Comments by "Lynott Parris" (@DenUitvreter) on "\"Leaving Africa In Chinese Hands Is A Big Mistake\" Says Italian Diplomat Antonio Tajani" video.

No, just a continent full of minerals and cheap labour Africans have no use for themselves. It's the bottom of the production chain, the raw materials and a booming population of unskilled workers to dig for it. There is a huge difference between the bottom of the production chain and an ATM machine.
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@grapeshot No, it's nothing like when Spain simply took the silver and gold from South America, that was like an ATM machine. The world still has to do all the difficult and important work with the resources to produce something of high value. They get them too cheap, I agree, but they will get it as cheap as the Africans allow them to.
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If you don't know how to make batteries, cobalt is not a resource to you, just something in the ground.
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@ReinaAfricana Western and Asian manufacturing makes it into a resource, otherwise cobalt are just rocks. So it's actually an opportunity offered by the West, to make money off something that was useless before. That opportunity would be best used by using the power over the wanted resource to get the technology in to do more of the manufactering chain. But for that you need capable non corrupt government.
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@grantgerson2492 It's not like Africa needed lot of help with that. It has used Western Medicine to quadruple the population, so now you have the share the continent's riches with three. And the abundance of labour doesn't push wages up either. It's also a choice to stay at the bottom of the production chains. But much more value is added higher up the chain, so that's where the money is. The West would love the many Africans to be big consumers, but the ones who would like to sell to Africans are not the ones that buy cheap from Africans.
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The lack of understanding of capitalism and world politics is more of the issue.
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@grapeshot I think it's important to understand what Europe actually did en what China is about to do, and it's not that different. ATM machine is a mischaracterization, that's not the way Africa gets exploited and will keep getting exploited.
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@maxwellmakenzi History doesn't repeat itself, it rhymes.
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@mansamusa9465 You're using another Western invention, get used to it.
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@piyesankara890 Even the Americans aren't as backwardly racist as you lot here. Black people have been invited to enjoy and contribute to the fruits of the enlightenment for ages, but they tend to be European, American or people who left Africa. Sadly many Africans, as the word says people from Africa, prefer to stay backward culturally and sulk about the past, looking for people to blame for their own failings and ignore what improvement and opportunity the European enlightenment has brought them. You guys make it about skin colour, but it's all about culture and attitude.
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The Chinese are just exploiting the anti Western sentiment after most African countries messed up since independence.
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@yawos9024 The racists come from Africa and China now so that's going to be an interesting combination.
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@yawos9024 What do you care? You have already made your racist conclusions. China has an evil regime and a racist population. Europe does not deliver on it's good intentions quite often, but that is still a lot better than evil.
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@ngheanchoong Yeah right. It's just the Chinese using the racist anti white sentiment and refusal to take responsibility for their own failings to exploit Africa instead. When was the last time China even cared about another interest than it's own?
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@arewealone9969 Like Europeans don't know how it is to be poor. Poor was the default state of man until the Europeans created accelerating progress through literacy, science, freedom and innovation.
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@mansamusa9465 No, they didn't, the fall of Constantinopel was a big impulse with all it's knowlegde acquired from muslims, but the muslims had already turned anti-science and freedom so they were already dumbing down.
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@mansamusa9465 No, that's your racist obsession with skin colour. They weren't Africans and brought nothing from African culture. It's also a bit sad, this inferiority complex to look down European history and out tens of thousands of people pick the blacks and then declare them crucial. No, they weren't, there were just too few of them for black people to be, that would have been a huge coincidence but there wasn't. I don't claim Africa needed colonialism, I'm claiming that in the renaissance in Eúrope something extraordinary happened, despite it not being the most advance. Before that civilizations, including African civilizations, developped slowly over thousands of years. With the reinaissance, book printing and science Europe got on a track of continuous accelaration of development and not just overtaking more developped civilizations like China and maybe even some in West-Africa, but also leaving them very much behind in only a century or even less. This was also used for imperialism, but the development was so impressive that it is to the advantage of the whole world. It's not just the Europeans that saw infant mortality hugely decreased, more crops on less land, car, train and aeroplane use, computers and telephone. I'm claiming Europe's enlightenment has given opportunity to everybody for a better life, but where most of Asia and America seizes that opportunity, Africa is sulking in resentment towards Europeans and in denial about what modern European civilizaton brought and in denial about their own failings. That's not being proud, that's holding back oneselves through bitterness.
