Especially on Africa even bourgeois intellectuals speak about the failure of development aid from the western countries. The following example shows, that it's not about "development aid" itself, it's a question about an proletarian internationalist position, or imperialist position. Socialist China under Mao Tse-Tung showed the world how to support the suppressed countries in their struggle against imperialism!
Zambia was in the 1960s and 70s the 4th largest copper producer in the world. Today it has still the biggest copper occur in Africa and the biggest copper mines in the world. After the formal independence of Zambia in 1963, the zambian government tried to get an independent sea access, to reduce the control of the imperialists, mainly US-Imperialism, and to export and import on their own. So they wanted to build a railway. The US-Imperialists declared, they won‘t support this project, because the construction of it would be „technically impossible“. They prefered to build a new street: a street which would not be accurate for copper transportantion. The Worldbank (the international organisation for financing of „development aid projects“) said that this project would be not financially profitable. They just wanted to keep Zambia under the control of the Imperialists. So Sambia called the Peoples Republic of China, which then was a socialist state, for support.
Under the great leadership of Mao Tse-Tung they had principles for international aid. So The Peoples Republic of China supported the project to strengthen the national independency of Zambia. Zambia got a interest-free loan, to build the „Tamsan-train“. The start of the construction was in October 1970 and the US-Imperialists said: „If the first train goes 1980, the chinese are lucky. They don‘t know the Africans. For african people work is a foreign word.“ The construction showed the opposite! The parallel construction of the two projects, the street from US-Imperialism and the railway from Zambian people supported from the Chinese workers, showed the difference between real aid from the socialist china and the „aid“ from the imperialists, which only should bring out more profit for them. The Chinese workers and the Zambian workers worked together as a unity and so the railroad could be finished one year earlier, in 1973. The imperialists work didn‘t go well and they said the african people are dumb and lazy. But why should they have been working hard? It is not their street, it‘s the street of the Imperialists!
The „Tanzara“(Tansanian-Zambian-Railway) is 1.500 kilometers long, it goes up to mountains of 2000 metres high and threw 22 tunnels. 40.000 workers were part of the construction work, 10.000 of them chinese workers. They educated 5000 workers to operate later with the Railway. The chinese workers didn‘t want to take the food from the zambian people, so they planted vegetables and had chickens and pigs, to not be a burden for the african people. A worker of the train made a comment: „Along the Tansam-Train the chinese leave orchards [vegetable gardens], the Americans only leave cans.“ The people in Zambia also called the Tansam-Train, the great „Uhuru-Train“, which means Freedom-Train, because they could free them with it in important questions from the imperialist exploitation.
This revolutionary project showed the proletarian internationalism and the friendship between the people. The suppressed people and nations don't forget the difference, they don't forget the revolutionary aid and they don't forget the exploitation from the imperialists! Death to Imperialism and Revisionism!
