China Elsewhere: the Current Fusion Among Chinese, African, and European Urban Culture

China Elsewhere: the current fusion among Chinese, African and European urban culture The exploitation of natural resources is undoubtedly the reason for Chinese expansionism in Africa, but there is probably the need to broaden its sphere of cultural influence overall by conquering "living space." In the gigantic social experiment that China performs on itself daily, it needs to grow constantly to meet enormous expectations and continue to feed them. From this point of view, for the Chinese, Africa is not only a land of conquest, as it was for France, the British Empire, Portugal, Belgium, Germany, and partly for Italy, but it is in the first place the natural "expansion chamber" of a system, its own, which cannot afford to withdraw from the chosen path. The financial rules that govern this aid system do not follow international standards, nor do they require counterparts of any kind on the issue of human rights. China, at least apparently, shows no desire to interfere in local political affairs, not that it does not care, but tends to exercise more economical than ideological, religious, or armed control. Another issue is that China is "generous" with its client states: over the years, infrastructural investments (roads, waterworks, ports, hospitals, institutional buildings) have multiplied in quantity and quality not comparable to the now less than meagre "European cooperation." A further element consists of the constant training of African managers and technicians in Chinese universities (or African universities with Chinese teachers) and the consequent technological transfer. The combination of these factors produces a slow, progressive, but already very evident shift of relations and a profound mutation of the very structure of African countries and their culture, the extent of which is still to be measured. However, how can the shared aspirations of modernity with such profoundly different roots be reconciled: the mystical/magical and symbolic African one and the Pragmatic-Confucian one? How will the Chinese urban tradition mix with the local anti-urban one? How will the different relationship with nature and its limited resources intervene? How will the memories of Europe's colonial past be used? What forms of artistic expression can arise in this context? What meaning will be attributed to public space, and finally, what forms will private homes take? The circulation of ideas, the cultural formation, and the sharing of the theoretical constructs at the basis of the architectural practice, despite the differences in the constructive and formal expressions, has brought Chinese, European and African architects closer together than in the past, however this potential common front of more sophisticated disciplinary circles risk being completely overwhelmed, with severe loss of values, landscapes, traditions and sensibilities, by low-cost and high-intensity transformations and by models superficially interpreted by a market in constant search of rapid profit and by geopolitical interests more structural and decisive.