Colonisation (殖民主义)by any other name would taste as bitter...


This article about the clash between the nationalism of students from mainstream China, and professors in universities in Australia, reminded me of a conversation I had with a British colleague with whom I travelled recently.  In the places we visited he often talked  and asked questions about the Chinese presence in the country, drawing also from his travels to other parts of Asia and Africa. His comments were quite critical about the way that  Chinese investment and behaviour overseas  was having  a negative impact on local economies and cultures. And there was a lot of agreement.

I couldn’t help thinking  that  consternation about this growing Chinese presence, must be exactly how a different generation of peoples of Africa and Asia would have felt at the height of European colonisation!  The Brits, the Dutch, the French, the Portugese, the Spaniards, the Belgians and others,  carved up continents, dealt out islands, divided and ruled, and also destroyed local economies and cultures.  Though of course given the state of technology at that time in our social evolution,  there was little opportunity for the peoples of the global south to share this concern as widely as we do now.  And less opportunity for the colonised to critique the colonisers!!!

I don’t know if he had never thought about it, or whether he was uncomfortable with the comparison, but when I did bring it up, my dear British friend was quick to dismiss it as ‘different’.  But was it? 


(with apologies for google translate, and online Chinese calligraphy that I may have got horribly wrong)

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