth was sometimes referred to as a “China miracle” by some pundits. This “miracle,” however, would not have occurred without the following four features, one high and three lows of China’s system of autocratic governance: high corruption, low human rights, low environmental regulations and low morality.
In a sense, China has disseminated the same model to Africa. This makes the CCP much more competitive in Africa (in terms of its ability to engage in influence peddling) than in Western democracies such as the United States and Canada, reported Washington Times.
China’s involvement in Africa raises several “red flags” for Africa, not only because of the Chinese government’s exploitative intentions but also because of the “China model,” in particular serious human rights abuses and corruption against Africans.
According to a recent report by the London-based non-profit Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, of 1,690 allegations of human rights abuses related to Chinese investments worldwide, 181 were reported in Africa. Most of these human rights abuses occurred in Africa’s mining and construction sectors.
In every single case, the Chinese companies involved either denied the allegations or simply ignored them. In the 2017 report, 60 to 80 per cent of Chinese companies admitted to paying “tips” or bribes to obtain licenses, according to Washington Times.
In 2019, a federal court in New York sentenced former Hong Kong Home Affairs Secretary Patrick Ho to three years of incarceration for his role in a scheme to bribe African officials to boost a top Chinese energy company that was part of Beijing’s global Belt and Road initiative.
