http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/404/China_businesses_lesotho_t… an engaging piece highlighting the inherent one-sidedness of Western media coverage of China’s presence in Africa, Stephen Marks explores the extent to which the Asian giant’s presence on the continent is primarily visible in its economic and diplomatic links rather than any military presence. While concerns over a so-called ‘Yellow Peril’ are scarcely predominant within US policy circles, the author argues, the Chinese presence on the African continent is primarily characterised as military, a characterisation that belies the essentially economic basis of the country’s relations with African countries. But with Chinese military expenditure now conspicuously on the increase, what will be the consequences for a changing relationship with Africa?

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has repeated his rejection of the ‘Union for the Mediterranean’, launched last month in Paris on the initiative of French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Speaking on a visit to Tunis, Gaddafi, - the only leader to stay away of the 44 invited - claimed the project would seperate North Saharan countries from the rest of Africa. "I do not agree to cutting up Africa for hypothetical prospects with Europe" he added, and went on to characterise the Union as a violation of AU resolutions, a threat to Arab unity, and a return to colonialism.

Ironically however, his fears of ‘division’ had already been mirrored by many of France’s EU partners. As a result the original ambitious French plan for a ‘Mediterranean Union’ has been watered down to the point where it is unlikely to be more than a talking shop, equally incapable of fulfilling either Sarkozy’s dreams or Gaddafi’s fears.

Apparently, January 1 2008 saw a breakthrough in Chinese workers’ rights, and a flight of employers to other lands where labour is cheaper and less protected. At least that is what must have happened if the rosiest [or most alarmist] interpretations of China’s new labour law, which came into force on that date, are to be believed.

But getting at the facts behind the reports is another matter - and of interest to African activists for at least two reasons. First, China’s competitive labour cost advantage is blamed for loss of employment in Africa especially in textiles. Second, Chinese firms in Africa are supposed to conform to local laws or failing that, to Chinese legislation. So if China’s labour laws are now to become a worker’s nirvana, could African workers in future hope to hitch a ride on the apparently greater rights of their Chinese brothers and sisters?

Human security should come first in seeking conflict resolution in the Horn of Africa. Favour should be shown to partners that protect their people - whether they are state or non-state actors - and not just to those who claim to protect western interests. And all states in the region should be required to conform to “the normal conventions of international conduct.”

These are the main conclusions of a new Chatham House report by Sally Healey in ‘Lost Opportunities in the Horn of Africa: How Conflicts Connect and Peace Agreements Unravel.’ The conclusions, despite their diplomatic wording, amount to a clear criticism of outside and especially Western policy in the region. But the underlying analysis provides a valuable conceptual tool-kit for challenging the concepts used more widely for understanding conflict.

The report looks at three peace processes in the Horn - the Algiers Agreement of December 2000 between Ethiopia and Eritrea; The Somalia National Peace and Reconciliation Process of October 2004, and the Sudan Comprehensive Peace Agreement of January 2005.

Each of the three processes is unique, and their most obvious common feature is that the results are mixed. The Algiers Agreement has not led to a permanent settlement between Ethiopia and Eritrea. The two instruments created at Algiers to help reach a permanent peace - the boundary commission and the UN force - have both run out of steam. At least the two sides have not returned to open war. But their enmity continues, and is played out by proxy elsewhere in the region, especially in Somalia.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/381/48823beardragon.jpgIn Africa, the Russian state seems far more ‘upfront’ about pursuing its grand geopolitical projects than the more cautious and patient Chinese. Russia’s private sector too is prepared on occasion to operate with an unashamed directness where others might be more diplomatic." While all eyes are on China's growing influence in Africa, Stephen Marks argues that Russia's Russia's bear is quitely intensifying its hug.
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While all eyes have been focussed on China’s rise in Africa, the other former Cold War Communist giant has also been making a comeback. And at first glance there are obvious parallels between the dragon and the bear, as each seeks to rebuild its African links on a commercial basis while building where it can on the friends and contacts made in an earlier, more ideological era.

Today the Aswan dam stands as a monument to Soviet aid in the Cold War era, as the Tazara railway does to China’s role. And the thousands of Soviet graduates match the specialists trained in China.

But Russia’s recent rise in African trade though steep, is far from matching China’s. The fall from $2.7bn in 1994 to just over $900m in 1994 (only 1.5% of all Russia’s non-CIS trade) has been followed by a climb back to over £3bn in 2006, with a further leap to $6bn in 2007. (See also www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~chegeo)

But this is easily dwarfed by China’s trade volume, already at $40m in the first nine months of 2007 alone, and projected to soar to $100m by 2010.

Nonetheless the trappings of Russia’s African rise seem at first glance to mimic those of China, if on a smaller scale. In September 2006, just weeks before the FOCAC summit in Beijing, Russian President Vladimir Putin took 100 Russian businessmen - some of them top ‘oligarchs’ - on a five-day whirlwind trip to Morocco and South Africa, followed up in March 2007 by then-Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov taking more business chiefs and officials to Angola, Namibia and South Africa.

As with Chinese President Hu Jintao’s whirlwind African trips, there were reports of major deals, promising investments in mining, energy and even space exploration. And Russia has also stepped up to the mark with the right noises about development and debt relief.

This April, at the first joint meeting of the AU and the UN Economic Commission for Africa, Russia’s ambassador to Ethiopia announced a $500m development assistance package and a $20m contribution to the World Bank’s African anti-malaria programme.

