China's Silent Army: The Pioneers, Traders, Fixers and Workers Who Are Remaking the World in Beijing's Image

355 Pages·2013·3.2 MB·English

by  Heriberto Araujo

Translation copyright © 2013 by Catherine Mansfield
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown Publishers,
an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
CROWN and the Crown colophon are registered
trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Originally published in Spain as La silenciosa conquista china by Editorial Crítica, Barcelona, in
2011. This translation originally published in hardcover in the UK by Allen Lane, an imprint of
the Penguin Group, London, in 2013. Copyright © 2011, 2013 by Juan Pablo Cardenal and
Heriberto Araújo.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cardenal, Juan Pablo, 1968–
[Silenciosa conquista China. English]
China’s silent army : the pioneers, traders, fixers and workers who are
remaking the world in Beijing’s image / Juan Pablo Cardenal and
Heriberto Araújo ; translated by Catherine Mansfield.
English translation of the author’s La silenciosa conquista china,
published in 2011 in Barcelona by Crítica.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. China—Foreign economic relations. 2. China—Economic
policy—2000– 3. China—Economic conditions—2000– 4. China—Commerce. 5. Economic
development—China. I. Araújo, Heriberto.
II. Title.
HF1604.C26713 2013
337.51—dc23
2012047488
eISBN: 978-0-38534658-0
Jacket design by Elena Giavaldi
Authors photograph: Christina Marti
v3.1
v3.1
Heriberto:
For my mother, father and sister, and to Julie C. and the rest
of the Calderón Gómez family.
Juan Pablo:
To my wife and children, Cristina, Jimena and Bosco.
“Observe and analyze calmly, secure our position, tackle changes
patiently, hide our abilities and wait for the right moment, keep a
low profile, never claim leadership, carry out business modestly.”
The strategy announced by Deng Xiaoping in early 1990—shortly
after the Tiananmen massacre—as a way of managing the changes
taking place at that time. Largely, continues to dominate China’s
international strategy to this day.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Acknowledgments
Note to the English Edition
Introduction
Photo Insert
1 The Mingongs Take on the World
2 The New Silk Road
3 Chinese Mines in the New Wild West
4 China’s “Black Gold” Offensive
5 The Foundations of the Chinese World
6 The New Victims of the “Factory of the World”
7 The Chinese Miracle Defies the Planet
8 The Pax Sinica of the Middle Kingdom
Epilogue: The New Master of the World
Notes
Acknowledgments
This book would not have been possible without the help and support of
Keiko Aoki, Gustavo Ayala, Ombretta Borgia, Lito Cardenal, Angelo
Carella, Ricardo Córdido, José Luis Díaz, Jesús Egusquiza, João Feijó,
Montserrat Galdo, Alicia García Herrero, Antonio Hidalgo, Ainur
Kulzhanova, Rosana Lake, Anatoly Lebedev, Iván Máñez, Eduardo
Morcillo, Gamble Nelkin, Awad Nubia, Mark O’Neill, Christian Phong,
Philippe Robinet, Hkanhpa Sadan, Luis Tolosa, Jason G. Tower, Aliya
Tshai, Mariano Turzi, Shannon Van Sant, Harry Verhoeven and Jumpei
Yoshioka. We would like to say a big thank you to all of them for the
invaluable help, logistic support, enthusiasm and time they have
invested in this project.
Maddalena Simoncelli deserves a very special mention for her
patience, hard work, support and kindness. We will never forget it.
We would also like to thank Liu Guijin, the Chinese government’s
Special Representative for African Affairs, for his good-natured
willingness to grant us an interview. Ambassador Liu has been the
friendliest face of a government that we have otherwise turned to time
and time again in search of answers without much success.
Our gratitude also goes out to the 500 people, approximately, who
were interviewed for this book, and to the many more anonymous
people across the world who unselfishly agreed to tell us their stories,
helping our investigations by giving us the key to understanding what
was happening on the ground; nor should we forget all the people who
have contributed to our knowledge of China’s reality over the last few
years. We would also like to give a special mention to the hundreds of
Chinese people, both in the twenty-five countries we visited and in
