China mixes
rice and neo-colonialism By Kent Ewing
HONG KONG - When China, one of the world's
most corrupt countries, starts dishing out tens of
billions of US dollars in aid and business
contracts in Africa, the world's most corrupt
continent, alarm bells go off in Washington and
other Western capitals. The fact that China turns
a blind eye to widespread human-rights abuses on
the continent further heightens concerns in the
West.
To secure oil supply is a major
reason for China aggressively to
expand its economic ties with
Africa. To fuel its phenomenal economic growth,
which has averaged more than 9% annually for the
past 20 years, China needs oil as well as raw
materials. Not rich in oil reserves, China is
becoming increasingly dependent on imported oil.
According the Ministry of Commerce, oil imports
accounted for 47% of the country's total
consumption in the first half of this year.
Last year, the US Congress successfully
blocked the attempted takeover of the US oil
company Unocal Corp by CNOOC Ltd, a subsidiary of
China National Offshore Oil Corp, one of China's
three largest energy firms. Energy security rose
to the top of the national agenda and Chinese oil
companies became even more aggressive in search of
possible petroleum sources in other parts of the
world.
Africa is home to 8% of the world's
oil reserves, which has prompted Beijing to spend
billions of dollars to secure drilling rights in
Nigeria, Sudan and Angola and to negotiate
exploration contracts with Chad, Gabon,
Mauritania, Kenya, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia and
the Republic of the Congo. The continent now
accounts for 25% of China's oil imports.
In addition, the Chinese are also key
investors in the copper industry in Zambia and the
Democratic Republic of Congo. And they are buying
timber in Mozambique, Liberia, Gabon, Cameroon and
Equatorial Guinea.
In exchange for
securing energy, mineral resources and other raw
materials, China has been doling out aid and
providing technical assistance and interest-free
loans to business-friendly African governments. At
the same time, Chinese companies are winning
contracts to build highways, pipelines,
hydroelectric dams, hospitals and sports stadiums
and to upgrade railways, ports and airports.
In recent years, China has been
increasingly aggressive in diverting and expanding
its trade with other parts of the world as its
trade frictions with the United States and the
European Union intensify. Hence China's trade with
Africa continues to soar and, not coincidentally,
the long-suffering economies of sub-Saharan Africa
are enjoying their fastest growth in 30 years.
According to the Chinese government,
China's trade with Africa has increased from
US$10.6 billion in 2000 to $39.7 billion last
year. During that same period, the International
Monetary Fund reports, the economic growth rate in
sub-Saharan Africa has nearly doubled. This year's
5.8% rise, the IMF says, is the best Africa has
seen since 1974.
Where Western companies
fear to tread because of small profit margins or
environmental or political concerns, the Chinese
have plunged in. China's state-owned companies
have the ability to put short-term profit aside
and focus on the government's long-term economic
plans.
As for environmental and political
qualms, Chinese leaders have made it clear that
they don't have many. In that way, China's
no-strings-attached approach to doing business in
Africa flies in the face of Western concerns about
democratic development and respect for human
rights.
So despite the largely negative
reaction in the West to China's push into Africa,
Chinese investment is clearly paying off. But how
and for whom? Those are the sticky questions.
For China, the benefits have been
substantial, and Chinese leaders hope to build on
their success at the third Ministerial Meeting of
the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, to be held
in Beijing next month.
Premier Wen Jiabao
summed up the Chinese strategy at a stopover in
Brazzaville during his Africa tour in June: "China
has been developing relations with Africa under
principles of mutual benefit and non-interference
in Africa's internal affairs."
Wen was
only reinforcing the see-no-evil, hear-no-evil
policy that President Hu Jintao had articulated
during his earlier visit to the continent in
April.
The offer is clear: in return for
securing the raw materials necessary to feed its
voracious economy, China will not meddle in the
internal affairs of African governments, even if
those governments are known for rampant corruption
and human-rights abuses.
From Beijing's
perspective, the partnership is working
brilliantly.
