Chinese Economic Imperialism in Nigeria: An Analytical Overview

This paper is an analytical overview of Chinese economic imperialism in Nigeria. The Chinese economic imperialism refers to the practice where China exerts gratuitous control over Nigeria’s economy through its bilateral trade and investment relations, loans for infrastructural projects, and covert manipulations of Nigeria economic policies. Overtime, the Chinese economic imperialism in Nigeria has promoted symmetrical relations between the two countries. This has been facilitated by the Chinese outreaching industrial base, huge market potential and expanding large corporate organizations that are exploiting Nigeria natural resources, leading to significant economic benefits for the China and stunting Nigeria development. The Paper argues that Chinese economic imperialism have gained significant leverage over Nigeria and has placed the country in perpetual powerlessness to check Chinese exploitations. The Paper finds that China's economic imperialism has impacted negatively on Nigeria economic development; that massive importation of Chinese goods and services has hindered the country's economic development; that Chinese massive loan has entrenched the country into deep economic crisis. The study recommendations: radical reorganization of the Nigeria external economic and financial relations to give local entrepreneurs access to credit facilities to procure industrial equipments to increase production capacity; to properly fund and restructure regulatory agencies to effectively check importation of substandard Chinese goods and services into the country; Nigeria government should encourage local manufacturing firms by subsidizing goods and services Chinese firms has comparative advantage. The Paper maintains that these measures would enable Nigeria to checkmate the destructive impacts of China's economic imperialism on the country.