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FREEDOMWAYS    FIRST QUARTER 1973

with France amount to around two billion francs. This support and these arms deliveries have greatly helped French firms to enter the South African market. French exports to South Africa are basically of equipment. Some very large companies and monopolies are established in South Africa: Thompson/CSF, CGE Alsthom, Compagnie Francaise des Petroles, Renault, Peugeot, Air Liquide. There is also export of French capital to the Bank of Indochina, and the Bank of Paris and the Netherlands play an important role. There is a progressive rapprochement between French and South African financial capital, witness the association between the Bank of Paris and the Netherlands and the Anglo American Corporation, Deriving support from South Africa, and with the collaboration of Portugal, the French monopolies are trying to establish themselves in the whole of Southern Africa.

In relation to foreign competitors, France has the dominant position. But the situation varies a great deal according to the country. Almost nothing in the DRV, negligible in Laos, France is still established in an important way in South Vietnam and Cambodia. In South Vietnam, French investments in the plantations have suffered great losses. They are still dominant in the industrial sector. The French banking sector carries on forty percent of the business. The contradiction of foreign trade reveals the political modifications which have come about: more than forty percent of the exports go to the franc area but only four percent come from there, forty percent come from the USA. French policy in Indo-China is not very active.

This study cannot be finished without a reminder that French imperialism maintains the dependent status and exploitation of the overseas territories and departments (Djibouti, New Caledonia, Réunion, Guadeloupe, Martinique). This last fact alone should be enough to destroy any complacency or illusion which we might have concerning a policy which is basically neo- colonial, is expressed in a variety of conditions, and whose first aim is to encourage the strengthening of French monopolies.

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