China's new export: farmers

China has a shortage of land, Africa a shortage of food. So one entrepreneur had the bright idea of persuading Chinese farmers to emigrate.

Liu Jianjun is wearing a brightly coloured African tunic, the tall hat of a tribal leader, a string of red beads round his neck and carrying a stick with a secret knife in the handle. Beside him sits a portrait of Chairman Mao Zedong. It is a slightly incongruous scene but one that mirrors the ever-closer relationship between Asia's economic giant China and the world's poorest continent.


"The African people yell, 'Mao Zedong is all right' and they are very warm-hearted when I'm there," says one of China's most prominent private sector ambassadors. "The minute Chinese people get off the plane, the Africans are friendly. Chinese do not bring rifles and weapons; they bring seeds and technology."

China's Ministry of Commerce triumphantly announced this month that its bilateral trade with the continent is set to hit $100bn (£67.8bn) by the end of 2008, two years ahead of schedule. Africa's plentiful oilfields and rich mineral deposits are top of China's imports, and in return the world's most populous nation is exporting tens of thousands of its countrymen.

By some estimates, 750,000 Chinese people have spent time on the continent or have moved to Africa permanently to do business and take advantage of the natural resources. And Hebei, the province from where the middle-aged Mr Liu hails, is no exception. He reckons 10,000 farmers from Hebei alone have gone to 18 African countries in the past few years.

They work in "Baoding villages", named after the dusty township where Mr Liu lives; he likes to point out that Baoding means "Protection and peace".

www.independent.co.uk...


Amazing.

I remember my first trips to South America and I was amazed at the Chinese in South America as well as the Carribean....also Indians..from India...

I am always facinated when I become aware of some of these underground social movements. No wonder the US Intel guys get all freaked out. lol

i dont see why your surprised

chinese and indians make up 50% of the worlds population

logic only entails you would see them roaming all over the face of the earth , even the antartic

now, if we didnt see any chinese or indians roaming around, THEN id get surprised and worried, as it wouldnt make any sense

China's new export: farmers

I'm not to surprised Mexico has been doing this for decades

All joking aside This could be a slow surprise invasion

I am always surprises as I become aware of new things. I did not mean this as a slight at all. I probably just exposed my ignorance more then anything..lol.

An example would be when I speak of India now I think of a high tech hub, Bollywood, its own music etc as opposed to my old idea of it being very poor.

And now Africa...with the third largest film industry in the world located in Nigeria, with MCDonalds and BP and now the Chinese are taking up farming in Africa. Wow. Just amazing.

So now I am viewing Africa with different eyes as European, American, Russian, Saudi, interests overlap in Africa.

reply to post by whiteraven

Worthy topic whiteraven. Chinese inroads in Africa go back a ways, One of the more historic symbols of Chinese/African solidarity was the difficult 5yr construction of the TAZARA Railway aka: The Peoples Railway 1970 -1975. To the chagrin of the World Bank, the Chinese stepped into a political void, to offer financial/technical/manpower assistance to the newely independent nations of Tanzania and Zamibia.

I used to have some great black & white photos of Chinese laborers laying-track with their African counterparts...smiling, dirty...approx 25,000 Chinese - 50,000 Africans worked, and died side-by-side. 70 Chinese - 157 Tanzanians lost their lives in the effort.

Cemetary of the Chinese Martyrs; Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania.

reply to post by OBE1


Very informative impressive post.

One of my great grandfathers worked on the Northen pacific in the US before the turn of the century...second last century.