Germany's black community are demanding that the government demolish the statue of Heinrich Carl Von Schimmelmann in Hamburg, which they argue honours 'a racist abductor, enslaver and mass murderer of African people.’ The statue was covered in red paint by ‘unknown persons’ on November 25, the day a protest was staged by a coalition of 18 black-led organisations including: The Pan African Women in Liberation Organisation and the Pan African Liberation of the Black Community in Germany.

A federal appeal court ruling that dismissed most of the claims for reparations from US slave descendants left a ray of hope as companies who hide links to slavery can still be found guilty of fraud, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals said. Those seeking reparations maintain that some of the biggest companies in the US profited from slavery and should be made to pay reparations to the descendants of those who were enslaved.

In the midst of climate talks in Nairobi and the release of the Stern review on the potential catastrophic economic impacts of climate change, the World Bank has been touting the most recent draft of its investment framework on clean energy and development, and stepping up its role in devising market-based solutions to climate change. Critics have decried the hypocrisy of the Bank's role in funding fossil fuel projects, and the perverse rationale behind carbon trading.

The World association of community radio broadcasters conference took place in Jordan’s capital city of Amman between November 11 and 17 2006. Colleagues of the APC were there to contribute two workshops: one on community wireless networking and the other on the gender evaluation methodology (GEM).

2006 was the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the first diplomatic ties between China and African countries and saw an increased focus on the relationship between China and Africa. In June 2006, Chinese President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao visited ten African countries to promote China–Africa relations. In November, African heads of state met in Beijing to learn of a massive Chinese package of aid and assistance, including preferential loans, cancellation of debts, and numerous other initiatives.

Chinese engagement with Africa has become the topic of serious analysis and debate. In the field of governance, natural resources and markets, China’s presence is everywhere. Suddenly, Chinese influence in Africa has begun to top the foreign policy agenda of African governments. Chinese involvement in Africa has raised concerns about China's commitment to human rights issues and its policy on arms sales to African governments, while in the areas of textiles and natural resource exploitation, Chinese competition has generated some adverse consequences for African industry and the environment. China has been pronounced the new imperial power in Africa, usurping the influence of Western governments. However, a more nuanced approach and understanding of China–Africa relations might be more helpful.

Historically, China has played a different role in Africa from Africa's colonial powers, supporting African countries in various liberation struggles, providing educational opportunities and assisting in healthcare. Moreover, the rise of China in Africa does not just make problems for the continent, it also creates opportunities. As Stephen Marks pointed out in a recent editorial in Pambazuka News , Western corporations and governments now face competition – there is an alternative to the dictates of the international financial institutions – and this can give African states more room for manoeuvre. The African Union as well as civil society need to consider how to react to China's challenge while avoiding ’uncritical acceptance on the one hand or mere rejectionism on the other’.

Despite the clear influence of China, research, policy, debate and analysis on China’s present and future role in Africa remains limited. All too often, the influence of Western policy towards Africa dominates development discourse. What is missing is an integrated overview of Africa’s own response, especially by researchers and activists on the ground and an ongoing forum through which such an integrated response can be developed and sustained.

With the support of Christian Aid and TrustAfrica, Fahamu undertook a work in progress to identify leading institutions, activists and academics within Africa who were working on China. In the course of this review, we commissioned a number of researchers to write papers on the key issues for both this special issue of Pambazuka News (issue 282 of 14 December 2006) and for a book, which we plan to launch at the World Social Forum. Given the relatively short deadlines available to ensure that the book would be available at the World Social Forum, not everyone we approached was able to respond. The articles in this special edition provide, therefore, only a taste of the richness of research and reflection on the subject of China’s emerging role in Africa.

This special issue contains shortened versions of the articles that appear in the book 'African Perpectives on China in Africa', edited by Firoze Manji and Stephen Marks, and published by Fahamu in 2007. To save on space, we have not included references here. The full articles will appear in the book as will the references. We will also make the full texts of the articles available for download in PDF format at Pambazuka News website at http://www.pambazuka.org/en/publications/index.php.

As we have several long articles, this special issue is published in two parts, the second part going out tomorrow in place of the usual Links and Resources.

Our intention in publishing this special edition is both to reflect the current thinking on the subject as well as to help nurture further research and engagement. But in so doing, we know that we are only beginning to understand the shifts in the balance of forces in Africa that are emerging as a result of what some refer to as ‘South–South cooperation’. There are four other players whose role needs further attention: India, Venezuela, Brazil and South Africa. We hope to turn our attention to these ‘new’ players in the coming year.

• Firoze Manji is director of Fahamu and editor of Pambazuka News.

It is hypocritical of Western states to be concerned about how China is approaching Africa given their history of exploitative relations with Africa, says Prof. Kwesi Kwaa Prah in this interview with Pambazuka News. Kwaa Prah also argues that its futile for Africans to be pointing fingers at the West or at China. “Africans have to organise their side of the story as best as they can in their own interests,” he says.

Pambazuka News: One of the articles in your forthcoming book deals with the earliest contact between China and Africa. Many people may not be familiar with that history. Could you explain it briefly?

Kwesi Kwaa Prah: It goes back to the early 15th century when the famous Chinese admiral Zheng He made seven epic journeys to various parts of the world including Asia and Africa between 1405 and 1433. During the course of these journeys he visited Africa. This was about 80 years before Columbus so it goes very far back. It is even suggested that some of the maps that Columbus used he borrowed or had antecedence in Chinese global maps of that period.

Pambazuka News: And how did that history progress into China’s relationship with Africa in terms of its engagement with newly independent African states of the 50s and 60s?

Kwesi Kwaa Prah: Well, there is a hiatus, an enormous hiatus, because of the distance and difficulty of communication and the colonial interlude which both China and Africa encountered. China went through a cycle which is not too different from the African cycle in terms of its encounter with the West and colonialism, from the period of the opium wars and the boxer rebellion, the period of about a half century which ended in 1902-03. And then there was the period before China become a republic in 1912; and the era of the warlords post 1912 to the beginnings of the Chinese revolution in the early 20s and then on from the early 20s to 1948 when China, in the words of Mao Tse Tsung, “stood up” in 1949.

Now after that China’s contact with the rest of the world especially Africa and Asia started in earnest. By the time of the Bandung conference in 1955 China’s beginnings of real contact with Africa was in the making and I’m talking about Africa proper, I’m talking about sub-saharan Africa, non-Arab Africa and that is because China’s relations with the Arab world were different and of an earlier period and so and so forth, but contact with Africa proper, black Africa or sub-Saharan Africa, starts in the late 50s in earnest and the rest is history.

Pambazuka News: So that’s a period spanning several hundred years and the question then arises in terms of how that influenced China’s current approach to Africa and policy as outlined in the January policy paper released by the Chinese government.

Kwesi Kwaa Prah: Yes, well, you’ll recall that there was a stage when Zhou Enlai arrived soon after or in the decade of African independence in the 1960s and visited East Africa and made the statement that Africa is “ripe for revolution”. China supported the African liberation movements but also in sharp rivalry with the Soviet Union and so the position China took often was not beyond consideration of its own tussles with the Soviet Union.

By and large China has been consistent in the sense that it has tried to help African states with infrastructure and at fairly low rates. This was particularly the case in the first two decades of independence before the cultural revolution in China itself. China did a lot to build roads and railways, to support African infrastructure and industrial plans, at a point in history when China itself was economically fairly weak.

Pambazuka News: Many have argued that the engagement with Africa in the 1950s and 1960s was more of an ideological outlook towards Africa, but that the current realities in an era of globalisation mean that China’s interest in Africa is solely commercially driven.

Kwesi Kwaa Prah: I wouldn’t put it in such polarised terms that at one pole it is ideological and at the other end of the scale its all economic. I think what one can say is that it was more preponderantly articulated and expressed in ideological terms in the earlier period. It had also economic dimensions but this was hardly pronounced. Now it is distinctly more pronounced as China tries to search for markets and also to search for raw materials, in this period that is.

Pambazuka News: So do you see that as a negative and positive engagement?

