INTERVIEWER: And joining us now here in studio, Ezra Vogel, a Lionel Gelber prize winner for his book Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China. And we have a nice tradition here of welcoming the Gelber prize winner to our studio. We're glad you could continue the tradition.

EZRA VOGEL: I'm glad to receive the prize. I'm glad to be here.

INTERVIEWER: Let me start by just reading a short excerpt of your book that will help set up the first question here. You write, "In the summer of 2000, I told my friend Don Orberdorfer, one of America's greatest 20th century reporters on East Asia, that I was retiring from teaching and wanted to write a book to help Americans understand the developments in Asia. Without hesitation, Don, who had covered Asia for half a century said, 'You should write about Deng Xiaoping.'"

First question. Why is understanding Deng Xiaoping so important to understanding today's China?

EZRA VOGEL: Because after Mao died in 1976, China took a completely new course. And just as if you understand the United States' government, you have to understand how Jefferson Madison formed the government and their philosophy and direction. So to understand China's new course, they have to understand how it was built and who built it. Deng Xiaoping was the one who built the new course that China has followed.

In 1978 if you had asked, could a communist country grow faster than a capitalist country, nobody would have said yes. And nobody did say yes in the Western world. And yet he brought it about.

INTERVIEWER: Now we're asking the opposite question. Can the capitalist countries grow as fast as China? Not sure about that. He was-- I mean, you talk about a political survivor. This was a guy who was at the center of things and then ostracized three different times?

EZRA VOGEL: Right.

INTERVIEWER: He made a political rehabilitation. How did he do that?

EZRA VOGEL: Well, the first time he had been cut down about six months. It was in the early 1930s, and he was accused of being too much of a follower of Mao Zedong. At the time it cost him about six months because Mao was then in trouble with the Central Committee. And then after Mao came back he brought Deng back with him. And when Deng had a chance to rise in the early 50s in Beijing, Mao was a great sponsor. But Mao was a purist and revolutionary, and Deng was more practical. So Mao wanted to teach Deng a lesson. And he put him aside at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution and attack him. But he didn't put him in jail and didn't punish him so badly that he couldn't come back later. He was teaching him a lesson.

INTERVIEWER: Why do you think he did that? Because obviously Mao was absolutely brutal and ruthless to many of his political adversaries, but not Deng.

EZRA VOGEL: I think there are perhaps three reasons. One was because the first time Deng was birds it was because he was a Mao faction. He'd been a loyal follower of Mao for decades. Secondly, his performance, moving so quickly and so rapidly and doing things so well, that Mao was very proud of his performance. And the third thing was he was especially good at arguing with the Soviet Union. In the early one 19602 he thought Deng was getting a little too pragmatic about approving markets, but Deng was the key arguer with the Soviet Union, and Mao loved and respected that. So I think those are all three bound up in why Mao was not going to dispatch Deng and to just teach him some lessons.

INTERVIEWER: It's funny. He was more of a hawk on the Soviet Union than many American presidents were. In fact, he kept telling them, you guys got to pick up your socks and get in there and get tougher with these guys.

EZRA VOGEL: Deng was tough. Especially after the United States pulled out of Vietnam and 1975, Deng, who is beginning to have a strong power, felt that the Soviet Union was the greatest threat and was taking advantage of the vacuum that America had created in Asia, and was going to cause lots of problems with China. So he became very tough on the Soveit Union.

INTERVIEWER: I want to show a bar graph right now. If any picture shows, perhaps, what Deng Xiaoping's influence was on the Chinese economy-- if we can, let's bring up this next bar graph here-- this might show it. That was the value of the Chinese economy before Deng became the paramount leader. And that's where it is as of a couple of years ago. Now if that's not a stark picture of this man's influence, I'm not sure what was. He inherited a large party bureaucracy. He inherited a stagnating economy. He inherited a country that he described as backward. What approach to reform did he uniquely bring that allowed that bar graph to take place?

EZRA VOGEL: Well Deng had been overseas in France for five years a young man. And he was familiar with the outside world having visited the United States and France in '74 and '75. And he understood what you had to do to catch up with the world. And he believed that you had to send scientists abroad and young students to bring back technology in all spheres. He didn't have any single model. He wanted to send bright young people abroad in all fields to bring back the most modern up to date way of thinking, the technology, management that would help China grow.

INTERVIEWER: What were the fields that interested him the most?

EZRA VOGEL: Surprising enough it was natural science, even more than economy. I've gone through the list of the people that Deng met over many years. I haven't found one meeting with an economist. The people that he liked to meet-- number one scientists, and number two businessmen, and number three politicians. He wanted people who had run things themselves. He wasn't interested in a broad theory. He was interested in people who had confronted problems and figured out a way to make them work.

INTERVIEWER: Speaking of Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's national security advisor--

EZRA VOGEL: Yes.

INTERVIEWER: Looked at him and said, you're a guy in a hurry.

EZRA VOGEL: And he was. And he also said, this is a guy we can deal with.

INTERVIEWER: OK, let's bring this up. I'm in chapter three right now, Michael. This is another excerpt from the book. This is Deng Xiaoping's visit in 1978 to Japan. "At Kimitsu, then the world's most advanced steel plant, Deng saw a new continuous-casting production line and computer-controlled technology that would become the model for China's first modern steel plant at Baoshan, just north of Shanghai. Dung said that to make the Baoshan work, the Chinese needed Japanese aid to learn management skills. He tried to explain to his countrymen, who believed what they had been taught under Mao about Western exploitation of workers, that the reality was quite different. Japanese workers owned their own homes, their own cars, and electronic equipment that was unavailable in China."

Here's a question. He obviously was blown away by what he saw in terms of what a capitalist economy could achieve. I guess what's somewhat surprising is that he never felt China needed to take the next step, which was economic liberalization, yes, but political liberalization, absolutely not. How come?

EZRA VOGEL: He thought that China had been so divided from the time of the Opium War right after 1949. They couldn't grow because there were too many contending forces and led to chaos. His experience was that the Cultural Revolution, when you let people have full blown democracy, encourage them to express their views, including on the street, that it could ruin China. China did not yet have the commitment of its people. They weren't rich enough to have a comfortable way of life. There were too many people who'd been upset with the way that landlords intellectuals had been treated, that there was not the basis, at the time when he was empowered, to have a confident leadership, you can count on the support of the people. And he felt in this short run, you certainly needed a strong government that was united and can make things happen quickly.

INTERVIEWER: Do you think by the end, though, he still believed in communism, per se? Or was it more just the power of the Communist party?

EZRA VOGEL: Deng was not one to quibble about words. He wouldn't quibble about the word of communism. But I think it was not what we Westerners call capitalism. Some people thought of what Deng did as capitalism, just under another name. But land ownership is still by the state in China. They have large state companies that control more than half the economy. They still have a planned economic system. The Communist party is still in charge. And so it's not exactly what we would call capitalism. But open markets wide, and that he had no hesitation in opening markets and encouraging competition.

INTERVIEWER: Socialism with a Chinese character.

EZRA VOGEL: That's what he called it. That was a way of allowing him to do whatever he wanted without getting bogged down by any logical arguments.

INTERVIEWER: I want to take it to June 4 1989, which I suspect, sadly for Deng Xiaoping, is how many people in the West are going to remember him-- as the guy who, when he saw a couple of 100,000 Chinese students protesting in Tienanmen Square, gave the order to clear the square by any means necessary.

EZRA VOGEL: Exactly.

INTERVIEWER: Why did he give that order?

EZRA VOGEL: He gave that order at the end of two months of turmoil in which he was really frightened that China was going the path of Eastern Europe where communist parties were falling apart. The Soviet Union was falling apart. And he felt the only way to enforce order, at that time, when so many people were demonstrating-- and on May 20 of '89 had blocked the entrance of the military, who then went in an armed, to try to restore peace. And they were unsuccessful. So he felt the country was just getting too lax. And the only way to bring it back together was, as you say, sadly, by force. And he would do what was necessary. And he never regretted it.