And Russia has also written off $20bn of African debt, making its contribution to the Debt relief Initiative for HIPCs the biggest of all donors in share of GDP, and the third biggest in absolute value.

A more detailed look at the deals done by the business chiefs accompanying Russia’s leaders on these jaunts shows some apparent similarities, but also significant underlying differences when compared to the pattern of China’s intervention.

As with China, energy and raw materials deals are a prominent part of the Russian roadshow. As production-sharing agreement with its Nigerian owners, followed by taking a 56.66% stake in three prospecting projects in the Ivory Coast and Ghana from the U.S. company Vanco Energy.

Metals have also been an area of of South Africa’s leading steelmaker Highveld Steel and Vanadium. And United Manganese of Kalahari, a company part-owned by billionaire ‘oligarch’ Viktor Vekselberg,, recently confirmed that it had won a mining license for its planned $200m manganese mine. Vekselberg’s company Renova and its partners last year bought the Transalloys ferro-alloy plant in South Africa. Vekselberg has said Renova plans to invest around $1 billion in buying ore deposits and processing plants. Renova is also in a currently stormy partnership with BP in the Russian oil company TNK-BP.

Mr Vekselberg appears to be a key figure in Russian-South African trade relations. He was appointed by President Mbeki to his International Investment Council. He also heads the foreign relations committee of Russia’s Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, and is said to be known as ‘Mr South Africa’ in Russia and ‘Mr Russia’ in South Africa. As we shall see he has been in the news for other reasons too.

Putin’s original 2006 visit took in only Morocco and South Africa, leading to the criticism that he was leaving out the expanse of black Africa in between. But since then the gap has been at least partly filled, not only by oil deals in West Africa, but also by Russia’s financial sector. In Luanda Angola’s first foreign-controlled bank has opened, owned 66% by Russia’s foreign trade bank Vneshtorgbank.

Russia’s Renaissance Capital group now owns 25% of Ecobank, the Nigerian bank which claims 450 branches in 22 countries. And the Renaissance group is also launching a $1bn African investment fund.

There has also been a Russian-South African tie-up between the world’s two largest diamond producers De Beers and Alrosa, the largely state-owned Russian producer. The two signed a joint exploration agreement a joint exploration agreement to facilitate De Beers exploration in Russia which is said to have reserves potentially greater than Botswana’s. This followed an EU anti-trust ruling barring De Beers from buying diamonds direct from Alrosa.

But diamonds apart, there is one significant difference between this Russian interest in energy and raw materials and its larger and more publicised Chinese comparator. While a major Chinese motive is the need for raw materials to fuel and feed China’s soaring output, Russia is a major raw materials exporter. Indeed it is rising world raw material prices, partly fed by China’s growing demand, which provides Russia with the cash resources to fund its purchases of African and global assets.

As Newsweek put it: ‘Russia is the world's largest energy exporter, and has plenty of its own metals and minerals. But rich Russian companies want to extend their global reach while they have the money, and with oil approaching $100 a barrel in recent weeks [sic], the time is now. There's another motive, too, analysts say: moving empires beyond the reach of the Kremlin serves as insurance against future political changes in Russia’.

As a result, the detailed articulation of the relationship between the state and its geopolitical strategy, and the commercial interests of private capital are arguably different in the Russian and Chinese cases, though it may not be immediately clear how the difference should be characterised.

In energy for example, Russia’s position as a net exporter enables the state to use its energy strategy as a geopolitical tool. While Russia is said to be running short of gas, this is partly due to the need to meet its considerable export commitments. Russia has been accused of attempting to use German and Ukrainian dependence on Russian gas as a means of political leverage. And at least one Russian analyst sees recent trends in Algerian policy as a reflection of Western fears of a Russian-Algerian energy tie-up being used in the same way.

Thus the Novosti News Agency reported in December 2007:

“Algeria has joined the global fight for diversification of energy supplies... According to Andrei Maslov, director of Rosafroexpertiza, a Russian expert group on Africa, his view stems from news on the expiry of a memorandum of understanding, which Algeria's Sonatrach state oil and gas corporation and Russia's gas monopoly Gazprom signed in August 2006.

“Algeria earlier leaked that it was not satisfied with the quality of Russian military equipment. Surprisingly, the criticism came not from direct clients in the Algerian armed forces, but the civilian team of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.

“The Russian expert sees a connection between the two incidents, especially if you take into account the high price of the question of Russian-Algerian strategic partnership. He writes that the two countries could jointly control up to 40% of gas supplies to the European Union. But Europe has opted for Algeria and Libya in an attempt to neutralize the growing influence of Gazprom.

“Europe's vigorous efforts to diversify supply routes have made Gazprom's presence in the two countries unacceptable to end gas consumers. The United States is also concerned … Maslov writes that the end of hostilities in Algeria and growing oil and gas export revenues led to a lightning transfer of political influence from the army elite to the energy lobby. President Bouteflika, who had maintained a neutral stance for several years, took the side of the energy lobby - and received a pat on the back from his Western patrons, primarily the United States.

“The redivision of power affected Algeria's relationship with Russia, especially their military-technical cooperation. The Algerian army and law-enforcement and security bodies were pushed away from the economy, and also from domestic and foreign policy. Until recently, Russia's policy in Algeria was based on confidential relations with the most influential military and security groups, who have now been pushed aside. Therefore, the Kremlin cannot hope for any good news from the Algerian front soon, Maslov concludes.”

