Page 2 of 3 CHINA ON
SAFARI Emperor Hu's new clothes for
Africa By Bright B Simons,
Evans Lartey and Franklin Cudjoe
geopolitical baggage with domestic
implications; the surprising thing is the number
of people who still don't get it.
In
Zambia: Hu's visit was dogged by rumors of
possible attempts to derail formal state
receptions by aggrieved union members acting in
solidarity with their colleagues in a copper mine
owned by Chinese investors. Reports of the
incident at the heart of their
grievances are confused, but
it appears that in an attempt to assist police
quell a violent riot at the mine, Chinese managers
may have shot into the agitated crowd, hitting six
protesters. The Chinese management of course
denies this, insisting that all seven of the
protesters who suffered gunshots were the victims
of Zambian police.
Hu's press conferences
had to be strictly "no questions, please", perhaps
in recognition of the sensitivity around the mine
issue. But it could as well have been due to the
Chinese president's famous dourness (something
perfectly to be expected of someone who spent a
decade grooming elite cadres at the
quintessentially proper Central Party School in
Beijing).
Nevertheless, the overzealous
efforts by the Zambian authorities to shield the
visiting dignitary from all controversy or
discomfort cast an unnecessary pall over the
visit. It may also have provided additional
encouragement to a growing alliance between the
opposition faction led by the firebrand
politician, Michael Sata (who openly favors
diplomatic overtures to Taiwan at the expense of
deepening ties with China) and the country's
unions, which have in recent years expressed
indignation over the poor working and safety
conditions in many Chinese-run businesses,
particularly in the mining industries.
In Mozambique: Public and
elite resentment over China's role in this
country's fast-modernizing economy is rarely a
prime topic of general conversation, yet Hu's
visit managed to catalyze the eruption of some
simmering tensions. No sooner had the visit been
announced than critical environmentalists went
into full gear, describing the country's
much-lamented deforestation crisis as a "Chinese
takeaway".
Chinese investors are accused
of bribing locals to front for them in the
acquisition of logging concessions, and then to
abuse those concessions once they have by such
vicarious means obtained licenses. They are
alleged to be violating minimum-wage regulations;
wantonly harvesting rare marine resources, without
the appropriate permits; and in several provinces,
such as Nampula, running counterfeit operations
that churn out forged documents by the truckload.
Snapshots in perspective So what
are these generally negative snapshots of Hu's
visits meant to portray - that his trip was a
failure? Not at all. That he was on a mission to
legitimize exploitation? Crude, simplistic and
false.
The framework of the "new"
Sino-African relations should be set into some
sort of pragmatic context. Too much of the recent
commentary about China-Africa ties is too
wide-eyed and unannotated to be of much use in
gauging critical trends. The widespread notion
that the new turn of the relationship is not only
qualitatively different from what has been before,
in the Cold War, with the West, with China itself
in the past, but also unanchored to general global
developments, is plainly useless when faced with
concrete facts on the ground.
Let's take
the principal shibboleth: China's relationship
with Africa is one of no strings attached.
From the selected snapshots above, it is
obvious that a great many of the concerns that
have dogged Africa's dealings with major powers
are also present in the relationship with China.
In fact, one is easily swayed to the view that the
concern should be with Africa itself. As long as
it appears to remain "static", even as other parts
of the world evolve, or, in the case of Southeast
Asia, surge forward, China's relationship with
others will appear exploitative, unbalanced,
strained. Such a situation is almost as certain as
a law of physics.
If Africa's needs and
offerings remain fixed, even as the needs and
offerings of its partners undergo rapid
transformation, then any relationship it enters,
no matter how well-meaning, will develop serious
compatibility frictions. This is plainly
self-evident, so it amazes us that many people
believe that the "new" Sino-African relations will
thwart this inevitability. In particular, we find
the attitude to China's economic cooperation with
Africa unbelievably naive.
This perception
of Sino-African diplomacy is parodied in a play by
Nigerian Nobel literature laureate Wole Soyinka in
which a character representing the late Idi Amin
of Uganda in a fit of anger over the actions of
his Russian allies explains why he prefers his
newfound "non-interfering" Chinese technical
advisers: "What's more, they bring their own
food!" Like all simplistic generalizations, the
notion that Chinese aid to Africa carries no
strings is of course a myth. It is false even when
the assertion is qualified by comparison with
Western aid.
What people often mean is
that no "transparent" strings are attached. In
that sense perhaps so, but only if the uncritical
distinction between it and Western aid is then
also removed, because in the past several Western
aid programs in Africa have similarly come with no
"visible" strings attached. One can think of
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