纽约时报中文网 - 英文原版-英China Keeps Building Stadiums in Africa But at What Cost
February 21, 2024 2 min 329 words
这则报道揭示了中国在非洲建设体育场馆的活动，引发了对其成本和影响的深刻思考。中国在非洲兴建体育设施，既是对中非友好合作的一种形式，也凸显了中国在全球的影响力。然而，报道未深入探讨这一行为的动机和实际效益，引发了对项目背后动机的质疑。在中非合作中，透明度和可持续性至关重要。建设体育场馆是为了激发非洲体育事业，还是仅仅是中国影响力的象征？报道未能提供足够的信息，令人对中国在非洲的投资行为产生疑虑。在全球合作的背景下，关注项目的长远利弊，是确保中非合作互利共赢的关键。
The Alassane Ouattara stadium rises like a piece of sculpture from the dusty brown earth north of Ivory Coast’s largest city, its undulating roof and white columns towering over the empty landscape like a spaceship that has dropped onto a uninhabited planet.
On Sunday, the three-and-a-half-year-old stadium will host its signature moment, when the national soccer teams of Ivory Coast and Nigeria compete in the final of Africa’s biggest sporting event, in front of tens of thousands of fans chanting and cheering in a stadium financed and built by China.
While that is nothing new for the tournament, the Africa Cup of Nations, the arena is just the latest example of the contradictions that emerge from Chinese projects built on Chinese terms, and on African soil.
Stadiums have been a cornerstone of China’s diplomatic reach into Africa since the 1970s, but their number has increased since the early 2000s, part of a larger Chinese strategy to build infrastructure — from highways to railroads, ports to presidential palaces and even the headquarters of the African Union — in exchange for diplomatic clout or access to natural resources.
Through that trillion-dollar program, known as the Belt and Road Initiative, China has become a central partner to the developing countries that benefit from expensive projects they might not otherwise be able to afford. But Chinese construction has sometimes been accompanied by charges of local corruption, and critics have questioned the value of the big-budget projects, noting they deliver dubious long-term economic benefits but very real debts that governments can struggle to repay.
“China doesn’t ask why you need a stadium,” said Itamar Dubinsky, a researcher at the African Studies Program at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. “It just finances and builds it.”