But if so, Russia is fighting back. According to ‘Africa Report’ Putin in his recent visit to Libya concluded a $4.5bn debt cancellation and arms sales package combined with ‘a raft of new oil and gas deals...the details of which have yet to be spelled out, and a partnership with the National Oil Corporation of Libya to produce, transport and sell oil and gas. This follows an agreement between Russia’s Gazprom and Italy’s ENI to work together in “third countries”.This in its turn is said to be connected with plans for a gas pipeline between Libya and Sicily able to carry 8bn cubic metres of gas a year.

There is also talk of a grand $13bn trans-Sahara gas pipeline from the Niger Delta to the Algerian coast and thence to Europe [1]. While some experts consider this ‘politically and technically impractical’, the majority state-owned Gazprom’s Chief Executive is said to be in continuing discussions with officials from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).

Whatever may become of these particular initiatives, the Russian state seems far more ‘upfront’ about pursuing its grand geopolitical projects than the more cautious and patient Chinese. Russia’s private sector too is prepared on occasion to operate with an unashamed directness where others might be more diplomatic.

Mark Buzuk, Africa Projects Manager for Vekselberg’s Renova Group, has the writers tell the reader that “this is the story of how the government, through the Department of Minerals and Energy (DME), awarded prospecting rights to a consortium set to benefit both Vekselberg, one of Russia's infamous oligarchs, and Chancellor House, the company we reveal to be an ANC business front.

The story is important because it suggests that the government was swayed by a mix of diplomatic expediency -- it was keen to improve economic relations with Russia in tandem with growing ties of friendship -- and the ruling party's funding needs.”

The article goes on to show that Renova’s BEE [Black Economic Empowerment] partner in the Kalahari deal was Chancellor House, an investment company used as a funding front by the ruling ANC.

It charges that ‘The African National Congress's (ANC) Chancellor House group has targeted investments in sectors of the economy where government institutions dish out opportunities such as business rights or contracts. When companies in which Chancellor holds a share compete for such opportunities, the ruling party becomes both player and referee’.

The journalists also documented outstanding racketeering charges against Vekselberg in the US courts relating to the process by which he acquired control of his companies in the first place.

Those involved in the negotiations leading to the Kalahari deal have denied any wrongdoing, as has the management of Chancellor House. But since the change of leadership at the ANC’s Polokwane Conference last December, the newly elected leadership has ordered a forensic audit of all empowerment deals and tenders that were received by Chancellor House.

This follows a

Cynics may claim that these decisions are more a reflection of factional score-settling within the ANC than a sign of any new leaves being turned. Presumably Mr Vekselberg will be among those awaiting the outcome.

[1] ‘Moscow grabs at Big Oil’s prize assets’, The Africa Report June-July 2008.

*Stephen Marks is a research associate with Fahamu

* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/376/48440china.jpgChina’s media and official reaction to the devastating Sichuan earthquake has been given generally positive coverage by Western media and governments, writes Stephen Marks. It may be a coincidence, but the earthquake and the allegedly more open reaction happen to follow soon after the coming into force of sweeping new Chinese government regulations on transparency - which could be a useful lever for activists seeking greater transparency in tracking the impact of China’s African footprint.

China’s media and official reaction to the devastating Sichuan earthquake has been given generally positive coverage by Western media and governments - both by contrast with the Burmese military junta’s handling of the recent floods, and also with Beijing’s reaction to previous natural disasters.

The Shanghai-based blog reviews and discusses the generally favourable global and Western reaction.

It may be a coincidence, but the earthquake and the allegedly more open reaction happen to follow soon after the coming into force of sweeping new Chinese government regulations on transparency - which could be a useful lever for activists seeking greater transparency in tracking the impact of China’s African footprint.

May 1 saw the entry into force of the Measures on Open Environmental Information (for Trial Implementation), issued by China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection. According to Ma Jun, Director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, a Chinese environmental NGO, ‘the measures require environment agencies to disclose 17 different kinds of environmental information, including regional environmental quality, amounts of discharge and the records of polluters in various regions’.

The categories of information which the new measures require to be made available to the public include:

- A list of enterprises violating discharge standards or exceeding discharge quota limits;

- Letters, visits and complaints filed about pollution caused by enterprises; and the result of their disposal;

-Administrative punishments, reviews, lawsuits and enforcement;

- A list of enterprises causing major and extremely large pollution accidents and incidents;

- Enterprises that refuse to comply with the effective administrative punishment decisions.

Enterprises listed for environmental violations must publish detailed discharge data within 30 days, on pain of a fine, and members of the public have a legal right to require environmental agencies to publish the list of polluting firms.

In addition, enterprises are encouraged to publish a much wider range of information regarding their environmental impact, and firms agreeing to do so will be rewarded with priority in the allocation of contracts for government-funded environmental projects.

All of which dovetails significantly with the conclusions reached last month in Nairobi at a strategy meeting of some 20 civil society activists and researchers from across Africa organised by Fahamu to discuss China’s growing African involvement.

A central theme to emerge from the meeting was the lack of direct links between Chinese and African civil society; While most African civil society groups are not explicitly concerned with China (and vice-versa) they are very much concerned with issues with a strong China dimension, and high on that list are issues connected with the environment.

Could African civil society groups pressure Chinese companies in Africa to raise their game, in ways which Chinese activists could use as leverage back home? This possibility might well be reversed if the new Chinese regulations prove to have teeth - African campaigners could press Chinese firms to be as open in Africa as they may yet be required to be in China.

