The Chinese are coming

I think the Chinese were always there, actually, but now they have “come to Africa” and everybody is delighted or afraid. Delighted seems to fit the description of those at the receiving end. The receiving end of money, or cheap plastic and clothes. The afraid part seems to be the European sentiment. All of a sudden we are afraid on behalf of the Africans for the Asian “neo-colonialists in disguise”. Expressing that fear might help disguise the European ongoing activities towards exploiting Africa? However, Europe can learn a lot from the Asian approach. Whereas we will always be considered slave drivers and exploiters, and any good attempt at shaking off our colonial historical image is automatically counteracted by a wrong comment or action that is blown out of proportion, the Asians can buy up land, do projects without using African employees, and flood the markets with cheap goods that should really be produced in Africa itself –and still get a warm welcome. I am probably oversimplifying things though.

Ah well, let me not complain too much. I mean, thanks to China I can watch DVDs for almost no money: 48 films on 1 DVD, for the equivalent of 3 euro. By now I’m used to watch films where sound and image are not synchronized, where there is a squeak throughout the film, where an entire collection of “Nicole Kidman films” can also host a film with Meg Ryan with no Nicole Kidman in sight (they look the same?), and where you have the quintessential English subtitling generated by a computer (at least I hope it’s a computer) that translates the English in Chinese and back into an incomprehensible English again. Quite nifty.

Perfection is possibly not the best sales pitch here though. Cheap has a much better ring to it, for the masses. On the other hand, the rich Nigerians are far more demanding than I can ever be, always flashing around the newest gadgets and going for a shopping excursion in Dubai or (of course also) China. Yet good service seems to be less appreciated with the result that I can sit in probably the best hotel of Lagos where I just had to wait 1,5 hours for a cup of coffee only to get it served with... honey and jam... Perhaps we need the Asians after all?