INTERVIEWER: It's odd because I guess, what? 12 years earlier? 13 years earlier? There had been demonstrations in Tienanmen Square for him. And yet, I guess, he didn't see the irony.

EZRA VOGEL: You read the book carefully, and you're exactly right. He understood the difference. And it wasn't that he believed that all demonstrations are bad, or that all democracy was bad. Some Westerners thought Deng was against all democracy, but not so. In 1978 he allowed students to write on the wall, what was known as Democracy Wall. And it took about three months before he decided it was getting out of hand, and he had to clamp down. And the same way in 1986, and the same way in '89. He didn't reflexively stop every demonstration. But when he felt it was getting out a hand and he needed to use force, he was always ready.

INTERVIEWER: One of the things that I'd forgotten about this time, which you reminded me about in the book, was the Tienanmen happened, in part-- I mean, the gathering of the students in the first place-- because Mikhail Gorbachev was there. He had come to visit to sign a friendship treaty, I guess, with China.

EZRA VOGEL: Right.

INTERVIEWER: And Deng Xiaoping didn't want having happen to him what was about to happen to Gorbachev.

EZRA VOGEL: Exactly. Exactly.

INTERVIEWER: And did he respect Gorbachev?

EZRA VOGEL: He regarded Gorbachev as a young man who was trying to move things ahead. But his son once told a foreigner that my father thought Gorbachev was stupid because he was trying to have political economic reform at the same time. And if you had economic reform, you had to have a strong political structure to make it happen. And so he thought that Gorbachev was trying to deal with the problems of the Soviet Union, but he made a serious mistake in allowing things to get out of hand.

INTERVIEWER: In looking at the research material that you encountered to write this book-- and I understand that Deng kept it all up here. He didn't leave notes.

EZRA VOGEL: Right. He left no notes.

INTERVIEWER: Did you ever find anything that would lead you to believe that this man, who I guess was 84 years old at the time when he ordered Tienanmen Square cleared out, that he had any regrets about the fact that he had, who knows how many-- maybe 5,000 people put to death with automatic machine guns in public?

EZRA VOGEL: Oh, it wasn't 5,000.

INTERVIEWER: How many was it?

EZRA VOGEL: The best estimate is by a Canadian scholar Tim Brooke were 700 and 800. He was there, went to the hospitals, took the data.

INTERVIEWER: Maybe 5,000 including injured?

EZRA VOGEL: Oh yes. There were 5,000 casualties.

INTERVIEWER: OK

EZRA VOGEL: But some 700 to 800 died. Deng had fought for 12 years-- first against the Japanese and against the [INAUDIBLE]. He had seen people killed in land reform, in the anti-rightist campaign. He felt that, as Mao said, the revolution is not a dinner party. To get established power, you do what's necessary. And Deng was far more willing to have the voice of democracy than Mao was. But, in the end, if he felt the country were falling apart-- he had experienced lots of battles and lots of deaths. And it was a lot more important to him to keep 1.3 billion people under some kind of stable order than it was to protect the lives of the 500 protesters, 800 protesters.

INTERVIEWER: That actually leads nicely to the next quote I was going to take from the book here. Which of the following: "When many Chinese people compare Deng's response to the Beijing student uprising with those of Gorbachev and his Eastern European counterparts to their own versions of the Beijing Spring, they believe the Chinese people and the Chinese nation today are far better off. They are convinced given its early stage of development, China could not have stayed together had the leadership allowed the intellectuals the freedom of thought. They believe even greater tragedies would have befallen China had Deng failed to bring an end to the two months of chaos in June 1989. You've looked at it. Are they right?

EZRA VOGEL: I think that there are a lot of students who believe that. And if I had to come down, I would guess yes. There's no way to prove one way or the other counter-factual, something didn't happen. Many of my Chinese friends that I respect thought if he had been moved more to democracy before Tienanmen would have never happened, and China would be far better. That's possible. I don't really know. I mean, I try to tell what happened and why it happened. Try to tell what he thought. But the ultimate judgment of could he have done it another way to have it work? History just doesn't answer that. And any scholar who seriously tries to understand can't leap and suddenly say one of the other. We just don't have that data.

INTERVIEWER: Well, fair enough. But the sprite inside you must occasionally ask yourself, what if he'd listen to his number two instead of ostracized him, and what if he'd allowed a liberalization, and what if he'd allow this? Would it have been so bad for him to go out and speak to the students? How might history have been different?

EZRA VOGEL: It's possible if he had gone out and talked to the students in May or June that they would have quieted down. But he was already, at that time, as you say, 84 years old. He didn't get out much. And he was determined to be fairly tough with the students. He thought that the students had benefited from the measures that he had brought about, and he had worked so hard to bring about. And now they were complaining and trying to overthrow the kind of structure that had brought all the changes to China. So I think he was really angry with the students at that point.

INTERVIEWER: In the long run, did China's relations with the rest of the world suffer all that much because of the Tienanmen Massacre?

EZRA VOGEL: For several years it suffered. There were a lot of sanctions. China was not involved in a lot of international affairs. And some of the sanctions for the sale of military weapons are still in existence even today. But as Deng said at the time, Westerners have a short memory. Businessman will want to be in the China market. And before long, we can resume contacts. We should not only stay open, we should open wider. And some people in China said, you know the foreigners are a threat. We have to stay clear of them. And they're the ones supporting the students who caused all the trouble. Deng said, no. We have to be open even wider to the outside world.

INTERVIEWER: It's odd because he didn't suffer from the xenophobia that many of his colleagues would have suffered from.

EZRA VOGEL: He certainly did not.

INTERVIEWER: Maybe because he was in France so really?

EZRA VOGEL: I think that the French five years had a lot to do with it. He understood the outside world. And he understood that countries that did well in the contemporary era were those that were linked to the world economy. And he was prepared to endure a few more years of difficulty, as China done in the 50s and 60s when it was closed, but in the long run, he wanted it wide open.

INTERVIEWER: The China that we see today, how closely do you think it mirrors what he had in mind?

EZRA VOGEL: I think it's very close to what he had in mind. I think if Deng, who died in 1997, were back today, 15, 16 years later, he'd be very pleased that more Chinese were now able to afford a comfortable way of life. And he would be proud that China is now a stronger and respected and listened to in world affairs. I think he would be strong against corruption. He would feel that his followers have not done enough to tighten up on corruption. I think he would still feel that they could begin to experiment with democracy, when the time came. And I think that, as a whole though, he would feel that the leaders are just a little too cautious. He was a broad revolutionary willing to make big stances. His followers who grew up in the system by being nice people and getting along with everybody else were not bold enough in tackling the problems that China faces.

INTERVIEWER: And unlike Mao, he didn't feel the need to kill millions of his fellow citizens to make it happen.

EZRA VOGEL: That's right. And he believed that China should be a peaceful country in the world. The Soviets made a big mistake by having too many enemies, putting all of the money in the military, which wasted the country and led to the ruin. He wanted China not to spend so much on the military, to keep good relations with the countries, and put the resources in the domestic economy. And that's what he believed should happen.

INTERVIEWER: A couple of minutes left. I want to touch on two more things. He dealt with a number of American presidents. Who do you think was his favorite?

EZRA VOGEL: That's hard to say, but I wouldn't be surprised it was Bush Sr. Because he had known Bush Sr. In 1975 when he, under Mao, was in charge of running China, basically. And Bush was in charge of the liaison office in Beijing and therefore saw them very often. Surprisingly enough, he probably liked Nixon because Nixon was a grand strategist. He didn't meet him in 1972 because he was [INAUDIBLE] at that time. When he met Nixon at the White House, and he met him when Nixon and later came China after that. And he also got along with Reagan. He and Jimmy Carter hit it off very well. Tip O'Neill and he hit it off. It's surprising the range of American political leaders-- he got along with all of them.

