Return to Transcripts main page

Amanpour

Chinese Investment in Africa Examined; Stalemate in Middle East Peace Discussed

Aired March 28, 2013 - 16:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

ALI VELSHI, CNN HOST: Good evening. Welcome to the program. I'm Ali Velshi, sitting in for Christiane Amanpour.

Is China buying Africa? The world's second superpower is pouring billions of dollars into the continent, running oil and mining firms there, constructing roads, stadiums, bridges, you name it. Just one example, the headquarters of the African Union, perhaps the most important political building on the continent, was built entirely with Chinese money, every last brick, to the tune of $200 million.

And while China is aggressively investing in Africa, the U.S. appears to be sitting on the sidelines. China has passed the U.S. to become Africa's biggest trading partner. Now just how important is Africa to the Chinese?

Xi Jinping became China's new leader just two weeks ago and right now, guess where he is? Africa. He and his glamorous wife got a hero's welcome in South Africa and they're traveling to Tanzania and the Congo as well.

So what exactly is China up to? Africa is the world's fastest growing market with the world's richest mineral reserves. So obviously there's money to be made but do the Chinese want more? Some say this is a new form of colonialism, a repeat of Africa's hated past.

Here's a quote from Nigeria's central bank governor.

"China takes our primary goods and sells us manufactured ones. This was also the essence of colonialism. Africa is now willingly opening itself up to a new form of imperialism."

So which is it? Colonialism or a relationship benefiting both sides? And where is the United States in all of this?

Ian Bremmer is the president of the Eurasia Group. He knows more about investment in Africa than anyone I know.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VELSHI: Welcome, Ian. China is pouring money into Africa; Africa is trading more with China. The numbers are really dramatic they way they've increased since the beginning of this decade or the beginning of the last decade.

Who's really getting the benefit of this trade and investment? Is it Africans? Is it the Chinese? Is it both?

IAN BREMMER, PRESIDENT, EURASIA GROUP: It's both. But clearly the Chinese are not picky where they invest. They typically go places that the West doesn't have as much. So as a consequence, they're less developed; they're more authoritarian. In those cases, the cash doesn't tend to trickle down to the Africans as much. The governments in those countries benefit.

So in places that are less democratic, more authoritarian, even though the African governments may be seeing a lot of cash, the African people are seeing a lot less. The Chinese clearly are getting what they want in the deal either way.

VELSHI: The governor of the Nigerian central bank has said that it's like colonialism, that in the end, China is extracting Africa's natural resources and, in the end, sending them manufactured product.

Do you think that's an apt comparison?

BREMMER: Funny that he would say that. I was just with the Nigerian minister of trade a couple of months ago. And -- who told me that the Chinese were by far the most effective trade partner that the Nigerians had, much more so than the United States because the Chinese write checks and because they actually come in and they build infrastructure.

So I think the central bank governor is trying to score some political points at home. But I tell you, the Nigerian government has been very happy to benefit from Chinese interests and largesse over the course of the past years.

VELSHI: In the -- in the past, particularly if it was U.S. largesse in developing nations, there would often be conditions associated with it, or for the World Bank or the IMF. You just mentioned the Chinese come in and write checks. And, in fact, they're very proud of the fact that they typically do not tie that to any sort of political reform or democratic reform.

Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

BREMMER: It's a thing. It's a thing.

(LAUGHTER)

BREMMER: The Chinese just, in the last couple days, Xi Jinping has been down in Africa and he made it very clear that when China comes to Africa, there will not be any political strings. And he's clearly implying that while the United States wants you to be democratic, they want you to pay attention to human rights. So, my God, the Chinese won't do that.

But there are strings. Let's be very clear. There are economic strings that everyone has a quid pro quo. The Chinese quid pro quo is different.

The Chinese quid pro quo typically involves lots of Chinese content, lots of Chinese labor that they're sending over to these countries to work, which hurts local unemployment issues. And of course, the availability of commodities, including food, to be exported to China. So you know, there is a -- there's sometimes a Faustian bargain in these countries.

VELSHI: Yes. Is there a geopolitical or other strategic interest, other than economic gain for China?

BREMMER: You know, not really. But the point is that the geoeconomic is becoming the geopolitical very quickly for the Chinese. All around the world, they need the commodities. They need much more energy from this part of the world than we do. The United States used to get a lot of energy from Nigeria.

Not so any more. We're getting it out of North Dakota. We're getting it out of Texas. And so the Chinese increasingly are going to be the ones holding the bag when these places blow up, when there's instability like there's been in Sudan. They're not very good at dealing with it.

