That worries Charles Mutasa, head of the nongovernmental African Network on Debt and Development. "The absence of Chinese pressure groups lobbying about environmental damage makes the whole business of China [in Africa] a bit tricky," he says, because there are no Chinese civil society watchdogs keeping an eye on their government and investors.
Seriously...what could they do if they knew?
Chinese activists looking to Africa
As its economic role in Africa expands, China's budding civil society takes cautious steps to hold its government to account.
By Peter Ford | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Shanghai, China - Amos Kimunya could hardly have been blunter.
As the annual meeting of the African Development Bank (AfDA) here last week celebrated China's booming aid and trade with Africa, the Kenyan finance minister verged on the undiplomatic.
"The question we have to ask ourselves" as China plows billions of dollars into Africa and snaps up its oil and minerals, he told fellow ministers, "is, 'is this a blessing or a curse?' "
At a much smaller and more discreet gathering on the sidelines of the AfDB shindig, African and Chinese civil society groups were meeting for the first time to plan how they could at least take some of the rough edges off a relationship that has sparked controversy well beyond Africa's borders.
But holding the Chinese government to account for its behavior in Africa will be a tall order for Chinese nongovernmental organizations that are still testing the political waters and have no international experience.
"The problem for us Chinese is that we are not aware of the projects" Beijing is funding in Africa, says Wen Bo, a leading Chinese environmental activist. "Chinese people don't know what Chinese companies are doing in Africa."
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They Do Know...
...but their ability to influence the actions of their government is next door to nil. We're talking here about a country where peasant farmers protesting aganst local government officials seizing their property and selling it at a profit to these same local officials have been shot down in the street and imprisoned. In this country we may scream and kick about the Bush Administration's efforts to strip away our Constitutional rights but in China kicking and screaming might buy you a long prison term or, worse, a bullet.
Some know, most ...
are like your average american here, locked in their own microcosm, oblivious to the greater world, let alone what some corporation is doing halfway around the world.
So, it's a combination of helplessness and ignorance.
Add a type of apathy to the situation as well. Every year, there are dozens upon dozens of small uprisings and riots in disparate parts of china against the outrages of companies and public officials. The gap between the well off and destitute is highly visible; you can walk down a street in a large city, and see a posh boutique, with a homeless family begging yards away. Thus, the chinese folks are too busy trying to secure their own freedom to worry about that of others. Bless the activists in this piece. but, they are the bourgeois, and will have bigger worries if the lower classes find the second coming of Mao.