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@zeissiez The Dutch allied themselves with the Johor Sultanate to kick the Portuguese, who fought against the Dutch Republic's independence, out. The Dutch did not interfere with internal matters and this is part of what's called the precolonial period. So to say Malaysia was colonized by the Dutch with a few trading posts is a linguistical matter. China had closed itself off from the rest of the world but I don't believe that's still their policy. So unless you're another racist here attributing properties to peoples based on their DNA, that history doesn't matter very much.
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@zeissiez No, the West has moved on. The idea of lower beings was not the dominant one anyway, it was more about lower cultures, cultures less advanced and even that not all the time. If the West hadn't moved on it would not be a question. The West stopped submitting other peoples because it believed it was the right thing to do. We were being nice, if that is met with tough talk like you can conquer is, we will stop being nice. The West is the reason you know there is a world outside. The West is also the reason the populaation on other continents could explode. But if you have a low infant mortality and you still make 13 kids per family, you have to share your land, your resources and your wealth of 2 with 13. You can be racist to the West, but than you are culturally backward again.
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@zeissiez Yes, that's partly the case, allthough this pipeline stuff between allies is really new and very shocking. We were used to the USA messing up the Middle East and then welcoming the mostly fake refugees and letting Saudi Arabia spending money on mosques here to make/keep those radical fundamentalists. Also new is that European left is bought, they joined the neoliberal globalists and the war machine and get LGBTQP-nonsense and fake refugees to patronize in return. American imperialism and globalism used to be criticized heavily by the European left.
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@zeissiez It's not really imperialism. It's basically what the Dutch did until the late 19th century, as they invented modern capitalism around 1600. Ironically the Dutch got imperialist, actually controlling the people and the land of now Indonesia, because they felt they had to take responsibility for the people instead of letting the cruel local rules make them rich. So you could also see a colonial system as an improvement on a purely for profit capitalist control. Because money controls as long as people from for example Africa are greedy and corrupt. I don't think those terms are derogatory. These are common languages as in a language that people have in common, not native languages per se, lingua franca, just like Swahili or English between different Europeans. This is how people are positioned in the world from the perspective of the outside world. I don't know the Igbo word for Anglophonic is, I do know English allows non Igbo speakers to communicate with the Igbo. What languages are called is always a matter of perspective. I live in the country called Nederland where the people are Nederlands and who speak Nederlands. But the British and Amercans call the country Holland and the people and the language Dutch, which is bastardization of what the Germans call their language and the people, Deutsch, because in their own language their own country is called Deutschland. I could say that's incorrect, but it's their language. If they Igbo don't want to call Europe but "Imperialistan" that's their decision about their language from an international perspective, and Europeans learning Igbo will have to follow that language rule. There are always bigger fish unless it's the USA. The British have also found out that the Americans determine the namings know and that's often self centered, etnocentric and not always expressing full understanding of the local situation. That's just not going to happen. I don't expect you to be considerate to every nuance between Europeans, that requires too much intimate knowlegde.
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@netgodzilla1 I know what they have done, how they did it and how they changed it. They only conquered Indonesia between 1870 and 1930. Before that they had outsourced the oppression to the local rulers except for very small area's, but the resulting cruel practices didn't fit their self image when that came out through a highly influential novel. So the net profit policy was left for war, investment and 'civilization' of the people. So they went from hands off exploitation to full blown imperialism for ethical reasons. You can think of that choice what you want, I'm not going to defend either as morally right, the point is that a capitalist exploitation of independent countries/kingdoms is not necessarily better for the people than imperialism. Today's USA is very much like the pre 1870 Dutch in their ways of exploitation.
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Neanderthals? Don't go down the genetics paths, not good for Africans.
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No, settling in a country uninvited is colonization.
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Which resources? Cobalt is only a resource if you know how to make batteries. Cacao beans and cheap child labour to pick it is only a resource if you know how to make chocolate. Most are only resources because of Europeans.
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@simmons4690 Yes, also that but that's not ambitious enough. The wealth is in the value adding, Europe is not wealthy because of colonization or slavery, but because they are the ones adding value to almost anything from anywhere. Raw cacao beans aren't very valuable, chocolate is. Raw rubber isn't very valuable, rubber products are. Same with sugar in the days of the Transatlantic slavery. The profit is in the end product, not the raw sugar thousands of miles away from where it's sold. Economically the difference between slavery and cheap labour is negligable. So that's why I think you should use the power over the raw material that everybody needs to get the technology to do more of the production chain.