Well, I don’t see it in positive or negative terms in the way that lots of people want to discuss the issues at this present time. China wants to pursue policies that are in its best interests and what we have to do in Africa is also to trade and pursue polices that are in our own interests. It’s as simple as that – all states do that.

What I find a bit reprehensible is the tendency of certain Western voices to start making obstructionist [statements] or start raising concerns about China’s attempt to get into the African market because it is a bit hypocritical for Western states to be concerned about how China is approaching Africa when they have had centuries of relations with Africa starting with slavery for centuries and continuing to the present day with exploitation and cheating with subsidies which help the European economic community to ridiculous extents that a cow in the European community gets a subsidy of $2 a day and 60 percent of Africa doesn’t get that. So we ask ourselves what is this concern: It is not real concern, it is jealousy and rivalry about Chinese inroads into Africa.

That is not to excuse the way China is also approaching Africa. China is obviously also approaching Africa from its own interests or as it perceives its interests and some of this interest is not necessary in the interests of Africa. This is something that Africa has to work out. It is futile for Africans to be pointing fingers wether at the West or at China. Africans have to organise their side of the story as best as they can in their own interests.

Pambazuka News: How should Africa go about doing that? What are some of the policy responses that are needed on the African continent?

Kwesi Kwaa Prah: Well, for a start I don’t think Africa really has any chance of doing anything in this present world without unity. That is the bottom line. Africans have to unite. Africans divided as they are have no platform for bargaining with anybody. If Africa was united today it would be a world power, poor as it is, and it would be capable of dealing with China on its own terms or with the West on its own terms. Unity is the basic pre-requisite for African advancement and for Africa to be able to bargain with China or anybody else.

Pambazuka News: One of the articles in your book, authored by yourself, is entitled ‘Nationalism, Revolution and Economic Transformation in China: Any Lessons for Africa?’ What does China’s example offer for Africa?

Kwesi Kwaa Prah: Well, you have to read my book first, that is for a start.

Pambazuka News: Give us a taster?

Kwesi Kwaa Prah: Well, I think one of the things we have to learn is that advancement in our time must be home grown. Africans have to learn to pull themselves up by themselves, one. Two, this process has to be based on their own cultural pre-requisites. It is not possible to develop Africa grounded in languages like English, French or Portuguese or Arabic for that matter. Africans have to realise that the cultural base for development has to be their own. That is not to say they should not learn other languages, no, but they must make their languages the centre of all the development efforts that they make.

Pambazuka News: China has cultural agreements with 42 African countries and 65 cultural exchange programmes in Africa. It has offered scholarships to 10 000 students and seconded more than 400 Chinese professors to African universities. Much of your work has been in the field of language and culture so what would you say are some of the issues raised by China’s cultural involvement in Africa?

Kwesi Kwaa Prah: We still have to see a lot of this you know. These are projected plans, this is what they would want to do and it is very fresh. I don’t think it has left the drawing board yet and I don’t think the implementation is with us as of now. We will have to see. I would see we will have to just wait and see how it pans out and how it is implemented. It is to early day to make announcements about these plans.

Pambazuka News: When is the book due out and where can people get it from?

Kwesi Kwaa Prah: Well, I expect that the book should be out early next year, that is 2007. It should be available through the African Books Collective and bookshops in South Africa and also through the web. If you enter Casas you should be able to get the details.

• Interview conducted by Patrick Burnett, Fahamu

• Prof. Kwesi Kwaa Prah is director of The Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society (Casas), which is based in Cape Town. Casas was established in 1997 as a Pan-African centre for creating research networks in Africa and its Diaspora. Professor Kwa Parah is the editor of a forthcoming book Afro-Chinese Relations: Past, Present and the Future. Visit for more information.

China-Africa relations received unprecedented attention during 2006, both in terms of visibility and attention, writes Daniel Large. China’s involvement is important to consider, he says, because China will continue to need African resources, because of the increased trade and investment in Africa as a result of the relationship and because of an emerging Chinese development agenda on the continent. Unlike early Chinese explorers dating back to 1433, the current Chinese involvement in Africa is here to stay.

China’s Year of Africa in 2006 climaxed with the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (Zhong Fei Luntan, or FOCAC). A friend aptly remarked, ‘Africa has taken over Beijing!’ Beijing mobilised to deliver high standards of Chinese hospitality and red-carpet treatment for 48 African delegations made up of political leaders, businessmen and accompanying journalists.

As the third ministerial and first heads of state conference, this FOCAC, between the 4–5 November 2006, was the most prominent such summit meeting after the first (Beijing, 2000) and the second (Addis Ababa, 2003). In many ways the first FOCAC was a trial run for this more lavish, ambitious and successful summit. It was carefully planned and impressively executed political theatre. Unlike six years ago, not just African but the world media was there to report. The FOCAC was a distinctively bilateral affair, contrasting with the more multilateral celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Bandung conference last year. Its staged choreography, including President Hu Jintao’s reception of individual Africa leaders in the Great Hall of the People, resonated with historical overtones of tribute, a contemporary version of ‘distant people’ arriving in ‘uninterrupted succession’. The extensive symbolic, monetary and political capital invested in FOCAC, its near flawless public execution and modern Beijing spoke of an increasingly self-confident China. Coming at the end of a year which has seen the dramatic irruption of China in Africa as a world media issue, topic of conversation and policy concern for governments, international organisations and civil society groups, it additionally, and very publicly, amounted to a declaration of arrival and positive intent: the Chinese government is serious about developing its African relations, and sought not merely to impress this upon its Africa guests but also the world at large. This forum cemented the official apparatus of cooperation and consolidated the foundations of development. Altogether, it formally marked the end of the beginning of China’s latest engagement with Africa, a process qualitatively different from the past and set to have potentially significant consequences for Africa.

This article briefly reflects on the current juncture of China-Africa relations at the end of an eventful 2006. After pointing to what is different about China’s return under new circumstances to Africa, it addresses key dynamics of current relations before identifying issues that are likely to increasingly come to the fore as the normalisation of relations proceeds and the exceptionalism that China still enjoys in its African relations wears off.

China’s return to Africa

Overall, 2006 was a watershed year for China-Africa relations in terms of the visibility of the subject and attention devoted to it. It featured a number of notable events, starting with the now-traditional tour by Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing (this time to Cape Verde, Liberia, Mali, Senegal, Nigeria and Libya) and the release of China’s Africa policy statement in January.

After visiting the United States, President Hu Jintao toured Morocco, Nigeria and Kenya in April, followed by Premier Wen Jiabao’s June trip to Egypt, Ghana, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda in June. Besides FOCAC, the wide geographical extent of these high-level tours was reinforced by regional meetings. The second ministerial meeting of the Macau Forum on September 24–25 in Macau featured high-level representation from Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau, East Timor, Brazil, Macau and China. The Conference of Sino-Arab Friendship, held in Khartoum at the end of November, established a permanent secretariat there under Arab League sponsorship and made a commitment to hold meetings every two years. China has arrived in Africa.

Rather than a sudden explosion into Africa, the Chinese engagement represents a return to the continent in a number of different ways. Strictly speaking, unlike 1433 when the Chinese sea voyages to Africa stopped, China never left Africa in the post-colonial period. The 1980s saw Africa downgraded in China’s foreign relations and China’s involvement in Africa was gradually reoriented into more commercial forms. Current relations should be traced to China’s renewed interest in Africa that was sparked in 1989 and consolidated with Jiang Zemin’s tour to six African countries in May 1996, a process that paved the way for the acceleration of the current phase after 2000.

Today’s unprecedented interest amongst the media, academic quarters, and a range of governments and international organisations evokes but exceeds the last comparable episode of attention, the wave of interest that followed Zhou En Lai’s African political safari in 1963–64. That was a very different context: rather than revolutionary prospects being ‘excellent’, as Zhou infamously declared in Mogadishu, the FOCAC proclaimed this to be the case for China and Africa’s ‘new strategic partnership’ for common prosperity. China’s return is occurring under new circumstances. A more developed China operates under conditions of enhanced interdependence. Gone is the Soviet Union.