So even though they have lots of economic interests, as you find that these places become more unstable, the Chinese will suddenly discover that they have geopolitical interests they didn't realize they had.

VELSHI: Let's talk about why in the countries that are stable, why are Americans not in there in greater -- in greater numbers and growth, greater economic force?

BREMMER: Well, to be fair, the Chinese aren't huge in Sierra Leone. Certainly they're not as big as they are in places like Guinea and Ghana that are neighboring. What the Chinese are doing in Sierra Leone the Americans aren't doing. They're doing projects that are very strategically important for the government.

So for example, the Chinese are rebuilding the new parliament building in Sierra Leone. And they're rebuilding the foreign ministry. You know that that comes with all sorts of benefits from the Sierra Leone government. Good thing to ask the president about when he's with you.

But you know, the Americans don't do that. I mean, our government has relations that are largely diplomatic and they're strategic. And they involve humanitarian aid.

And then we have our companies and our companies go in if they want to invest, they invest. If they don't, they don't. But they're not being directed by the U.S. government as part of a strategic plan, sort of free market economy, as --

VELSHI: But in that --

BREMMER: And China's a very different story, right?

VELSHI: -- you and I have talked about this, though. Growth in Africa is remarkable. In some places from a very low base, but economic growth in Africa is double what it is, if not more than that, in the developed world. American companies are good at sussing out opportunities and sniffing them out. And yet they're not there. There are Chinese companies in Africa.

BREMMER: Well, I mean, I was just with Muhtar Kent, the CEO of Coca- Cola, just a couple days ago --

VELSHI: Sure. They're there, obviously.

BREMMER: -- he will tell that you Africa is their biggest opportunity over the next 20 years in terms of growth. They're all over it.

But you know, for some of these companies, you know, I look at some of the American telecom companies; I look at health care. Africa's a little exotic and American law firms aren't as well established. American accounting firms have only just started setting up in the larger economies.

Our companies aren't quite as comfortable going in big until they know that they have the professional services, the lawyers, the accountants, that are going to advise them, protect them if something goes wrong.

But, clearly, we are there and we're going to be there in much larger numbers. But we will only be in the places that are more stable, where there aren't going to be foreign corrupt practice issues and where there's rule of law. That's going to limit us from some of the places that the Chinese will just basically tie up.

VELSHI: Full circle again, is this good for the Africans, this remarkable increase in trade and direct investment from China into Africa? It may not be distributed as fairly as some in Africa and the rest of the world would like. But is it ultimately good for Africans, in your view?

BREMMER: I think it is ultimately good for Africans because Africa is getting governed better. Fifty percent of Africa's 1.1 billion people now live in cities. Their women are getting educated.

As that happens, you start to see better demographics. They're more sustainable. There's less poverty, of course, and the government improves. And when the government improves, the investment starts looking less colonial.

So frankly, if China's investments in Nigeria come full circle, start looking more colonial, that government has no one but themselves to blame.

VELSHI: Ian, always a pleasure to talk to you.

Ian Bremmer is the president --

BREMMER: My pleasure.

VELSHI: -- of Eurasia Group.

And before we take a break, one last look at China's African investments. Not all of them are working out exactly as planned. This is Kilamba, a city built by the Chinese in a remote location 20 miles from Angola's teeming overcrowded capital city of Luanda. Seems like a good idea.

But its high-rise apartments, schools and shops, it has room for half a million people. But so far it's a virtual ghost town because apartments there go for over $100,000 while two-thirds of Angolans live on less than $2 a day. You do the math. While we'll be right back.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(MUSIC PLAYING)

VELSHI: Welcome back to the program. I'm Ali Velshi, sitting in for Christiane Amanpour.

Now after decades of American intervention, even after President Obama's visit to the region last week, Israel and the Palestinians are as far from a peace agreement as ever. In fact, more Israeli settlements are spreading across the West Bank and rockets are flying across the border from the Palestinian side.

My next guest makes the argument that, in fact, the failure of the peace process is America's fault. He's Rashid Khalidi. He's a professor of Arab studies at Columbia University. His new book is called "Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East."

Also joining me is Bret Stephens, foreign affairs columnist for "The Wall Street Journal."

Gentlemen, welcome. And before we begin, I want to show you a clip from Iraq video, welcoming President Obama to the West Bank last week.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(MUSIC PLAYING)

VELSHI (voice-over): It's all about the hope.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VELSHI: The video was produced by the American Consul General in Jerusalem.

Let me ask you, Rashid, do you honestly think that Palestinians were expected to welcome President Obama, thinking that he was going to somehow bring peace or that they were hopeful that that would happen?

