The Guardian newspapers editorial published on May 5, with the above headline as any other editorial by Nigerian mainstream national newspapers cannot be taken lightly and hence this rejoinder.
According to the editorial, “the recent incident in Guangzhou that prompted a Nigerian diplomat to vent justified anger upon some Chinese officials for seizing the passports of a number of Nigerian citizens and subjecting them to extended days at quarantine for no justifiable reasons”, is worrisome. It further worried that “curiously, none of these maltreatment have been reported for investigations and prosecutions by the Chinese authorities”.
However in recent media interview, the Chinese ambassador to Nigeria, Dr. Zhou Pingjian said that currently, there is no outstanding complaint from Nigerians in Guangzhou, as according to him, “during the past two weeks, “11 complaints were registered and resolved immediately”. To further clarify what has been generalized as maltreatment of Nigerians and other Africans in Guangzhou, the spokesperson of the foreign affairs ministry, Mr Ferdinand Nwoye told a media outlet that while the ministry is doing its best to find a solution to the issues raised, “all we need are specific cases of discrimination against our people by the Chinese authorities or individuals. What we hear are generalizations and all what we want is Mr. K should file a formal complaint before Chinese authorities that on a particular day, he or she approached property owner P, who refused to rent him or her a an apartment based on race or nationality. With that, we would pursue a targeted case and get it trashed out. But when we hear they maltreat Africans, we can’t work on that until we have pieces of evidence. You know also that while there are the general complaints of being thrown out, many Nigerian still leave in homes in that city…”
He further alluded to the well known case of a Nigerian man who physically assaulted a Chinese nurse and asked rhetorically, “if it happened in Nigeria and a Chinese did that to a Nigeria lady nurse, would Nigerians feel happy about it, and if eventually, the Chinese authorities decide to prosecute such act, would they be wrong?”
All these issues speak to the fact that there are some considerable gaps in most of the videos and comments in social media. Strangely, the erudite editorial under review based most of its analysis and comments of the events in Guangzhou on “recent video release in the social media”, from which it deemed it, “most unacceptable”. One observed with consternation that the editorial choose to disparage and even vilify the foreign minister, Mr. Geoffrey Onyema for his earlier measured and graduated response which was tagged “intolerably weak excuse” in contrast to lionizing “the attendant strong response by a Nigerian embassy official glaringly captured on video”, who ostensibly may have acted on impulse and the spur of the moment. And suffice it to say that the extremely emotional outburst of the embassy official circulating in video under reference is hardly the best way to get practical results in issues of diplomatic engagement. We will hardly know what went behind in Lebanon before the Nigerian woman offered for sale by his Lebanese captor was immediately released, but had the Nigerian diplomats in Lebanon gone banging tables and howling down at Lebanese government officials and releasing same on social media, the lady swiftly released to the Nigeria authorities, may still be there in Lebanon now. If diplomacy is about physically flexing, muscles, countries would have been sending out their strongest men and women and not some of their most brilliant ones. One thinks that the Guardian Newspaper is too sophisicated and one believes so, to be mersmerized by the outburst of emotional grandstanding than the rational,quiet diplomacy that delivers the best result.
Yet in the editorial under review, the Guardian reached to the depth of its fine intellectual tradition and observed “that Africa-China friendly and mutually supportive relations date as far back as the founding of the People’s Republic of China,” and noted that “…even in the years after the Chinese revolution, when the country was struggling to rebuild, reconstruct and redirect, it still found in its generosity, resources to support infrastructure developments in various parts of Africa.”
One concrete example was the construction of the 1,860 km railway between the copper mines in Mposhi , Zambia and the port of Dares Salam in Tanzania to give Zambia alternative route to export its only major income earner, while it was under pressure then, from the racist white minority regime in South Africa to expel leaders and militants of the anti-racist nationalist movements or have its access to the Pretoria port blocked. The landlocked Zambia would have bowed to the pressure of the racist white minority rule in South Africa then, if China had not come to the rescue in undertaking then, her most costly foreign assistance to build the longest railway in Africa. China then, was not rich and yet out of solidarity and commitment to common humanity built the facility and handed it over in 1974, when it had absolutely no need for prospecting natural resources or business opportunities in Africa.
This and some others are the epochal foundation of Africa-China operation, which according to the Guardian editorial “has grown exponentially especially in the economic front such that there is now a standing forum on China-Africa cooperation (FOCAC).”
In the executive summary of Report of field research conducted by the US based international management consortium, Mckinsey & company on “How are Africa and China are engaging and how will the partnership evolve” published in 2017 it, “evaluated Africa’s economic partnership with the rest of the world across five dimensions: Trade, investment stock, investment growth, infrastructure, financing, and aid,” and found out that “China is in the top four partners for Africa in all these dimensions, and that “no other country matches this depth and breadth of engagement.”
Despite that the editorial took its stance from “recent video releases in the social media” to regret that “
China, would allow serial disgraceful acts by a fraction of its nationals” it however, observed the robust constitutional guarantees of the constitution and laws of the people’s Republic of China “that protects the lawful rights and interest of foreigners within Chinese territory.” It is vital to state here that China takes its laws very seriously and no provision of its constitution would be treated with levity.
Further scrutinizing China and behavior of its nationals, the editorial observed that “there have been reports of discrimination against African patrons of Chinese restaurants.” It appears that perhaps, Chinese restaurants serving exclusively their indigenous dishes just as similar African restaurants in Guangzhou and Beijing, serve exclusive African dishes, is the problems here and not that of racist discrimination. There are several African exclusive restaurants in Guangzhou, which by common sense, Chinese do not bother to patronize and it will be curiously preposterous for Chinese to scream blue murder about African exclusive restaurants practicing racist discrimination against them, simply because the restaurants exclusively cater for the immigrant African community.
While Africa-China relations especially the component of the people to people cooperation is not yet an Eldorado and still a work in progress, it is important to note that when a window of such an important relation is continually opened for fresh air of improvement to filter in, some insects will fly in too. It will not be wise to seek to shut the window for the reasons of few insects that flew in.
Africa-China cooperation has great prospects and such scathing but brilliant editorial of the Guardian Newspaper only serve as a reminder that there is more work ahead to secure and consolidate African’s most reliable window of international partnership.
Charles Onunaiju,
Director, Center for China Studies, (CCS) Utako,
Abuja
