Aside from the parallels between policy,
emigration and entrepreneurship in 18th-century
Alsace and 20th-century China there is another
equally important feature of Reuven Brenner's
provocative viewpoint that we interpret as having
a bearing on why Africa, more than any other place
on earth, is a potential promised land for
ambitious entrepreneurial Chinese who have grown
up under the one-child policy:
"Neither Chinese law, nor Chinese
courts are today reliable institutions. There is
no great commercial legal tradition in China.
And such tradition can neither be imposed, nor
created quickly. So how will the Chinese expand
their family businesses? Whereas in Europe,
large families succeeded to pool together their
resources and expand family
businesses backed by
legal institutions - and that's how Western
European corporations developed before having
access to developed financial markets - this
arrangement cannot be done in China for the
simple reason that the one-child policy kept
families small. There are no brothers, sisters,
and for the coming generations no first cousins.
How will then the small family
businesses, that reached their limits and would
like to grow, expand?"
Since it will take long
before China will have developed sophisticated
financial markets (which do need solid legal
backing), the expansion will have to take place
through voluntary associations between "trusted"
families. This is what happened among Jews
within the larger European community, or
happened elsewhere in the world among tribes
which, for one reason or another were
discriminated against (such as the Chinese in
Thailand), and where the countries had no
reliable legal framework. What shape and form
these voluntary organizations will take, I do
not know. But people are ingenious in the ways
they can adapt - even if the adaptation has
long-term neurotic consequences, which are not
anticipated, and whose origin will be long
forgotten when they surface."
Our short
answer to the question posed by Brenner, "How
will then the small family businesses, that
reached their limits and would like to grow,
expand?" is one word: Africa. Moving to
Africa is the 'ingenious adaptation' that we
believe millions of Chinese are gambling upon in
order to escape environmental degradation and
the impact of the one-child policy. The journey
west also permits enough breathing room for
Chinese ethnic trading networks to expand and
collaborate in ways not possible on the
mainland. The weakened condition of African
central authorities dominated by kinship based
systems (tribes, ethnic groups, religious
communities and even 'gangs') makes the
necessary 'voluntary associations between
trusted families,' more possible there, than
anywhere else.
Though not connected with the
one-child policy in the minds of elite
'China-in-Africa' intellectuals, the dilemma of
Chinese firms - even in Africa - struggling to
reach scale is real. Brenner's expectation that
the Chinese face a continued challenge in
expanding family businesses and that such
expansion can only take place through voluntary
associations is an insight that can be shown to
already be a factor in the Chinese experience in
Africa. In an October 1, 2011 paper by Terutomo
Ozawa and Christian Bellak we read:
"It is true that Chinese
entrepreneurs and migrant workers (estimated to
be over one million) are already in Africa and
will continue to accompany any large-scale,
China sponsored development projects, and will
create many more small-scale business clusters
across the continent than in the recent past.
But these private investments - mostly
by 'family multinationals' - may not be large
enough to spur local industrialization ... And
further in a footnote we see, 'Excepting a few
manufacturing investments by China's large
private companies (eg Huawei Technologies,
Holley Group, and Haier), China's investments in
Africa's manufacturing are made by individual
entrepreneurs and small companies (Gu, 2009).' "
[1]
Of all of the different
groups of Chinese moving into Africa we anticipate
it will be those coming from the province of
Fujian that will have the most success in
executing a strategy to expand family businesses.
Not only does Fujian have the advantage of being
the prized possession of a Chinese-Taiwan
competition - enabling it to attract capital from
both sides - it also has been arguably the most
successful in establishing migration networks
between both continents while enjoying close to
US$2 billion in trade with Africa. With those
statistics and momentum toward a commercial code
governing Chinese businesses in Africa it would
not be hard to imagine a repeat scenario from 20
years ago which saw 75% of the foreign capital
invested in mainland Chinese businesses pouring in
from the Chinese diaspora. Simply replace
'mainland Chinese businesses' with 'Chinese
businesses based in Africa.'
There is no
denying the risk that China runs in jumping
borders into foreign land. Although Chinese
designs on Africa are more imperialist in nature
than a form of Western evangelical colonialism (we
don't see the Chinese as seeking to impose their
culture on unsuspecting Africans) already dust-ups
in several African countries - typically over the
expanding market share of small scale Chinese
traders - have occurred. For some these are minor
growing pains, for others ominous signs that China
has violated a law of Biblical proportions. If
ever there was a necessary test of Acts 17:26 -
"From one man He created all the nations
throughout the whole earth. He decided beforehand
when they should rise and fall, and he determined
their boundaries" - 300 million Chinese moving
into the borders of Africa is providing it.
Although the economic and geopolitical
motivations of China's aggressive move into Africa
are enormous, the demographic reasons are the most
poignant, even desperate. In that sense China
needs Africa, not to thrive but actually just to
survive.
For China, Africa is not a future
colony as so many superficially think but quite
possibly her only possible neurotic promised land.
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