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Photograph Source: \u5185\u95a3\u5e83\u5831\u5ba4\uff5cCabinet Public Affairs Office \u2013 CC BY 4.0<\/a><\/p>\n \nAt the close of a year in which Africa\u2019s underlying economic problems continue to worsen, the Johannesburg G20 summit on November 22-23 utterly failed<\/a> in its mandate<\/a> to cut the continent\u2019s foreign debt and assure that appropriate climate-finance grants will be available. Nevertheless, even while the world economy\u2019s value chains suffer disfigurement thanks to Donald Trump\u2019s whimsical tariffs<\/a>, ambitions for Africa\u2019s long-overdue industrialization are regularly articulated based either on copying an East Asian sweatshop-based strategy replete with Special Economic Zones<\/a>, given the continent\u2019s large, young, desperate workforce; or on adding value to local raw materials.<\/p>\n In both cases, hope is sometimes expressed that, as U.S., British and European Union (EU) aid shrinks and trade barriers rise, the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (BRICS) economies will come to the rescue, especially because a benign sponsor \u2013 Beijing \u2013 is standing by, quite capable of reversing current trends.<\/p>\n Writing<\/a> in early December, Tricontinental research institute leader Vijay Prashad recalled how, \u201cAt the 2015 Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in Johannesburg, South Africa, the Chinese government and fifty African governments discussed the problem of economic development and industrialization. Since 1945, the question of African industrialization has been on the table but has not advanced due to the neocolonial structure that has prevented any serious structural transformation.\u201d<\/p>\n True, colonial-era and immediate post-colonial African dependency relations persisted thanks to Western economies\u2019 power over the continent\u2019s exports, over global commodity markets and over nascent value chains through the fragmentation and extension of corporate production systems. Only a few sites of durable capital accumulation emerged in Africa via productive forces associated with manufacturing.<\/p>\n Prashad explains<\/a>: \u201cThe most industrialized countries on the African continent are South Africa, Morocco, and Egypt, but the entire continent accounts for less than 2% of world manufacturing value added and only about 1% of global trade in manufactures. That is why it was so significant for FOCAC to put industrial policy at the heart of its agenda; its 2015 Johannesburg Declaration affirmed that \u2018industrialization is an imperative to ensure Africa\u2019s independent and sustainable development\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n These are fine aspirations \u2013 and they are also expressed regularly in African elite meetings with Western imperial powers, such as in Angola last month when 76 leaders of the EU and African Union met<\/a> for a major summit aiming to \u201cStrengthen continental and regional economic integration and accelerate Africa\u2019s industrial development.\u201d Yada yada.<\/p>\n In practice, such sentiments tend to be overwhelmed by the capitalist mode of production\u2019s laws of motion; today, especially by the unregulated, increasingly desperate<\/a> drive for profit and commodity access by Chinese firms. A new book makes that case (with free download here<\/a>): The Material Geographies of the Belt and Road Initiative, edited by Elia Apostolopoulou, Han Cheng, Jonathan Silver and Alan Wiig.<\/p>\n (For dialectical curiosity, here\u2019s<\/a> a completely different approach, from a neoliberal podcaster arguing that China\u2019s \u2018curse of overproduction\u2019 is not capitalism\u2019s fault but is due to \u201cgovernment\u2019s heavy intervention, weak market mechanisms, and lack of legal frameworks perpetuate inefficiencies, with local governments chasing GDP through subsidies and projects.\u201d)<\/p>\n In a more critical \u2013 but nationalistic (and non-solidaristic) \u2013 spirit, one of Prashad\u2019s leading allies here in Johannesburg, Irvin Jim of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), made<\/a> a heartfelt appeal last month against \u201cthe dumping of cars from India and China\u201d whose automakers have increased their market share here by a factor of 25 since 2018.<\/p>\n Hence, insists<\/a> Jim, \u201cit is about time that we must increase tariffs.\u201d His grievances about massive job losses caused by imports \u2013 to be discussed in detail in the next essay \u2013 suggest Prashad is not yet attuned to deindustrialization damage done by the Chinese state and its capitalists in recent years. Moreover, at a time the West has shrunk its own (inflation-adjusted) aid-debt-investment packages, the FOCAC commitments made in 2015 \u2013 amounting to about $22 per African citizen \u2013 were chopped nearly in half by 2024.