INTERVIEWER: And just finally, as a person-- he's not a person who managed to avoid personal tragedy, right? A first wife who died and a child who was--

EZRA VOGEL: Died seven several days later, yes.

INTERVIEWER: Yeah. And another son who was handicapped I think from having been--

EZRA VOGEL: In the Cultural Revolution, he was pursued by Red Guards. And there's a question whether he was pushed or jumped out the window. I think the evidence is that he was jumped out of the window.

INTERVIEWER: Do you have any sense of how all of those personal tragedies might have affected the man he became?

EZRA VOGEL: I think he was steeled by the time he came to office. Particularly 12 years in war time fighting-- I think this is one very tough person who was just determined to think of the big picture and to look at things and not to be frightened. And I think that he was there for a very bold and doing what he thought was good for the country.

INTERVIEWER: Professor Vogel there aren't many people who can say I beat Henry Kissinger at something. But you beat Henry Kissinger for your book on China against his book on China for the Lionel Gilbert prize, for which we congratulate you.

EZRA VOGEL: Thank you.

INTERVIEWER: Ezra Vogel. Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China.

VOICEOVER: Support Ontario's public television. Donate at tvo.org.

Thirty years have flown by since China adopted reform and opening-up policies in 1978. Starting today our new Biz China 360 series takes you through enormous changes over the decades. In this first installment, we take a brief look at how this historic decision set China on the road to becoming the country as we know it today.

It's the Beijing Olympic games and the Shenzhou 7 manned space flight has surprised and fascinated the world. It was a decision made 30 years ago that made all this possible.

In December 1978, the 3rd Plenum of the 11th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China was held in Beijing. Looking back, it can be considered a turning point in Chinese history opening up a new era that outside world that has since referred to as reform and opening-up.

BI JIYAO, DEPUTY DIRECTOR INST. FOR INT'L ECONOMIC RESEARCH, NDRC: The decision to implement economic reform and opening-up policies was very important decision in the 1970s for China. Since then, we have been on the road to economic reform and opening-up and we have graduated from the traditional centrally planned economy to the market economy. Our economy has moved from a closed one to an open one.

[ON SCREEN TEXT: 1979, SHENZHEN SET UP CHINA'S FIRST SPECIAL ECONOMIC ZONE]

While Chinese people were pushing ahead to change their lives, the outside world was also moving on and wondering what this Asian Eastern nation could achieve.

MELINDA LIU, BEIJING BUREAU CHIEF NEWSWEEK: Even among my own friends and colleagues the reaction was very mixed. My personal reaction was curious and surprised and again, I think excited. I think simply the idea that things were starting to change even if we didn't know what the outcome would be made this an extremely unusual situation. I think I even then I had a feeling it might be a once in a lifetime type of story for a journalist.

It was never going to be an easy task. It required great focus and determination to stay the course. The world's most populous nation began its march out of the closed and planned economy towards a socialist market economy which aimed to expand rural income, encourage experiment in enterprise autonomy, and join in more overseas investments. To ensure the experiment would prove a success, China started a series of pilot programs in selective cities and villages such as setting up economic zones and household contract responsibility experiments in rural areas.

LAURENCE BRAHM, POLITICAL ECONOMIST: The thirty-year changes [INAUDIBLE]... and basically cross through a wall walking on the rocks. And this approach made China transform from a nation of scarcity to a nation of surplus, from a nation which had tremendous poverty to you know, removing so many people from poverty. And this shift presented the world with an alternative to the Washington Consensus.

Reform and opening-up brought a fundamental change to the China of the time. It freed up people's minds, unleashed productivity, injected a great vigor and vitality into the nation, and greatly stimulated economic and social development. As a result, China's economy has maintained nearly a 9.8% annual growth rate for the past three decades. Back in 1978, China's GDP accounted for only 1% of the world's total.

By 2007, it had reached more than 5%. China's share in global trade also jumped from less than 1% to roughly 8% during this period. And the development got a further lift when China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, 23 years after it adopted the reform and opening up policy.

BI JIYAO, DEPUTY DIRECTOR INST. FOR INT'L ECONOMIC RESEARCH, NDRC: When China adopted the WTO, China had been significantly involved, integrated into global economies. And our contributions to the world economic goals have surpassed the United States as the number one over past three years. So we can see China's economic development providing important driving forces for the whole economy.

Reform and opening-up has also brought new benefits to the people whose lives have undergone great changes. From suffering the lack of basic living necessity to enjoying moderated prosperity.

"The development of Chinese cities including Beijing, is very impressive. I think they are even better than foreign countries. Very modern."
"Buses, flyovers...Changes are huge."
"People's living standards improved a lot. It's just that simple."
"I'm feeling well, and quite satisfied with the current life."
"Food clothes...people used to need those quota coupons to get what they need. With China's economic development, these have become things of the past."
"Now whatever you want to eat, you can have it. I feel even better than what ancient emperor's ate."

Great changes have swept across this world's most populous country during the past three decades. Including wealth and more open-mindedness, changes can be found in every corner and in all walks of lives. But there is one thing that remains unchanged, that is China's determination to carry on its reform and opening up and ensure a better life for its people. This is Feng Ling reporting with Biz China 360.

And that's where we're going right now because by the mid 1990s China's reform and opening-up had brought a remarkable transformation to the country's economic landscape. The changes were most evident in the bustling business activities along the coastal regions, especially among the so-called special economic zones. Launched in the 1980s, the special zones were given flexible policies to conduct economic reform. In today's 30 in 30 series we look at this unstoppable trend of reform and the model of special economic zones.

In December 1996, policymakers was steadfast in the continuation and consolidation of economic reform. A national meeting was held in Shenzhen, China's first special economic zone. State Council officials said transformation in trade and business should alternate the country's development model between speed and quality optimizing trade structures and improving sustainability. 1996 was also the first year of a new five-year growth plan. Given achievements made in the past, officials said flexible policies would be granted to more cities and regions and more measures would be taken to reform the National Economics Center. On the same day, Xiamen celebrated its 15th anniversary as a special economic zone. Two ceremonies for construction projects for transportation will also help. An official from the National People's Congress said Xiamen had entered a second stage of development. As the country was set to deepen reform the city should serve just came accumulating relevant experiences as an economic testing ground.

Shenzhen and Xiamen were among China's earliest gateways to foreign investment. They were designated as special economic zones in the beginning of the 1980s. Both were chosen for geographical reasons. Shenzhen to attract investment through Hong Kong, and Xiamen to welcome businesses from Taiwan. For years the special economic zones took the lead country's economy, focusing on imports and exports as well as manufacturing. Their success encouraged the government to expand the scheme to cover almost the entire coastal regions opening more cities to foreign capital. By 1996 there were dozens of special economic zones around the country that had opened up to foreign trade and investment. Most were not officially designated, but in practice their experimenting was the same economic reforms. Their experiments were also encountering new issues and missions to maintain the growth of a newly established market economy and to explore ways to become more mature and innovative.

Well, after thirty years of reform and opening-up, China has transformed from a closed economy to a vibrant more open one. So, one of the natural questions is what's next? In the final episode of our Biz China 360 series, we look at future development trends as well as challenges and opportunities in the year to come.

Skyscrapers, high speed trains, fancy luxuries. China has not only achieved what it planned thirty years ago, but it has done so far more successfully than anyone ever thought. Looking forward, the world is curious about where China will go from here.

MELINDA LIU, BEIJING BUREAU CHIEF NEWSWEEK: We all are watching with great admiration and curiosity as to how things go from, from now on. I think we have all been extremely impressed with the past 30 years.

And the answer is clear, Chinese leaders have emphasized on various occasions that the country is committed to pursuing reforms and opening up. But as some experts say, the road ahead might be tougher than the previous several years.

