China-Africa News

The Kenyan economics expert James Shikwati, 35, says that aid to Africa does more harm than good. The avid proponent of globalization spoke with SPIEGEL about the disastrous effects of Western development policy in Africa, corrupt rulers, and the tendency to overstate the AIDS problem.

Products, companies and restaurants from China have flooded into Sudan in recent years and now the Chinese language has become the latest import.

‘A win-win situation’ is how the Chinese government describes its economic relations with Africa. In 2005, Chinese Vice-Premier Huang Ju announced that his country would triple trade and double investments in Africa by 2010. In addition, Beijing has vowed to double its development assistance to Africa, estimated at $1b and $2b a year. ‘Co-operation to realise common development’ is the proclaimed goal. But there is another, less rosy side to China’s involvement in Africa. In this third part of a series on Sino-African relations, Editor-in-Chief Els De Temmerman looks at China’s non-interference policy and the conduct of its companies…

As China becomes a major influence in Africa, it faces mounting resistance and a profound dilemma: How does a nation devoted to nonintervention become a global power?

Of all the elements of growing national power China now wields to promote its national interests in Africa, its military’s role raises the most anxiety. Beijing’s Africa strategy to promote China’s economic (resource access and trade) and political (one-China recognition) interests explicitly tie in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to support overall peace and security for its interests in Africa.

Howard French reports from Chad:

When I last visited this country, in the late 1990’s, watching CNN at a French-run hotel here, or for that matter in many former French colonies in the region, meant carrying a screwdriver and readjusting the television’s tuner to have some choices beyond French-language fare.

Less than a decade ago, the French claim on this region was still so strong, and Africa’s importance to France’s view of its own place in the world correspondingly so, that the French were paranoid about expanding American influence on the continent. This went so far as to interpret the American-aided ouster of Zaire’s longtime dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, as Washington’s bid to supplant France in Africa.

Amid such a climate, even CNN was regarded in Africa by the possessive French as an arm of an encroaching American empire to be held at bay.

Imagine my surprise then, arriving in Ndjamena late at night on a visit from China, when I turned on my television at the French-run Sofitel Hotel to find that the program blaring from Channel 1 was a starchy variety show in Chinese, courtesy of that country’s state broadcaster CCTV.

Frustrated by the West’s failure to halt the slaughter in Sudan, Darfur advocacy groups are pinning their hopes on a country they see as genocide’s enabler in chief: China. But in pressuring an indifferent Beijing, activists are merely helping Western governments evade responsibility for a humanitarian crisis that they could do far more to stop.

US Presidential Candidate Bill Richardson suggests boycotting the 2008 Olympics to pressure China into acting in Darfur. Of the handful of candidates, only John Edwards agrees. Joe Biden would consider the use of force, though.

The China Daily recently ran a front-page story recounting how Paul Wolfowitz used threats and vulgarities to pressure senior World Bank staff. The newspaper noted that Wolfowitz sounded like a character out of the mafia television show The Sopranos. At the same time, while the Wolfowitz scandal unfolded, China was playing host to the Africa Development Bank (ADB), which held its board meeting in Shanghai. This is a vivid metaphor for today’s world: while the World Bank is caught up in corruption and controversy, China skilfully raises its geopolitical profile in the developing world.

China is conquering Africa as it becomes the preferred trading partner of the continent’s dictators. Beijing is buying up Africa’s abundant natural resources and providing it with needed cash and cheaply produced consumer goods in return.