Taiwan has lost the diplomatic recognition contest. Ideological disagreements have been superseded by political differences, especially on key concept of sovereignty, as China participates in the global economy and pursues better trade terms rather than an alternative economic socialist vision. Practical Chinese engagement, including Chinese companies, is still facilitated by and anchored within a state framework. The array of Chinese in Africa is more diverse, however, with an increase in entrepreneurial migration including to such locations as Cape Verde.

Why China in Africa Matters

The first reason why China’s return to Africa is important is that it is there to stay. With the addition of India and Asian states, this is part of what has been described as ‘the most dramatic and important factor in the external relations of the continent – perhaps in the development of Africa as a whole – since the end of the Cold War.’

China needs, and will continue to need, African resources more than previously. One commentator wrote in the early 1970s: ‘For the most part strategic minerals do not figure prominently in China’s quest for economic relations with Africa.’ Today a fundamental aspect underpinning relation is modern China’s need for a range of resources to supply its rising domestic and industrial needs. The most important sector by far is oil: some 30 per cent of China’s oil comes from Africa, its top suppliers being Angola (14 per cent), Sudan (7 per cent) and Congo-Brazzaville (4.4 per cent). China’s energy diplomacy (nengyuan waijiao) has mainstreamed as a foreign policy issue in the Hu Jintao period, which has seen an expansion and intensification of diplomacy not merely in Africa. ‘An unprecedented need for resources is now driving China’s foreign policy.’ The Chinese government’s relationship-building diplomacy with oil states is a means to enhance its energy security.

The second area of why China matters relates to increasing trade and investment in Africa, and the impact of this on political economy and for Africa’s international relations. Sub-Saharan trade remains proportionally not as significant as its world trade but has grown rapidly and if sustained, ‘the likely future impacts may be very substantial’. Total trade for 2006, according to official statistics, is expected to be over US450 billion, more than Africa–EU trade. This is spearheaded by the strategic pursuit of resources, around which investment is concentrated, and attempt to protect and enable guaranteed flow of raw materials for China’s energy needs. China’s foreign direct investment for Africa as of mid-2006 of some US$41.18 billion is mostly channelled to resource-rich countries, headed by Sudan and Nigeria.

As such, the thrust of China’s relations can be considered as fundamentally extractive, with other motivating factors, such as Africa as a market or production platform, less important at this stage of relations. The growth in African exports is thus predominantly confined to a growth of major commodity exports to China and India. As a developing power looking to grow within a globalising world, China has distinctive aspects in its African relations.

However, it ‘replicates in key ways developed state policies of disadvantageous terms of trade, exploitation of natural resources, oppressive labor regimes and support for authoritarian rulers. The commonalities of the PRC and Western approaches are therefore fundamental.’

A third area, albeit less significant for now, where China matters is its emerging development agenda in Africa and the considerable interest from different parts of Africa in applying aspects of China’s development experience in their own contexts. China’s legitimacy in questions of development rests in part on its own domestic record. It additionally benefits from a certain popular disillusionment with post-colonial development efforts in Africa, and the promise that China can deliver where ‘the West’ has not.

China’s official development discourse diverges: it is explicitly non-prescriptive, employing a language of ‘no strings attached’, equality and mutual benefit. It emphasises the collective right to development over the rights-based approaches focused on individual rights. It stresses the importance of political stability, internally-driven development appropriate to given conditions and promotes a sovereignty-based order. Finally, its non-intervention approach publicly separates business from politics.

Normalising China-Africa relations

Through experience, familiarity, and the progressive deepening of links, Chinese actors are becoming a more established part of Africa. This process whereby a range of Chinese interests become a more normal part of life is one that must necessarily erode the popular reputation for exceptionalism China has enjoyed, together with such particular cases as Darfur. In the political imaginary in different parts of Africa, projections of China are often made in these terms, especially during and after FOCAC, in keeping with the West’s historic tendency to alternate between seeing China as a great hope or threat.

The first broad area where this process is set to proceed concerns the political implications – internal and international – of China’s approach to political relations with African states and the limits of public adherence to non-interference. Giving a corporate marketing edge to a political position, one Chinese minister asserted: ‘Nonintervention is our brand, like intervention is the Americans’ brand’. However, the idea of separate business and political realms is deeply disingenuous. The Chinese approach business as functional politics. The ‘business, not politics’ approach depends on an ability to navigate political waters, will necessarily be enmeshed in politics and entail a logic of negotiation and conflict of a political (if not always openly so) nature. When it comes to protecting existing investments that have been established on the basis of political non-interference, China’s African involvement is likely to need to evolve once the boundaries of its ‘late-entry’ non-interference mode of engagement are tested and transgressed.

A second point is the need to engage the Chinese side better and to appreciate the evolving challenges China faces domestically and in the international context as it pursues its own development. There are reasons to suggest that ‘linear predictions of a manifest Chinese destiny may be flawed’.

Contextualising Africa within wider Chinese trade, foreign policy and participation in the global trade system, including the indirect impacts of China on Africa’s economic performance, is important. China’s trade with Africa is proportionally a small part (3 per cent) of its international trade and its energy needs are not neatly separable from those of global corporations (some of whom have invested in the Chinese oil majors operating in Africa).

There is the question of international responses. In the longer term China may reconfigure and could even break the monopoly of development concern and activity held by the current set of international organisations if its relations evolve to a deeper structural level of involvement. Ideas mooted about a Chinese Development Bank for Africa raises the question, for example, of how China may affect the international donor landscape of development finance in Africa. However, while keen to promote a range of development concerns, from aid, health, education, and even the environment, Beijing operates within prevailing international standards, including the Millennium Development Goals, and does not seek to challenge these. The competition China represents could catalyse new creative responses from the different layers of existing development architecture in Africa.

The final area concerns how different constituencies in Africa can respond. Can African governments develop appropriate responses and pursue these bilaterally, and also through more coordinated means through common positions via the AU? On the one hand, African governments can attempt to ‘take the opportunity of the competition between China and the West and obtain the best terms for our people.’ On the other hand, many African governments face the challenge of how to maintain good relations with and yet not become economically and politically dependent on China.

Conclusion

China’s return to African is a consequential subject that it is developing rapidly. However, despite wide coverage, not enough is known about concrete dynamics and significant knowledge gaps remain, including those exchanges that are less visible at present—commodity flows, educational, creation of new elites, or African business in China. Singling out an abstract ‘China’ in Africa is, of course, limited headline value and needs to be disaggregated to more properly reflect the dynamics of the Chinese engagement. In such topical countries as Sudan, where Petronas and ONGC-Videsh are important together with CNPC, China is part of what is better approached as an Asian-African axis the cumulative impact of which may be to effect a historic shift in the centre of political and economic gravity. However, as well as contextualising the seemingly meterioric rise of China in Africa, a historical approach would temper such crystal-ball gazing with caution about the limitations of long-term projects. Africa may have taken over Beijing during the 2006 FOCAC, but there is no inevitability about a transformative impact.

China bears a growing responsibility to match practice with its positive approach, to demonstrate it is different, rather than merely assert this with its official discourse which sets high standards and concomitant expectations of its official discourse. The issue of whether China can ‘prosper where others have failed’ could be inverted: can Africa benefit in longer term, more sustainable and more representative ways from China’s enhanced attention and links with Africa in ways that departure from established patterns with external powers? Through a historical lens, China has set the terms of its African engagement up to and largely including the present; ‘the onus rests upon African leaders to push the development agenda to the next level.’

There is thus a need to retain perspective of relations as they currently stand, and not exaggerate the importance of China but at the same time to recognise that this is consequential and not ephemeral. The idea, for example, that ‘“Empire” has begun to die before our very eyes, and Beijing will be written on its heart!’ may be indicative of current stratospheric hopes held in some quarters, but must be tempered. As President Nyrere’s recognised, while ‘equality and mutual benefit’ is a key tenet of relations, Tanzania-China relations was a partnership of ‘most unequal equals’, and this could also be used more generally to capture broader China-Africa relations.

At the end of China’s Year of Africa, as the beginning of its return to African ends, and as it becomes a normal phenomenon throughout the continent, there are good reasons to contemplate a possible Chinese decade of Africa.

