There was a time when nuclear power plants were reviled on Planet Earth because people thought they threatened life throughout the planet. It also happened that at the same time, Hollywood had gotten into the business of exploiting people’s anxieties by making movies that aggravated their worst fears.
And so,
Hollywood produced “The China Syndrome,” a film that tells the story of an
American nuclear power plant that melts down and threatens to tunnel its way to
China — the other side of the world.
What’s
known about Hollywood’s exploitative instinct, is that it builds on its
successes by producing sequels to the movies that do well initially. But
because Hollywood failed to do so this time, someone else filled the gap.
Be careful,
however, because that someone did not produce a movie. He simply produced a
fictitious narrative as imaginative as any run-of-the-mill Hollywood script. It
is the story of China tunnelling its way to Africa and gobbling the natural
resources of that Continent, leaving little or nothing behind for other countries
to buy and develop their industries.
That budding
script writer is Clifford D. May who wrote: “‘Cobalt Red’: The price Africans pay so we can have better batteries,” a
column that was published on June 13, 2023 in The Washington Times.
Basing his
arguments mostly on the writings of Siddharth Kara, Clifford May begins telling
his narrative by shooting himself in the foot inadvertently. Here is how he did
it while speaking of Kara:
“The author of
three books on modern slavery, his most recent is ‘Cobalt Red: How the Blood of
the Congo Powers Our Lives.’ To research it, he made multiple journeys into
militia-controlled areas of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the central
African country where 75% of the world’s cobalt is mined”.
Intending to single
out China for being the resource-hog villain of the planet — like he has been
doing for years, and like he ended his current column — Clifford May weakened
his argument by mentioning at the start that Kara:
“Made journeys
into militia-controlled areas of the Democratic Republic of Congo where 75% of
the world’s cobalt is mined. Cobalt can be mined using machines but Mr. Kara’s
focus is on the more than 30% of cobalt mining in Congo that is artisanal
— a euphemism for hundreds of thousands of people engaged in the feverish
excavation of cobalt in medieval conditions”.
Thus, Siddharth Kara
says he saw Congolese militia and not Chinese bosses control the mining of cobalt
in their own country. So then, what is China’s role in this sordid mess? Here
is how Clifford May answered that question:
“No one accepts ‘responsibility at all for the negative consequences
of cobalt mining in the Congo,’ Mr. Kara writes, ‘not the Congolese government,
not foreign mining companies, not battery manufacturers, and certainly not
mega-cap tech and car companies. He’s not wrong, but I’d argue that he doesn’t
sufficiently emphasize Beijing’s role in the exploitation of Congo’s
resources and people”.
So, this is how
Clifford May formulates the arguments which he hopes will convince audiences of
his points of view. What he does, is “emphasize the nefarious roles” that the
bad guys play in the exploitation of others, even if the bad guys are invisible.
Still, China plays a somewhat meaningful role, he says; one that goes like
this:
“Roughly 90%
of Congo’s mining exports go to China, where they are processed and where
batteries are manufactured for sale around the world. The energy source for
this processing and manufacturing: mostly coal, the most polluting hydrocarbon”.
Because being someone’s
client, and paying good money for the supplies he sells you, was never considered
a sin, that part of Clifford May’s argument fell flat, and the author must have
become aware of it. This is why he resorted to another method by which to stir
the emotions of his audiences. He did so by asking the question: “How did China
achieve its dominant position in Congo?”
And this is
when and where Clifford May has shown his true colors. Like the past performance of people like
himself who wanted to ban the internal combustion engine because the Arabs had
the fuel to power it, today, he wants to ban the electric car because the Africans
have the resources by which to make the fuel that will power it.
Add to that
kind of discourse a bucket or so of crocodile tears, and you have an old style
argument that went nowhere then, and will go nowhere today. See for yourself:
“China has market
dominance in all the strategic minerals necessary to produce EVs. It already
has more market dominance in these minerals than OPEC has in oil. The national
security implications should be obvious: The US is becoming more dependent on
China for energy. On top of that, the
Western war on hydrocarbons is exacerbating poverty in the global south. More
than 500 million people in Africa do not have electricity. In Congo, fewer
than 1 person in 10 is rich enough to have an electric light or fan in his
home, much less a computer”.
The way to
help these poor people is not to get China out of Africa and replace it with “Trickle
Down Economics,” it is to get in there, compete against China, and show that
the Western system is superior to that of China.
Otherwise be quiet and learn from the Chinese.