Page 1 of 2 China's scramble for the African Union
By Derek Henry Flood
ADDIS ABABA - In the thin air of Ethiopia's low-slung, mostly ramshackle
capital, a glittering tower complex is erupting from a warren of corrugated tin
roof shacks that many locals call home.
The China State Construction Engineering Corporation (CSCEC) is building a
massive new complex in an expansion of the African Union's (AU) headquarters in
Addis Ababa, Africa's "capital" akin, in theory, to Brussels being the capital
or Europe.
Though the CSCEC describes its efforts there as "aiding" the African Union,
make no mistake, it is building the facility wholesale.
Stern-faced Chinese foreman command ever-smiling Ethiopian
laborers who are working round the clock to finish the project at breakneck
speed for its planned January 2012 inauguration. Jean Ping, a half Chinese-half
Gabonese former diplomat for the late Gabonese big man Omar Bongo, addressed
the Chinese delegation at the fourth annual China-Africa Strategic Dialogue
held in Addis on May 4 led by Zhai Jun, China's vice minister for foreign
affairs. Ping described China as the AU's "good and reliable partner".
In anticipation of a hoped-for visit to Addis Ababa by President Hu Jintao for
the new AU's debut, Ping stated: "We cannot thank China and it's leaders enough
for it ..."
In an interview with Xinhua, China's state news agency, early on in the
construction, Zeng Huacheng China's "special representative" on the grounds of
East Africa's most noteworthy construction site, described the project as "a
perfect embodiment of the friendship between China and Africa, as well as a
major milestone marking the new Sino-African strategic partnership".
As China scours the continent for resources virtually unchallenged, this "gift"
to the people of Africa will certainly come with strings attached. In a recent
meeting with a high-ranking CSCEC official, Erastus Mwencha, a seasoned Kenyan
diplomat who holds the deputy chair of the African Union Commission that
oversees the project, hailed it in a recent press statement as a "permanent
signature on African soil".
When Asia Times Online visited the present AU headquarters hugging hilly
Roosevelt Street, a representative of its Conflict Management Division lamented
the depth of Chinese involvement both in Ethiopia and across the entire region.
Africa's sudden anti-democratic partner is engaged in a slew of road
rehabilitation and construction endeavors in many parts of the country.
When looking at maps of their vast nation with many of its roads in rural areas
in a devastated condition, Ethiopians refer to "Italian asphalt". Following the
1928 Italo-Ethiopian Treaty of Friendship and Arbitration, Italian
colonialists, who partially encircled the Ethiopian empire from their footholds
in Eritrea and Italian Somaliland, sought to cement their Africa Orientale
Italiana, first economically and then by an outright military invasion aimed at
creating a new Roman empire centered on the export of Italy's particular brand
of fascism.
Benito Mussolini's colonial administration built a network of now decrepit
roads during Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie's exile period that have been fit
to rot ever since. They connected the once remote Addis to Asmara and
Mogadishu, two cities from which modern Addis is cut off due to extreme
hostility and perennial instability.
China is now renovating many of these roads for the first time since the period
of Italian fascist occupation and many Ethiopians are grateful for it. The
Chinese are able to implement projects overnight that the government of
Ethiopian Prime Minister Mele Zenawi has been unable to do 20 years after the
fall of the Marxist junta he dedicated his life to defeating.
Save for the five years of Italian occupation, Ethiopia has always prided
itself on its fierce independence and the preservation of its ancient, lettered
history and language, the only intact civilization of its kind in all of
Africa. Yet Ethiopia's 20th-century rulers from monarchs to Marxists, did next
to nothing to develop their nation's physical infrastructure.
Current ruler Meles Zenawi, a former Tigrayan guerilla leader, has given
Beijing a free hand to rush around with a plethora of massive development
projects that will eventually give the Chinese fantastic leverage over this
vast, diverse and immensely impoverished land. In official Chinese jargon
related to its overwhelming economic embrace of the AU, it employs transparent
terms like "friendship", "brotherhood" and "partnership" to describe this
incredibly paternalistic seeming relationship.
A local man running a cramped concession shack adjacent to the CSCEC's
sprawling operation said that Ethiopians and other Africans had little choice
but to accept the rapid Chinese entente into their societies because "the price
was right ... free".
Desperate to emancipate themselves from poverty and dilapidation without the
luxury of worrying about future considerations when Beijing begins make less
brotherly-like demands for natural resources, many Ethiopians were resigned to
this adrenalin injection of Chinese progress into their relatively moribund
economy.
When asked whether this influx of foreign workers had an immediate economic
benefit in the neighborhoods surrounding the construction, vendors said that
their Chinese guests had almost no immediate interaction with Ethiopians other
than those picked to work under their immediate direction.
Perhaps the finished product will have the desired economic impact local
businesses pined for? Or perhaps their makeshift stores will be deemed eyesores
and bulldozed in the name of progress, making the surrounding area more
appealing to visiting dignitaries of the "dictators' club", as some of the
pan-African body's critics harshly deem the AU.
On a second visit to the AU site, Asia Times Online was accosted by guards from
a local security contracting firm after taking photos from the vantage of a
public street of Chinese officials going to and from the site's personnel gate.
A scrum ensued with more guards involving themselves with a crowd of passersby
beginning to congregate out of curiosity. Speaking neither Amharic nor
Mandarin, things quickly spiraled out of control. A CSCEC official with an
uneven buzz cut and chinos stormed out onto the street, angrily furrowing his
hardened brow, putting himself at the center of the fray.
Crossing his forearms upright to form an "X", ie "no" and disapprovingly
shouting "photo", the official tried to explain to a massive Ethiopian security
man how to erase the memory card on a professional DLSR camera. Simply refusing
to needlessly surrender the images, I had the neck strap wrapped around my
wrist for dear life as the tug of war continued.
Trying in vain to insist that the precious photos had been deleted in the
scuffle, this correspondent was subsequently dragged through a temporary steel
door spray painted with the CSCEC's Chinese-language logo. Once inside the
buzzing site to which no outsider had seen, sans photographing, I was
frog-marched past a group of chain-smoking men looking at an out of place
Westerner traipsing through their secret world with suspicion.
The zone was one of almost total Chinese self-sufficiency, thereby putting the
imported East Asian workers in a less exotic context. Pick-up trucks carted in
stacks of mattresses and box springs to provide shelter for newly arriving
workers needing accommodation. While the Chinese government would surely
describe this scenario as another "harmonious" entry in its ever-deepening
relationship with Africa, the project appeared to be an effort of exclusion and
commanded efficiency. It was the Chinese who were clearly in charge.
I had been curious as to what kind of service economy had sprung up in the wake
of the all-male Chinese arrival. Addis Ababa's Bole International Airport was
bustling with all manner of Chinese engineers and laborers. The in-flight
magazine for Ethiopian Airlines boasted of its increases in traffic to Beijing,
Hong Kong, Guangzhou and now Hangzhou.
The CSCEC men, however, lived a self-contained life for the duration of the
project, leaving only to procure foodstuffs or eat at a touristy theme
restaurant on a loose weekend evening. Otherwise, they live on the grounds of
the new AU headquarters as backhoes and cranes ground along day and night.
Chinese workers in knockoff tracksuits obliviously brushed by ethnic-Somali
women in brilliant colored hijabs who performed domestic duties on-site.
Chinese vehicle operators blazed across the grounds while gaunt Ethiopian
workers in ill-fitting hardhats clung to the sides of the trundling heavy
machinery. Eventually, we reached a cluster of neatly arranged trailers that
served as the logistical and technical hub for the entire linguistically
awkward arrangement.
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