China's influences around the world today

After just watching this excellent documentary on bbc 2 called the chinese are coming
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00ykxg9/The_Chinese_Are_Coming_Episode_1/

i thought i'd do a blog about it.

What i witnessed in the documentary was very worrying i thought. From a human perspective the amount of human exploitation going on was scarey. Millions of Chinese capitalists/entrepreneurs are moving to the continent of Africa and the documentary visits Brazil next week where we get to find out waht the chinese influence is having there.

From the documentary they took you to places and examples of chinese involvement. From the chicken farmers in Zambia and the chinese chickens being sold incrediably cheap and mass produced virtually smashing the market for Zambians to even compete to the copper mines up in the Democratic Republic of Congo where there is terrible working conditions for workers there, African workers who work 11 + hours a day there in poor, cramped and often deadly conditions.

There has been protests about pay and conditions for working like anywhere around the world would have. But you hear on the documentary that chinese managers have ended up shooting protesters due to their refusal to work and get on with their jobs in awful conditions.

Right throughout the programme we are reminded how much power and buying power the new China has. What used to be a very insular so called commonist state is now becoming one of the biggest if not the biggest capitalist exploitators in the world.

China is fast over taking the USA and the rest of the world put together.

I havent read Gordon Browns the crash book at all yet but one of the best lines from it i have heard is that he estimates Chinas consumer power once at full capacity will be the equilavent to two United States of America's.

If we stop to think about that for one second, that is scarey and beyond comprehension. The damage that consumtion will have on the planet as a whole will surely drive it to its eventual destruction unless this is curbed.

But what can we do ? there is very little i feel now, China is growing at such a alarming rate and with other big developing countries such as India too the west is going to struggle to compete and keep its power in the global stage.

The documentary continueing next week will be visiting America to find out how scared they are that they will be over taken and pale into the distance with a ever growing China. This will be interesting to hear i think.

As a socialist i am appauled at the rate and extent of China's exploitation around the world and in such poor continents like Africa. They do not see a chance to change Africa for the better they only see it as a vast market and a vast potential profit for their huge business's back home in China.

This in my view is capitalism at its very worst. Wher ea global super power is exploiting the poor in another continent and several countries for their own personal gain.

Sure dont get me wrong local Africans may have benifitted a little from the jobs the chinese have created. But alot of the jobs have gone to chinese workers who have been shipped over from mainland China as they are quicker and more efficient workers apparently. This again is not helping African countries at all. All of the profits and tax is going back to China. Some of the tax will be paid to the local governments in those countries of course but as we well know in this country tax avoidance is something the capitailists specialise in it seems.

Lastly waht also worried me a lot too was the fact that China is very closely linked now to Zimbabwe and Robert Mugabe who as we well know has a awful record on human rights and has had sanctions leveled at him by the west for decades.

Yet China feels it can do business with him and his awful regieme. One of the most corrupt and torrturers and awful dictators on the planet is cuddling up to one of the worlds super powers in the face of western condemnation is a very worrying thing indeed.

So i do reccomend if you can watch this documentary which is also on next week as it is a very interesting outlook of things to come for Africa, China and the rest of the world. Which will in turn affect all of us.