Africa's ruling elite are
also happy as the Chinese pump money and cheap
manufactured goods into their economies without
the ritual hectoring about democracy and human
rights that they have grown accustomed to hearing
from Western partners.
Thanks to China,
demand for African oil, copper and platinum is
surging, and everything from Chinese-made T-shirts
to kitchen utensils to motorcycles is widely
available across the continent at prices lower
than those for comparable goods imported from
elsewhere. Two companies in South Africa have
announced plans to sell cheap Chinese automobiles.
And certainly African leaders such as
Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe and Sudan's Omar Hasan
Ahmad al-Bashir are grateful for China's promise
of an "equal partnership" with their nations.
President Mugabe, 82, who has ruled
Zimbabwe since 1980, has the Chinese to thank for
the blue-glazed tiles on the roof of his new $13
million, 25-bedroom presidential palace. The tiles
came gratis, but the Chinese have also won
contracts totaling hundreds of millions of dollars
to provide hydroelectric generators for Zimbabwe's
power authority, which happens to be run by the
president's brother-in-law.
In addition,
China is supplying jets to the perennially
mismanaged Air Zimbabwe and buses -1,000 of them -
to the country's municipalities. Zimbabwe's air
force has also been strengthened by China, to the
tune of $200 million. The Chinese are even farming
about 1,000 square kilometers of the land that has
been seized from white farmers since 2000.
In Sudan, Beijing is one of Bashir's
leading arms supplier and has supported the
president's resistance to the stationing of United
Nations peacekeeping troops in the Darfur region,
where the United States alleges
government-sanctioned genocide has killed hundreds
of thousands. Chinese support should come as no
surprise, since more than half of Sudan's oil
exports go to China. Overall, Sudan accounts for
5% of China's oil.
China National
Petroleum Corp owns 40% of the Greater Nile
Petroleum Operating Co. Sinopec (China
Petrochemical Corp) is building a 1,500-kilometer
pipeline to Port Sudan on the Red Sea, where the
China Petroleum Engineering and Construction Group
is constructing a tanker terminal.
It's
safe to say that the Sudanese president won't be
hearing many complaints from Beijing - unless, of
course, the oil stops flowing.
In
Washington, China's relationship with such nations
as Sudan has officials worrying that Chinese
investment could, either directly or indirectly,
be used to support terrorists. To Beijing, this is
just another example of alarmist thinking from a
White House that seems determined to contain
China's rise as a world power.
While
Chinese and African leaders are celebrating what
Beijing describes as their current "win-win"
relationship, the average African may not be so
thrilled. On a continent where nearly half the
people live on less than $1 a day, a cheap car or
air-conditioner- or even a new T-shirt - is still
out of reach of ordinary people.
Africans
need jobs. And while there is no question that
Chinese projects have created jobs in some places,
they have also clearly taken them away in others.
In South Africa and Lesotho, for example, cheap
Chinese imports are blamed for the loss of tens of
thousands of local jobs in the textile industry,
while in Angola, China has insisted on using
Chinese laborers as it upgrades the country's
railways.
In Zambia, opposition party
leader Michael Sata has tapped into resentment of
the Chinese with his suggestion that they be
expelled from the country along with other foreign
workers who he claims have taken jobs away from
locals. Sata was defeated last week by incumbent
Levy Mwanawasa in a presidential election that his
supporters claim was rigged.
In Zimbabwe,
Mugabe may be admiring the blue tiles on the roof
of his palace, but ordinary citizens have coined a
new phrase to describe Chinese goods - from buses
that break down to clothing that falls apart - as
substandard in quality: "zhing-zhong". Some
Zimbabweans have even started using this epithet
to describe Chinese people.
Although
China's Africa policy has won the hearts and minds
of the continent's rulers, the people themselves
appear to lag behind. They are waiting to see
whether the Chinese model of engagement with the
continent is going to be any different than those
of the exploitative colonial powers of the past.
So far - with China using the continent as
a source of raw materials and a dumping ground for
its own manufactured goods - the formula seems
much the same.
Kent Ewing is a
teacher and writer at Hong Kong International
School. He can be reached at
kewing@hkis.edu.hk.
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