<\/p>\n Relentless Western abuse of Africa<\/p>\n Of course, Washington should mainly be blamed for the continent\u2019s most current wave of social misery and economic degradation, which in the second half of 2025 contributed to Gen Z social uprisings in Kenya, Tunisia, Morocco, Madagascar, Zambia and Tanzania<\/a>. The mix of Western economic attacks on Africa and greedy resource grabbing should not disguise how imperial interest at the White House and State Department is waning: Trump last week recalled<\/a> 15 career-professional U.S. ambassadors from African countries, to be replaced by America-First political hacks.<\/p>\n Exceptions to that disinterest in Africa may arise, such as the Lobito Corridor extraction route for $2 trillion worth of minerals to be spirited out from the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) via an Angolan port. In a \u2018peace deal<\/a>\u2019 earlier this month brokered by Trump between corruption-accused<\/a> DRC leader Felix Tshisekedi and Rwandan dictator<\/a> Paul Kagame \u2013 one immediately violated<\/a> \u2013 the U.S. president announced<\/a>he would soon be \u201csending some of our biggest and greatest companies over to the two countries\u2026 we\u2019re going to take out some of the rare earth and take out some of the assets and pay\u2026 and everybody\u2019s going to make a lot of money.\u201d<\/p>\n Except the African people and ecologies<\/a>, yet again victims of what can be termed \u2018unequal ecological exchange<\/a>.\u2019<\/p>\n Already in February, Trump and his ex-South African sidekick Elon Musk had wiped out most U.S. emergency food, medical and climate-related aid to Africa, with a special cut for all South African contracts<\/a>. Washington\u2019s $64 billion US Agency for International Development was shuttered by Musk, fed \u201cinto the wood chipper,\u201d<\/a> leaving many millions of lives at risk<\/a> (although some AIDS medicines spending was later revived).<\/p>\n Then came Trump\u2019s devastating tariffs \u2013 in February, April and again in August \u2013 followed by the September demise of the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) which since 2000 had given dozens of African countries duty-free access to U.S. markets. Notwithstanding a deeper context of dependency relations associated with AGOA \u2013 for as political economist Rick Rowden points out<\/a>, \u201cgains were largely due to African exports of petroleum and other minerals, not manufactured goods\u201d \u2013 these latter trade-curtailing processes were exceptionally damaging, wiping out 87% of auto exports<\/a> from South Africa in the first half of 2025.<\/p>\n The World Bank concluded<\/a> of 2025\u2019s tariff chaos, \u201cindustry-level impacts may be significant in global value chain\u2013linked activities, notably, textiles and apparel as well as footwear (Eswatini, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, and Mauritius) and automotive and components (South Africa)\u2026 Loss of the AGOA would sharply reduce exports to the United States. On average, exports would decline by 39% if a nation were suspended from AGOA benefits.\u201d<\/p>\n (A House of Representatives bill may gain support to resume AGOA in 2026 but without the main industrial beneficiary, South Africa, due to Trump\u2019s irrational hostility<\/a>. Exports of autos, steel, aluminium and many agricultural products to U.S. have collapsed.)<\/p>\n Moreover, other Western sources of demand for African products will also soon decline, according<\/a> to the World Bank, thanks to Europe\u2019s \u201cnew regulatory measures, such as the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism and the EU Deforestation Regulation, [which] impose stringent compliance requirements on exporters of cement, metals, and agricultural products\u201d starting in early 2026. The Bank admits both that a \u201cglobal shift toward \u2018friendshoring\u2019 in strategic industries, risks marginalizing African suppliers\u201d \u2013 thus undermining its export-led \u2018growth\u2019 mantra.<\/p>\n On the class-struggle front, the Bank continues<\/a>, \u201cThe growth of the labor share in national income registered a negative contribution in 2000\u201319: it declined at an annual rate of 0.1%. This decline reflects the adoption of more capital-intensive technologies, increased participation in global value chains, reduced (relative) bargaining power of workers, and greater market power of large firms in concentrated product markets.\u201d<\/p>\n Too much is being produced, mainly by China<\/p>\n Still, the overarching crisis affecting the world economy, not just Africa\u2019s, can be termed the \u2018overaccumulation of capital,\u2019 which Karl Marx had in Das Kapital identified as the core internal problem capitalism faces, due to the tendency to overproduce<\/a> relative to market size. From that process, we can understand geopolitical tensions much better.