BI JIYAO, DEPUTY DIRECTOR INST, FOR INT'L ECONOMIC RESEARCH, NDRC: Before the different kinds of reform, may be more difficult than before because we are facing more complex problems than 30 years ago.

Fast economic growth has certainly resulted in some side effects. An income gap, environmental issues, problems with the health care and pension system, and an aging population. These are some of the concerns voiced by the public. While admitting the top challenges ahead, premier Wen Jiabao said at the 2008 summer doubles in Tanjing, that the fundamental solution to all these problems lies in the deepening of the reforms.

WEN JIABAO, CHINESE PREMIER (ENGLISH SUBTITLES): We will continue to deeper economic reforms. We will further improve the basic economic system and market systems, deepen reforms of the fiscal, tax and banking systems; and improve the macro-economic regulatory system. Only by continuing reforms and opening up and unswervingly following the path of socialism with distinctive Chinese features can China have a bright future.

Experts also pointed out that transforming the export based economy to a consumption-based one is a also a highlight of future reforms - especially at the time when the global financial tsunami is weakening external demands.

BI JIYAO, DEPUTY DIRECTOR INST, FOR INT'L ECONOMIC RESEARCH, NDRC: If China can maintain economic growth, that will make a greater contribution to the world economy. As you know China has become a very important engine for where the economy goes and the reason is our government has formulated a series of important policy matters to stimulate the master demand.

MELINDA LIU, BEIJING BUREAU CHIEF NEWSWEEK: I think now much of the world is looking to China to actually lead the way out of this global recession, partly because it has a lot of wealth as you say a lot of money, the government has a lot of money. And partly because it's, you know economy is somewhat buffered from a certainly the American and the European recession that we see going on now. I think if there's any country that could, could afford to spend its way to you overcome the current challenges in the global economy it would be China. It's very lucky that way.

With ever-increasing integration with the world economy, China is becoming more active and important on the international stage. Thirty years of reform and opening-up have brought historic changes to China's development creating a rocketing economy that is now the fourth largest in the world. For the ordinary person on the street, the past 30 years have not only meant better clothes and food, but also China's rise on the international stage and that is what makes them proud to say, I'm Chinese.

Let's see what they're hoping for in the years to come: "I hope China is regarded not only as a large country. I hope China's technology development will enter a new stage." "I hope our country will become stronger, and our economy will develop faster and be more integrated with the world." "I am very confident in China's future. China will become better and better."

Let some people get rich first, and then help the rest to achieve a good standard living. That's one famous phrase from late China's leader Deng Xiaoping. The past thirty years has proven China to be very successful at the first part, and now the country is on its way to achieving the second part of it, and that is what the reform and opening up is all about. This is Feng Ling reporting for Biz China 360.

MARWAN BISHARA: Africa-- hopeless, corrupt, dysfunctional, just not a place to do business. But suddenly, everything changed. Suddenly, Africa is the place to be and foreign investment is flooding in. And foreign powers are coming back. And that's why we've come to Africa. When the global business media is suddenly interested, when even the Economist, the neo-liberal bible of free trade and free markets, changes their forecast from hopeless to hopeful, somebody should ask the question, hopeful for whom?

So people died for the cause of Africa [INAUDIBLE] Independence. There have been attempts at establishing democracies, but in the end of the day what we see is, the French are there and expanding. The Americans are there and expanding. The Chinese are there expanding like hell, but where are Africans from those challenges that we're talking about? Are we going to back to the same old historical events?

ABUBAKAR ADDY: Most of our group we see, we are talking about 6% GDP per annum, and loose Ghana [INAUDIBLE], but they are coming for mining. They are not really trickling down to the ordinary person.

MARWAN BISHARA: They're coming from where?

ABUBAKAR ADDY: For mining sectors, basically.

MARWAN BISHARA: For natural resources.

ABUBAKAR ADDY: Natural resources.

DUNCAN MPUSETSANG: I go to my home village, and it's the same as it was 10 years ago.

MARWAN BISHARA: Your home village, where?

DUNCAN MPUSETSANG: In Botswana.

EMMANUEL SAMPSON: It's about states' priorities. They don't even care about the masses when you are talking about these deals. You come to certain countries, all state's enterprises now have been privatized because it gets the state or the bureaucrats something. India--

MARWAN BISHARA: In return.

EMMANUEL SAMPSON: Do you get what I'm trying to say? And in the end, they are not providing any opportunity for the youth, so there are lots of unemployment in Africa, now. And people from my home will travel out of Africa because things are just not working.

MARWAN BISHARA: For centuries, Africa was treated like a chessboard by competing global powers. But for a moment about half a century ago, it seemed that there was a sliver of hope. That somewhere between the darkness of colonialism and the horrors of an emerging cold war, that popular movements were winning independence, taking matters into their hands. Africa was rising.

But then the Cold War killed the dream.

Moscow and Washington divided the continent into new spheres of influence. Proxy wars plunged the continents into civil war. But two decades after the Cold War, it seems that Africa is rising again, that investments are flowing in. We need to ask the big question and we need to ask it in Africa. Are Africans, at last, taking matters into their own hands, or is this just another scramble for Africa?

Our journey starts in Kenya. Our first stop is its capital, Nairobi. Nairobi, by all African standards, is a young colonial city. It was built on the railway towards the Port of Mombasa. Today Nairobi is buzzing. It's the financial and trade hub of East Africa. You will see trucks and cranes everywhere, developers at work, except they're not from the west. They're from the East.

China is now Africa's biggest trading partner. In just 10 years, China's trade with the continent has grown from 10 billion to over 200 billion dollars. At least 2,500 Chinese companies are operating in Africa, and more than a million Chinese nationals have moved here to do business. In Kenya, Chinese companies are visible everywhere but they are remarkably camera shy. We were just off this construction site and were turned down by dozens of Chinese firms before we found a businessman who was eager to speak with us.

GAO WEI: Kenya and Africa is a hopeful land and is in the early stage of taking off, so we believe there are a lot of opportunities.

MARWAN BISHARA: When Gao Wei moved to Kenya 10 years ago, he says there were only a handful of Chinese living here. Now, there are tens of thousands.

GAO WEI: The competition between China and the US about this land of Africa, and I have my own opinion. They decide to look East and now Kenya, or Africa country, will make a decision. Which one is better? And the which one I will take.

MARWAN BISHARA: And Kenya, like most of the continent, is choosing China for its big infrastructure projects.

ANNOUNCER: The excellency, the president, will now proceed to view the port and then our [INAUDIBLE].

MARWAN BISHARA: Last August, three African heads of state celebrated the Chinese-built expansion to the port of Mombasa. It will soon be linked to a Chinese-built railway connecting five East African countries.

SPEAKER: Your Excellencies, that is what our region needs.

[AFRICAN MUSIC AND SINGING]

MARWAN BISHARA: A railway for 3.5 million dollars connects you to the port, builds ports, that's quite an achievement for Africa and for China.

HOWARD FRENCH: There's ports already in every African country that has an ocean-front, and those ports were built another imperial power, one or another, in the last century. This is what imperial powers do. They build ports so that they can send their goods to that country and so that they can export from that country, to their markets, the things they need from that country.

MARWAN BISHARA: You don't think Africa needs this kind of infrastructure anyway-- at any rate.

HOWARD FRENCH: Africa desperately needs infrastructure. Whether it needs infrastructure of these terms is the question. They are negotiating many of these deals on the basis of a kind of barter-- secure supply of resources for a piece of infrastructure. That's a type of modern barter. Most people elsewhere are not doing that kind of trade or investment with Africa. The second thing that they are doing, which makes this arguably very far from a win-win situation, is China is creating these very powerful feedback loops for its own victory, its own win, that really cut Africa or African countries out of the equation in terms of the benefits. So the blueprints and engineering, no turnover, no handover.