China’s re-engagement reprises questions of power, states and constraints on development, including Africa’s unfavourable position in the world market, that are sadly familiar in Africa’s post-colonial history. Those with high hopes that China can benefit Africa as well as itself, for example, have to recognise its current economic involvement must change for broader development to occur.

• Daniel Large is a doctoral research student at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London and has studied in China and conducted research in Africa. He is co-editing a book on China-Africa relations to be published early in 2007. Email: [email][email protected]

• This is a shortened version of an article by Daniel Large. The full version, including references, will be available in a forthcoming book to be published in January by Fahamu and called ‘African perspectives on China in Africa’. The full articles will also be made available as .PDF files on the Pambazuka News website.

• Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Moreblessings Chidaushe tackles the issue of development aid to Africa, comparing the approach of the West and the new player, China. What is significantly different, she states, is that instead of the top-down language used by the West, China has instead used language that speaks of partnership and friendship. The West should not see China as a threat to its hold over Africa. Africa should be left to decide who it wants to engage with, she concludes.

This article interrogates China’s new approach to Africa in the specific context of development aid (grants, loans, technical experts). The rationale is to compare the Chinese approach to the traditional western donor approach and analyze the extent to which Africa may or may not benefit from this new approach. Some of the questions it tries to explore are; is China necessarily offering Africa a better development aid option than the west? Where is the new relationship taking Africa? Will Chinese aid move Africa towards achieving the MDGs? Is China a new friend or a new imperialist? What will be the west’s role in this new paradigm? And most importantly is this engagement not just a case of whose turn it is to colonize a continent up for grabs anyway?

Background/context

Chinese-African relations date back to 50 years ago when in 1956, China first established diplomatic relations with Egypt, since then, China has not looked back in advancing its relationship with the continent. To date, it has established co-corporation with 48 African countries (supporting the One China Policy). Africa and China share common historical experiences which have significantly contributed to cementing of what is now described as an “unshakable friendship”. Fifty years of engagement has borne more than 720 Chinese projects in Africa, huge infrastructural projects (TAZARA railway, major highways, stadiums, mining, energy ventures, oil in Angola and Nigeria) 18,000 governmental scholarships, 800 Chinese enterprises, 15,000 medical personnel and much more. Trade between the two parties has risen from an estimated 4 billion in 1995 to 40 billion in 2005 and still growing, trade agreements brokered during the Nov 2006 Sino- Africa Summit point to $100 billion by 2010.

China’s cooperation with Africa has previously not been particularly outstanding. We however begin to note some significant changes taking place around 2000 with the hosting of the first Forum on China-Africa Cooperation – Ministerial Conference in Beijing which received massive participation from the African partners. The Forum principle was based on “carrying out consultation on an equal footing, enhancing understanding, increasing consensus, promoting friendship and furthering cooperation”. China’s gentle and appealing attitude coupled with growing concerns and restlessness about a largely unproductive engagement with the west contributed to a stronger desire by both parties to strengthen the relationship. Furthermore, China’s growing superpower ambitions have resulted in more aggressive efforts to strengthen this relationship especially around the strategic resource endowments in Africa. The climax of these efforts culminated in the development of a policy that was announced in January 2006.

China’s policy on Africa

In January, 2006, China unveiled its new policy on Africa, an all-round, coherent roadmap articulating China’s objectives and strategies in Africa in areas ranging from high-level exchange visits, consultation mechanisms, trade, investment, financial, agricultural, resources, tourism cooperation, infrastructure, debt relief and cooperation in human resources development, science and technology and cultural exchanges and many more.

One of the most striking features of the China-Africa policy document is the language in which it is coined. China uses friendly language and its soft power to appeal to Africa’s hand. The document is coined in a language that provides a gentle, friendly, caring attitude one to which Africa has been wholly enticed. Exploitation, heavy hand top-down relationship has been typical of Africa’s relationship with the west, one approach China has deliberately opted to reverse – presenting itself as a potentially better friend to Africa.

While China has a clear policy to engage with Africa as a block, on its part, Africa’s approach to China still remains largely ad hoc. Although several countries have adopted the “Look East” policies, these are still at individual national levels with each country pursuing maximum benefit for its own best interests and specific needs.

One can’t help wondering if, without a comprehensive and structured policy, African countries are individually smart enough to deal with this growing force of a friend without being shortchanged. Although the relationship is supposedly based on an “equal” partnership – the level of equality in the partnership is questionable given the different contexts of the two parties.

Both simple logic and experience tells that it is impossible to engage on an equal footing as long as the parties are not on the same level. China is coming in as a donor and Africa as a recipient much like it has been with the west. The departure platform is thus already tipped in China’s favor making it difficult for Africa to bargain a genuine partnership – some kind of domination is likely to take place between the two.

A way out would be the development of a comprehensive African policy on China. This would result in more structured, secure and beneficial engagement and indeed potentially create the platform for a win-win situation as is the intention of the relationship.

An African policy on China would have to be developed through a continental body like the African Union with multi-stakeholder collaboration at all levels beginning at grassroots and feeding into regional blocks like SADC, EAC, ECOWAS etc. Such a policy would increase African countries security and benefits in dealing with the superpower wannabe rather than individual approaches easily susceptible to manipulation. Others might argue that different national interests would call for different policies and engagement mechanisms with China. Under such circumstances, individual countries could well be encouraged to develop national policies on China but these should be anchored within the framework of a continental policy, in other words, the various national and the regional policy should be complimentary.

Judging from the African leadership enthusiasm towards the strengthening of Chinese relations, it would seem China is the ultimate solution to the continent’s problems. It is crucial to note that while China might assist Africa to a certain degree, it is not, will not and should not be expected to solve all of Africa’s problems. It remains the responsibility of Africans to craft a way out of their quagmire. A simplistic view of the upcoming Chinese deal reveals that benefit from the Chinese aid is minimal, for example the proposed 100 schools will only translate to 2 schools per country in a continent whose member countries need more than 100 schools each, the same applies for the proposed 100 agricultural experts to be sent to Africa and the 50 clinics.

Thus it is clear that benefits of Chinese aid per individual country is minimal and will not add a significant difference to the achievement of the MDGs in Africa. It is therefore still crucial for Africa to maintain good relations with other partners (west) to compliment efforts towards the achievement of the goals. A huge concern is that currently China and Western relations with Africa are being approached from a competition point of view. A way should be sought to combine these efforts for maximum benefit for Africa.

Development Aid in Africa

A traditionally perceived way out of Africa’s quagmire has been the use of development aid. The crisis of western aid has been that, the more the industry has grown, the more distorted it has become and the more detached from reality it has become. Strategic dynamics have grown to undermine the fundamentals of aid thus it has largely failed to achieve its objectives and thus been rightly criticized. The concern is that there is a rather weak link between the aid intentions, amounts poured into development and the worsening situation on the ground.

China and development aid

Critics and even development practitioners themselves have long made recommendations on how development aid can be improved. They have recommended that Africa needs more grants than loans, less technical aid, cheap loans and aid without conditionalities and they have also called for more trade not aid. This sections examines the extent to which the supposedly better Chinese aid is meeting these recommendations in order to assess the extent to which Chinese aid will be better in addressing Africa’s challenges.

China is itself a developing country but it got freedom earlier and adopted an aggressive approach to its development. Because it has not depended on aid to the same level as Africa, it has since achieved impressive development in the past 50 years. It is no wonder Africa is ready to embrace engagement with China as it considered it as having a crucial experience from which Africa can tap. China chooses to concentrate more on the huge infrastructural investments, production and trade and the turnover from these have proved more beneficial than development aid. Thus, unlike the western approach, China concentrates more on trade and investments and less on charity and social sectors.

While Africa excitedly welcomes China as a better development partner, it is important to be cautious and not go into the relationship blindly, it is critical for Africa to take time to analyze the implications and real benefits of the China policy and engagement with Africa. After all, China has aggressive superpower ambitions which it is advancing and may in the long-term harden its approach/stance to ensure the achievement of its objectives.

