China's Silent Army by Juan Pablo Cardenal Heriberto Araujo

Author:Juan Pablo Cardenal,Heriberto Araujo [Cardenal, Juan Pablo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-385-34658-0
Publisher: Random House Inc.
Published: 2013-02-19T05:00:00+00:00

KING COBRA: AN ANTI-CHINESE HERO

In terms of China’s role in the heart of Zambia’s mining industry, the difference in perception between the government minister and the workers who struggle against their Chinese employers on a daily basis—between the political and financial elites and the common people—perfectly summarizes the situation in the country. The Zambian government has placed its bets on a strategic alliance with Beijing, as it considers China the perfect traveling companion along the road of long-term development for its fabulous mining sector. Zambia hopes that the investments in its mining industry will propel Zambia towards an “African Industrial Revolution,” which is seen in Lusaka as an essential factor in helping the country to rise out of poverty. All this is no doubt caused not only by the enthusiastic reforms carried out over the last few decades, but also by Zambia’s attractive current investment framework, which has been strongly criticized for its staunchly neo-liberal leanings and which has clearly had a decisive impact on the country’s growing job insecurity. Hungry for raw materials, China has taken advantage of this situation, becoming the only foreign investor to continue investing in the Copperbelt since the financial crisis, despite the fall in the international price of copper.18

The fact that Zambia has pinned all its hopes for the future on its mining industry, and therefore on Chinese investments, has led to a situation in which Chinese investors are essentially given free rein to do whatever they like in the country’s Copperbelt. While this is demonstrated by Lusaka’s offer of tax holidays and the removal of customs duties for foreign investors, it is also particularly evident in the Zambian government’s lax attitude towards the continuous flaunting of the most basic labor standards in Chinese mines, including the dismissal of the case against the two Chinese foremen who shot and wounded their employees. “Foreign investors are very comfortable in Zambia. The unions are very active, but the government prefers to protect investors over the people,” the union leader Boyd Chibale told us during our meeting in Kitwe. While Lusaka’s dreams of wealth become a reality, 80 percent of the Copperbelt’s population live on less than two dollars a day, with Beijing’s complicity. Is this the “sacrifice” which Félix Mutati talked about that day on the shores of the Red Sea?

Chinese mining companies should not technically benefit from highly favorable treatment, but the working conditions they offer their employees—many of them on temporary contracts—are comparatively the worst in the country. This precarious employment situation, which causes suffering among some of Zambia’s poorest inhabitants, has made the companies the target of hostility. Michael Sata, the populist leader of the opposition Patriotic Front party at the time of our visit to Zambia, had pinned his presidential hopes on the use of markedly anti-Chinese discourse directed at the former government’s weakest flank. “King Cobra,” as he is known, argued that the suffering of Zambia’s miners stems from the fact that they are treated as unwelcome guests in their own country.

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