The Chinese Government has a declared policy that where local laws are lacking or deficient, Chinese companies should abide by the relevant Chinese legislation. So participants at the Nairobi meeting agreed that better knowledge of China's own domestic laws, both on environmental regulation and on issues of employee rights and broader social responsibility, would help.

If the new regulations on disclosure prove to have teeth they could prove a useful basis for closer co-operation between environmental activists in China and in Africa. But how effective are the new rules likely to prove in practice?

As Ma Jun points out ‘It is well-known that there is weak enforcement of laws and regulations in China. As a law that reflects new thinking, the implementation of the measures is expected to be even more challenging’.

On the plus side, the regulations are launched by the energetic and radical Environment Minister Pan Yue whose State Environmental Protection Administration [SEPA] has since the last Party Congress, been officially retitled and promoted to the status of Ministry of Environmental Protection [MEP].

Pan Yue is on record as connecting China’s environmental crisis with the uncritical adoption of Western capitalist models of industrialisation, and the consequent widening of .

So it is not surprising that his Ministry was among the first to issue .

Which brings us back to the issue of government and media reaction to the earthquake crisis. Some of the positive Western comment has explicitly linked the greater openness about the scale of the disaster and even of inadequacies in the response, to the new directives on openness - Financial Times reported last week that:

‘In spite of wall-to-wall coverage of the earthquake in Sichuan province, the ruling Communist Party has been working hard to shape the news.

'A meeting of the party’s most powerful propaganda officials on Tuesday stressed the importance of “correct guidance of public opinion” and ordered a strengthening of political consciousness among journalists.

'All frontline coverage of the disaster should “uphold unity and encourage stability” while “giving precedence to positive propaganda”, ordered Li Changchun, a member of the party’s supreme Politburo standing committee, the People’s Daily reported.’

Just what these central edicts will mean in practice is still not clear. In the same issue of the Financial Times Mure Dickie analysed the implications in a piece headed China Media Project [CMP] at Hong Kong University reports that:

‘CMP has confirmed with sources inside China’s media that the CCP’s Central Propaganda Department (...) has issued “numerous” directives on coverage of the Sichuan earthquake, including a directive against “critical reporting” on the disaster. The general atmosphere for coverage, however, seems to remain relatively open. While media have been instructed to follow the lead of central party media – Xinhua News Agency, CCTV and company – regional commercial media can and are, for the moment, pursuing the story with intensity.’

CMP illustrates the point with a comparison of the coverage in the official Xinhuanet, site of the official Xinhua news agency, and Caijing, the leading independent business and current affairs magazine.

So where does that leave us? Central government agencies that issue commendable regulations, which will not be implemented by sluggish and self-interested officials unless, perhaps, they are forced to by energetic popular pressure. And politicians who encourage press openness - as long as it is ‘positive’ and avoids ‘irresponsible sensationalism’.

Sound familiar? Clearly Chinese and African civil society activists will have a lot of common experiences to share in future.

*Stephen Marks is research associate with Fahamu.

**Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

Stephen Marks argues in this extended review of recent publications about China that there are few other important global players whose affairs are so exclusively analysed on the basis of ignorance and stereotype. There is little understanding outside China about the differences of perspectives of Chinese intellectuals - they are far from being a homogeneous group.

China is no longer a topic - it’s a dimension. On every issue, from global warming to the credit crisis, China and its impact can no longer be ignored, not as a subject apart to be left to experts, but as an integral component of the global picture, on which every analyst or commentator has to have an opinon.

And as we all do when we have to come up with an opinion on something of which we know nothing, we reach off the shelf for a ready-made answer. In the case of China, these are easy to find.

There is the cold-war image of China the sinister Communist dictatorship. There is the older racial image of the sinister ‘inscrutable’ Chinese. And for Africa, there is the image of the voracious Chinese imperialist, concerned only to rape the ‘eternal victim, the dark continent’, of its precious resources. (see ‘' by Emma Mawdsley.)

There are few other important global players whose affairs are so exclusively analysed on the basis of ignorance and stereotype. Across the world, those who follow international politics are aware of the major policy debates in Washington between neo-cons, traditionalists and ‘multilateralists’. The ebb and flow of federalist currents in the EU are common knowledge. Even the revival of Russian assertiveness under Putin can be analysed as a modern trend, without invoking the ghost of Stalin or images of the Russian Bear.

But as Mark Leonard, Director of what calls itself ‘the first pan-European thinktank’, asks us in his recent book, ‘how many of us can name more than a handful of contemporary Chinese writers and thinkers?’ Indeed, if we are honest, ‘a handful’ would be generous where most of us are concerned.

The chief merit of Leonard’s contribution [What does China think? Fourth Estate 2008] is to show us what we are missing, and whet our appetite for more. The same feeling of stumbling across a hitherto unknown continent of argument and debate around central issues of our time comes from Zhang Yongle’s summary of the range of ideas in a leading Chinese intellectual journal in his article ‘Reading Dushu’ [New Left Review 49 second series, Jan Feb 2008].

It is no surprise to be introduced to the ideas of ‘New Right’ economist Zhang Weiying, a pioneering advocate of the free-market economic reforms which led to China’s astonishing record of 9 per cent growth year after year for three decades.

But cliches will be shattered by exposure to the thinking of some of China’s ‘New Left’, who have no wish to turn their backs on the market at home or abroad, or to turn the clock back to a central command economy, but instead are grappling with the same issues of combining market institutions with social justice and equity, as their counterparts in the West and South.

