The Angolan government has contracted a consortium of Chinese state-owned companies for $1.9 billion to rebuild the country's infrastructure. An article in the Dec. 24, 2005, issue of the Boston Globe titled “Chinese scooping up deals in Africa as U.S. firms hesitate," quoted Angolan congressman Issac Maria dos Anjos, who said Chinese companies' costs per square meter of construction is one-quarter that of European firms.

"We can make a profit because we have an advantage over other foreign companies—we work holidays, Saturdays, Sundays, most evenings, and we cost a lot less," Liu "Johnny" Jian Wei, spokesman for the Chinese state-owned Civil Construction company, told the Globe. The company had been working on construction projects in Angola for five years.

China exported about $300 million worth of goods—largely construction materials, furniture, footwear, and textiles—to Angola between January and October of 2006. During that period China imported 98 million tons of oil from that country, one of its single largest suppliers of petroleum.

In 2005 Beijing granted $2 billion worth of loans to Angola on favorable terms, enabling the government in Luanda to forgo austerity measures the International Monetary Fund had demanded in exchange for credit. Since then it has extended Angola another $1 billion. Much of the loan money is being spent to build roads, schools, hospitals, and a fiber optic network, and to repair railroads, bridges, and industry in that country.

Many Chinese companies bring in Chinese workers for the projects in Angola and other African countries. This is both to compensate for a lack of construction skills among workers in those countries—where in many cases, as a result of imperialist-imposed underdevelopment, a modern working class is just emerging—and to use a workforce they expect will work hard for relatively low wages and living standards.

"To cut costs more, we live together, two or three to a room," said Liu, referring to the Chinese workers he oversees, who are paid about $500 a month.

"We cannot force them to work like us," Tu Qingkui, manager of a school construction near Huambo, told a New York Times reporter, referring to Angolan workers, many of whom are not used to the discipline of workers in economically more developed countries. "We taught them how to mix concrete. They didn't even know bricklaying."

Meanwhile, an Angolan worker repairing the railroad near Kamakupa for a Chinese company told the same reporter that he earned the equivalent of $2.50 a day. "And they don't even give us lunch," he said.
 
 
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