The excitement around the “new” Chinese approach brings about the general perception that China is offering Africa a better aid package – but is this necessarily true? Much like the west, China’s development aid to Africa has centered around grants, loans and technical expertise, therefore the two’s departure points are similar. The Chinese approach therefore begs an interrogation to assess any differences between Chinese and traditional western approaches. Currently, the technicalities/dynamics of Chinese aid are not very transparent as the deals are brokered at bilateral (government to government) level. This discussion therefore bases some of its facts on experience on the ground which translates to/implies possible similar existing bilateral agreements between the two parties.

Technical expertise

Technical expertise has remained a major concern of the development industry. As a conditionality, western donors have traditionally attached technical expertise to their development aid.

On technical expertise the Chinese have proved worse than the west. Chinese projects are typically accompanied by droves of Chinese nationals. What has been particularly difficult for locals, is that in many cases the Chinese even import Chinese casual labors, leaving the majority of locals in the cold and yet Africa has an abundance of unskilled labor which could immensely benefit from these projects.

Chinese aid, and especially technical aid should be adjusted to consider such circumstances. While it should be targeted at reducing unemployment in Africa, it is instead targeted at reducing unemployment in China.

Technical aid is thus undoubtedly one of the areas in which Africa will have to battle with in regard to Chinese aid as Chineses labor does not seem to be a negotiable part of Chinese aid. Earlier than later, Africa should draw up its own policy on technical aid/labor to ensure that collaboration with China will assist in reducing the unemployment pandemic typical of the continent.

Trade

Europe has for long been Africa’s largest trading partner – but with the coming in of China, tables are certainly turning. China’s continues to develop insatiable energy needs and Africa is more than ready to plunder its natural resources to satisfy China. The danger of this benefit though is that it is only being calculated in monetary terms at the expense of issues around environmental sustainability and resource depletion, which are crucial to the continent’s future. Both China and Africa should develop policies to safeguard environmental and sustainability concerns of the extraction of resources from the continent. For now, China’s preoccupation is the extraction of Africa’s resources, raising the question of the long-term sustainability of these resources.

The Beijing Consensus

China’s aid commitments as stated in the China-Africa policy were further elaborated/expounded during the Sino-Africa Summit (Nov 2006) where the eastern nation pledged to double aid to Africa to US$5 billion for direct investments ($3 billion in preferential loans, $2 billion in export credits) by 2009 and increasing the number of loans, development projects in health and agriculture and also in debt cancellation. From the above deal, African loyalty in favor of China is set to grow further in the coming years, making the neo-liberal agenda less relevant.

And yet the doubled Chinese aid will come in the form of loans. What is not yet clear to African publics are the conditions under which Africa is acquiring these loans. Admittedly the Chinese loans are cheaper than western loans and come with less political and other conditionalities and penalties unlike the IFI Poverty Reduction Growth Facility (PRGF). Chinese aid has one major political conditionality attached to it – adherence to the “One China” policy. Any country engaging China cannot engage Taiwan. The caveats of this conditionality may however breed other political conditionalities not yet clear to Africans at this stage.

The Chinese loans also have, attached to them, economic conditionalities to allow Chinese firms access to the exploitation of Africa resources, repatriation of profits and labor as discussed above. It is also not yet clear what the implications of these loans will be on the continent’s debt crisis.

The west has often been accused of double counting/discounting aid and one cannot help but wonder too if the Chinese offer for debt relief, technical assistance, scholarships and exchange visits will not be double counted as a part of the aid package. Thus it is a misrepresentation to claim that Chinese aid is free of conditionalities.

Given the above discussion, it is sensible to conclude that Chinese aid may not be significantly different from western aid and therefore may not move Africa towards the achievement of the MDGs. Currently there is more excitement for anticipated benefits overshadowing the analysis of the actual benefits which are in fact minimal. High hopes/expectations should not be confused for actual benefits because what may seem like the oasis in Africa’s development journey may only be a mirage. So far Chinese aid (grants, loans and technical expertise) has not proved itself significantly different from western aid.

Conclusion

For a continent in such a quagmire, anyone offering a generous hand to Africa will always be welcome. Africa’s resource gap has oftentimes subjected it to exploitation by some “partners” and yet due to limited options, the continent has had to bear with these exploitative relationships, subjecting its masses to deeper poverty, humiliation and desperation for the sake of accessing resources. The IFI conditionality regime is a classic example where Africa has had to subject itself to humiliating top-bottom relationships resulting in the IFIs maintaining a perpetual heavy grip on the continent. To date nearly all African countries are still undertaking IFI imposed structural adjustment programs off tangent to the interests of their peoples. The result of these programs has been increased poverty, debt and dependency.

What has made China a seemingly better and easier to embrace friend to Africa has been it’s seemingly softer approach it has used. Thus embracing China has been a walk in the park for Africa. The west has had to be coerced (by years of lobbying and advocacy) into adopting measures like the Paris Declaration in efforts to tip the scales up in favor of the developing world. Even then this agenda has not been fully embraced by all donors as they see themselves loosing their autonomy in the process. Thus compared to China, the west has generally been a difficult partner to deal with.

The west is in the forefront of criticizing China’s stance in Africa. In some circles, China has been branded as irresponsible and reckless mainly due to the non-interference policy. It is however doubtful that this criticism is a result of genuine concern for African welfare or the reality of the failure to block China from grabbing the traditional domain. Thus the Beijing Consensus to solidify relations with Africa and increase trade seems to pose a challenge to the Washington Consensus.

Yet the two parties potentially have something good to offer Africa, thus it is only sensible to combine the two for maximum benefit. The current competing approach is not beneficial to Africa. The west should not see itself as Africa’s savior but its partner - the “savior attitude” is what is bringing about the competition.

The above discussion has shown that as far as aid (grants, loans and technical expertise), Chinese aid is not significantly different from western aid. For China to increase the effectiveness of its aid, it should urgently revisit its technical aid agreements, increase grants as opposed to loans, and find a beneficial non-exploitative way of accessing African resources.

• Moreblessings Chidaushe currently works as a Programme Officer - Lobby & Advocacy for African Forum and Network on Debt and Development (AFRODAD) based in Harare, Zimbabwe. Holds a Masters Degree in International Development from the University of Bath, UK. Dynamic, open-minded person. Follows development aid issues passionately and believes that not until Africa finds a solution to its challenges will there ever be social and economic justice on the continent.

• This is a shortened version of an article by Moreblessings Chidaushe. The full version, including references, will be available in a forthcoming book to be published in January by Fahamu and called ‘African perspectives on China in Africa’. The full articles will also be made available as .PDF files on the Pambazuka News website.

• Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

The ‘look east’ policy of Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe is well documented. But the deeper implications of Zimbabwe’s relationship with China are less well understood. Whether the relationship turns out to be a win-win one will depend much on how effectively Zimbabwe can build institutional and bureaucratic capacity to harness Chinese funds and investment for the benefit of the country, writes John Blessing Karumbidza, who doubts whether this will be the case, raising questions as to whether Mugabe is simply replacing Western colonialism with Chinese imperialism.

‘We have turned east where the sun rises, and given our backs to the west, where the sun sets’ – Robert Mugabe on the occasion of the celebration of 25 years of Zimbabwean independence, May 2005.

That China is a rising global economic player of note in Africa is well established. China’s interest in Africa is part of a calculated plan and policy to ‘go global’. Africa offers a strategic training ground and opportunity for Chinese capital. In an address to the Nigerian Senate in 2005, the Chinese President described China-Africa relations as ‘win-win economic cooperation’. This paper explores what will become of the renewed relationship between China and Zimbabwe, or more appropriately, the Zimbabwe African National Union, Patriotic Front (ZANU PF).

It is arguable that whether the relationship becomes what the Chinese President described as a ‘win-win’ relationship is not entirely dependent on China, rather on whether Zimbabwe has the institutional and bureaucratic capacity to turn Chinese funds and investment to benefit the country. There are reasonable doubts about the possibility of widespread and long term economic benefits to Zimbabwe. Temporary benefits so far include the political preservation of Mugabe reign and personal aggrandizement through corruption and kickbacks by his ZANU PF cronies flowing from Chinese investment.

On the whole, it would not be fair to blame the Chinese for acting to further their interests. It is incumbent upon the government of Zimbabwe and its people (and any other African country for that matter) to put in place a programme and strategy for chanelling funds and direct investment in a way that contributes to growth of its own economy.