<\/p>\n As world-systems sociologist Ho-fung Hung recently suggested<\/a>, \u201cToday\u2019s intensifying U.S.-China rivalry resem\u00adbles more the inter-imperial rivalry a century ago driven by the overaccumula\u00adtion of rising capitalist power \u2013 that is China \u2013 than the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.\u201d<\/p>\n At the end of 2025, it is abundantly evident that far too much productive capacity exists in China, given limits to the fractured world economy\u2019s ability to mop up the surpluses through various forms of consumption and debt \u2013 now at saturation level in many countries.<\/p>\n The excess capacity is experienced in various ways, as capital flows away from durable fixed investment in many settings, and often into extreme financial bubbling due to higher speculative profits. When the crash comes, if the state is sufficiently strong, such credit flows can be reversed, as Evergrande\u2019s 2021-22 collapse in China illustrates<\/a> (following which the state\u2019s managers of overaccumulated capital self-destructively redirected bank loans to manufacturing again).<\/p>\n Nervousness about the durability of the financialization that inevitably follows overproduction is reflected in the soaring gold price, up from $250\/oz 25 years ago to an insane $4500\/oz today. There is also new evidence, in many national economies, of fresh swathes of deindustrialization, high levels of unemployment and under-employment, and falling profit rates<\/a>.<\/p>\n Mostly though, excess capacity is the core signal, as some crucial sectoral examples show:<\/p>\n + global steel output<\/a> of nearly 9 billion tonnes in 2024 contrasted to 2.47 billion tonnes of capacity (i.e., 76% capacity utilization), with a rise of another 10% excess capacity estimated in 2025, to 680 megatonnes;<\/p>\n + in chemicals, Bloomberg News reported<\/a> earlier this month, \u201cA wave of new Chinese petrochemical plants is raising fears of a deluge of exports that will put pressure on other producing nations that are already struggling with oversupply\u201d due to \u201cseven massive petrochemical hubs\u2026 creating a global glut that could swell even further if more planned plants come online\u201d at a time, in 2025, polyethylene output rose 18%;<\/p>\n + China\u2019s annual vehicle production capacity<\/a> \u2013 carrying either internal combustion engine or electric motors \u2013 was 55.5 million vehicles\/year capacity in 2024, but was only half utilized (just 27.5 million vehicles were produced that year), while in 2025, Chinese output was expected to reach 35 million<\/a> (still a low capacity utilization), displacing other economy\u2019s sales and leaving the world with increased idle capacity<\/a>, as global vehicle sales<\/a> languish at 90 million;<\/p>\n + also in China, \u201cThe root cause of the cement sector\u2019s current difficulties lies in the long-standing problem of overcapacity, which has now been amplified by weaker market demand\u201d since 2021 \u201cdue to declining property investment and a slowdown in infrastructure construction,\u201d according<\/a> to the China Building Materials Federation, and<\/p>\n + solar photovoltaic panels generated<\/a> nearly 600 GW of new power in 2024 \u2013 mostly emanating from China \u2013 but there was, at that point, more than 1,000 GW of annual manufacturing capacity, and to store the power, lithium-ion batteries were produced<\/a> at the scale of 2.5 TWh in 2023, but by 2024 there was 3 TWh of capacity and projections of 9 TWh by 2030, at a time demand was expected to rise only to 5 TWh.<\/p>\n (Renewable energy offers a curious form of capitalist \u2018excess capacity\u2019 \u2013 since this description obviously deserves scare quotes: for the sake of ecological sanity, it is a misnomer. So much more capacity is urgently needed for installation in every corner of the earth, but at an affordable price. And it\u2019s becoming obvious that even mass production in China apparently cannot drive prices down<\/a> to the point where capitalism can save itself from the climate catastrophe, given this disjuncture.)<\/p>\n As a result of core sectoral overinvestment, financial bubbling and trade turmoil, world capitalism is currently suffering the worst case of overaccumulation in recorded economic history. In a recent report<\/a> by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the extent of recent overproduction emanating from China is illustrated by comparing investment rates of its firms (and also multinational corporate subsidiaries there) to sites elsewhere. China\u2019s economy takes obvious leadership in \u2018new economy\u2019 sectors, amidst an overall investment boom that followed Beijing\u2019s recent redirection of bank lending into manufacturing<\/a>.<\/p>\n However, whether this investment can be justified by sustained profitability remains to be seen, for as the OECD shows<\/a>, China\u2019s rates are generally lower overall than in other countries, and especially in several (mainly old-economy) sectors including semiconductors, fertilizers, chemicals, aluminium, steel, and aeronautics and defense.