"Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social relations, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier times. All fixed fast-frozen relationships, with their train of venerable ideas and opinions, are swept away, all new formed ones become obsolete before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and men at last are forced to face with sober senses the real conditions of their lives and their relations with their fellow men."- Marx, Engels, The Communist Manifesto
Gutter being dug and filled with concrete, Kigoma, Tanzania, 2010. Par Moi.When I boarded the small Air Tanzania flight to Kigoma I found my seat in the back of the plane, next to a Chinese man. The seats behind us and before us were also filled with Chinese men in their 40s. None of them spoke Swahili and the man next to me spoke very little English. I was able to uncover that he had been living in Dar es Salaam for ten years. He doesn't like it. He travels back and forth to Tabora in the middle of the country, where he buys a particular hard wood, which he then sells to China for fine-furniture production.
There have been Chinese in Tanzania as early as 1891. With waves of migration to Zanzibar in the 1930s, workers sent by the government in the 60s and 70s and continued interest from private entrepreneurs and traders who began doing business there in the early 90s. Since the era of Julius Nyerere there has been a bilateral relation between the two Nations. In 1965, China and Tanzania signed "The Treaty of Friendship between the People's Republic of China and the United Republic of Tanzania", as well as many other agreements on bilateral co-operation in the fields of economy, trade, culture and health. Nyerere, like other Nationalist leaders across the continent, looked to China as an example, as quoted in Donald Robinson's 'The Hundred Most Important People in the world Today, he said,
There have been Chinese in Tanzania as early as 1891. With waves of migration to Zanzibar in the 1930s, workers sent by the government in the 60s and 70s and continued interest from private entrepreneurs and traders who began doing business there in the early 90s. Since the era of Julius Nyerere there has been a bilateral relation between the two Nations. In 1965, China and Tanzania signed "The Treaty of Friendship between the People's Republic of China and the United Republic of Tanzania", as well as many other agreements on bilateral co-operation in the fields of economy, trade, culture and health. Nyerere, like other Nationalist leaders across the continent, looked to China as an example, as quoted in Donald Robinson's 'The Hundred Most Important People in the world Today, he said,
That was one era of the relationship between Tanzania and China. Back then it was seemingly linked more with ideology and the Chinese government. Now, it is more of a relationship between Tanzanian government and Chinese corporations. China needs Tanzania's raw resources. Does Tanzania need China? The reply is undoubtedly divided between government, the corrupt and individuals who are called to work under the Chinese business thrall. It is both an interesting and imperative relationship to examine. Is it a mutually beneficial relationship, or neocolonialism? We don't want to reflect upon this era with remorse."You don't have to be a Communist to see that China has a lot to teach us in development. The fact that they have a different political system than ours has nothing to do with it." (New York, 1970)
"The bourgeoisie has resolved all personal honor and dignity as idyllic into exchange-value; and in place of all the freedoms that men have fought for, it has put one unprincipled freedom - Free Trade." (The Communist Manifesto)
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