LETTER FROM WASHINGTON: For China, the prize in Africa is its markets
IF you’re a student of China in Africa and haven’t read Howard French’s, China’s Second Continent: How A Million Migrants are Building a New Empire in Africa, you need to remedy that.French was probably the best correspondent the New York Times ever posted to Africa between the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Sahara. The newspaper then made him bureau chief in Shanghai, where he mastered Mandarin and was struck by the growing flow of visiting African bigwigs. That led to scores of interviews in six African countries, and the book.To see China’s involvement as a "raw materials play" is "a failed appreciation of China’s ambition with regard to Africa and, indeed, the world", he said at a forum in Washington DC this week."What China is really after is the development of markets."To illustrate his point, he held up his iPhone. "China is making hundred of millions of mobile phones in a factory owned by Foxconn that runs 24 hours a day in eight-hour shifts. Ten thousand workers come ...
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