MARWAN BISHARA: It's all Chinese.

HOWARD FRENCH: All Chinese. The workers. They send over 500 or 1,000 workers. They do this for two years. I've been on projects where even the people pushing wheelbarrows are Chinese.

MARWAN BISHARA: So what you're saying is that the loan is Chinese, the investment is Chinese, the plans are Chinese, the designs are Chinese, and the implementations and the workers are Chinese?

HOWARD FRENCH: Many times even the materials are Chinese.

MARWAN BISHARA: Are they actually importing the materials from--

HOWARD FRENCH: The salaries of the workers are typically, or at least very often, banked in China. So win-win is a propaganda slogan. It's not an accurate description of this sort of arrangement. Imperialism evolves. It's different from age to age. The circumstances change. What doesn't change is the balance of power between the two parties that are engaged in imperialism.

MARWAN BISHARA: The weaker and the stronger.

HOWARD FRENCH: The weaker and stronger. And the weaker has an inability to resist, or a lack of alternatives, and that's exactly what we're talking about.

PARSELELO KANTAI: I'm very skeptical about the whole Africa rising narrative. What civilization can one reference that has ever been developed by foreigners.

MARWAN BISHARA: But you also seems to be creating an elite that are benefiting from all the investments, benefiting from the selling of the land, benefiting from the new security situation.

PARSELELO KANTAI: I think the old word for that, if you read your Franz Ferdinand, is the comprador elite. This is not new. We just have a new class of elites. You have your kind of post-structural adjustment oligarchs and others, you know, who are now skimming off the top of these new deals.

MARWAN BISHARA: There are three ways of looking at Africa's so-called growth and prosperity. One is that it is real. The numbers prove it. Seven out of the ten fastest growing economies in the world are in Africa. As a continent, Africa is growing at 7 to 10% faster than any other continent in the world. The other way of looking at it is that this is fake. All fake. It's a false dawn. Africa's growth is fueled by debt and the mass sale of natural resources.

And then there's a third scenario, which is yes, Africa is growing. Yes, Africa is prospering, but who's benefiting? Africans and their majorities or only a few oligarchs-- only the elite that is linked to global finance and global power? So which is it? And this is the question I need to take to the man in charge of industrializing Kenya-- a former banker turned minister.

You're a former banker and you know what I'm talking about when I say that there's no real development going on in building an industrial infrastructure in the contract or in the country. In fact, your local manufacturing has dropped in terms of production and in terms of exports. And now you're importing a huge number of Chinese cheap products.

ADAN MOHAMED: Correct. China turned into the factory of the world where not only Africa, but many countries, globally, have moved their productions into China. This is now the perfect time for Africa to become what China was many years ago.

MARWAN BISHARA: But you're signing contracts that say 70% of the labor for all these projects is going to be Chinese.

ADAN MOHAMED: Well, I mean there are cases like that in different parts. It's not that--

MARWAN BISHARA: Most cases--

ADAN MOHAMED: It's not like that across Africa. There's no infrastructure project the Chinese do without it being put on a tender-- international tender. People bid and the most appropriate--

MARWAN BISHARA: And the Chinese win.

ADAN MOHAMED: Chinese win. That is the nature of the open nation.

MARWAN BISHARA: But we know that even before the process starts because they're providing the credit. They're the ones who already do the barter, and they are ready to under-price the rest, because they have a long term plan.

ADAN MOHAMED: There are things that you can do as a country, as government, and there are things that you need to do with support of private capital or foreign capital. We must make the grounds convenient and producing for people to want to come and invest in Africa.

MARWAN BISHARA: But for the time being, this is all theory.

ADAN MOHAMED: Well it is not theory. It's a plan that just needs to be executed.

[SINGING IN AFRICAN LANGUAGE]

MARWAN BISHARA: For most of us non-Africans, this is the exotic continent-- open skies, open horizon, natural beauty. Global powers have long projected their fantasies and fears on Africa. The continent presents expanding markets, cheap labor, and natural resources. On the other hand, it's the incubator of their worst nightmares-- instability, ethnic conflicts, and global terrorism.

With the drawdowns in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US war on terror has pivoted to Africa. Last year the US Africa Command ran over 400 missions in more than 35 African nations. The US is training, equipping, or running joint exercises with most of the militaries on the continent.

JEREMY KEENAN: The number two in U-Comm, General Charles Wald, came out with a statement, "the Sahara is a swamp which we must drain of terrorists." He talked of 30,000 terrorists having swarmed out of Afghanistan, through the Sudan, through Chad, through Niger, through Mali, up to Algeria. I've never found a trace of one who's been on that route.

MARWAN BISHARA: Professor Jeremy Keenan has written five books about Africa and the War on Terror. He argues that the threat of terrorism was initially greatly exaggerated both by the US military and by African leaders.

JEREMY KEENAN: So you have these very dictatorial governments basically referring to any civil society movement that had any angst or complaint against the government, they were being branded as sort of terrorists. It's what I call terrorism rents. You're actually getting money off fabricating creating terrorists. And, of course, your opposition gets dubbed as terrorists.

[NEWS ANCHOR VOICEOVER] It is been described as a new front in the War on Terror.

JEREMY KEENAN: What has happened in the last year or two is that it's got out of control. It is now becoming serious. It's become a self-fulfilled prophecy.

[NEWS ANCHOR VOICEOVER] World-wide attention is growing over the Islamist militant group Boko Haram.

NEWS REPORTER 2: What should we know about Al Shabaab?

NEWS REPORTER 3: Al Qaeda in the Maghreb which is this group, has about a 1,000--

NEWS REPORTER 4: And safe haven and training grounds for Al Qaeda. Exactly what Afghanistan was in the 1990s.

MARWAN BISHARA: So now the global war on terror has come to Africa. And it's expanding from Nigeria to Kenya. From Algeria to Uganda. It's as if Washington has recreated it's school of the Americas into a new school of Africa. One where, under the rubric of African, American advisers train African security forces to fight Washington's war on terror. So is the new military aid helping stabilize Africa? Or is it dragging the continent into a war that's not its own?

PARSELELO KANTAI: We're in a very tough neighborhood in East Africa. And Kenya has always been something of a save haven.

If you were to present, five years ago, the idea that in five years time, your country is going to be in a state of siege, facing a constant threat of grenade attacks, bombings, or mass scale killing, they would have told you, that's impossible.

The African intervention, in Somalia especially, was predicated on the idea that America was going to avoid embarrassment by putting its own boots on the ground, so African boots could be put on the ground.

MARWAN BISHARA: Right.

PARSELELO KANTAI: In other words, Africa lies.

MARWAN BISHARA: So it outsourced the war on terror to you.

PARSELELO KANTAI: Yes.

MARWAN BISHARA: The war on terror to you.

PARSELELO KANTAI: Absolutely.

MARWAN BISHARA: And do you feel more secure now?

PARSELELO KANTAI: Of course not. I mean, what are the implications of that?

MARWAN BISHARA: What are the implications?

PARSELELO KANTAI: Well, what we are seeing in this country, in Kenya, today is a total backlash-- blow back, really-- against our presence in Somalia. It feels sometimes, and in a lot of places, like we're in a state of siege.

MARWAN BISHARA: Like a state of siege?

PARSELELO KANTAI: Yes.

[CHEERING]

MARWAN BISHARA: Parselelo isn't alone in these feelings. Even the prime minister, who first sent troops to Somalia, has had a change of heart. He now finds himself in the opposition and is calling for a troop withdrawal.

Prime Minister, have you enlisted in the US war or terror in East Africa?

RAILA ODINGA: Yes. It is unfortunate that we are in the midst of the war on terror. It's something that's the circumstances has imposed on us.

MARWAN BISHARA: And it started under you. You're the one who sent the troops to Somalia.