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@simmons4690 No, added value in the sense that if you have 200 euro E bike battery there's only about 10 euro's in cobalt and lithium and other raw materials in it. This 20 euro has then be divided between a few hundred miners and truckers transporting it to the ship. A remaining 180 euro's has to be divided by about 10 Europeans involved in the manufacturing, processing skilled workers, trained machine operators, marketing, whatever. The rest goes to the shareholder, all of them are consumers products like that. That's how Europe is so wealthy. They don't care if Africa gets more wealthy, they'll pay more for the resources but also sell much more batteries. Probably the latter makes them more money but no one decides on that, it is what it s. Capitalism isn't planned, that's why it's so good and so bad at the same time. So what I am saying that for the continent to get more wealthy, they should do more of the value adding to the raw materials they have, and use the power over the scarce resources to get from the West what they need for that. If Congo would only say you can get our cobalt, but we ship it to you too and you got to pay handsomely for that. Than you have the shipping money too and that would already be an improvement. But Africa could do much more of the processing too, and that's just the start. From there you could do the whole battery. You don't have to like capitalism, but it is there and it's not going anywhere so you have to work it to your advantage.
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African weapons? Spears? Where's the African weapon industry to improve on?
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They are fare worse than the Europeans. The Europeans don't deliver on their good intentions like they do on their own interests, but there is a decent side to them. The Chinese don't care, they don't have good intentions at all. That's pretty straight forward to deal with, but not if they think they're any better than Europe.
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@grapeshot You won't get any saviour complex from the Chinese or the Arabs, that's for sure. I guess it's hard to get a grasp on global capitalism from the bottom end.
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@assouankoffi9456 Maybe it doesn't need Europe anymore but without European knowledge it couldn't have reached this population, and could not have sustained it. Africa also can't protect itself from China, it could colonize the whole continent with miilitary force in a year. I'm the first to admit that Europe is only half decent and simply doesn't deliver on it's good intentions, but that's one half more decent than China or the Arabs or Africa itself. On the resources it's very simple, who is doing somethign with it? Gold, diamonds and ivory are about the only ones that are and were valuable without Western technology. It's the Europeans that studied what was in the soil and how it could be used. And the manufacturers using it are still in Europe or off shored. It's in the processing of raw materials and the end products where the wealth is because there is the value added and there are the skilled workers making good wages. The cacao bean picker earns far less than the chocolatier. The machine operator in a battery factory earns more than the cobalt mining children. There is too much naivity towards China and too much resentment towards Europe. Mainly because the resentment is not productive, not helpful. It's also only partially justified, but skeptic, suspicious attitude towards it's intentions and it's competence to deliver on it's good intentions is only sensible. But there is no big plan to keep Africa poor. The plan is to let capitalism do what it does and then Europe will do the top the production chain. You have the cobalt and coltan needing industries that like the Congo poor, but you also have the Sneaker and electronics manufacturers that would like Africans to be more wealthy and spend more on their products. It's also not important at all that the cobalt is very cheap. It could be twice the price, that wouldn't really matter fundamentally, but they can't just pay the miners double because they loose out to competition. They are stuck in the system too, stuck in nicer place, but still stuck. And Africa could do with a bit less blaming Europe and more blaming itself. Someone here said that the West killed all the good leaders. I can think of a few examples but that also means there have been very little good leaders because not that many were killed by the West, and usually with the help Africans. Basically African countries wanted independence asap because they could do it themselves, they got it, failed, and now the West is to blame again? It's a tough world out there and maybe they weren't as ready as they thought? I got a suspicion they aren't ready for dealing with China without Europe yet either.
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@maxwellmakenzi Whatever, fact is that it keeps labour cheap and you have to share the wealth of the resources between more and more people. I guess poverty isn't a problem if you can blame Europeans for it.
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@mansamusa9465 Indeed, it's always the dumbest that are the most attracted to the idea their race is still superior, for those two obvious reasons.
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@piyesankara890 You're an American, what do you know about my Western identification? Nothing but ignorance and stupid projections of backward American racism frot that side usually.
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@piyesankara890 No, raw sugar, tobacco and cotton would have been slightly more expensive, but the money was in the processing, the refinement and marketing it into products where the wealth is, just like it still is today. You're not going to get rich from digging or picking stuff, because anyone can do that. No matter how much that raw stuff is wanted.
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@2352anne Yes, I do believe I'm educating you and I am actually shocked by the level of understanding of global capitalism and geopolitics on display in this comment section. But as I said before, I guess it's much harder to understand both from the bottom end, from the recieving end. Maybe read up on the history of global capitalism from the winners side (up till now) and not feel sorry about yourself but to understand it and use it to the continents advantage. There's such a world of knowledge out there if you speak English that is there to be used to your advantage, not your bitterness.
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Nonsense, she's just anti-colonialist.
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@questworldmatrix Not for the people who understand global capitalism better than you and I.
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