Questions about Chinese financing and business involvement in African development programmes include: Are they based on an equal partnership? Are African governments able to negotiate terms of interaction without ‘pawning’ their countries and submitting their people to exploitation?

There is growing concern that China disregards human rights and democracy. It has a reputation for the abuse of workers’ rights, intolerance of political opposition; and dislikes a free press. In the name of non-interference, China justifies doing business with pariah states and dictators – which also means that civil society and the citizenry cannot hold them accountable for flaunting environmental and labour laws.

It is important to note however that this Chinese ‘non-interference’ policy cannot be permanent. The Chinese are well aware of this themselves. Where deals are signed with unpopular dictatorial regimes that could later be revised by a new government, it becomes necessary for the Chinese to protect such regimes. This explains their arming of the ZANU PF government in Zimbabwe. For example, China funded Zimbabwe’s acquisition of military-strength radio jamming equipment to block opposition broadcasts ahead of the 2005 elections.

Liberation ties paying off for China

In seeking to gain a hold on African resources and opportunities for sale of Chinese goods, China should be wary of losing political capital and ‘credibility’ it acquired from supporting African liberation struggles through conniving with dictatorial regimes. Prior to the present day questionable expansion, China had no burden of historical guilt in Africa, unlike the global North. China therefore gives credence to the likes of Mugabe when it claims to be protecting African sovereignty. Whereas British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Bono see Africa as a ‘scar on everyone’s conscience’, still troubled by their historical guilt of the slave and colonial era, the Chinese see Africa as a business opportunity.

The earlier 'ideological' phase of Chinese-African relations was part of a global strategy which by the mid 1970s saw some 15,000 doctors and over 10,000 agricultural engineers from China serving all over the Third World. It is common knowledge that many African countries exploited the cold war and the bi-polar world system by claiming to be socialist to gain assistance during liberation and after independence, going first to the West, then the East for development aid.

By 1977 Chinese trade with Africa reached a record US$817,000,000. The new orientation found institutional expression in the first China-Africa Co-operation Forum held in Beijing in 2000 - a mechanism to promote diplomatic relations, trade and investment between China and African countries. In the same year, China-Africa trade passed $10bn for first time. By 2003 it reached US$18.5bn. By 2004, nearly 700 Chinese companies were operating in 49 African countries. According to some estimates US$30 billion will change between Chinese and African hands this year. More recent Chinese estimates claim that it is already approaching US$40billion.

China is using the UN’s five-point proposal to ‘assist’ developing countries accelerate development, including: ‘Granting zero-tariff treatment for some exports from the least developed countries, increasing aid to the heavily-indebted poor countries and least developed countries and cancelling debts contracted by them, providing concessional loans and effective medicine for treating malaria, and training professionals.’

These steps will increase China’s access to the raw materials, energy and food resources it requires to sustain growth as well as feed its population. Observers have pointed to the fact that ‘more recently China's policy has shifted from cold war ideology to a more classical pursuit of economic self-interest in the form of access to raw materials, markets and spheres of influence through investment, trade and military assistance - to the point where China can be suspected of pursuing the goals of any classical imperialist’. Moreover, the heavy militarisation of the Zimbabwean government through Chinese loans and technology raises suspicions of China’s global ambitions to develop strategic military bases in Africa.

A closer look at the nature and character of Chinese investment in Zimbabwe

For Mugabe, who sees democracy and development as mutually exclusive, the fact that China has been able to raise 400 million of its people out of poverty over two decades, without being subjected to democratic elections and a free press serves as a useful example. Mugabe cites the present world order as a source of conflict and war, and calls for a more positive alternative order.

China was ZANU PF’s main supporter in the 1970s in the war against colonial rule. After independence, Zimbabwe declared itself Marxist-Leninist and announced the intention to reorganise society along socialist lines while courting Western aid and and the IMF.

Since 1980, Zimbabwe has revoked the liberation era ties with China to maintain low profile diplomatic ties, which are now upgraded to a development partnership. As a result of the lack of conditionalities on Chinese loans and funding, Chinese loans in the 1980s went into white elephant projects, such as the construction of the National Stadium.

By the end of 2004, Chinese investments in Zimbabwe were estimated at US$600m. To service the increasing Chinese investment and the 9000 Chinese believed to be living and working in Zimbabwe a bi-weekly flight between Harare and Beijing was launched.. Another US$600m was pledged at the June 2005 Asia Summit; and separate deals between Chinese state and private firms were signed with various Zimbabwean corporations. Renewed and increased China-Zimbabwe relations brought about now familiar circumstances: a Zimbabwean state now considered by the global North as a pariah state; an unprecedented economic slump; unemployment above 75 per cent, inflation heading towards 2000 per cent;, and shortages of consumer goods, most importantly fuel.

European and American travel sanctions, the lack of any IMF rating, coupled with the ANC in South Africa’s conditions of political and economic ‘normalisation’ have taken their toll. In August 2005 therefore, snubbing the efforts of Thabo Mbeki, Mugabe turned to China for funding to ‘revive the economy through increased agricultural production’. This led to Chinese promises for increased economic cooperation in many areas of the economy and an immediate US$200,000,000 to finance agricultural production and three MA-60 passenger planes.

Mugabe fought the 2005 elections on the argument that Zimbabwe must not become a colony again. But it is questionable whether he has not in fact simply replaced Western colonialism with Chinese imperialism. Having ceded control of strategic state firms and massive Chinese takeovers, including of railways, the electricity supply, Air Zimbabwe and Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation makes ‘win-win’ economic cooperation between China and Zimbabwe appears doubtful. Given that Zimbabwe has no comparative advantage over China in any sector, this opening up of the economy is most likely to benefit the Chinese perhaps even at the expense of Zimbabweans.

Zimbabwe lacks the institutional and strategic infrastructure to effect requisite economic transformation, and will have difficulty putting Chinese development loans to good use. The failure to revive the agriculture sector since the 2000 land seizures is a major concern.

It is not surprising therefore that the Chinese signed a contract to farm 386 square miles of land when millions of Zimbabweans are still landless. Recent land seizures saw most of the productive land fall into the hands of the elite, while the rural poor remain mostly landless. The Reserve Bank governor’s monetary policy statement emphasised the need for the agriculture sector to pull its weight in the economic turnaround of the country encouraging the new landowners (mostly urban ‘telephone farmers’) that ‘the battle cry is for all those who hold land to view it as an effective means of economic emancipation rather than a status symbol’.

Beyond the rhetoric of ‘the land being the economy and the economy the land’ there is no apparent strategy for the necessary transformation required for agriculture to release its potential for the economic turnaround needed in Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe cannot even benefit from the Chinese Maoist blueprint for rural economic transformation. The joint Chinese ventures in Zimbabwean agriculture amount to nothing more than land renting and typical agri-business relations that turn the land holders and their workers to labour tenants and subject them to exploitation.

There is additional fear that the takeover of strategic national firms by the Chinese companies is a security threat and can be seen as loss of national sovereignty. Most sinister of all is that the Chinese authorities must know that Zimbabwe is more than likely to default on payment of bills; and wishes precisely this, in order to obtain a tighter grip on Zimbabwean assets.

It would be naïve to think that China is motivated by the need to salvage the Zimbabwean economy from its economic abyss; indeed even the government does not itself believe this. It is simply a venture to save political face. For the Chinese, the investment in Zimbabwe is nothing different from Chinese ventures elsewhere on the continent. The current arrangements, simply allows Mugabe to keep the illusion of victory over the West; and enable his cronies in the army, police, government and business to partner with the Chinese in further exploitation of the masses. As in the 1980s, the poor people will be told to tie their stomachs and pull up their socks, and that a revolution is not for ‘cry babies’. For as long as Mugabe reigns over the abyss, the rhetoric of imperialist demons fighting against Zimbabwe will continue to suffice.

In the context of a politicized security system, silenced media and partial judiciary, the Chinese will drain the Zimbabwean economy and future generations will pay for it.