<\/p>\n One reason for the overproduction of those goods, is the Chinese state\u2019s ambition and ability to redirect credit flows (often at below-market rates)<\/a>, as can be seen in the year-on-year growth in Beijing\u2019s (centrally-directed) lending to its own firms. This is a revealing<\/a> case in which public policy amplifies capitalism\u2019s underlying contradictions (the classic \u2018pro-cyclical\u2019 bias of neoliberalism). So after the early-2019 year-on-year increases in lending to China\u2019s bubbly real estate sector hit $1 trillion, at the peak of the economy\u2019s chaotic property speculation, then, contributing to the bubble\u2019s burst, loans fell rapidly in 2021, down to no year-on-year growth by early 2024.<\/p>\n In contrast, year-on-year growth in Chinese manufacturing finance rose from steady levels of just $60-90 billion in the 2016-20 period; and suddenly by late 2023 there were $700 billion worth of new manufacturing loans<\/a> (compared to the year before).<\/p>\n These trends appear to have continued, if the People\u2019s Bank of China statistics are accurate; in September its staff reported<\/a> that \u201coutstanding medium and long-term loans to the manufacturing sector registered a year-on-year increase of 15.9%. Specifically, outstanding loans to the high-tech manufacturing sector increased by 13.4% year on year.\u201d<\/p>\n Hence in 2024-25, manufacturing output in China has been formidable, growing nearly 6% annually<\/a> (more than ten times the 0.6% global manufacturing increase in 2024 and three times 2025\u2019s expected increase of 1.9%<\/a>). The result is a 2025 trade surplus that, for the first time, exceeded $1 trillion.<\/p>\n But it is vital to keep the systemic features in mind, because in this process of serving capitalist global value chains, \u201cChina has made large transfers in value through trade and investment to the imperialist bloc,\u201d according<\/a> to Marxist economist Michael Roberts.<\/p>\n This is obvious enough, but so too have peripheral countries like the DRC made large transfers in value to Chinese capitalism through, first, Congolese workers\u2019 depletion of non-renewable resources that are inadequately compensated (either through royalties or various forms of profit reinvestment), thus depriving current and future generations of natural wealth; second, through massive greenhouse gas emissions whose cost we consider below; and third, through local pollution which in many cases can be extreme. All these features contribute to China\u2019s role as a subimperial power<\/a>.<\/p>\n Can Chinese-led industrialization save Africa?<\/p>\n How does China address its excessive local investment and untenable trade surpluses? One obvious strategy implemented since the early 2010s is when firms attempt so-called \u2018going out\u2019 from their immediate sites of overaccumulation, along the Belt and Road Initiative. This has included the establishment of much stronger connections to African markets, which should in turn permit more African exports.<\/p>\n This process coincides, insists<\/a> Ho-fung Hung, with \u201cthe increasing competition between Chinese capital and U.S. capital worldwide after China started to aggres\u00adsively export its overaccumulated capital to the rest of the world in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008.\u201d<\/p>\n In contrast, on the optimistic end of the spectrum, Prashad argues<\/a>, \u201cChina\u2019s industrial capacity would be put at the service of Africa\u2019s need for industrialization through the creation of joint ventures, industrial parks, a cooperation fund, and mechanisms for technology and science transfer. Africa-China trade has increased from $10 billion in 2000 to $282 billion in 2023. In 2024, the Chinese government upgraded its relationship with African states to \u2018strategic partnerships\u2019, enabling greater cooperation. We now have a test case for whether South-South cooperation can engender sovereign industrialization that breaks with the old patterns of plunder and dependency.\u201d<\/p>\n But on the pessimistic end, there are too many instances of adverse impacts from Chinese capitalism in Africa: deindustrialization through swamping local markets with surpluses (as NUMSA complains), especially as the displacement of Trump\u2019s tariffs; broken promises on Special Economic Zone investments; brazen but unpunished corruption; excessive lending and then sudden cuts in credit lines; and heinous corporate behavior especially in the extractive industries, including extreme ecological damage. Each needs elaboration, in the pages below.