China itself, who welcomed us into their lives and helped us understand
the inner workings of the Chinese world.
We also thank Félix Balanzó, Nicholas Bequelin, Madhu Bhalla,
Enrique Criado, Geoffrey Crothall, Michael Elleman, Ángeles Espinosa,
Josh Gordon, Fraser Howie, Guaicaipuro Lameda, Irene Jay Lui, Susana
Moreira, William Nee, Alek Nomi, Pál Nyíri, Nicolás de Pedro, Xulio
Ríos, José Manuel Seage, Ian J. Storey, José Toro Hardy and Víctor
Torres for all of their comments, corrections and suggestions when
revising these chapters. Their contribution has been invaluable and the
responsibility for any errors found here rests entirely with us.
We would like to show our appreciation, too, for our colleagues at
Notimex and El Economista for being so understanding when the posts of
Beijing Correspondent and Hong Kong Correspondent were left empty
while we were carrying out part of this project. We would like to give a
special mention to Sergio Uzeta, Miguel Ángel Sola and Salvador Borja,
as well as to Alejandro Valente, Alexandra Pineda and all the
outstanding professionals working at the Spanish-language office of
Radio France Internationale.
We would also like to say a big thank you to our editor, Vanessa
Mobley, for her enthusiastic belief in this project from day one, to our
agent, Felicity Bryan, for making this book go global, and to our
translator, Catherine Mansfield.
A very special mention goes to our friend, the great photographer Luis
de las Alas, who joined us on our “paradisiacal” journey through Africa.
Part of this project also belongs to him.
Finally, our warmest thanks go to Wu Ye for her matchless efforts
spent arranging paperwork, organizing interviews with Chinese people,
translating, sorting out logistics and generally righting the wrongs that
took place during the more thankless parts of our journalistic
investigation from China. The same can be said for our friend and great
adventurer H. S., who played a vital role in gaining access to Chinese
projects and to the Chinese emigrants who are silently conquering the
world. Thanks to him, we got much further on the ground than we ever
could have done alone. It is a great shame that we have had to omit
their real names here because of the reprisals they might otherwise face
in China.
Note to the English Edition
Writing a book about a phenomenon as dynamic and complex as China’s
international expansion carries definite risks. The emergence of the new
Asian giant has such wide-ranging implications that, as you will see for
yourselves over the course of the following pages, these inevitably create
both light and shadow. A thin line often separates the positive from the
negative, and this must be understood if we are to get to the essence of a
phenomenon that is changing the world.
The playing out of events over the year since publication of this book’s
original Spanish edition—with such abrupt changes as the global
repercussions of the Arab Spring and the internal evolution of the
Chinese regime itself, now moving somewhat turbulently through the
first changes in the highest ranks of its leadership in a decade—could
have made what we describe in this book obsolete. As it turns out, this
has very much not been the case.
To the contrary, everything described in these pages has become
further validated by the passage of time. This is not only because none of
the phenomena explored in China’s Silent Army have lost their relevance,
but also because the book’s principle thesis and conclusions have been
reinforced. From Tehran to San Juan de Marcona in Peru, from Luanda
to Hanoi, the rise of the giant is happening on an overwhelming scale,
although still concealed by the lack of transparency typical of Chinese
initiatives in the developing world.
China’s arrival in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America is
the theme of the book in your hands, which has been fully updated for
Anglophone readers. In it, we draw on countless human stories and over
500 interviews to describe how China is guaranteeing its future supply
of natural resources, opening new markets and creating strong alliances.
China is setting itself up as an autocratic superpower without any
interference from the usual counterweights which might otherwise
submit its world conquest to international scrutiny. We also examine the