RAILA ODINGA: Yes. We called it operation Linda Nchi. Meaning that that's an operation to protect the country.

MARWAN BISHARA: But don't you think the occupation of Somalia genetics more radicalism and extremism?

RAILA ODINGA: I think so. That's why we must have an exit strategy.

MARWAN BISHARA: But you don't think the President is necessarily on board because he just declared the war on terror.

RAILA ODINGA: He's still in a fighting mood.

MARWAN BISHARA: He's in a fighting mood?

RAILA ODINGA: Yes.

MARWAN BISHARA: That does not bode well for the country. Because as you said, the continent is going to need more stability, not more war.

RAILA ODINGA: Yes. That's what you need-- more stability than war. Exactly.

MARWAN BISHARA: It's war on terror, war on terror.

RUTH MIYANDAZI: Oh my god.

MARWAN BISHARA: Now that might have not reached [INAUDIBLE] yet, but I think--

MALE SPEAKER 1: It's in Kenya.

FEMALE SPEAKER 1: Oh, tell me about it.

JANE BYANI: This war on terror, who is it helping? I mean, when they kept giving us military aid, it's keeping the current government in power.

MARWAN BISHARA: So you cry war on terror, and you get paid, and you stay in power.

JANE BYANI: And you stay in power.

MARWAN BISHARA: But are you saying that the new military solutions of training troops, putting money in new security structures, you think that does help bring peace?

MALE SPEAKER 1: That's not help. All you're going to do with them is to shoot them and kill them. You're not solving the problem.

RUTH MIYANDAZI: The fighting, I think, creates escalation. I think, sometimes, an eye for an eye.

KITAKA MUSEMBI: Like no, we did not invade Somalia just because we wanted to invade Somalia or because it's fun, right?

JANE BYANI: Yes.

RUTH MIYANDAZI: It's true.

KITAKA MUSEMBI: We invaded Somalia it was destabilizing--

MARWAN BISHARA: It wasn't for fun?

KITAKA MUSEMBI: No, it wasn't.

MARWAN BISHARA: Yes.

RUTH MIYANDAZI: It wasn't fun at all. It was destabilizing us and our--

KITAKA MUSEMBI: It was destabilizing Kenya.

MARWAN BISHARA: Now I'm curious.

RUTH MIYANDAZI: Yes?

MARWAN BISHARA: You actually think Kenya can stable Somalia?

KITAKA MUSEMBI: No. I don't think Kenya can stabilize Somalia.

MARWAN BISHARA: So why send the military in then?

JANE BYANI: Yes.

KITAKA MUSEMBI: It's just to--

MARWAN BISHARA: Look [INAUDIBLE].

KITAKA MUSEMBI: Make the situation a bit better.

MALE SPEAKER 1: me one country that was stabilized using military intervention. Give me one country.

KITAKA MUSEMBI: Afghanistan.

MALE SPEAKER 2: Maybe Lebanon. Maybe Lebanon.

KITAKA MUSEMBI: Wait, wait, wait, wait. I don't believe the Kenyan military was ever in Somalia to occupy Somlia.

RUTH MIYANDAZI: Exactly.

KITAKA MUSEMBI: It was to at least try and stabilize Somalia in as much as we can and then move out.

RUTH MIYANDAZI: Yes. That was intention.

KITAKA MUSEMBI: It was never an issue about--

MARWAN BISHARA: But that's why America's in Afghanistan. That's why America is in Iraq.

RUTH MIYANDAZI: No, no, no, no.

MARWAN BISHARA: Only to stabilize.

RUTH MIYANDAZI: No, no, no, no.

JANE BYANI: To introduce democracy.

MARWAN BISHARA: To introduce democracy.

JANE BYANI: Introduce democracy.

RUTH MIYANDAZI: No, no, no, no.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

MARWAN BISHARA: It's perverse, even if it's predictable, that Washington would find its way back to Africa under the pretext of the global war on terror. Clearly today's Africa security agenda is not set in Nairobi or Lagos, it's set in Washington. That's why we need to get to the American capital and speak to an African strategists. Jennifer Cooke is the director of The Africa Program at The Center for Strategic and International studies.

On the one hand, you to fight extremism. On the other hand, you support military dictatorships or military regimes from Egypt or Nigeria.

JENNIFER COOKE: Well, this is a pattern for the US all over the world. I mean, it's not anything new in Africa. What is new in Africa is that we pay a lot more attention because we tend to think we have fewer interests in Africa. It's almost like the US can have morals where it doesn't have interests, in a way.

MARWAN BISHARA: What are Americas interests in Africa?

JENNIFER COOKE: Well, obviously there's the security agenda. There's a growing economic agenda as well. There's also the competition, I think, for political ideas and ideologies.

MARWAN BISHARA: You mean the scramble with the Chinese, and the French, with the Turks, and the Iranians.

JENNIFER COOKE: Yes. I think there is a competition for global norms. We want to remain relevant and influential in Africa. And so I think that's where the game is going to be played.

MARWAN BISHARA: And that justifies the 1.2 billion dollars extra now investment in the military base in Djibouti.

JENNIFER COOKE: Does it justify? Well-- the problem is in the US system, the military is probably the best resource tool that we have. If we had a limited budget, I would say we have to be very careful to balance that with the military. You can train a military in Mali to shoot straight and do the right thing. If the government that they work for is corrupt or weak, no amount of military training is going to fix that country's security problem.

MARWAN BISHARA: Or perhaps the contrary. When you support, train a corrupt military government, that could probably lead to even more disaster.

JENNIFER COOKE: Yes. But you have to get the mix of both, I think.

MARWAN BISHARA: It's good to end on an agreement.

JENNIFER COOKE: Good grief.

MARWAN BISHARA: When we come back, French troops on African soil. Is this the return of the dark, old days of Francafrique.

PARSELELO KANTAI: We're dealing with a continent that has been doubly, maybe even triply, wounded.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NEWS REPORTER 5: France saying it's just hours from direct combat with Al Qaeda fighters.

NEWS REPORTER 6: France is involved now.

NEWS REPORTER 7: Now the French are leading the fight.

NEWS REPORTER 8: Well, I know it sort of offends most American sensibilities.

NEWS REPORTER 9: In fact, the most aggressive country fighting the jihad is France, if you can believe it.

[PARISIAN MUSIC PLAYING]

MARWAN BISHARA: When France invaded Mali last year, it offended Fox News sensibilities to learn that people they once thought of as cheese eating, [INAUDIBLE] were now the front line force in the war on terror in Africa. Here, in Paris, the news was hardly shocking. Many still think of Francophone Africa as their backyard. But it did mark a dramatic change in policy.

[FIREWORKS LAUNCHING]

[MILITARY MARCH PLAYING]

A few years ago, it seemed that France's military was being relegated to the grand parades of the Champs-Elysees That Paris was going to put its past behind it. No more wars, no more interventions, and certainly no more Francafrique, that corrupting system of patronage that governed France's relations with Africa.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Time and again, in the early days of independence, popular African leaders were assassinated or deposed in coups led by ex-French Foreign Legionnaire. Togo in 1963. The Central African Republic in 1966. Burkina Faso also in '66. Mali in 1968. In 50 years of independence, there have been 16 coups in former French colonies, more than in all the other countries of Africa combined. All that violence kept in power governments that were in line with France's political interests and friendly to its oil and mining industry.

The system of interlocking military, political, and economic influence is known as Francafrique. Even today, many former colonies continue to struggle to free themselves from it. France holds the national reserves of 14 African countries in its central bank. It has a web of military bases across West Africa, unparalleled by any other foreign power. And exercises deep political and commercial influence on the continent.

HELENE QUENOT-SUAREZ: This has to change and this has to be ended. So at some point, we have to renegotiate the terms of Francafrique.

MARWAN BISHARA: Do you think this is going to be transformed any time soon?