Anti-Chinese xenophobia: Attitudes towards the Chinese in Zimbabwe

When confronted with reports of crime against Chinese nationals (numbering not more than 10 000), Zimbabwe established a Chinese desk at the central police station in Harare. Mugabe has also appointed a Minister for Chinese affairs.

Already, the police officers, the University of Zimbabwe and schools have been asked to offer classes in Mandarin (soon after losing their love of French). Reacting to the new requirement to learn Mandarin, Washington Katema, ZINASU president, snubbed the move as a case of the ‘madness of the Mugabe regime scaling new heights’ and as a political gimmick to lure the Chinese into the country to bankroll the bankrupt regime. These excesses by Mugabe’s regime are likely to fuel xenophobia against the Chinese. Many reports of crime and abuse of women and children, rape and violent crimes against Zimbabwean nationals are yet to receive such a high profile response.

The economic background to the anti-Chinese sentiments is that Zimbabweans are horrified at the prospect of a permanent take-over of strategic state companies in what is generally considered a desperate move to perpetuate the tenure of ZANU PF. Trade unionists are worried that companies are being forced to close having lost their market to cheaper goods imported directly from China, and about the abuse of workers. The Chinese managers are alleged to have a negative attitude towards local people and massive dislike for trade unionists. At will they are known to ‘forget’ to understand English as a means to avoid dialogue with anyone critical of their actions. The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) was quoted as saying that a Chinese steel company operating in Willowvale in Harare has unacceptable pollution levels but the government treats them with kid gloves.

Conclusion

In the next half a century if all African countries adopted the shift from colonial languages that create a barrier to cultural unity, China could replace them with one language spoken across the continent. Maybe then, a ‘United States of Africa’ – under Chinese ‘prefectship’ – may become possible. After all, China would gain more advantages from a united Africa than from a balkanised continent. China is in Africa to pursue expansion, consistent with its search for global dominance, and to avoid being out-competed by the US. It therefore requires resources, raw materials, and markets, and space for its surplus population.

As far as Africa is concerned however, as long as poverty remains at the centre of the conflicts and crises in Africa, and there is no African reconstruction and development strategy, conceived and funded from local resources, the giant panda will carry on from where the colonialists and imperialists left.

Mugabe’s looking ‘east where the sun rises’, expecting Chinese loans to develop the beleaguered economy remains a fantasy as long as his politics and economics are wrong. Meantime, with Mugabe fixated on Chinese promises, the people of Zimbabwe, especially the middle class that decide to leave the country at the whims of Mugabe, and Chinese take over, in the pursuit of temporary respite in the diaspora, only have themselves to blame.

• John (Blessing) Karumbidza is an economic historian and researcher in rural sociology based at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. He is a public intellectual seeking to promote the position that ‘another Afrika is possible’.

• This is a shortened version of an article by John (Blessing) Karumbidza. The full version, including references, will be available in a forthcoming book to be published in January by Fahamu and called ‘African perspectives on China in Africa’. The full articles will also be made available as .PDF files on the Pambazuka News website.

• Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Ali Askouri charts the high cost of China’s rising involvement in Sudan, placing emphasis on the lives lost and communities displaced in the Southern Sudan and Darfur. He explains the rapidly growing Chinese demand for oil and the involvement of Chinese companies in huge infrastructure projects. ‘The sad truth is, both the Chinese and their elite partners in the Sudan government want to conceal some terrible facts about their partnership,’ writes Askouri. ‘They are joining hands to uproot poor people, expropriate their land and appropriate their naturaul resources.’

Before Sudan's independence in 1956, the nation's economic relations with China were insignificant. Despite good diplomatic relations, the level of cooperation between the two countries hardly figured on Sudan's foreign-trade sheet. From independence up to the early 1990s, Sudan exported cotton, sesame, and metal scraps to China. In exchange, Sudan received small arms, fabrics and other textiles. At one point, however, in the early 1970s, the Chinese built what they called the ‘Friendship Hall’ – a grand conference hall on the Blue Nile's western bank, a few hundred metres from the confluence of the White and Blue Niles at Khartoum. Available data showed that Sudan’s total debts to China up to 2001 totalled US$67.3 million, of which China wrote off 63 per cent in 2001.

In 1989, however, there was a military coup in Sudan. Led by Islamic officers and widely supported by the National Islamic Front, the junta declared a holy war on the Southern Sudanese rebels who were fighting the central government at the time. The main objectives of the coup were:

• to crush the rebels

• Islamicise and Arabise the southern part of the country

• forcibly unite the South with the rest of the country

• establish an Islamic state.

To achieve its objectives the junta set out to exploit the country's vast oil reserves, discovered by Chevron in 1978. The country was opened up for Islamist investment and many Islamic groups came to the country with huge amounts of money. However, it soon became apparent that these groups lacked the necessary technical expertise required for such ventures. Consequently, not long after they had settled, the junta expelled them under various political pretexts.

As a result of a trade and financial boycott by the donor community and international financial institutions, Sudan was facing bankruptcy. To overcome these economic difficulties, the junta began feverishly looking for an influential business partner who could extract oil and mobilise other natural resources to lubricate its atrophying economic muscles. Given its recent human rights records, the human and material costs of any investment were never issues that the junta was going to care about. Indeed, the junta had shown exceptional cruelty towards the civil and political rights of citizens, even those who did not antagonise the junta. It was therefore expected that violations of rights would become excessive when civil and political rights collided with the junta’s declared agenda.

Following its experience with the Islamists groups, the junta wanted its business partner to have the strength and ability to withstand political pressure from Western ‘imperialist’ countries; the stamina and determination not to be bothered by the protests of human rights groups; and, above all, to be a heavyweight international player that Western imperialist countries would find hard to force out of the country through political pressure.

China's long-term strategy for Africa

Numerous events in different African countries since the beginning of the 21st century have show that there is a long-term Chinese strategy to control and exploit Africa natural resources, particularly oil. The Chinese strategy is propelled by China's growing internal demand for oil as a result of its rapid economic growth. The key African countries targeted by the strategy include, but are not limited to, Sudan, Ethiopia, Angola, Chad, Algeria, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Ghana. Although the current economic development status of these countries cries out for development targeted at improving the lot of the impoverished masses, this is not the motivation of Chinese economic assistance. Following a top-down economic development approach, Chinese economic assistance to these African countries has encouraged elitism, deepened social and class divisions and widened corruption. Economic assistance seems targeted to reward or bolster whomever is in power, regardless of how they got there. While many African societies struggle to further democratic values and strengthen respect for human rights, there is no doubt that Chinese economic assistance is encouraging dictatorships and tyranny in Sudan, Chad, Zimbabwe and elsewhere.

Chinese leaders keep repeating the misleading statement that China does not interfere in the internal affairs of the countries it deals with. This statement is untrue, provocative and insulting to many Africans who are aspiring to further democratic values. China interferes deeply in the domestic affairs of its partners, but always to the benefit of the ruling group. A recent meeting between the Sudanese president and his Chinese counterpart revealed the extent of China interference in domestic Sudanese affairs in favour of the ruling junta. Addressing his Chinese counterpart, the Sudanese president stated: ‘The relationship with China has been fraternal, brotherly and excellent. Our relation with China is built on mutual benefit. China has always supported the unity of Sudan. When our relations became problematic with the international financial institutions, we turned to China. Relations with China have enabled us to overcome economic difficulties.’ The Chinese president has expressed support for the Sudanese president’s concerns about United Nation troops being sent to the Darfur region: ‘China is sympathetic to Bashir’s objections against peace-keeping forces’.

In Sudan, Chinese support for the government has undoubtedly undermined all the efforts of the opposition to effect change in the government, thereby extending its rule despite the clear political indications that the junta would be unable to rule the country without heavy Chinese economic and military support. It is therefore not surprising that Chinese economic aid to the Sudanese junta has come at an extremely high human cost in Southern Sudan and Darfur, where the number of lives lost and communities displaced has become an internationally recognised tragedy.

