Don’t insult Africans with your anti-China propaganda, US

The meddling by US President Donald Trump’s administration in pushing for a shift in the policy direction of other countries, knows no bounds.

If remarks by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on the continent’s relations with China are anything to go by, the US government has run out of ideas on how to deal with trade and investment competition.

In typical cowboy style, Pompeo – on his first African safari after nearly two years in office – devoted much of his message to African leaders in Senegal, Angola and Ethiopia to badmouth China, something that has led to a sharp reaction in diplomatic and political circles.

Darius Shahtahmasebi, a New Zealand-based US foreign policy expert, summed up Pompeo’s objectives: “He is not visiting Senegal, Angola and Ethiopia for fun – he is there to fight China.

“The more likely reason, though, is to promote US investment as a genuine alternative to Chinese funding, all the while bad-mouthing Beijing – something Pompeo has been doing relentlessly for some time.”

The trip, said Shahtahmasebi, “doesn’t appear to have produced anything tangible so far, other than anti-Chinese and pro-US rhetoric”.

Responding to questions from journalists on Pompeo, Chinese ambassador to SA Lin Songtian, this week told a media briefing: “There is no market for his argument and no one buys it.

“As the former chief of the CIA who long engaged in the special field work, he still lives in the Cold War era and did not change his outdated ‘zero-sum game’ mentality, defined by hatred, hostility and ideological prejudice.”

The US may be the world’s biggest economy characterised by its huge gross domestic product and a strong currency, but its international market dominance should not give it unrestricted liberty to insult African heads of state by telling them who their friends should be.

The US is so paranoid by China’s rapid economic growth that it has been found wanting on how best to deal with competitiveness.

At the recent 56th Munich Security Conference in Germany, US Defence Secretary Mark Esper cast China as a rising threat to world order, accusing Beijing of deploying a “nefarious strategy” through the telecommunications firm, Huawei.

Esper warned against European countries’ reliance on Huawei for 5G technology, claiming it would endanger western countries’ internal systems.

Huawei is a leading company in 5G technology and the largest supplier of internet equipment in the world. A total of 80% of the backbone networking infrastructure in Africa has been built by Huawei and other Chinese companies.

Songtian maintained that the US “used the so-called national security as an excuse and mobilised national strength to ban Huawei, even forced Europe, Japan, Australia and other allies to stop their cooperation with Huawei – pressuring some African countries to follow suit”.

“These bullying acts by the US indeed harm others without benefitting itself,” said Songtian.

Rubbishing of Huawei under the guise of the company posing a security threat to the US, Europe and other countries, is not a theory that the world should be gullible to, given the US past assumptions, which turned costly.

Remember the Bush-Blair alliance that wanted us to believe that Iraq hid weapons of mass destruction – a claim which could not be proven?

So much for Uncle Sam’s dangerous propaganda.

Brian Sokutu.

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