Showing various aspects of how business is conducted between two very different cultures, this really shows the reality of how some areas in Africa are just permanently stuck with no real way out of their mindset.
I really really like the Chinese guy and wish he had a whole series of documentaries.
I dunno, Lao Yang didn't seem to have it much more together than the locals. He doesn't have a steady supply for his food, or his gravel. He wakes up one morning and says "we need more steel." He drives a dump truck with a broken gate to get a load of gravel, then complains after they fill it that the gate is broken and should have been fixed. So he makes them fix it, then yells at them to fill the truck more, before immediately telling them to unload some because the tires will burst.
The whole project doesn't seem well thought-out. At one point he indicated he didn't even have money. He frequently said he didn't know how many supplies he would need--really? No idea how much material you need to build your road? (Though maybe he was just saying that to play his cards close to his chest--but that just indicates he's not dealing honestly with his suppliers.)
Did this Chinese company really not know what they were getting into? I would think you'd have to know exactly what you're doing before you undertake such a project, and get your supply lines figured out before you hire staff and break ground. It's like they were figuring it out as they went along.
Only Eddy came out looking good IMHO. Aside from being an amazing polyglot (I counted at least four languages), he carried himself very professionally, I thought, though he seemed to get increasingly disgusted with Lao Yang. It looked like he was about to punch him at the end there, and I wouldn't have blamed him. He takes his constant abuse, being a proxy for his frustrations, and then has to put up with yet another lecture on how the Congolese were so much better off under colonial rule.
I thought it was telling that even there, they crack "made in China" jokes. The whole time I kept thinking of shoddy buildings, poisoned food, cities with unbreathable air, people being crushed in elevators and escalators--the Chinese have a reputation of cutting every corner imaginable...and here they are building a road in a country where they can't even be bothered to speak the language (it's French, for God's sake, hardly some obscure African language). It was like the blind leading the blind. The whole thing was incredibly painful to watch.
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As a reward for your bravery, you will both find permanent homes on adult contemporary radio.
The Congolese government was supposed to provide the money and materials while the Chinese experts focused on rebuilding the infrastructure, what about that don't you understand? Lao Yang's job was to organize the materials as they came in...not to source them from the government and private entrepreneurs. They're engineers, their job is infrastructure, why would they know how to source their own materials and funding in another country when they're supposed to be there being paid to complete a job?
You're letting your own bias get in the way of what is reality. They were hired to do a job with the understanding that certain conditions were going to be met by the government...the government failed to uphold their end of the bargain. The Congolese government shouldn't have let the infrastructure fall into disrepair to begin with. All these countries in Africa wanted the colonialists out and when they got their way they literally destroyed their own infrastructure instead of adopting it and making it their own. The people and governments cut off their own noses to spite their face, this is an absurd concept in most Asian culture, especially Chinese culture.
In the movie, the DJ said that the building of the road was a quid pro quo--in exchange for the road, the Chinese could operate a mine and realize its wealth. That indicates to me that the Congolese government did not agree to "provide the money."
Also, I don't know where you got the idea that the government was to "provide the materials." Where was that said? In a typical construction project, the job of sourcing the materials is the builder's. I don't believe the government in the US, for example, hires a contractor to build a post office, and provides them with the bricks, cement, etc. That is just bizarre. If you have evidence that the deal the Chinese made with the Congo was different, I'd like to read it.
I agree that the Congo has done a horrible job of managing its infrastructure, but it hardly was also "set free" after the Belgians left--there was plenty of interference for years afterwards, including assassinations of democratically elected leaders. So we don't really know, had they been able to be independent on their own terms, if they'd have been more successful than they are now.
For sure, though, the idea that the Congolese are inviting outsiders in to build up their infrastructure in return for mineral rights is essentially the same as being colonized, so I also agree that, whatever the reasons, they are going nowhere.
In any case I have no biases. I watched the movie and took what I saw at face value. Lao Yang was running a loose ship and blaming it on the Congolese. And while his complaints were probably legitimate, what exactly did the Chinese think they were getting into? I saw no evidence they had a plan, a budget, supply lines, or any idea how to screen and manage the locals. At the very least, as I said before, couldn't they have bothered to at least learn French?
It may be the movie had its own biases and so this is how things were made to look; I am just reacting to what I saw on-screen. I'm hardly a scholar of post-colonial Africa or modern Afro-Sino economic relations.
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As a reward for your bravery, you will both find permanent homes on adult contemporary radio.
A quote from the description:
The Congolese government was supposed to deliver these things but so far the team hasn't received anything.
i researched the deal a little and it seems to be correct. the kongo was supposed to supply not only materials but also workforce among a few minor other things.
shareThank you for writing such a great analysis on Lao Yang, I found the guy absolutely hilarious, him and Eddy played off of each other so well. My favourite part was him holding onto that Congolese guy's legs as he climbed down.
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