Economists Wang Shaoguang and Hu Angang argue persuasively that a central state which was at once stronger and more democratic could curb unaccountable regional power centres which currently waste resources through corruption and duplicated prestige investments. The resulting resources could finance a welfare safety-net which would give the public confidence to consume, thereby strengthening the domestic market and reducing China’s dependence on Western consumer demand.

Other writers such as Wang Hui and Cui Zhiyuan lament the ‘new enclosure movement’ which is ripping-off public property, and discuss ideas such as an Alaska-style ‘social dividend’ for citizens from the profits of state-owned enterprises, which would provide a ‘social wage’ to replace the largely dismantled welfare state.

Slightly more exposure abroad has been given to the environmental critique of Pan Yue, quantifying the horrific human, ecological and economic cost of the environmental degradation that has accompanied China’s breakneck growth. Though appointed to head the official State Environmental Protection Association, his report has been shelved, and widely ignored on the ground. But its concerns are certainly reflected, however inconsistently, in official pronouncements.

When it comes to political institutions, the Chinese debate is also far from the stereotype of Stalino-Maoist totalitarianism, though still remote from any Western concept of democracy. There have been some widely-trumpeted experiments in village-level democracy, contested inner-party elections, and consultative innovations such as ‘citizens juries’ and public policy hearings. But these remain few, localised and untypical.

Moreover, their champions do not see them as leading to multi-party democracy but rather to a ‘chinese model’ of ‘deliberative democracy’ where the central government allows a range of consultative opinions to be presented to it, supplemented by low-level electoral participation.

However, as new leftist Wang Shaoguang points out, this represents in effect a convergence with the West where the established electoral democratic system is increasingly perceived as ‘hollowed out’ and formal, and is frequently being supplemented by consultative processes, citizens juries and local referendums. Could China and the West be converging on the same destination from different starting-points?

The debate that Leonard reports on issues of global governance is equally stimulating, and shows a keen awareness that Chinas’s interest lies in promoting a notion of ‘soft power’ against the one-dimensional US obsession with hardware.

Many of us are familiar with solemn Western debates about how to ‘manage’ China’s rise, so as to ‘assist’ the new arrival to be a ‘civilised’ member of the ‘international community’ just like an assumed Western ‘us’. So it is a pleasant and amusing surprise to be introduced to the mirror-image debate in Beijing about how to ‘manage’ the West’s decline.

This debate came out into the open in 2006 when Wang Yiwei, a young scholar, asked in a newspaper article ‘how can we prevent the USA from declining too quickly?’ Shen Dingli argued that China’s goal should be ‘to shape an America that is more constrained and more willing to co-operate with the world’.

So however we are to analyse the complex and changing reality of the ‘actual’ China, the cliches of the conventional wisdom – the ‘evil Communist Tyranny’, the ‘inscrutable oriental’, or the new imperialist raping and looting Africa – are clearly more a hindrance than a help.

Which therefore leads us to ask why these unhelpful images persist. One obvious approach would be to ask whose interests are served by portraying China in this way. Less obvious, but also perhaps more interesting, is to make a comparison with the first encounter between the West and China, in which the prevailing stereotypes were not negative but on the contrary, rather idealised.

Leading philosophers of the 18th Century Enlightenment, including such figures as Leibniz and Voltaire, frequently referred to China in the most glowing terms. This followed an explosion, reminiscent of our own days, in the volume of Western publications about China.

According to the German scholar Thomas Fuchs (

Now these utopian images of China did indeed draw on aspects of reality. But their purpose was not so much to understand the real China, as to say something about the society of the West. Could the same be true of today’s negative image?

For example, the ‘neoconservative’ US columnist Robert Kagan goes so far as to argue that China's policy towards Sudan and Zimbabwe is determined not so much by economic self-interest as by political solidarity with their dictatorial regimes, and foresees a Sino-Russian 'League of Dictators'. [Robert Kagan League of Dictators? Why Russia and China Will Continue to support Autocracies Wahington Post April 30 2006.]

Is he really trying to say something about China’s policy? Or is he using a certain image of China in order to say something positive by contrast about US policy – just as the Enlightenment philosophers used their idealised image of China for the opposite purpose?

Likewise when China’s African role is reduced to a supposed re-run of Europe’s exploitative colonial past, is the real purpose a better understanding of China’s role? Or is it to imply, by comparing China’s present to the West’s past, that the West’s present is different to the West’s past?

Of course, just as with the idealised China of the European past, the demonised image of today can also draw on aspects of reality. But perhaps any such correspondence is, also as in the past, purely incidental to other more important functions.

To separate fact from fiction, and disentangle reality from the myths, an indispensable first step must be to acquaint ourselves with the actual and often surprising debate taking place within China itself.

However before we all get carried away we must remember that these debates are taking place within limits which, while far broader than the generally accepted cliches would suggest, are still constrained by a government which does not claim to subscribe to Western concepts of democracy and individual rights.

Paradoxically, the lack of western-style political pluralism enhances the role of ‘insider intellectuals’ and their debates. And as Leonard points out; ‘The Chinese like to argue about whether it is the intellectuals that influence decision-makers, or whether groups of decision-makers use pet intellectuals as infornal mouthpieces to advance their own views’.

But either way, if China is a central component of the issues that we face in every continent, including Africa, so the ideas that contribute to shaping its policies, and those who frame those ideas, should be part of our reality too.

* Stephen Marks is research associate with Fahamu.