<\/p>\n And one test case deserves more consideration: the rapid deindustrialization of South Africa underway in recent months thanks to the \u2018dumping\u2019 (i.e. sale at below the cost of production) of Chinese overaccumulated capital, according not only to the government<\/a> in Pretoria \u2013 which in recent months punished imported Chinese steel, tyres, washing machines, and nuts and bolts with new tariffs \u2013 but also to NUMSA<\/a> (which wants the same for cars), although it is ordinarily very pro-China. In South Africa, the manufacturing\/GDP ratio was 24% in 1990 and has now sunk to 13%.<\/p>\n Formidable Chinese product competition means the African economies mentioned by Prashad as the continent\u2019s lead industrial production sites, plus the largest in population (Nigeria), have not improved their manufacturing\/GDP ratios since that 2015 FOCAC industrialization hype. Most such ratios, like South Africa\u2019s, had already collapsed in the first round of 1990s-era trade liberalization.<\/p>\n The optimal test case that many pointed to during the mid-2010s as Africa\u2019s cutting-edge industrialization site, was Ethiopia, thanks to the sudden emergence of (largely sweatshop) manufacturers mainly in Addis Ababa, whose products benefited from the new train line to the port of Djibouti, built with the assistance of Beijing. As a result of the influx of Chinese firms\u2019 local production of clothing, textiles, footwear and other light-industrial output, Ethiopia\u2019s manufacturing\/GDP rose rapidly from 3.4% at the low point in 2012, to 6.2% in 2017.<\/p>\n However, that ratio subsequently fell to 4.3% in the period 2021-24. As the International Monetary Fund explained<\/a>, \u201cThe share of manufactured goods such as textiles, leather and meat product in total exports had grown to 13.5% in Fiscal Year 2018\/19, from a small base, but declined sharply thereafter to around 4% in the first nine months of FY2024\/25, due to the pandemic, conflict, suspension from AGOA, and foreign exchange shortages that limited availability of intermediate imports.\u201d<\/p>\n Those hard currency shortages led to a major financial crisis in late 2023, when the Addis Ababa regime declared bankruptcy<\/a> on foreign loans, just days before the country officially joined the BRICS network. As a result of the default, Ethiopia was initially not permitted to become a formal member of the BRICS New Development Bank, for potential hard-currency credit infusions (nearly 80% of that bank\u2019s lending is in the dollar or euro), although it is scheduled to join<\/a>, at some stage.<\/p>\n Then in mid-2024, a $2.56 billion International Monetary Fund package imposed<\/a> all the classical Washington Consensus remedies on Ethiopians, including a 50% currency depreciation which was meant to spur manufacturing exports. Indeed a revival of sweatshop exports oriented to Chinese consumer markets apparently began in 2025, and Beijing began talks to potentially convert $5.4 billion of its dollar-denominated loans<\/a> to Ethiopia into yuan by late 2025, on which a lower interest rate would be paid. Ethiopia was indebted<\/a>to China for $7.4 billion of its $28 billion foreign debt in late 2023 (with $15.3 billion owed to international financial institutions).<\/p>\n But in Ethiopia, and across Africa more generally, foreign exchange reserves have shrunk due to the vicissitudes of Global North states and multilaterals. For all recipients, aid was cut in 2024 by 9%, and in 2025 by up to 17%<\/a>. The peak year for Overseas Development Aid<\/a> to Africa was 2020 at $73 billion, but especially since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, European capitals and London have replaced a great deal of aid for Africa with higher military budgets.<\/p>\n Will Beijing step in? In aggregate, Chinese aid, investment and loans to Africa have also fallen since mid-2010s peaks, which also affected states\u2019 foreign exchange reserves. China\u2019s own new public and publicly-guaranteed loans to Africa collapsed<\/a> from $32 billion in the peak year of 2016, to $1 billion in 2022. The year-end 2025 African foreign debt of $1.3 trillion includes $182 billion<\/a> in Beijing\u2019s known public and publicly-guaranteed loans.<\/p>\n China had taken a decision in 2021, AidData researchers remind<\/a>, to fund 128 rescue loan operations in 22 low-income countries facing debt distress, costing $240 billion. These included five African states \u2013 Angola, Sudan, South Sudan, Tanzania and Kenya \u2013 among which low-income borrowers were \u201ctypically offered a debt restructuring that involves a grace period or final repayment date extension but no new money, while middle-income countries tend to receive new money \u2013 via balance of payments (BOP) support \u2013 to avoid or delay default\u2026 These operations include many so-called \u2018rollovers,\u2019 in which the same short-term loans are extended again and again to refinance maturing debts.