Few African countries have closer links with China than Zambia. The relationship goes back decades and Chinese investment in Zambian copper mines have led to both economic growth and an anti-Chinese backlash. The recent arrest of four Chinese mining technicians on charges of sex with underage prostitutes is pushing this relationship into uncomfortable new territory. The sexual math of mining is pretty simple.
Mining overwhelmingly takes place far away from urban centers. Mines overwhelmingly employ men. The miners are bored, the local women are poor β as I say, the math was pretty simple during the American gold rush and it is pretty simple in the African shantytowns surrounding big mines. However, nowadays most large-scale extractive industries are dominated by multinational corporations and here the situation becomes complicated fast.
Throw in the rhetoric of neo-colonial exploitation and you have an explosive combination of cultural difference, historical resentment and sex.
Four Chinese technicians recently became the center of exactly this kind of miasma when they were arrested for having sex with underaged prostitutes in Zambia. They are currently in jail and face anything from fifteen years to life with hard labour for indecent assault. Some of the community members interviewed made it clear that the only reason this particular case is getting this level of attention is because the defendants are Chinese.
But it also seems to me that these technicians have haplessly triggered some kind of post-colonial resentment bomb where sex and historical trauma become the fuel for a press bonfire. What makes it more symbolic is that China has in the past stoked exactly this kind of bonfire. In a Chinese businessman was staying in a hotel in Zhuhai when he wandered into a massive orgy involving Japanese businessmen and local prostitutes.