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

Stephen Marks introduces the articles in this publication by reviewing the billion-dollar glamour on display in Beijing during a summit between African and Chinese leaders in early November. But behind the glitz, what does it all mean for Africa? Is it colonialism revisited, a mad dash for African oil and minerals? Is there a Chinese model of development that can be followed? And what is the true nature of Chinese involvement in Africa?

Heads of state and dignitaries from 48 countries flocked to Beijing in November 2006 to attend the largest international summit ever held in the Chinese capital. And China pulled out all the stops, not only, or not even, to make the VIP guests feel welcome, but also to leave China’s people and the world at large in no doubt of the meeting’s importance.

Bright red banners lined the streets with slogans lauding ‘Friendship, Peace, Cooperation and Development.’ China’s official news agency Xinhua declared that the visitors ‘brought a trend of the mysterious continent to the capital of China’. Giraffes and elephants frolicking on the savannahs were spread over giant billboards on all the capital’s main streets and squares.

But behind the official ‘Africa chic’ and the predictable warm words of the official communiqués, something substantial was going on. The declaration adopted at the end of the meeting on Sunday 5 November was strong on ‘motherhood and apple pie’ rhetoric promising ‘a new type of strategic partnership’ founded on ‘political equality and mutual trust, economic win-win cooperation and cultural exchanges’. But there was impressive substance too.

On Saturday 4 November, China’s Premier Wen Jiabao proposed that China and Africa should seek to bring their trade volume to US$100 billion by 2010. This would more than double the 2005 level, about US$39.7 billion. In the first nine months of this year, China–Africa trade had already surged to US$40.6 billion, up 42 per cent year-on-year.

On the same day China’s President Hu Jintao announced a package of aid and assistance measures to Africa including US$3 billion of preferential loans in the next three years and the cancellation of more debt owed by poor African countries. China, he pledged, would:

• Double its 2006 assistance to Africa by 2009

• Provide US$3 billion of preferential loans and US$2 billion of preferential buyer’s credits to Africa in the next three years

• Set up a China–Africa development fund, which would reach US$5 billion, to encourage Chinese companies to invest in Africa and provide support to them

• Cancel debt in the form of all the interest-free government loans that matured at the end of 2005 owed by the heavily indebted poor countries and the least developed countries in Africa that have diplomatic relations with China

• Increase from 190 to over 440 the number of export items to China receiving zero-tariff treatment from the least developed countries in Africa with diplomatic ties with China.

• Establish three to five trade and economic cooperation zones in Africa in the next three years

• Over the next three years, train 15,000 African professionals; send 100 senior agricultural experts to Africa; set up 10 special agricultural technology demonstration centres in Africa; build 30 hospitals in Africa and provide a grant of RMB 300 million for providing artemisinin and building 30 malaria prevention and treatment centres to fight malaria in Africa; dispatch 300 youth volunteers to Africa; build 100 rural schools in Africa; and increase the number of Chinese government scholarships to African students from the current 2,000 per year to 4,000 per year by 2009.

President Hu even pledged to build a conference centre for the African Union ‘to support African countries in their efforts to strengthen themselves through unity and support the process of African integration’ – perhaps a visible reinforcement of the final statement’s pledge to support ‘the African regional and sub-regional organisations in their efforts to promote economic integration, and [support] the African countries in implementing the ”New Partnership for Africa's Development” programs’.

Early on Sunday morning, the 2nd Conference of Chinese and African Entrepreneurs concluded with 14 agreements signed between 11 Chinese enterprises and African governments and firms, worth a total of US$1.9 billion. The agreements cover cooperation in infrastructure facilities, communications, technology and equipment, energy and resources development, finance and insurance.

There was more good news to come. The summit was followed by a two-day African Trade Fair in Beijing. According to Xinhua ‘Over 170 enterprises from 23 African countries filled a Beijing exhibition hall on Monday with varieties of their local specialties, including minerals, jewelry, textile, fur, spice, tea and coffee.’

But except for textiles, which are notoriously hard-hit by Chinese exports, all the items listed as on display were primary products which Africa was already exporting in colonial times. Perhaps this influenced Xinhua’s choice of Chinese entrepreneurs to interview on their view of future business prospects in Africa.

‘Wang Jianping, president of the Hashan Company in eastern Zhejiang Province, told Xinhua that after the summit, he decided to increase investment in Nigeria from two million dollars to six million dollars so as to boost the development of local shoemaking industry’.

’Sheng Jushan, general manager of the Guoji Group in central China's Henan Province, said his company has just set up an economic cooperation zone in Sierra Leone, which attracts about 20 Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises’.

A similar processing zone in Nigeria, according to Xinhua, ‘when completed and put into operation, will help boost economic activities in the state through processing local raw materials into manufactured goods, especially those that have to be imported now in the country.’

Colonialism revisited?

China’s race for Africa is certainly due in large part to the same causes as Europe’s 19th century scramble – the need for raw materials to fuel industrialisation. As the Economist summarised it before the summit: Its economy has grown by an average of 9% a year over the past ten years, and foreign trade has increased fivefold. It needs stuff of all sorts—minerals, farm products, timber and oil, oil, oil. China alone was responsible for 40% of the global increase in oil demand between 2000 and 2004.

‘The resulting commodity prices have been good for most of Africa. Higher prices combined with higher production have helped local economies. Sub-Saharan Africa's real GDP increased by an average of 4.4% in 2001-04, compared with 2.6% in the previous three years. Africa's economy grew by 5.5% in 2005 and is expected to do even better this year and next’.

