“China / Africa Big Business (Episode 4: Moving Africa)” (ENDEVR, 2013)
Fourth instalment in a series of documentaries investigating examples of Chinese industrial investment in Africa, this episode follows workers and managers in an automobile plant operated by Beijing Automotive Works Co. Ltd (BAW) in South Africa, and the construction of necessary harbour and port infrastructure in Lobito, Angola, by the China Harbour Engineering Company Group (CHEC), with an emphasis on how Chinese and African interactions benefit and enrich both parties and local African communities.
In the South African part of the episode, South African and Chinese workers and managers talk about their experiences of working with one another, learning Chinese work values and culture, and adapting to local South African product and service needs and expectations. The camera follows these individuals around the factory floor and the episode features close-up camera work of people checking finished parts, tightening screws on components and consulting with one another on various projects. In the Angolan part of the episode, we see not only people and heavy machines at work building the port and storage facilities but also CHEC’s involvement in an environmental conservation project, in training and educating workers in civil engineering, and in sponsoring an orphanage.
As always in this series, the pace is easy-going for a general audience to follow and pick up information. Camera work is consistent as well and features often quite beautiful panoramas of town and city life though sometimes the poverty shown can be stark and confronting for Western viewers. Again, the music and ambient background soundtrack can be intrusive and the voice-over narration has to fight for dominance.
The examples of Chinese investment offered in this episode seem unusual: was there no other place in Africa where Chinese auto companies are also operating, even if in South Africa also? The section on CHEC’s investment in Lobito’s harbour and port infrastructure could have been expanded into an episode in its own right.
I’ve probably seen enough of Lobito in this series that I perhaps should consider putting the town on my bucket list of places to visit before I die, to see how CHEC’s construction work and the work of other Chinese companies covered in the series are progressing.