\u201d <\/p>\n The 2024 FOCAC did, however, denominate more financial flows in the Chinese currency, which could facilitate trade, alleviate forex shortages, and also lower transactions costs. Yet devils are in the details, for against all the logic argued above, according<\/a> to the Centre for Global Development (which is generally neoliberal and welcomes Chinese lending):<\/p>\n Between 2015 and 2021, commercial creditors contributed about a third of all Chinese lending commitments over that period. These commercial lenders overtook policy banks between 2018 and 2021 \u2026 [and] are market-oriented, with loans that are more expensive and with shorter maturity than state-owned counterparts. Their need for risk mitigation, usually through Sinosure, raises the financing costs even higher<\/a>. Over the next five years, a continuation of this trend where Chinese commercial lenders become an ever-larger segment of lending to Africa at non-concessional rates will only heightens the risks of debt distress.<\/p>\n So the overall trends suggest that China\u2019s extreme overaccumulation of manufacturing this year, as Trump\u2019s tariffs cause chaos at a time of Belt & Road Initiative burn-out, there is no reason to expect FOCAC to, as Prashad hopes, \u201cengender sovereign industrialization that breaks with the old patterns of plunder and dependency.\u201d Africans should prepare for the opposite.<\/p>\n FOCAC\u2019s declining pledges, 2006-24<\/p>\n Source: http:\/\/www.focac.org\/eng\/<\/a><\/p>\n Also adversely affecting Africa\u2019s hard currency revenues, most energy and mineral commodity markets crashed<\/a> after their May 2022 peaks (with notable exceptions like gold and, recently, platinum). As a result, across the continent, there is less foreign exchange available to repay debt, especially when exacerbated by the higher interest rates imposed by the U.S. Federal Reserve from 2022-24.<\/p>\n In 2025, Trump\u2019s new tariffs on African exports to the U.S. represented an overall 10% levy in April, followed by higher amounts for many countries in August (e.g. South Africa at 30%). Annual remittances, generally paid by African migrant workers living in countries abroad to their family back home, rose in this period from $66 billion up to $110 billion in 2024, but are not expected to rise further due to rising Western xenophobia.<\/p>\n Are Chinese firms looting Africa?<\/p>\n In this desperate context, Ethiopia\u2019s sweatshop experience could not be termed genuinely \u2018sovereign industrialization,\u2019 no doubt Prashad would agree. Nor should any African \u2013 or sympathetic observer \u2013 tolerate the Chinese-led extractive industry plunder of many economies<\/a>, resulting not only in extreme ecological damage in general terms, but in a series of specific scandals and social resistance.<\/p>\n As noted above, there are usually three categories to consider, of ecological reparations due to non-renewable resource depletion, greenhouse gas emissions and other forms of localised pollution. Michael Roberts acknowledges, in a helpful essay on environmentalism<\/a>, \u201ca continual battle by capital to control and lower rising raw material prices as natural resources are depleted and not renewed, adding another factor tothe tendency of the rate of profit to fall.\u201d<\/p>\n And in a 2021 co-authored analysis of the \u2018Economics of Modern Imperialism\u2019, Roberts argues<\/a>,<\/p>\n \u201cColonialism and modern imperialism do not exclude each other. Colonialism is the appropriation of natural resources, military occupation, the direct state control of colonies and the stealing by the imperialist countries of commodities not produced capitalistically. But colonialism contains in itself the germs of modern imperialism. This is the appropriation by capitals in the imperialist countries of the surplus value produced by capitals in the colonies through the trade of the commodities with high technological content produced in the imperialist countries for the capitalistically produced raw materials or industrial goods produced with lower technological content in the dominated countries. The result is unequal exchange, the appropriation of international surplus value through international trade.\u201d<\/p>\n Roberts concludes that the Chinese economy therefore retains a relatively low \u2013 and now fast-falling<\/a> \u2013 share of global value chain profits due to unequal exchange processes. The distribution, marketing, financing and research and development departments of Western corporate headquarters squeeze out monies that could otherwise be paid to both Chinese and Congolese laborers and to communities now underpaid for their work in extraction of raw materials, in super-exploitative production systems, and in goods transport.