China’s Heavy Investment
The article “China’s Heavy Investment in Ghana Ignites Debate” looks into China’s engagement with Ghana in terms of loans and grants, and if this engagement is healthy for Ghana’s industrialization prospects. One important point is that China’s engagement with Ghana is not generating shared prosperity for both countries; on the contrary, it appears that China is interested in not only nurturing a market for Chinese products but also satisfying its quest for natural resources to feed economic growth. Additionally, the heavy investment made by China cannot guarantee Ghana’s industrialization agenda since it is heavily tilted in China’s favor as all the business of delivering content used in these projects goes to Chinese firms. Lastly, cheap Chinese loans may complicate matters for Ghana in terms of inability to service the huge loans, increasing total public debt, and rising accountability issues.
Ghana Deports Thousands
The article “Ghana Deports Thousands in Crackdown on Illegal Chinese Goldminers” illuminates the intersection between China’s quest for natural resources and its bait of providing governments in developing countries with billions in loan facilities. A major point raised in the article is how the Chinese government is retaliating after the deportation of thousands of illegal Chinese who have been plundering natural resources in Ghana while compromising the environment. Although it is denied, it is clear that China’s tightening of the visa regime is a direct result of the actions being taken by the government to deport illegal miners whose main preoccupation is to satisfy the country’s huge quest for natural resources. Another important point relates to how the local economy has been affected by the deportations, pointing to the dependence predisposition that makes African countries economically and politically unstable.
“China: The New Spanish Empire?”
This article equates China with sixteenth-century Spain and other totalitarian regimes in the context of shrouding its economic outlook in secrecy and manipulating its investment indicators. A major point raised in the article is that China’s economy may fail at some point in time by being unsustainable in the long-term. Although China mixes capitalism with totalitarianism, it may still be unable to sustain its economic outlook due to government interference in the financial sector and secretive transactions. Still, the article raises the point of how the Chinese financial markets lack transparency and trust despite the country having massive growth potential. This lack of transparency and trust is engineered by the Chinese dictatorship, particularly in terms of purposively interfering with the stock market and government financial statistics to paint a picture that China’s economy is growing at a healthy rate. Such interference and state secrecy, according to the article, is bound to engineer the collapse of the Chinese economy.
References
China: The new Spanish empire? (2015). The Agenda. Web.
China’s heavy investment in Ghana ignites debate. (2013). Atlanta Black Star. Web.
Ghana deports thousands in crackdown on illegal Chinese goldminers. (2017). the Guardian. Web.