China, Africa, and globalization
Currently, there are many Chinese immigrants in Africa who moved there without any assistance from the state, and solely to pursue their own entrepreneurial goals, with some estimates putting the figure around one million Chinese citizens having arrived in Africa since 2001. 11 It can be argued that since they are not involved with the sta te, and thus don’t have a large amount money at their disposal, they are far more likely to employ more African workers and train them than they are to bring in Chinese workers from China, and have to pay them more than what they would earn in China. The act of employing increased amounts of African workers by Chinese entrepreneurs who own decently sized businesses has increased the disposable incomes of those workers, increasing consumption. This can be demonstrated through a diagram, in which there is shift of the aggregate demand curve outwards to show increased spending by the workers on goods
Price Level
SRAS
P1 P2
AD3 (MULTIPLIER)
AD 2
AD
Y1 Y2
Real National Output
and services, as they become more wealthy due to moving from being unemployed to being employed, or in some cases frombeing employed to being better trained, and havingmore experience allowing them to apply for more well-paid jobs. This could have led to the multiplier effect, as when people spend money on goods and services in markets such as those in African countries, often this directly becomes someone else’s income leading to them spending more money on goods and services. A good example of how this might happen is at marketplaces, where consumers will be giving their money to the vendors having bought a good. This vendor is then able to spend further money elsewhere, leading to the next vendor doing the same, and in effect this process is repeated. Therefore, this would be a good example of the multiplier effect. In this situation the initial increase in consumption is represented by themovement from P1, Y1 to P2, Y2, and then the multiplier is the further shift outwards from the aggregate demand curve to AD3. However, there can also be negatives to Chinese entrepreneurs moving to African countries to pursue their ambitions, for example it is unlikely the majority of those entrepreneurs have been able to scale up to the point where they are able to easily employ African workers, and for that to actually even make a difference in the first place it would have to be large-spread. Furthermore, working conditions for Africanworkers working under Chinese entrepreneurs are often quite bad. One journalist noted when visiting a Chinese-owned copper-smelting factory in Zambia that ‘ Not one of the workers, men who spend hours at a time in this environment, wore a mask or any other specialized clothing ’ and the same journalist further noted upon seeing two Chinese workers being the only two workers in the entire factorywho were responsible for building the new furnaces, he asked the Chinese entrepreneur who ran the factory why he did not choose to train two Zambian workers to do the same job at a lesser cost to him, to which the entrepreneur replied ‘ defensively ’ claiming that he treated his Zambian workers very well, whilst avoiding the question. 12 This demonstrates that there is still a discriminatory attitude by Chinese citizens who ownmedium-sized businesses inAfrica with employing and
11 French, H. (2014) China’s Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa . 12 French, H. (2014) China’s Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa .
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