In Beijing in 2005 Moeletsi Mbeki, deputy chairman of the South African Institute of International Affairs, spelled out to a conference organised by the Chinese Parliament what many feared might be the result; Africa sells raw materials to China and China sells manufactured products to Africa. This is a dangerous equation that reproduces Africa’s old relationship with colonial powers. The equation is not sustainable for a number of reasons. First Africa needs to preserve its natural resources to use in the future for its own industrialisation. Secondly China’s export strategy is contributing to the de-industrialisation of some middle-income countries ... it is in the interests of both Africa and China to find solutions to these strategies.

Clearly, many of the decisions announced at the summit reflect Chinese awareness of these fears of a ‘new imperialism’. So did the People’s Daily article before the summit indignantly denouncing ‘The fallacy that China is exercising “neo-colonialism” in Africa’ which was ‘apparently aimed at sowing discord between China and Africa’.

And on the eve of the summit the state council, China's cabinet, issued ‘Nine Principles’ to ‘Encourage and Standardise Enterprises' Overseas Investment.' The principles require Chinese companies operating overseas to ‘abide by local laws, bid contracts on the basis of transparency and equality, protect the labor rights of local employees, protect the environment, implement corporate responsibilities and so on.’

Is there a Chinese model?

Like Japan and the smaller ‘Asian tigers’, China did not develop by following the rules of the Washington consensus. Critical attention in the West and also in Africa, has been focused on China’s avoidance of good governance and human rights conditionality now commonly insisted on by the West, and this undoubtedly lies behind much of the enthusiasm for the ‘Chinese model’ on the part of Africa’s more repressive regimes.

But there is also substance to the idea that ‘South–South’ cooperation has merit in its own right. In areas such as rural development and intermediate technology China’s experience does indeed have much to offer that is of greater relevance precisely because China too is a developing country.

Code such as the African Peer Review Mechanism were not intended to be part of an aid conditionality package, and the perception that they are externally imposed has damaged their reputation even in the eyes of campaigners and activists who support their objectives.

Conversely, China’s avoidance of conditionality means that she can move faster to produce visible results on the ground. The statism which still characterises China’s economy means that China can offer a ‘one-stop shop’ approach, in which contracts guaranteeing China its desired access to oil or key minerals, as in Angola, or Nigeria, can be combined with soft loans and much-needed infrastructure projects such as highways and railways, and low-cost, high-impact ‘add-ons’ such as rural development projects, industrial parks for small firms, and training and scholarships.

This integrated approach can be a genuine plus-point, and not only for such regimes as those in Zimbabwe or Sudan. As in this example, the whole deal can be tied up and delivered in visits by top governmental figures, reciprocated by red-carpet treatment for African leaders, as at the recent Beijing summit.

But not all these factors are unique to China, and future analysis would benefit by looking at China’s approach in a wider context, rather than in the one-track contrast with the conventional model of liberal globalisation which characterises conventional Western approaches.

As Chris Melvile and Molly Owen have pointed out China is not the only player in the ‘South–South’ game, or the only one to promote the idea as offering ‘win-win’ benefits. India, Brazil and South Africa have established their own ‘south-south’ links. Each has also been welcomed as an alternative to the old imperialist powers. And each in its turn has been accused of pursuing its own ‘sub-imperialist’ agenda.

And as Chris Alden and Martyn Davies point out: Chinese MNCs are in many respects like other MNCs operating in Africa, for example France’s Elf-Aquitaine or South Africa’s Eskom. In the French case, Elf-Aquitaine has been highly politicised, building up or even defining France’s Africa policy in particular countries such as Gabon or Angola.

The close proximity between French business and political interests manifested by the presence of oil company executives in the inner circle at the Elysee Palace as well as the circulation of key political elites such as Jean-Christophe Mitterrand within political and business circles, has been a feature of France’s post-independence African policy from the outset.

Moreover the modus operandi of foreign policy makers in Paris has been to construct policy around a network of personal relationships with individual African leaders, bolstered by a web of bilateral agreements in trade, finance, development assistance and defence.

The nature of the Chinese multinational corporations

If the role of the Chinese state is not so different to that of at least some western and ‘Southern’ states, how does the Chinese MNC itself differ from its rivals in the way in which it operates as a firm?

China’s government made its position clear in its official policy statement on Africa; ‘The Chinese Government encourages and supports Chinese enterprises' investment and business in Africa, and will continue to provide preferential loans and buyer credits to this end.’

As Mark Sorbara puts it ‘Investing in African extractive industries is a risky business, but China is desperately in need of raw materials to feed its booming economy, hence the government is willing to shoulder most of the risk for Chinese companies looking to invest in Africa.'

But the purpose of this state backing is not only to secure China’s access to raw materials. As Alden and Davies point out: In pursuit of its broader global ambitions, Beijing is intent on ‘picking corporate champions’ that, with the benefit of active and generous support from the state, are being groomed to join the ranks of the Fortune 500. Roughly 180 companies have been designated by the state to benefit from preferential finance, tax concessions and political backing to ‘go global’ and become true multinationals.

This aim to be global players in their own right was made clear by Fu Chengyu, chief executive of China’s oil giant CNOOC after the US Congress moved to block CNOOC’s takeover bid for Unocal, the US’ ninth-largest oil firm: ‘We aim to be a participant in the global industry, like all the international majors, supplying the global marketplace as well.’

