China and Africa must share a future for economic and cultural reasons. This is all but inevitable, both because it can happen, and because the consequences to both of them are unacceptable if they don’t.

The Situation in China

China’s encounter with modernity has been tumultuous. It was an ancient civilization that had remained stable and relatively unchanged for over a millennium. It was so stable, that even when it was invaded by the Mongol Horde, it had a greater influence of its conqueror than the Khans had over them. Arguably, the Khan’s most lasting accomplishment was to establish a Chinese dynasty.

Tumultuous Modernity

All of this changed once the Europeans arrived and began to slice up the coastal areas. Instead of establishing a lateral relationship with this ancient civilization, they began to impose a mercantilistic relationship on them. This was most visible with the encounter with the East India Corporation. When that venerable old empire rejected the manufactured goods of Great Britain, the East India Company simply corrupted the population by getting them addicted to opium, making them permanent, highly motivated customers. This is what the Chinese now refer to as “The Century of Humiliation.”

This event is what led to China finally embracing change and modernity. Anger at the mistreatment of the Europeans in general and the British in particular led to nationalistic fervor. These nationalist tendencies made the Chinese highly motivated and easy to mobilize. The first flare up would be the Boxer Rebellion, but it would not be the last.

China would fight the Westerners and, later, the Japanese, in several wars, leading up to World War 2. During that war, the Empire of Japan would become the primary foe. Following the defeat of Japan by the Allied powers, China finally found itself free of Western domination. It then, once again, turned inward.

Civil War

With the Western invaders finally gone, two main factions competed for rule over the Chinese civilization: the Nationalists and the Communists. The Nationalists, led by Chang Kai-shek, was loosely associated with, and held views consistent with, the Fascists in Europe. The Communists, led by Mao Zedong, was backed by the Soviets, who viewed their movement (at least initially) as in line with their own revolutionary tradition.

Ultimately, the Communists won, and they established a decentralized form of political Dasein managed from the top by distributing Mao’s “Little Red Book,” which empowered common Chinese citizens to exert political authority in their localities. This led to a new, cohesive Chinese Communist culture and politics based primarily in the Han nationality.

Chinese Modernity

China would continue to focus on internal development until Deng Xiaoping rose to power. Once Deng came to power, he steered the national attention pro-actively outward for, arguably, the very first time in Chinese history. He ended up turning China into a manufacturing and global trade powerhouse. While Westerners tend to associate Communism with the top-down micromanagement and stagnation associated with the last stages of the Soviet experiment, Deng showed how a Proletarian dictatorship can mobilize itself into monstrously competitive industrial market power.

Unfortunately, Deng also instituted a policy that would ultimately prove to be lethal to China’s manufacturing and economic dominance, long-term. This, of course, is the one child policy. China’s transition from a subsistence farming economy to an industrial economy meant the vast Chinese population began to crowd into enormous mega-cities, which became the engine of the global economy. Managing this was a monumental challenge which the one child policy was meant to help manage. Unfortunately, the policy caused an over-correction in their population. Now, three generations later, China’s population decline, without a very significant intervention, is going to be economically terminal.

China’s economic rise was so fast and sharp, that most analysts in the West predicted that the twenty-first century would be “The Chinese Century.” Within a very short amount of time, China went from being a backwater to being the second most powerful economy behind the United States. Now, right as they appear to be on the verge of overtaking the US, their aging population and debt issues seem to be breaking the juggernaut apart.

There is one way out for them, and it is half a world away. And they have been laying the groundwork for it for years.

Sino-African Relations

China is the most powerful manufacturing economy on the globe. In addition, it is one of the most technologically advanced civilizations on the planet. They have everything they need – except for raw materials, and young workers.

Africa

Africa and China, in many ways, share a similar relationship with modernity. Like China, Africa was heavily (and often brutally) colonized by Western powers. Just like China, Africa finally began to break free of Europe in the aftermath of World War 2. And, like China, many countries in Africa know the ravages of civil wars. But while China has a long history of being a unified civilization state, Africa does not. For that reason, it has had a much more difficult time unifying and advancing as a coherent economic block.

