How China has created a new slave empire in Africa

Tuesday, September 30th, 2008

Peter Hitchens was in a car attacked by a Congolese mob, but he got away. Why did these semi-starved miners want him dead?

The diggers feared — and their evil, sinister bosses had worked hard on that fear — that if people like me publicised their filthy way of life, then the mine might be closed and the $3 a day might be taken away.

I can give you no better explanation in miniature of the wicked thing that I believe is now happening in Africa.

Out of desperation, much of the continent is selling itself into a new era of corruption and virtual slavery as China seeks to buy up all the metals, minerals and oil she can lay her hands on: copper for electric and telephone cables, cobalt for mobile phones and jet engines — the basic raw materials of modern life.

It is crude rapacity, but to Africans and many of their leaders it is better than the alternative, which is slow starvation.

On the one hand, he notes that his journalism — which is sure to trigger the “international community” into action — will cost them their jobs, and that their only alternative is slow starvation, yet he clearly thinks he’s doing the Lord’s work by stopping the “evil” Chinese “slavers” buying up minerals from Africans.

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