By Friday Obande
The Chairman of Chinese investors Association for Development and Promotion in Nigeria, Chief Ronnie Liu has decried what he called enmity that the US sows in the minds of Nigerians and Africans against China as baseless.
Liu, a businessman in Lagos with interests in several sectors lamented that while US has sustained one of the world’s greatest economies for hundreds of years and also related with Africa these years without a lasting impact, it doesn’t feel comfortable that China has warmed its way into Africans minds through genuine friendship.
The Chinese businessman noted that even in the face of the coronavirus global pandemic, while China struggles to control its own crises, it hasn’t looked away from assisting African countries to pull through.
He therefore called on Nigerians and Africans to be wary of and ignore the propaganda of the US trying to sow hate between the two worlds.
He said “the relationship between Nigeria where I have lived and done business in the past 21 years has been great and fruitful. The China Africa cooperation in the past 20 years through the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) has yielded great dividends and it would be meaningless for us to allow ourselves to be driven apart by US that hasn’t shown any better love for Africa even with a far longer relationship.”
Chief Liu, is also a co-chairman and founding leader of the University of Lagos Institute for Nigeria-China Studies
The details of his chat with us as reproduced here was instructive as he challenges Africa and China to work towards better days ahead for the good of the two sides.
“When we take stock of the benefits of FOCAC in 20 years and those of Africa-US relationship, we don’t look far to see the difference and also know who has been the real friend and who is the enemy between the two large world economies.”
His statement:
Western media has made everything non-western evil. We need to sit down and look at it logically. Nigeria has been struggling to fight Boko Haram for over a decade, US has never shown any genuine support. In fact, at a time they were technically supporting Boko Haram by blocking every opportunity to access weapons. Whereas, the same US has been building sophisticated millitary bases all over Africa with several billions of dollars even all over islands in Africa. In a continent struggling to provide basic thing as clean water, road, education, etc. In terms of infrastructure development, US hasn’t built anything tangible anywhere in Africa despite her big economy and influence. On the other hand, China is building projects across Africa from electricity to railways to airports, roads, and further awards scholarships to Africans.
Let’s say African countries default eventually in paying for the projects and China takes them over as canvassed by the US, who would still be using those infrastructure, Chinese? At least they brought them here, so if Africa can’t pay back and the Chinese take them over, these things would still be in use by Africans and improve quality of life, just like every private business. I said this by just assuming the position of US is correct, although it is not because the conditions and terms of the project construction don’t include such takeovers.
US and its leader, President Donald Trump have made it a duty to see everyone supporting Africa as enemy and call them all kinds of unprintable names, impose visa ban on them, reporting the weak and negative sides of African nations and continuously ridiculing everything we do.
Even before any takeover as they predict, the western media still find their ways into the hearts of Africans to hate Chinese. Sadly, enough some uninformed people even those that are opinion leaders that should know better join in brainwashing the uninformed citizens.
For instance, how many times has China overthrown any African government? How many nations in Africa has China invaded? How many times has the Chinese Embassy criticized Nigeria’s local affairs?
It was in 1809 that New York started operating underground train, that’s over 210 years ago, they never extended such to Africa. China started booming just 20 years ago and has extended everything technology they have to Africa, that have improved people’s lives; from phones, train, good airport, naval vessels, roads, scholarships, etc. So, Africans must sit down and think and know who their real enemy is and definitely China is not the enemy of Africa.