The same seems to apply to the China–South Africa deal, concluded at the Beijing summit, to set up a joint company to expand ferro-chrome production in South Africa. Reuters’ report on the deal commented that ‘China has become a big investor in mining and natural resources in Africa as it seeks the raw materials to feed its economic growth, but unlike many Sino-African deals the purpose of Tubatse Chrome is to make money rather than to supply metal to China’. And the chairman of the South African partner was quoted as saying: ‘Sinosteel is a trading organisation, and Tubatse Chrome will be a profit-driven company. If China offers the best price we will sell it to China, but we will sell to wherever we can get the best price.’

Optimists may view this as a good sign. As Ndubisi Obiorah puts it: As global branding and reputation become more important to Chinese companies, they may become less willing to be associated with human rights abuses and repressive regimes in Africa and elsewhere.

As a result, he suggests, Chinese companies could become more vulnerable to ‘naming and shaming’ from NGO’s in Western countries and elswhere.

Optimists may also see some signs of this on the websites of Sinopec and Petrochina, which feature prominently their awards for corporate governance, and their ‘model’ policies on health, safety and environmental protection.

Does this establish the need for a ‘corporate China watch’ to be set up, for activists in Africa and elsewhere to bring this pressure to bear? But in that case why single out China? As Alden and Davies conclude: ‘Indeed even critics admit that if one sets aside the particular cases of Sudan, Angola and Equatorial Guinea, ”the rest of PetroChina and Sinopec activities on the African continent are not especially reprehensible” or at least no more so than many of their Western counterparts.

Perhaps the material distinction is not between Chinese capital and Western, but rather between the merely rapacious, and the more sophisticated. Even these are not two seperate categories, but at least as much two different faces, each of which may be presented as convenient.

In this context, those involved in corporate research could usefully examine the possibility that Chinese MNCs operating in Africa might themselves incorporate some Western capital, perhaps percolating not only through the obvious channel of joint ventures and shareholdings, but also through funds from Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Neil Tottman, head of commercial banking at HSBC China, has laid out aggressive plans for its commercial banking businesses in China, in anticipation of further deregulation of the sector this year. ‘The total volume of business referrals between Hong Kong and the mainland grew at an annual rate of 175 percent between 2002 and 2005. This year to date, volume between Taiwan and the mainland has increased 512 percent over the same period last year.’

The antidemocratic road?

But there is one other aspect of the concept of a distinctive ‘Chinese model’ which is certainly appealing to Africa’s more repressive regimes – the idea that it disproves the argument that democracy is an essential precondition for development. China is widely held to prove the opposite - the need for strong government.

Ndubisi Obiorah quotes a Nigerian example of this invocation of a ‘Chinese model’: ‘leading lights of the Obasanjo faction claimed that an absence of stability and visionary leadership were the principal cause of Africa’s underdevelopment and that it was these same qualities that had enabled Singapore and China to become contemporary economic miracles.’

As Obiorah points out, the rise of India might counter this self-interested vogue for authoritarian government. It could also be pointed out that before 1949 some of the main obstacles to China’s development were to be found in the close ties of ruling elites to forces at home and abroad opposed to modernisation; in archaic patterns of land ownership and authority; and in chronic national disunity and warlordism on a scale whose closest parallel in today’s Africa is the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). All of these were swept away by a massive popular revolution ¬– a prospect likely to be at least as unacceptable to Africa’s current repressive elites as a more gradual and reformist path to democratisation!

But the most powerful antidote to the idea that China validates an authoritarian road to development is the growing grassroots unrest in China over the cost of the country’s current economic model in its impact on employment rights, the environment and mounting inequality and social exclusion.

As Dorothy Guerrero has pointed out: China is now the world’s fourth-largest economy and many developing countries envy its record of economic progress. However, China’s phenomenal growth is producing a big misconception in that it is viewed as a big winner of globalisation.

Although it is true that market reforms and China's opening to the global economy gave millions of people there an increased standard of living, more Chinese people are suffering the consequences of its rapid transition to a market-based economy.

The majority of the Chinese people are not too concerned about when China will become the world's largest economy. Rather, they are asking, ‘When will the benefits of China's rise to superpower status start to affect our lives positively?

Even official sources in China and abroad are aware of the social costs of China’s free-market great leap forward. Members of the legislature have warned of the country’s impending employment crisis and the World Bank has confirmed that China’s poor are getting poorer.

As for the environment, no less a figure than Pan Yue, deputy director of China’s State Environmental Protection Administration, sparked controversy with a recent essay On Socialist Ecological Civilisation when he openly charged that: ‘The economic and environmental inequalities caused by a flawed understanding of growth and political achievement, held by some officials, have gone against the basic aims of socialism and abandoned the achievements of Chinese socialism.’

The march of neoliberalism within China and its impact on the Chinese people has advanced hand-in-hand with China’s growing imperialist role abroad. This apparent anomaly of an imperialist power itself subject to growing imperialist exploitation in alliance with local capital is not new – it also characterised Czarist Russia. And difficult though it may currently seem to act on the idea, the connection suggests that an obvious grassroots ally of activist and civil society groups in Africa will increasingly be their opposite numbers in China itself.

• Stephen Marks is a freelance writer and researcher specialising in development and human rights issues.

• This is a shortened version of an article by Stephen Marks . 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

From oil fields in Sudan to farms in Zimbabwe, China’s presence in Africa can be seen and felt everywhere. In recent times, writes Stephen Marks, China’s relationship with Africa has shifted from Cold War ideology to a more classical pursuit of economic self-interest. But its not all negative – as the global economic giant bulges, opportunities also arise for Africa.