Africa: Is China the new African Savior?
PakistanPal
After many years of enduring the rigors, manipulation and exploitation
of Western colonial powers, Africans are hoping that patronage, peace
and progress may come at last from the East, aligned by China. After
centuries of slavery, wars and poverty, China has stepped forward to
offer what appears to be a trustable hand of friendship to a lagging
continent.
While China has the capacity to assist Africa to its feet, critical
observers remain skeptical about China’s role in Africa, and correctly
so, they have asked : Is China going to be different from the western
nations in their relations with Africa? Is China in Africa to help, or
to plot a subsequent dominion over the continent and its people? Is
China the answer to Africa’s problems or will Africa suffer a sequel
to the colonial, realist relationship it had with Europe and America?
Former South African President Thabo Mbeki had cautioned that China
may replicate in Africa a colonial relationship of the kind that
existed under white rule.
China does not plan to spread international communism but they seek
global power (economic and political); and like Europe and America
prior to the Berlin Conference, China sees Africa as a strategic area
of interest, and thus has taken international trade, commerce, and
political influence to a continent whose 53 nations are represented in
more than one-quarter of the United Nations General Assembly- Africa.
A 19th century prediction
On June 5, 1873, Sir Francis Galton, English anthropologist,
statistician and polymathematician, wrote a letter to the Editor of
The Times, forecasting China’s acquisition of Africa. A century after
China is in command of a huge portion of Africa.
Like the western imperial push in the 18th and 19th centuries, the
Chinese authorities foresee Africa as a proxy state, and a solution to
China’s problems of over-population and shortage of natural resources.
In 2006, China hosted a major summit with African leaders, which was
attended by 50 African heads of state, where promises of generous
financial, commercial, and military assistance were made, and about $1
billion in African debts were cancelled. Africa is now home to about
750,000 Chinese, and about 300 million more are expected to migrate to
the continent to solve China’s over-population and pollution.
Why Africa?
Africa has vast lands, abundant resources and potentials, incompetent
governments, desperate citizens and weak systems. China is hungry for
land, food, energy and power. The Chinese economy heavily requires an
enormous influx of natural resources; especially oil and gas. As one-
fifth of the world’s population, China consumes about 70 per cent of
the world’s oil, steel, copper, aluminum, and food supplies.
As a result of the country’s increasing demand, the Chinese government
has invested billions in resource development and infrastructure,
written off billions in debt, and built friendly relationships with
energy-rich African countries. China is especially investing and
providing assistance in infrastructure, industry, and agriculture —
areas long neglected by the West. These investments are however done
with a strict policy of non interference in internal affairs, much to
the pleasure of African governments. According to a report by the
Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), China offers African nations a
financing alternative to Western donors, the International Monetary
Fund, and the World Bank, providing choices these countries might not
otherwise have.
Currently, Africa provides China with 30 percent of its energy
imports, meeting 5 percent of China’s energy needs and rivaling the
Middle East as a source of Chinese energy. Economic reports claim that
China has about $3 billion invested in Nigeria’s oil, $3 billion
invested in the Sudanese energy sector, and $3 billion credit line for
Angola’s offshore oil fields. Trade between China and Africa has
brought critical revenue to several poor African nations; there are
new roads, railroads, bridges, airports, more oil deals, more credit,
and more Chinese labor.
The other side of the relationship so far
Despite the exciting prospects this China-Africa relationship reveals
on the surface, the theory of realism and the practicality of power
maximization from economic boom shed darker light on the affair, and
at most screams for caution and wisdom on the part of African leaders.
The red flag of China is flying; from the Cape of Good Hope to the
sand dunes of the Sahara, lucrative deals are being struck, and over
800 Chinese companies are operating without scrutiny, across Africa.
Cheap Chinese goods like textiles, electronics, and toys have flooded
African markets, crippling local developing markets, causing
unemployment, and closing down local factories across the continent.
Chinese contractors are also reported to be importing cheaper Chinese
labor: For example, the two-hundred local textile factories that
thrived in Kenya, in 2004, have been cut to ten, as Chinese companies
continue to knock them out of business with cheaper goods and labor.
China’s turnover in trade with Africa as a whole has risen from about
£5million to £6billion in the last ten years, studies have shown, but
the same measure of growth cannot be said of Africa.
China promotes its development model in Africa, based on a limited
market economy controlled by an authoritarian Chinese government.
According to economic experts, China’s lending practices may result in
the rapid reestablishment of an unsustainable level of debt in Africa
as a result of the unconditional loans offered by Chinese banks.
China’s lending practices are reported to be undermining international
debt-relief strategies that have dramatically reduced the debt burden
in Africa. However many African regimes, desperate to revitalize their
weak economies while grabbing onto political power, are seemingly
finding China’s modernization model better than the free-market and
democratic reforms advocated by the U.S. and the European Union.
China’s politics of realism in Africa
Support for Repressive governments: China is pursuing its own
contracted self-interests in Africa. Like the West this interest has
been pursued by supporting repressive regimes, resource conflicts and
weak systems, ignoring public opinion and needs. China’s activities
and it’s political, economic, and energy interests in Africa undermine
long-standing international and domestic efforts to promote regional
peace, prosperity, and democracy in Africa.
Darfur epitomizes China’s policy in Africa were the push for exclusive
access to natural resources is actualized by allying with notorious
regimes. Even though the U.S. and the European Union were not any
different, they have spoken against the Arab-led Sudan government’s
role in the atrocities in Darfur. But China has vetoed every U.N.
sanctions imposed on the Sudanese regime for the death of about
450,000 and 2.5 million displaced Darfurians.
Chinese-made AK-47 assault rifles, grenade launchers and ammunition
for rifles and heavy machine guns continue to flow into Darfur, where
atrocities have been described by the United Nations as the worst
human rights crisis in the 21st century, except, perhaps, Palestine.
With Chinese assistance, the Sudanese government has built three
weapons factories, ahead of a 2011 referendum to divide Sudan into
North and South, complicating international arms embargo’s against
Sudan’s government.
China and Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe
President Robert Mugabe’s political and human rights abuses led the
U.S. and the European Union to impose punitive sanctions against his
regime. Conversely, China responded by selling Zimbabwe over $200
million worth of fighter aircraft and military vehicles, and provided
equipment for jamming anti-government media broadcasts from inside and
outside the country and gave electronic surveillance equipment to
Harare’s security services to monitor political opponents.
China faces accusations of facilitating humanitarian crisis through
its supplies of arms and support of repressive regimes like Zimbabwe’s
Mugabe, Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir, and Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial
Guinea, who publicly hung his predecessor from a cage, suspended in a
theater before having him shot.
China claims to be approaching Africa’s resources differently from how
the west has, but reports have revealed otherwise. The communist
country has facilitated conflicts over the materials the Chinese are
desperate to buy. Trucks are headed to seaports, carrying billions of
tons of illegally-logged timber, diamonds and gold, destined for
Beijing after unloading cargoes of cheap goods, made in China.
There is no doubt that China as a superpower wants unimpeded and
exclusive access to Africa’s abundant natural resources, especially
sources of energy, so as to expand Beijing’s political influence to
match Washington, London, Rome and Munich. China also seeks to
increase its international commercial markets through non-
interventionist but self-serving diplomatic, economic, and military
assistance. While some have praised China’s involvement in Africa,
others have called it neo-colonialism. But whether China’s engagement
in Africa will prove to be ‘good’ or ‘bad’ will depend on how much
lessons African leaders and governments have learned from European and
American engagements in Africa: Once bitten, twice shy, it is said,
but to what extent?
Article Source : http://en.afrik.com/article15968.html