The West has been able to exploit Africa’s inability to unify to continue to loot it for resources. When African nations broke with the West by force, as Zimbabwe did under Mugabe, the results were often catastrophic due to over-corrections in government mandates, as well as a failure to establish constructive global trade.

Now, the West is continuing to try to establish economic inroads into the African continent, but they are doing so in an ideological way that is incongruous with the priorities of African peoples. The West is trying “wokeify” Africa, and use it for “sustainable” economic experiments. Africa has enough sense that it is mostly rejecting that.

Africa Finds a New Kind of Partner

In contrast, China is far more in touch with the African priorities. It is reaching out to Africa. It is not doing so to unilaterally export its ideological priorities. China’s approach is bilateral, and driven by absolute necessity. For that reason, China offers Africa mutually beneficial trade arrangements responding to real world problems.

In the meantime, culturally, classical Marxism-Leninism has always been as wildly popular in Africa as it has been in China, and, in China, Africa has a shining example of what a successful Communist country looks like. China and Africa are natural allies, both ideologically and economically. Alone, they stare at an abyss of collapse and slavery. Together, their future points to the stars themselves. A technologically advanced Africa and a demographically supported China together would represent an unstoppable historical force.

One Belt and Road

Although China’s past was characterized by introspection over interaction with other cultures, they have always been an international trading partner under the surface. As early as the Han Dynasty, they were reaching out across the globe with their Silk Road trading routes.

Now, they are revisiting this tradition with a massively ambitious project to build infrastructure across Siberia, through the Middle East, into Africa and Europe to unify the entire Eastern Hemisphere into a coherent trading block with themselves at the center of it.

China does not merely aspire to do this. It must do this or die. Up until the current point in time, global trade has subsisted on Pax Americana, which has guaranteed safe passage for trade world-wide. Now, as America’s politics become increasingly populist and nationalistic, it is re-industrializing, increasingly producing what it needs locally or regionally, and ignoring the security needs of what was its global empire.

Without Pax Americana, the current Chinese system will break down. If they lose access to global markets for its manufactured goods, they will face complete economic collapse at the same time that they are dealing with demographic problems that are historically unprecedented.

On the other hand, if they successfully implement One Belt and Road, not only will they have access to markets across the entire span of Eurasia and Africa, but they will also have access to labor forces and migrants from across the entire hemisphere. In that case, they become the Eastern version of the “City on a Hill,” and will establish a form of international Dengist Communism that will prove to be far more resilient and responsive than any other proletarian dictatorship in history.

The Sun Rises in the East

One of the ambitions of the American Global Empire was to bring Africa into the first-world fold through foreign aid. Foreign aid has not helped Africa; it has stymied it. The reasons for this are complex, but the bottom line is that it has not helped African peoples become competitive and industrious, and has, instead, encouraged corruption and caused moral hazard.

On the other hand, China has been building hard infrastructure in Africa that will increase its competitiveness for decades to come. This includes, but is not limited to, dams, railways, and ports. And where the Americans gave Africa poisoned lucre, the Chinese have reached out to them out of desperate tangible necessity and have improved the lots of both parties in doing so.

China is building projects in Equatorial Guinea, Zambia, Uganda, Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Kenya, and that list will continue to grow.

Africa: the Hope of a Hemisphere

The median age in the developed world is 40, and most developed nations are facing some degree of demographic collapse. The median age in Africa is 19.

Africa covers 6% of the surface of the world, but contains 30% of its resources.

Africa’s economic growth is currently around 4-5% in spite of wars, disease, and lack of basic infrastructure. As Chinese capital investment pours into Africa, we can expect some multiple of that.

Africa has experienced some of the most harrowing living conditions in modern history. In spite of that, African cultures are among the most kind and generous. Extended African families are tightly knit. Strong families and generous spirits will mean stable, strong, constructive populations over the long term.

Finally, on a cultural and political level, the great powers of the East – Russia and China – are Africa’s natural allies. As EFF leader Julius Milema recently articulated, “We are Putin, and Putin is us.”