China has for the past several years confounded observers, and even critics, by
treading lightly on Africa's political terrain, even as it steps all over the
continent's increasingly prized economic resources. But recent hijackings of
Chinese ships by Somali pirates show it is just as vulnerable to events on the
continent as its competitors.
Many had marveled at the Asian giant's ability to stay aloof of the central
geopolitical issues of the day - Zimbabwe, Darfur, Eastern Congo, Baidoa etc -
while maintaining a strong grip on its economic interests across these various
regions, mostly in the volatile natural resources sectors.
Africa's emergent risk factors seemed no more than fluttering rice-paper in the
breeze as far as China's maneuvering is concerned. Chinese dexterity in this
space attracts wonderment similar to
that of its famed gymnasts, to put it trivially.
It has for instance successfully maintained lucrative arms trade regimes with
both Ethiopia and Eritrea, the profoundly bitter Horn of Africa rivals who
never pass on an opportunity to trade blows across their barren borders.
A rising spate of events may suggest however that China's other-worldly skills
may be losing their unnatural sheen and that the new winds now are blowing in
Africa's geopolitics are not the type to be defied by dexterous gymnastics.
In just the past few weeks, China has recorded two major hijacking incidents
off the eastern coast of Africa, both of them at the hands of the now
internationally notorious bands of Somali pirates. This week's incident was
reported as involving a Hong Kong wheat cargo vessel with a crew of 25.
The moral in the tale appears to be that China will not - and perhaps never has
been - immune to most or any of the strategic risks and threats emerging out of
Africa's remaining political and economic quagmires.
Somalia is Africa's most hopeless case in both or either of the above-stated
categories. Effectively without a central government for almost two decades, a
rugged non-state economic system endured for close to a decade before a potent
ingredient of Islamic extremism was introduced into the mix.
In 2006, piracy all but disappeared when the Islamic Courts Union took control
of most of southern and central Somalia for six months, bringing in law and
order for the first time since the early 1990s.
But the Islamists also sparked a ring of regional instability which eventually
culminated in early 2007 with the invasion of Somalia by the region's pretender
to the status of a military power, Ethiopia. Every tinder in the box ignited.
In rode China, brazenly grabbing oil concessions and brandishing prospects of
modern telecoms and financial products in war-torn Mogadishu. Admirers cheered.
Critics booed. The maestros from Shanghai and Beijing didn't even blink. Not
even when credible reports emerged that most of the contracts China was busily
signing were mired in fractious and fratricidal contention within Somalia
itself. See China's
risky bet in Somalia [ July 24, 2007].
The complicated geopolitics of the Horn of Africa region where batted away as
little more than petty nuisances by Chinese analysts who continued to insist
that China's approach of "invest headlong, and the politics will sort itself
out" made these forays calculated risks rather than reckless flirting with
threats.
China clearly wasn't interested only in a couple of oil blocks in the desert.
It definitely saw the strategic importance of Somalia in the geopolitical
geography of the world. A Mandarin in Beijing waxed lyrical about China's 15th
century expeditions to Africa, which apparently had involved stopovers in
Mogadishu. As to be expected, awed Arab analysts quickly sought to extrapolate
the situation to encompass a hypothetical stand-off between the US and China
(with American proxies in Ethiopian uniforms and Chinese frigates just a
nautical mile away from the Gulf of Aden and considerable amounts of Western
oil supplies at play).
When Washington blocked American private security firms from dealing with the
transitional government of Somalia on the issue of coastal defense in 2005,
Chinese contractors stepped in to discuss marine and maritime security; and a
morbidly prescient view of the world it turned out to be too. (Considering that
the piracy situation then hadn't grown anywhere to the proportions we are now
witnessing.)
Everything thus seemed to be pointing in the direction of the growing consensus
about China's political program in Africa to outbid the West where its
competitive advantages were least effective. This viewpoint is usually based on
the assumption that the West is uncompetitive in Africa before China's
onslaught as the latter does not play by the rules.
Within these narrow confines of the debate, some experts may interpret China's
escalating headaches as a syndrome caused by Beijing's oversized risk appetite.
There is no credible evidence that Chinese ships are being attacked
disproportionately in the stormy waters off the Gulf of Aden, or that its oil
workers are experiencing a higher risk of kidnapping or fatal attacks than
nationals of other countries because of an African backlash against Chinese
avarice and political insensitivity.
What is amply clear is that a certain trend in certain factors have attracted
China to Africa, to wit: better production margins for certain raw materials;
low bargaining power on the counterparty side; a shift in geopolitical
significance in the post-Cold War world; growing integration of African
logistics with the global system due to falling costs of technology; and
surplus capacity in certain parts of China's production profile.
These factors when they intermix are likely to precipitate emergent risks.
China had sought to bluff the world that it could defy the gravity of so
complex a mix of factors. But in the end complexity prevails.
China is merely discovering that Africa isn't as simple as it looked.
Bright B Simons is a research fellow at the Ghanaian think-tank IMANI,
the Center for Humane Education, Accra.
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