RASHID KHALIDI, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY: I think they're not so stupid as to assume that everything that they've experienced over the past 20 years has been wiped out and that there's been some miraculous change. In fact, they have had great disappointment at American efforts.

And so I'm sure they did not expect. In fact, listening to that video, I don't think there's a single word that represented the views of anybody in the occupied territories.

VELSHI: You know, Bret, you brought our attention to a headline in "The Onion" that sort of -- let's actually put it up here and we'll see. I think this is probably the last point on which you two are going to agree with us. But it's the idea that both Israelis and Palestinians, what does it say there? "Palestinians and Israelis Come Together to Mock Obama's Hopelessly Naive Speech."

You're not hopeful that either side really thinks that there was anything coming out of (inaudible)?

BRET STEPHENS, FOREIGN AFFAIRS COLUMNIST, "THE WALL STREET JOURNAL": (Inaudible) satire often has a way of getting to the heart of the truth much more quickly than mountains of analysis tends to do. And I think that's exactly right. I think the expectations were low and those expectations were --

(CROSSTALK)

VELSHI: -- exceeded.

STEPHENS: Well, maybe. I'm not sure. I think what -- the expectations that were exceeded were the expectations of improved relations between Israel and the United States, between Netanyahu and President Obama. The expectations were low about the Palestinian front, the peace front, and those, I think, were amply (inaudible).

VELSHI: And that is basically the point of your book, that the -- that a visit by a U.S. president to Israeli or an Israeli president to the United States or to Congress has got more to do with the Israeli relationship with America than it's got to do with the Palestinians.

But you go as far as to say in this book that you think the U.S. is largely complicit whether deliberately or not, but complicit in the fact that there's been no peace between these two places.

KHALIDI: We have been engaged in what's been called a peace process, right? This is Orwellian language. There's been a process. It has not produced peace. It has made the situation measurably worse. I'm not suggesting that was the intention of several U.S. presidents. That is the result of what we've done.

We are on -- we've been on the wrong course; we are on the wrong course. If we continue, we will not help towards a settlement. In fact, we've exacerbated the problem. As far as the Palestinians are concerned, as far as the conditions under which they live. So they can call it what they want. But it's scandalous for them to call it a peace process.

VELSHI: Do you agree with that, Bret?

STEPHENS: I agree with every word you've said. This is -- there's no difference here. The peace process was misnamed from the very beginning, in part because the minimum that Israel could give was probably less than what the Palestinians were -- or the maximum Israel could give was less than the minimum Palestinians --

(CROSSTALK)

VELSHI: Something you wrote recently -- and you've written it before -- is that the Palestinians are obsessed or the -- that's my word -- with the dismantling of the settlements. And you feel that that's a red herring, because in the past, Israel has dismantled settlements in favor of peace.

Is the implication that Israel will do that again if there's peace to come?

STEPHENS: Yes, I think that's been demonstrated. They dismantled settlements in the Sinai against ferocious opposition, people forget -- this was in the 1970s -- for the sake of peace with Egypt.

They got out -- here Rashid and I will probably disagree. They got out of southern Lebanon in 2000. They got fully out of Gaza in exchange for no peace. There's no doubt, I think, that a consensus of Israelis would love to go to the 1967 borders if they felt that the country that emerged out of that deal was a country like Canada. That's the confidence they don't have.

VELSHI: All right. Let me show you a poll, though, because in fact, it was kind of interesting to me. This was a poll of Israelis and Palestinians in showing their support for a two-state solution. Amongst Palestinians, 59 percent support a two-state solution. Amongst Israelis, 62 percent support a two-state solution.

Give me your interpretation of that, Rashid.

KHALIDI: Well, I think that statistically it's the same number.

STEPHENS: I agree, yes.

VELSHI: It's high.

KHALIDI: It is high. And I think that it represents the view of both peoples, that they would actually like to have their own state.

The problem is what has been done. The problem is action. So saying the people want this is one thing. Saying that there is a governmental system that can deliver it is another.

(CROSSTALK)

KHALIDI: In Israel there is not such a --

VELSHI: The problem is -- there's another poll I want to show you, and that is where this ranks in terms of importance. When polled Israelis ranked this, about 15 percent of them think it's important. It's a very low percentage. It's all sorts of things that are more important to Israelis whereas Palestinians rank some kind of a deal --

KHALIDI: Very high.

VELSHI: -- very high.

So how do we get a deal in that --

(CROSSTALK)

KHALIDI: -- suffering. Israelis are not feeling this.