DOUGLAS YATES: Five, six years ago, you had some very strong anti-French rhetoric coming out of Francophone Africa. What's happened? The actors who were speaking against France have been replaced.

MARWAN BISHARA: Like who? Like where?

DOUGLAS YATES: Well, for example, Ivory Coast.

MARWAN BISHARA: And where else?

DOUGLAS YATES: Where militarily intervenes to impose a pro-French ruler. Or in Mali, where Francois Hollande militarily intervened, suppressing a popular, indigenous movement in the North, to impose a southern leader through what you could barely call real elections. And that Southern leader now, [INAUDIBLE], is a servant of France. In Niger, where Mahamadou Issoufou, who is a former employee of the French uranium country, AREVA, is now the President of Niger. And he recently signed a 40 year concession giving away Niger's only non-renewable natural resource-- uranium.

MARWAN BISHARA: This is an exhausting list. Is he being harsh?

HELENE QUENOT-SUAREZ: Yes. I think so. Quite a bit. I was not supposed to be the French lady on stage, but I have to.

MARWAN BISHARA: No, please. Please. Otherwise, I'm going to have to be the French lady on stage.

DOUGLAS YATES: The French lady.

HELENE QUENOT-SUAREZ: It would be dreadful. I discussed with an American diplomat. They said, OK, French speaking countries. Your history, your stuff. [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]

MARWAN BISHARA: How do you translate that into English?

HELENE QUENOT-SUAREZ: Shoot first, dear, French people.

MARWAN BISHARA: A text that is written by President Hollande and President Obama, published in the Washington Post, about the deep, important, strategic relationship between the United States and France, especially in Africa. What is this relationship that suddenly has become so important? And why is it there?

DOUGLAS YATES: Well, each of these partners has something to offer in this region that's being called the Africanist. The United States, what does it have to offer? It has money, it has military hardware, things like drones, satellite information. It has a high tech capacity. What does France have to offer? Boots on the ground and intelligence, the one thing The United States can't get in French speaking Africa because it simply doesn't have the language. The businesses are competing for their strategic resources, but the governments are collaborating in the war on terror.

MARWAN BISHARA: But are they now finding that the bigger threat is not amongst themselves, but China? Economically speaking.

HELENE QUENOT-SUAREZ: Economically speaking, everybody acknowledges the power of China. They're saying, OK, we can't compete. They're just there. And they know we have to reorganize to find new ways to make business, new ways to make diplomacy, so that we can keep some influence.

MARWAN BISHARA: And Francafrique helps, in this sense.

HELENE QUENOT-SUAREZ: We speak a lot about the military intervention, but we don't speak about the [INAUDIBLE], for instance. 10 years from now, the biggest French speaking city in the world will be Kinshasa. So it's something very, very important.

MARWAN BISHARA: The cultural of entrenchment in Africa is an asset for Paris.

HELENE QUENOT-SUAREZ: Yes. And we aim to use it strategically.

MARWAN BISHARA: So in that sense, France and the US are getting involved to perhaps confront or contrast with the Chinese involvement?

HELENE QUENOT-SUAREZ: Just to keep their share.

MARWAN BISHARA: So this is it. It's dividing the pie.

HELENE QUENOT-SUAREZ: We are all doing the same things, the same mistakes that we were doing the colonization.

MARWAN BISHARA: Dividing areas of influences within Africa.

HELENE QUENOT-SUAREZ: Yes. But the risk that is at stake--

MARWAN BISHARA: Yes.

You know, it's puzzling to me that the same France that condemned the American British invasion of Iraq would be so in denial over its own military interventions in Africa. Now here you have a country that is capable of debating anything from the smell of cheese to France's rightful place in Europe, but it's incapable of having a frank discussion over it's present and past relationship with Africa. As if, for France, Africa is a place where truth goes to sleep. What is more peculiar is France's anti-imperialist, socialist left that is no less in denial over France's imperialism in Africa.

So how do you feel now about France enlisting in America's war on terrorism in Africa?

MICHEL ROCARD: I don't like this relation and not even this formulation. I am afraid of the taste of the Americans for violence. And, in a way, afraid, too, of their youth. China, Britain, France are thousands year old countries with long historical experience. We are still ashamed of our last colonial wars. We have finished with all that. We have no more any strategic interest in Africa.

MARWAN BISHARA: But now Francois Holland wants to double the trade from 30 billion dollars to 60 billion dollars. How do you double the trade?

MICHEL ROCARD: You are strange. You have a strange way to the question. Francois would like to double the trade of France with the whole world.

MARWAN BISHARA: But the problem is, in Africa, you have been involved in four wars while you are talking about trade.

MICHEL ROCARD: You like to mix all the questions at once.

MARWAN BISHARA: They are mixed.

MICHEL ROCARD: The French reaction is the duty left by history that puts on us an obligation to go there, even if alone. You cannot rub out history. It's not my fault.

MARWAN BISHARA: France is a force-- let's call it a force of stability in Africa. Meaning Africans look to France, it has 10,000 soldiers, it has multiple bases, and it's involved in war, in intelligence on the continent. So it's normal for them to preference France for their trade because France is a power in Africa.

MICHEL ROCARD: Maybe for them. In my vision, we are fed up with all of that. I would have preferred not to have to go to Mali, not to have to send to Africa. But take Mali. They call for help. No one was ready. America was too busy with Iraq, where they should never have been, but they are. Anyway, we helped to destroy the killers. It was a two month operation. For the rest, it's their affair.

MARWAN BISHARA: But you're staying there, in Mali. You're not leaving Mali. Even after the UN comes--

MICHEL ROCARD: I am as sad as you are that all these Muslims, between themselves, are not capable to find ways to speak and to reconstruct friendship.

MARWAN BISHARA: All the new murderous groups, the religiously motivated, religious groups--

MICHEL ROCARD: Yes.

MARWAN BISHARA: Have all of them come out of result of foreign intervention? Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, ISIS in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, Shabaab in Somalia, et cetera, et cetera. Every time there is a foreign military intervention, it creates radical, extremist, violent groups. Aren't you doing the same thing in Sahel today?

MICHEL ROCARD: I'm not sure you're right. You may be.

MARWAN BISHARA: It's factual.

MICHEL ROCARD: I don't permit you to take so quick conclusions. It's another conversation.

MARWAN BISHARA: Are you trying to--

MICHEL ROCARD: If there is a terrorist zone in Central Africa, it will be, first of all, a worry for all of you. Muslim people are those who live there. The better you manage without calling for us is the best. It's up you to you to treat the problem. You will not draw me and you will not draw France backwards to colonialism.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

MARWAN BISHARA: Listening to the Chinese, and the Americans, and the French, you would think they're all out there to help Africans help themselves, as they say. The French want to help Africans build democratic institutions. The Americans want to help Africans build security structures. And the Chinese want to help them build the economic infrastructure. But the big question is, are Africans benefiting from the new competition? Or are they being squeezed by this new scramble?

JAMES SHIKWATI: The Chinese, if I used American lives, are living their dream. The Western countries are living their dreams. Africans are being forced to live other people's dreams. So in this--

MARWAN BISHARA: You mean Africa is living the China dream?

JAMES SHIKWATI: No. We've been living the Western countries' dreams. And now China is there with it's dream. It's yet to be clear whether Africa will live it's own dream.

PARSELELO KANTAI: We need to distinguish what the African agenda is. It's become very fashionable for African governments to talk about a new policy of looking East. The question, for me, is whether they're looking East or whether the Chinese are looking to Africa. So the question of what the African agenda is, is a very important one. Now if you look at the--

MARWAN BISHARA: But are Africans benefiting from the Chinese engagements in Africa?

PARSELELO KANTAI: Yes. On the one hand, there is an unequivocal yes. African governments are now free. They have now been freed to actually make deals on terms that they can live with.

MARWAN BISHARA: So the Chinese engagement is a step forward from the European and Western one?

