China Pillages Africa Like a Colonist

Mandarin Translation of the Week

China is exploiting Africa's resources just like European colonisers did, with disastrous effects for the environment, acclaimed primatologist Jane Goodall has told AFP.

据著名灵长类动物学家珍•古道尔女士表示，"中国正在掠夺非洲资源如同昔日欧洲殖民者，并给环境带来了毁灭性影响。"

This article has been translated from Mandarin. Click here to read the original version on the Sun Daily.

On the eve of her 80th birthday, Jane Goodall, the fiery British wildlife crusader, whizzes across the world giving a series of lectures on the threats to our planet. And the rising world power's involvement on the continent especially raises alarms when it comes to her beloved chimpanzees and wildlife habitats.

During the last decade, China has been investing heavily in African natural resources, developing mines and oil wells and running related construction companies. Activists accuse Chinese firms of paying little attention to the environmental impacts of their race for resources.

"In Africa, China is merely doing what the colonists did. They want raw materials for their economic growth, just as the colonists went into Africa and took the natural resources, leaving people poorer," she told AFP in an interview in Johannesburg.

The stakes for the environment may even be larger this time round, she warns.  "China is bigger, and the technology has improved... It is a disaster."

Other than massive investment in Africa's mines, China is also a big market for elephant tusks and rhino horns, which has driven poaching of these animals to alarming heights.

But Goodall, who rose to fame through her ground-breaking research on chimpanzees in Tanzania, is optimistic.  "I do believe China is changing," she said, citing Beijing's recent destruction of illegal ivory stockpiles as one example.  "I think 10 years ago, even with international pressure, we would never have had an ivory crush. But they have," she added. "I think 10 years ago the government would never have banned shark fin soup on official occasions. But they have."

Her organization, Roots and Shoots, founded over two decades ago to instil conservation values in children, has also become involved in China.  "We work with hundreds of Chinese children, and they are not different from children we work with here. They all love nature, they love animals, they want to help; there's no difference," she said.

Young people's enthusiasm to change the world is a major reason to hope for Goodall, with seemingly inexhaustible energy and who manages to keep an auditorium hanging on her words for more than an hour.

"These young people will become the next parents, the next teachers, the next lawyers, the next business people and the next politicians, some of them. The biggest problem is that people understand but don't know what to do," she said. "If you have one thousand, one million, or eventually several million people all making the right choice, all thinking about the consequences of their behavior, then we're going to see big change."

Article translated by Qiuyun Shang, Staff Intern for the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at the Wilson Center.

Photo courtesy of World Bank Photo Collection via Flickr Commons.