STEPHENS: Well, I think if you had taken that poll 20 years ago at the time of the Oslo Accords --

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHENS: -- 10 years ago, the number would have been much higher. I think what's happened is that the experience of the last 12 or 15 years has embittered Israelis to the idea that they have a genuine partner on the other side, whether it was Yasser Arafat in his day or now Mahmoud Abbas. I'm sure the Palestinians can make parallel remarks.

But the sense is the experience is there is no peace to be had. There are other things in life. There's an economy to build. There are other threats in the region -- Hezbollah, Egypt, Iran -- so why should they be obsessed about an issue that has been and remains and will be insoluble for some time?

VELSHI: And you've --

KHALIDI: It's largely insoluble because for the past 20 years, we've gone in the wrong direction. The things that could and should have been done, when you had this welcoming attitude toward peace --

(CROSSTALK)

VELSHI: -- however that happened, now we are at a place where some sort of deal is more important, it seems, the polling shows, to Palestinians than it is to Israelis. So how would you get that back? How would you change those numbers, that more Israelis think it's more important?

KHALIDI: I don't think it's for us to deal with the Israelis or the Palestinians in changing their views. I think what we can do is U.S. policy. We can do something about (inaudible) --

(CROSSTALK)

VELSHI: -- writing that since Truman the U.S. has either done nothing or the wrong thing.

KHALIDI: That's basically true. And that is -- that is the argument of the book.

STEPHENS: I think -- I think that the best policy that could be pursued on all three sides -- American, Israeli and Palestinian -- are small confidence-building measures, not big steps, not huge grand bargains, small things that every side can do to reduce the number of checkpoints, to provide security assistance to Palestinian security personnel.

And what the Palestinians could do to demonstrate that they are really committed to a two-state solution, that it isn't simply a stage on a road to the destruction of Israel, small things work better in the long term.

KHALIDI: I think that's pumping formaldehyde into a corpse. This entire structure is dead. It will not produce a resolution (inaudible) --

VELSHI: You're saying something new should happen? What is that?

KHALIDI: So they can -- well, you have to go back to things like international law. You have to go back to things like can you negotiate over a piece of pie when one side is gobbling it up? I don't think --

(CROSSTALK)

VELSHI: -- that the U.S. is being referee and player?

KHALIDI: Exactly.

(CROSSTALK)

KHALIDI: -- the U.S. has its big fat thumb on the scale.

VELSHI: The U.S. is a player.

KHALIDI: -- on the side of the stronger party.

VELSHI: So do you think the referee should change?

KHALIDI: Well, I would be thrilled if the referee would colleague.

VELSHI: To whom?

KHALIDI: It's not going to happen. Frankly, anybody would be better, given the record of the past --

VELSHI: -- not going to happen.

KHALIDI: I'm not suggesting it's going to happen.

(CROSSTALK)

KHALIDI: -- saying we have been so biased over the past couple of decades that we don't really make --

VELSHI: Do you disagree with that, Bret, that there is a -- there is a -- you disagree with Rashid's contention that there's now the common institutional bias in the United States that our interests are Israeli interests?

STEPHENS: No, I think there's an institutional experience that sees that Israel, by and large, is sort of on our side of many of the issues that matter to us. I think there's a larger point to be made here. There are all kinds of conflicts that are insoluble or haven't been solved for generations if not centuries.

There are all kinds of people who are seeking statehood and are not getting it, Kurds, Tamils in Sri Lanka and so on. You know, when you look at the panoply of issues in the Middle East, the butchery that's going on Syria, the descent of Egypt into chaos, the increasing aggressiveness and confidence of the mullahs in Iran, this is actually a fairly small topic that consumes a great deal of air time.

I don't think this is -- I think we are doing a disservice to all kinds of people throughout the Middle East by, frankly, having this panel talking, devoting all this time to a relative non-issue --

(CROSSTALK)

VELSHI: -- strongly disagree; that's a lot of your book, that you think that's exactly what has happened?

KHALIDI: The United States is not preventing the Kurds from getting independence. The United States is not preventing the Tamils from getting independence. The United States is siding with Israel and alienating people all over the Arab world, the Middle East, and, frankly, the world by its support for Israel's preventing the Palestinians --

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHENS: -- I just imagine that in 2000, when the second intifada began, what would have happened if the Palestinians had followed the strategy of the first intifada, which was a largely non-violent --

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHENS: -- they would have been massively better off --

KHALIDI: I agree.

STEPHENS: -- the number one obstacle frankly to a Palestinian state has been Palestinian militarism.

VELSHI: All right. I'm sure -- I know you don't agree with that. So we're going to leave it there. Guys, I appreciate you coming in. We'll have this conversation again. Good to have our audience here from both of you, Bret Stephens and Rashid Khalili (sic).