PARSELELO KANTAI: In the terms in which it creating opportunities for African government to begin dreaming about a new infrastructure or modernization age.

JAMES SHIKWATI: We should not forget that when Western countries were also coming to Africa, they also looked friendly. They also came in the name of trade. They came even with infrastructure. In fact, the British built the Kenya, Uganda railway. And in that earlier stage, they were not talking about their colonizing anybody. How the Africans reacted at that time looks so similar to how Africans are reacting to China now, in terms of their [INAUDIBLE] with these good things that are coming, but they don't have game. What is critical is to pinpoint an African game or an African agenda. In the absence of which, it just becomes very difficult to celebrate any kind of achievement, in the absence of a goal in mind.

PARSELELO KANTAI: I'm constantly puzzled about the fact that there hasn't been an internal debate, on this continent, about what we want to do with the Chinese. The Chinese are constantly having these conferences and inviting African governments for these debates. But Africa, ourselves, whether on a regional level, at an African Union level, we have not actually had this debate. These are questions that need to be asked.

MARWAN BISHARA: I'm skeptical. I'm skeptical that Africa has the leadership, that it has the leverage, that it has the unity and the coordination to do any of this.

PARSELELO KANTAI: You have to understand that we're dealing with a continent that has been doubly, maybe even triply, wounded over the past 50 years. The sense of purpose that was driving the kind immediate post independence generation of nationalities, the whole independence dream for the continent, that's almost completely gone. You have the rhetoric. You have the rhetoric of it being banded around, but the meaning has been totally excavated from the nation.

MARWAN BISHARA: How is that? And why?

PARSELELO KANTAI: For different reasons. The kind of wars that were waged here, either proxy wars during the Cold War or else just civil wars over the last 40, 50 years--

MARWAN BISHARA: Or today, war on terror.

PARSELELO KANTAI: Today, the war on terror. But also, just as much, military and civil conflicts has been the kind of economic war, or the war on economic policy, that has been waged here. Economic policy has been externalized in a profound way.

MARWAN BISHARA: But it does have African agents. There's an African agency for that.

PARSELELO KANTAI: There are African boots on the ground at various treasuries, but the policies themselves are fundamentally neoliberal. And they are fundamentally pursuing a line that was developed by the West.

MARWAN BISHARA: But then that grew towards the Chinese and the competition between the Chinese and the rest. That has not changed that game in Africa.

PARSELELO KANTAI: Yes, but the terms-- it's more important to explore the terms on which an engagement with the Chinese is possible. In a post [INAUDIBLE] adjustment era, in a neoliberal age, how do you begin to negotiate your goods and services, your resources? You're constantly going to be pursuing and outsourcing kinds of projects. Projects that will privilege private capital and the privatization of collective resources and public goods.

MARWAN BISHARA: But that doesn't sound like development to me. It sounds like a lot of things. It doesn't sound like development.

JAMES SHIKWATI: Yes. For me, awareness is a good step. To first of all be aware that you are not playing your own game, you're playing somebody else's game. It's a good step now to [INAUDIBLE] on them. And in terms of the issues of trade, if you are not sitting down to think long term, then you're opening doors and benefiting short term. And then, eventually, your country or continent loses in the long term. So I think the issue of how to reverse this trend is really on our side, as Africans, to ask ourselves when we talk about industries. Who's running the industries in African?

PARSELELO KANTAI: We are a continent that is emerging from an era of intellectual surrender, intellectual policy surrender. Where your entire economic outlook and orientation was externalized. What is so encouraging, especially for political elites, about China is that we are freed from the conditionality regime that governed this continent for so long. There's a little bit of policy petulance, if I may call it that, amongst the elite at the moment. Saying to the West that we no longer need you. You can see, we now have China.

MARWAN BISHARA: I actually read, in the local press, a long expose about the rise of the African oligarchs. Do you agree with that?

JAMES SHIKWATI: We are in that state now, 50 years down the line. Because if we look at even how the political leadership changes, the word change does not really mean the dictionary aspect because it's the same group that keeps recycling itself.

MARWAN BISHARA: Right.

JAMES SHIKWATI: And holding the door on behalf of the country.

MARWAN BISHARA: Right.

JAMES SHIKWATI: Or on behalf of the region of the continent.

PARSELELO KANTAI: It's interesting to me when we talk about oligarchs because the oligarchs are actually a natural, historical outcome of the privatization of public resources. Changing the face of the so-called investor from an American, or a Chinese, or an Indian to an African face doesn't change the nature of the kind of exploitative, extractive policies that already are in motion. What you actually require is to totally revise or transform the nature of the game.

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SAMATHA WEYA: I think it's a generational thing because our grandparents, per say, were dealing with the colonialists, literally. So it was, let's take in all this information and let's do it as they have told us. Our parents' generation is more or less, let's imitate the West. And that's a problem because the Western ways don't necessarily work for Africa. That's not what Africa needs. But I feel like our generation is taking a step forward.

I think part of the problem is people thinking there's no hope, there's no room for change. And that's an old thinking. So we need to flush out the old and encourage the new, encourage the ways of thinking and bring that forward.

MARWAN BISHARA: But the question is, now that you have multiple, global corporations and powers interested in Africa, is that giving you more room to maneuver and to get better deals? Or is that sandwiching you in among various interests?

ABUBAKAR ADDY: I think one thing also we should realize is, most of the time, Africans, we negotiate as single entities.

JANE BYANI: Yes.

SAMATHA WEYA: Yes.

ABUBAKAR ADDY: If Europe is negotiating, you see the European Union.

JANE BYANI: The European Union.

ABUBAKAR ADDY: You see the United States in Africa. You see China as very global, [INAUDIBLE] power. But Africa, we go as Ghana. We go as Sierra Leone. We go as Niger. You don't have bargaining power.

JANE BYANI: Yes, yes, yes.

ABUBAKAR ADDY: You're just simple economics. You're bargaining power has no strength. We need to negotiate as a block. And I see The African Capacity Building Foundation and The African Development Foundation. They should really try and maybe think about ways of we going and speaking with one voice. That's the only way we can go.

SAMATHA WEYA: It takes a movement. It takes a number of people getting into the system and changing the system from the inside out. Because otherwise, as individuals, you go, and you're fought by the system, and you get caught in the system, and you become redundant.

RUTH MIYANDAZI: I don't want to be in the non-governmental organization, I want to be in the government. The government has the last say. The government has the last say on how much tax you pay--

MARWAN BISHARA: I agree.

RUTH MIYANDAZI: In the private sector. And when you go to these meetings, and you listen to what the government officials have to say, and you're wondering, oh my god, is this the best we've got? Because as much of intellectual capacity-- they don't have so much. They never demand for anything.

MARWAN BISHARA: So it doesn't have to be just NGOs or business, people need to get into the decision making process and change government.

RUTH MIYANDAZI: Exactly.

JANE BYANI: Exactly.

ABUBAKAR ADDY: We are the young generation, we'll change it.

RUTH MIYANDAZI: Yes.

ABUBAKAR ADDY: We are the young generation. We will change it.

MARWAN BISHARA: Hooray. No, no--

RUTH MIYANDAZI: To us, to us, to us. Yes.

ABUBAKAR ADDY: No. We are the young generation, we will change it.

RUTH MIYANDAZI: Yes.

MARWAN BISHARA: I don't know about you, but I'm not buying into this whole French, Chinese, American argument that they're in the continent to help Africans help themselves. You know we, at Empire, take it for granted that global powers act out of self interest. But what's been striking for me making this episode is the dynamism and determination of African youth, those who make up 70% percent of the continent's population. Their political maturity has been striking to me. They have this pan-African vision that makes it indispensable for African countries and peoples to work together in order to turn the tables on those who are trying to carve the continent into pieces. Cliche, perhaps. Simple, yes. But I say, brilliant.