History of China-Sudan relations

As early as 1992–94, hundreds of Chinese, allegedly employed by Chinese intelligence, started to appear on Khartoum streets selling cheap consumer products directly to the people. Some of these people became involved in house construction while others set up small commercial companies. The tens of thousands of Chinese workers who were later recruited for the construction of the oil pipeline and other mega-infrastructure projects were gradually moved into Sudan this way. In those days the phenomenon of hundreds upon hundreds of young Chinese (mostly men in their 20s) who neither speak Arabic nor English, crowding the dusty streets of Khartoum selling combs and headscarves to people was the talk of the city. Apparently it was hard for the local people to understand how a young chap could fly in from Shanghai to sell combs and deodorants on Khartoum’s streets in order to make a living!

Inside China, the rapidly growing demand for oil pushed China to venture into Africa looking for opportunities. ‘The reality that China faces is that it will need to become a net importer of oil by the year 2000 if it is going to continue with its modernisation plans,’ wrote Cleophas Lado of the University of the Western Cape.

Indeed, endowed with its vast recoverable oil reserves, Sudan was a great opportunity for China. Equally, for the Sudanese junta, China – given its exceptional ability to condone human rights abuses alongside its heavy-weight ability to develop large-scale projects – represented the ideal partner with whom to strike a deal. ‘It is very much a symbiotic relationship between China and Sudan, where China is in desperate need of a secure source of oil over the long term, while Sudan needs the external credit, investment and market for its oil.’

Lado describes a few of China's investments in Sudan: ‘China has invested heavily in the country. China has initiated $20 billion worth of development and infrastructure projects involving dams, hydroelectric power stations, textile mills and agricultural schemes. China has promised to contribute $750 million in the construction of the new Khartoum International Airport, and another $750 million for a new dam on the Nile near in the Northern Province.

Approximately $100 million has been spent by the Chinese on textile plants, and $500 million on a recently constructed oil refinery. China also provided Sudan with over $12 million in soft loans to fund a fishing project in the Red Sea. Other economic ties have involved arms transfers between Beijing and Khartoum. China has supplied the Khartoum government with arms since 1985, with transfers between 1985 and 1989 totalling $50 million. China became one of the GOS's [government of Sudan’s] principal arms suppliers in 1994 and remains so today.

In addition to Lado’s list of Chinese projects in Sudan, China is upgrading the Khartoum oil refinery from 50,000 barrel/day (b/d) to 70,000 b/d at a cost of US$350 million. As part of the Merowe dam project (also being built by the Chinese, see below), the Chinese won a second contract for power towers that will transport electricity from the dam site to Khartoum and Port Sudan. The contract signed by Harpin-Jilin and CCMD is worth about US$460 millions. This is in addition to a bridge project downriver from the dam site costing US$10 million.

While China claims that it does not interfere in internal politics, the distribution of these projects reveals that China is immersed in the internal politics of Sudan up to its neck. However, Chinese immersion in internal politics is meant to appease the ruling elite, with minimal analysis of the economic, social and environmental feasibility of the proposed projects. For China, whoever happens to be in power is a friend of China as long as they will guarantee China access to resources. Indeed, the opportunistic nature of Chinese policy in Africa is very obvious. It has led, as discussed below, to massive internal displacement and is associated with the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives – tantamount to genocide in many parts of Sudan.

Displacement and human rights abuses in oil producing areas

Currently most of Sudan's oil is produced in the Upper Nile area. The Dinka and Nuer people are the main tribes living in the area. To ensure the safety of the oil installations, the government adopted a scorched-earth policy carried out by the army and splinter groups from the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement, used by the government as proxies to carry out its depopulation policy of the area. According to Christian Aid: ‘The inter-tribal warfare that has plagued the south for the last decade has been fomented by strategic arms deliveries from government garrisons. By the middle of last year, hundreds of cases of ammunition had already been delivered to one of the southern factions fighting for control of Western Upper Nile and its vast oil reserves. This is warlordism – as the government and the oil companies call it – but warlordism provoked and encouraged by the government with the express intent of depopulating oil-rich areas.’ The policy was carried out with an intensity that leaves no doubt that the inhabitants must leave or face death and extermination.

The report continues, ‘Since construction of the pipeline to the Red Sea began in 1998, hundreds of thousands of villagers have been terrorised into leaving their homes in Upper Nile. Tens of thousands of homes across Western Upper Nile and Eastern Upper Nile have been burnt to the ground. In some areas, the charred remains of the humble mud huts that got in the way of oil are the only evidence there is that there was ever life in the region.’

Displacement in the Merowe dam project

The Merowe dam (also known as the Hamdab dam) is a massive multipurpose dam project on the fourth cataract of the River Nile in Northern Sudan. The dam, which is expected to cost around US$1.8 billion, is being implemented by a Chinese joint venture between China National Water Resources and Hydropower Engineering and China Water Engineering, known as CCMDJV, according to the dam implementation unit website and other Sudanese and European companies. The CCMDJV contract totalled US$ 60 million. Chinese companies have another contract in the project for power tower networks that extend to Dongola, Atabara, Portsuan and Khartoum. The total amount of the Chinese contract is US$460 millions. The project, according to the dam authority, will displace more than 50,000 small farmers living on the riverbanks.

In February–March 2005, two leading experts on dams and resettlement visited the site and reported: Al Multaga site is located in the desert. The Merowe Dam Project Implementation Unit (MDPIU) is providing support in removing the sand that covers many plots and in irrigating the land. However, two years after resettlement, some 20% of the land has still not been cleared of sand; it is thus unavailable for production. And even with irrigation, the quality of the soil is so poor that farmers cannot sell their products on the market.

In Sudan, it has been the established tradition that major public infrastructure projects are normally guarded by the police force or in exceptional cases by small army units. Staff working on such projects normally live among local people without of any type protection. On the assumption that the Chinese are investing their money to help poor Sudanese, it is odd that they believe the dam site should need security protection 24 hours a day. It is even more puzzling given that in that part of Sudan – where villagers are all connected or related to each other – theft or crime of any sort are unheard of. Villagers still leave their doors unlocked. From what, then, do the Chinese need protection?

The sad truth is, both the Chinese and their elite partners in the Sudan government want to conceal some terrible facts about their partnership. They are joining hands to uproot poor people, expropriate their land and appropriate their natural resources.

Conclusion

Commenting on China’s foreign policy, Lado states: From Sudanese experience it looks that the strategy of China’s foreign policy is not built on initiative and entrepreneurship, it rather exploits the opportunities resulting from the contradictions in the international arena. For China Sudan was the best opportunity that China could dream of given its rising domestic demand for fuel and the growing internal trend among Chinese investors for overseas investment.

The opportunistic nature of Chinese foreign investment, particularly in Sudan, was further exposed when pressures mounted on the Sudanese government to accept peacekeeping forces in Sudan. China failed to veto any United Nation Security Council Resolutions on Darfur, including the referral of Darfur criminals to the International Criminal Court. This has led many Sudanese commentators to question the feasibility of maintaining a strong link with China and whether China is a trustworthy and reliable political ally.

One reason China is the single biggest international player in Sudan is the prolonged boycott by Western countries of the Sudan government. Excluding a vast country endowed with huge natural resources from contemporary international affairs may not be the best strategy. As experience has shown, isolating countries makes them conducive to violence, human rights abuses and civil unrest.

China's huge presence in Sudan needs to be challenged on all fronts. China must be made aware that its opportunistic involvement with dictatorship carries a price for trade and investment inside China. Support for pro-democracy groups needs to be strengthened; investment that observes acceptable international standards on the environment needs to be enhanced. And above all, international justice mechanisms must be made more effective so that perpetrators know that eventually they will face justice.

• Ali Askouri is the director of the London based Piankhi Research Group working in the field of development and human rights.

• This is a shortened version of an article by Ali Askouri. The full version, including references, will be available in a forthcoming book to be published in January by Fahamu and called ‘African perspectives on China in Africa’. The full articles will also be made available as .PDF files on the Pambazuka News website.

• Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Professor Kwesi Kwaa Prah speaks to Pambazuka News about the history of Chinese engagement in Africa and theorises about what is to come. This accompanies our special issue exploring China's relationship with Africa. Professor Kwaa Prah is about to release a book entitled: "Afro-Chinese relations: Past, Present and the Future". He is based at the . The music in this podcast is by Freddy Macha

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