<\/p>\n There are some on the left who object to a critique based in part upon imperial-subimperial collaboration in the looting of Africa. Last year, Prashad\u2019s colleagues at Tricontinental offered a different view<\/a> of the DRC, based on competition between the Chinese on the one hand; and on the other, Western firms like Swiss-headquartered, London-listed Glencore (whose largest share of its $70 billion capitalization is actually registered on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange) and Canada\u2019s Ivanhoe. Tricontinental authors claim that \u201cChinese interests therefore lie in keeping mineral and metal processing within the DRC and building an industrial base for the country.\u201d<\/p>\n This counter-intuitive conclusion is based on how, in Tricontinental\u2019s interpretation, \u201cThe entry of the Chinese state and private Chinese companies into Africa over the past two decades has provided competition against the Global North countries and their mining companies. This was the first time that these multinational corporations faced direct competition, a shift that provided the space for the Congolese government to amend the mining code in 2018 on more beneficial terms.\u201d<\/p>\n Admitting that, in the process, Chinese firms gained \u201ccontrol of fifteen of the DRC\u2019s seventeen mining complexes,\u201d Tricontinental authors turn to this justification: \u201cIn the extractivism debate, the Global North, its eyes set on furthering its own agenda, has fixated on China\u2019s role in the region as the world\u2019s leading consumer of cobalt, nearly 80% of which it uses in its rechargeable battery industry. What is often left out of the discussion, however, is that, as the largest manufacturing country in the world, China uses Congolese minerals and metals to produce goods that are consumed across the globe, including in the DRC and the Global North.\u201d<\/p>\n Indeed this subimperial location within global value chains makes China subject to an unequal ecological exchange critique. For behind the general need for resource extraction and (limited) processing of minerals that goes on in Africa, are scandalous conditions. Without sinking into Sinophobia, it is useful to recall some of the highest-profile cases, because Beijing simply fails to respond to the obvious need to curtail Belt and Road abuse by Chinese firms:<\/p>\n + in the DRC in November, Congo Dongfang International Mining leaked toxic pollution<\/a> into the Lubumbashi River<\/a> near the country\u2019s second largest city, while nearby at Kalando, informal miners (75% of whom across the DRC sell their wares<\/a> to Chinese buyers) suffered at least 50 deaths<\/a> in a mountainside collapse that compelled the government to ban<\/a> artisanal copper and cobalt mineral processing, in the wake of non-payment of billions of dollars\u2019 worth of royalties to the government by Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt, Ningxia Orient, JiuJiang JinXin and Jiujiang Tanbre smelters \u2013 all within Apple\u2019s supply chain<\/a> \u2013which in turn resulted in a major lawsuit by the Kinshasa regime<\/a> and by a S. public interest agency<\/a>against the California corporation, and similar non-payment accusations<\/a> were made by Kinshasa officials against China Molybdenum\u2019s super-exploitative Tenke Fungurume cobalt mine;<\/p>\n + in Zambia\u2019s copperbelt in February, negligence by Sino-Metals Leach and NFC Africa Mining caused a slime-dam break<\/a> \u2013 of 5 million tonnes<\/a> of cyanide- and arsenic-laced sludge \u2013 into the Kafue River, resulting in an $80 billion lawsuit by some of the 700,000 affected residents adjacent to Zambia\u2019s main internal waterway and second-largest urban region;<\/p>\n + in the Central African Republic\u2019s mines, there was slave-like human trafficking of Nigerians \u2013 who went unpaid for a year in 2024-25 \u2013 by Rado Central Coal Mining Company<\/a>;<\/p>\n + in Ghana, Shaanxi Mining<\/a> extracted gold in a manner that amplified the \u2018galamsey\u2019 artisanal mining crisis;<\/p>\n + in Zimbabwe, there are countless complaints against Chinese mines, for looting $13 billion of Marange diamonds by the military-owned parastatal Anjin (as even President Robert Mugabe alleged<\/a> in 2016), for the murder of a dozen Mutare artisanal gold miners in 2020 by Zhondin Investments<\/a>, for mass displacement and pollution at the Hwange coal mine by Beifa Investments<\/a>, for illegal mining in national parks<\/a> by Afrochine Energy and Zimbabwe Zhongxin Coal Mining Group, and for Sinomine Resource Group\u2019s failure to respect beneficiation requirements at the continent\u2019s largest lithium mine, in Bikita<\/a>, in addition to other Chinese lithium miners at Kamaviti, where as a result, Centre for Natural Resource Governance director Farai Maguwu alleged<\/a> in late December, \u201cZim is the biggest donor to China, and not the other way round\u201d;<\/p>\n + in South Africa, the corruption of rail parastatal Transnet<\/a> by Chinese locomotive suppliers empowered the notorious Gupta \u2018state capture\u2019 family<\/a>, while at two chaotic Special Economic Zones, Chinese