While there are prayers for -- Khalidi -- I'm sorry.

While there are prayers for peace this week all over the world with Passover and Easter, Pope Francis continues to surprise and inspire with his actions. First he gave up his palace and now he's broken with another tradition. He's celebrating Holy Thursday not in St. Peter's Basilica, but in a youth detention center in Rome.

There he got down on his knees and washed the feet of 12 young people, two of them women, two of them Muslim, to commemorate Jesus' washing the feet of the 12 Apostles at the Last Supper. The pope even kissed their feet. We'll be back with a final thought (inaudible).

(MUSIC PLAYING)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(MUSIC PLAYING)

VELSHI: Twitter's given a voice to anyone and everyone who uses the social network. With the push of a button, you can share your opinion for the world to see it. And let's face it, sometimes that's an incredibly stupid idea. Bad day at work? Tell the world just how big a jerk your boss is. Yikes. Bad day at work is now your last day at work.

But wait, our tech guy, Samuel Burke, has come across a website that could save many of us our livelihoods; might save you from yourself. We've got some examples of just how stupid people can be on Twitter and how you might actually be able to save yourself.

Sam, good to see you. Let's talk about this. Are there really -- I mean, how big a problem is this, people tweeting things about their workplace or their bosses or their coworkers?

SAMUEL BURKE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, this German university has come up with this website that's scouring the entire Internet, every single tweet out there, for negative language about your boss or your job -- and there are tons of them. It's nonstop on this website. So I can just -- I'm just going to give you one example.

I can't show you many of them, because they're so -- so much profanity in them. But here's one guy who said, "Lord, give me patience, lots of it, because if you give me strength, I will kill my boss." Now you wouldn't think many people are taking to Twitter to say they're going to kill their boss.

VELSHI: Right and (inaudible) tongue-in-cheek.

BURKE: Tongue-in-cheek, thankfully. But this is the actual website, and there are actually hundreds of these tweets coming in --

VELSHI: It's called Fire Me?

BURKE: -- Fire Me. And what this German team did is they've created an algorithm that finds all these negative words associated with your job or your boss and they put them on the site. But they took it a step further. This algorithm also gives each tweet a number to tell you just how fireable that --

VELSHI: Oh, really?

BURKE: -- is. But they didn't stop there. During a period when they were testing this during the experiments, they were also sending people a tweet, whoever sent out a negative tweet about their job or their boss, to say, whoops; did you really want to send that?

VELSHI: All right. If you're -- if you're that kind of person who would tweet something that serious about your work or your boss that could get you fired, is that tweet that they send you going to be helpful?

BURKE: Well, in this experiment, 5 percent of the people, after they received that tweet, saying, oops; did you really want to tweet something like that? They deleted the tweet immediately.

So it's kind of like when you do something wrong, but you keep on doing it until your mom walks in the room and says, Ali, you shouldn't be doing that, and then you kind of realize that you shouldn't have been doing something like that. But this like can't save us from everything that's online. There are plenty of people on Twitter doing stupid things, like tweeting their credit cards.

VELSHI: You're kidding.

BURKE: Can you imagine that?

VELSHI: You mentioned this earlier, and I can't actually believe it. People -- and I hope we've cut the number off there?

BURKE: I took out their credit card number for them, because they weren't smart enough to take it out --

VELSHI: What was the -- what's the point of tweeting your credit card?

BURKE: A lot of times they see people who are going online, saying, oh, I just got this new credit card. Check out the logo on it. And then they're tweeting the picture of their brand new credit card.

VELSHI: Wow.

BURKE: The point is that maybe something like this, this sentiment analysis, or these algorithms could help save us from ourselves. Maybe you delete that tweet immediately or maybe you get a message right away that says, do you really want to tweet something, your credit card? So this technology could be used to help save us from ourselves on Twitter.

VELSHI: Well, that's not bad. I mean, I don't know if it would have saved me. I once sent a tweet out, a news tweet, and I left a word out. And it changed the meaning of the tweet. And I had sort of a buddy here at CNN say, hey, you made a mistake. But this is sentiment analysis. It's an algorithm that actually gets a sense of what you're saying.

BURKE: Exactly. So it knows that you're saying something negative about your boss. So it could be used in all types of other situations, marketing if people want to know something, if they're saying something positive or negative about a product, that's another --

(CROSSTALK)

VELSHI: And you've posted a link where?

BURKE: On my Twitter account -- and I know you're going to post one - -

VELSHI: I absolutely will. OK. We'll post a link to the university's tool.

That's it for tonight's program. Thank you for watching. And goodbye from New York.

END