I am in the last few chapters of reading The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair.  It’s one of those classics (definition of a classic is a book which many people praise but very few read) I’d heard about off an on in school.

For those of you who have never read it, it is definitely one of the most depressing books I’ve ever read in my entire life.  I’ve slogged my way through it because it depicts life as it existed for hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people in the US around the end of the 1800s and early 1900s.  Raw, unbridled capitalism was squeezing the life and hope out of the common man and every person in his family through the grip of employment.  Sinclair focused his attention upon the Beef Trust, the great packing houses of Chicago which took everything from an animal — even after parts had sorely gone bad — in their pursuit of the wealth for the owners.  The book is basically godless in its understanding of the situation, but, then again, probably many of the people who lived in those conditions were also godless.

Now, I come across this link about China’s involvement in Africa. It appears that regardless of over a hundred years of living with the reality of what raw greed will do to a nation and its people, we have forgotten or ignored those lessons. China, as a nation, has no regard for human life.

Until the world wakes up and says, “No more Chinese products,” they have no reason to discontinue their policies and their involvement in Africa — regardless of the cost.

What do you think?