investors included an Interpol red-listed looter of a Zimbabwean mine<\/a> and two auto producers (FAW and BAIC) whose job creation and production promises were not kept<\/a>; and<\/p>\n + in the two main oil and gas controversies in Africa, state-owned China National Overseas Oil Corporation<\/a>is building a heated pipeline (the world\u2019s longest) from western Uganda to Tanzania\u2019s port of Dar es Salaam<\/a>, and state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation\u2019s<\/a> participation (with partners ExxonMobil and ENI) invested in a long-delayed northern Mozambican \u2018blood methane<\/a>\u2018 gas extraction project, in the midst of a civil war with Islamic guerrillas that since 2017 has displaced one million people and killed many thousand \u2013 and in both cases, the ultra-corrupt TotalEnergies<\/a> leads the projects.<\/p>\n In addition to often-extreme human rights violations, these represent obvious forms of unequal ecological exchange, in which African economies lose net wealth<\/a>, even if Chinese purchases of raw materials raise levels of foreign exchange and national income, creating (low-paid) jobs and providing a modicum of royalties, taxes and infrastructure.<\/p>\n Typically outweighing such benefits, though, damage is not limited to local pollution and displacement, or to permanent depletion of non-renewable resources that leave both current and future generations impoverished. For example, instead of burning coal, gas and oil, their hydrocarbons should be left underground and only later, if needed, exploited for non-combustible purposes (lubricants, synthetic materials, pharmaceutical products, etc).<\/p>\n On top of this damage, the extraction and processing of minerals also entail an enormous \u2018social cost of carbon\u2019 caused by CO2 and methane emissions in mines and smelters. This should be priced (by taxation not carbon trading) in the region of $1584\/tonne<\/a> of CO2 (according to a recent National Bureau of Economic Research study), rendering a great deal of the pollution-intensive extractive+processing activity as uneconomic.<\/p>\n The latter damage will create new \u2018polluter-pays\u2019 climate debtors out of low-income African economies, if the International Court of Justice\u2019s July 2025 advisory opinion on liabilities for socio-ecological reparations<\/a> is to be taken seriously. Following the court\u2019s finding against states which do not limit their firms\u2019 emissions, much more climate-debt litigation is inevitable. In late 2024, Beijing and many other high-polluting countries\u2019 governments had opposed any liability judgement<\/a> because, as the imperialist and subimperial powers together insisted, the Paris Climate Agreement<\/a> \u201cdoes not involve or provide a basis for any liability or compensation.\u201d<\/p>\n The best opportunity for a Chinese climate debt payment to Africa arose in September 2021 when Xi Jinping announced<\/a>, \u201cChina will step up support for other developing countries in developing green and low-carbon energy, and will not build new coal-fired power projects abroad.\u201d<\/p>\n However, not only is renewable energy still a for-profit commodity, unaffordable for the vast majority. In addition, in Zimbabwe, residents of the wretched<\/a> coal-mining town of Hwange<\/a> (near Victoria Falls) know that Xi\u2019s was just one more broken climate promise, what with several Chinese coal-fired power plants<\/a> under construction there.<\/p>\n In sum, unless the Chinese state suddenly begins regulating its firms\u2019 emissions and abuse of African resources and people, and finds creative ways to pay a wide range of ecological reparations, it appears extremely unlikely that a genuine industrialization initiative will emanate from Chinese investors.<\/p>\n But having set the context of blame for Africa\u2019s recent bout of underdevelopment both in Chinese overproduction and Trump\u2019s tariffs \u2013 among the main new factors that amplify existing problems of commodity export dependency, excessive debt, structural adjustment policies and climate damage \u2013 the next essay will have to assess various strategies emerging among some leading African activists, ranging from nationalistic dirty growth to internationalist degrowth en route to eco-socialism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photograph Source: \u5185\u95a3\u5e83\u5831\u5ba4\uff5cCabinet Public Affairs Office \u2013 CC BY 4.0 At the close of a year in which…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":212112,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[114,184,85,46],"class_list":{"0":"post-212111","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-israel"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212111\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Screenshot-2025-12-28-at-8.25.09-AM-680x378.png\")
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