How Chinese and African organizers came together to protest an oil pipeline

On a hot Friday afternoon in New York City, Ugandan, Tanzanian, and Chinese organizers came together to march upon the offices of banks and insurance companies, demanding a stop to the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP). These diasporic organizers are united by their fight against transnational capital, and their campaign against EACOP could serve as a template for future globe-spanning organizing projects opposing global capitalism.

EACOP is perhaps one of the most environmentally devastating projects currently under construction in Africa. Intended to transport crude oil from Uganda’s Tilenga and Kingfisher oil fields to the Port of Tanga, Tanzania, on the Indian Ocean, the pipeline would be the longest electrically heated crude oil pipeline in the world once completed. On its intended route, EACOP would pass through sensitive ecosystems near Lake Victoria, which hosts Africa’s largest inland fishery. It would traverse habitats of endangered wildlife at Murchison Falls National Park, the Taala Forest Reserve, the Bugoma Forest, and the Biharamulo Game Reserve. It would cut through thousands of smallholder farmers’ fields, indigenous communities, and countless villages and towns. The construction of EACOP will displace thousands of families and put tens of thousands at risk of potential contamination and environmental catastrophe. On a global scale, EACOP is expected to emit 379 million tons of CO2 over 25 years of operation, according to a report by the Climate Accountability Institute, making it a significant contributor to climate change.

To climate and anti-war activists in the West, the case of EACOP is a familiar story. EACOP epitomizes resource extractivism and economic neocolonialism by transnational capital interested only in profit margins. It represents the looting of an entire continent by imperialist, capitalist powers eager to expand their markets and economic influence at the cost of human dignity and the environment.

What makes EACOP unique, however, is the identity of the looters. Although the pipeline is largely owned by the French multinational oil company Total, five percent of the ownership also belongs to the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), a Chinese state-owned corporation. In addition, EACOP receives financing from the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), the Export–Import Bank of China (Exim Bank), and the China Export & Credit Insurance Corporation (Sinosure). By all evidence, it appears that EACOP has been designated as a high-priority project under China’s Belt and Road Initiative with the personal seal of approval from President Xi Jinping.

As organizers and activists in Europe pushed the European Union Parliament to pass an emergency resolution condemning EACOP on the grounds of human rights and environmental destruction, Chinese state media spun the resolution as Europe’s attempt to “impede African sovereignty and development.” This hypocritical stance is an attempt to disguise China’s economic neo-colonialism in Africa and its own hunger for more fossil fuels. Even as more activists in Uganda and Tanzania mobilize against EACOP, China focuses its messaging on how “superior Chinese engineers” are training locals to build the pipeline and how China is helping to “industrialize” Africa.

EACOP represents the very real harm of transnational capital and the system of globalized capitalism that we struggle against daily. It is a blended project with capital participation from all over the world. It is a signature project under China’s Belt and Road Initiative, financed by Chinese state institutions. It is also headed by a French multinational corporation with participation from American capital and firms such as the American International Group (AIG). As principled socialists, climate organizers, human rights advocates, and anti-war activists, we must recognize the complex web of global capital we must struggle against. The modern exploitation of Africa, and increasingly in the rest of the global south, will increasingly take shape in the mold of EACOP, where traditional western imperialist capitalist powers either collude or compete with China in a race to the bottom.

As a Chinese organizer in the United States, I believe that the campaign against EACOP opens new avenues of struggle for our diasporic activist community on a global level. We understand that the Chinese institutions behind EACOP are not susceptible to our pressure through protests alone. However, we can strike these institutions where it hurts the most—their assets overseas. Through movements such as Stop EACOP, we can mobilize a broad coalition of activists from different issues to come together and identify pressure points directly connected to these institutions back home. Moreover, we can draw connections between the struggles here and those back in China. I believe that the future is bright, and we will one day succeed.

Featured image credit: Wikimedia Commons; modified by Tempest.

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