2024年3月28日星期四
 
專家論市
Martin Hennecke
Sam Porteous
A noted risk management specialist based in Shanghai sporteous@navigantconsulting.com
"Few things seem to make the West more uneasy than the sudden emergence of China as a major player in Africa."

End of a honeymoon
14/05/2007


Few things seem to make the West more uneasy than the sudden emergence of China as a major player in Africa.

The continent which in the wake of the Cold War has been relegated to all but an afterthought in major player politics, except for the occasional grand poverty reduction, AIDS campaign or debt forgiveness scheme, is causing consternation in Western capitals through its embrace of Chinese commercial and diplomatic forays into the continent.

Symbolic of the importance with which both sides now regard this relationship is the decision by the African Development Bank, the premier pan-African entity, to hold its 2007 annual meeting in Shanghai this week.

It is only the second time in the multibillion dollar organization's history it has held its annual meeting out of Africa. Tellingly, the theme of the Shanghai conference is !§Asia and Africa: Partners in Development.!‥

In accepting China's invitation to have the annual meeting there AFDB president Donald Kaberuka and other African leaders have recognized the dramatic growth in economic and diplomatic ties between the mainland and Africa.

Two-way trade has grown from only US$12 million (HK$93.6 million) in the 1980s to US$10 billion in 2000 and then to as high as US$56 billion in 2006.

In addition, China has poured billions into African infrastructure and resource development and has written off billions more in debt.

Admittedly, most of this development has come in the form !§package deals!‥ focusing on Africa's extractive industries but the benefits are no less real.

Typical of these projects is the iron ore mine located deep in the interior of Gabon at a site no one had yet dared develop.

After agreeing to purchase the mine's entire output a Chinese consortium led by the China National Machinery and Equipment Import and Export Corp also contracted to build everything associated with the project including extraction machinery, necessary hydro facilities, railways for transportation and a deep-water port in Libreville from which to ship the ore to China.

For governments in need of infrastructure deals like this in any sector can be hard to refuse. But the excitement surrounding the relationship is not just about trade and feeding China's seemingly insatiable need for minerals and oil and gas.

There is genuine desire among the Africans to explore whether the China model of development which has lifted so many so quickly out of poverty is, as some are arguing, a better fit for African states than the difficult neo-liberal strategies being promoted by the World Bank and Western powers.

To a certain extent relations between the two are still in the honeymoon phase with Confucian learning centers popping up across the African continent and what seems an endless flurry of state visits announcing new deals in both directions.

But that honeymoon phase may be coming to an end as a host of issues rise up to complicate the relationship between the two.

Ever since Beijing hosted a major summit with African leaders, which nearly 50 African heads of state attended last November, critics in the West and some in Africa are raising a litany of concerns regarding China's policies towards the continent.

The list is long.

China's generous no strings attached, including those of the environmental and corporate governance kind, lending policies worry some observers that African states whose debts to Western countries have just been written off may slide back into debt and see little actual return for the funds borrowed.

The US Treasury Department in this context has even referred to China as a !§rogue creditor!‥ practicing !§opportunistic lending.!‥

Some African workers are complaining of Chinese project employment policies that sometimes require up to 70 percent of employees to be Chinese.

Many emerging African industries particularly those in the textile and plastics sectors are complaining they are being squeezed out by cheap Chinese imports.

President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa recently warned Africa could fall into a colonial relationship with China.

Finally, eclipsing all these concerns is the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Darfur, Sudan, and China's continuing opposition to significant UN intervention.

Displaying the new nimbleness of Chinese foreign policy, President Hu Jintao in his February tour of Africa went out of his way to address many of these issues.

Hu undertook to make trade between the two partners more balanced, transfer more skills and technology and at the same time assist more African countries in developing processing and manufacturing industries.

As regards Dafur however, Beijing continues to struggle with its response, torn between adherence to its long cherished !§non-interventionist policy!‥ born of its own painful experience during its ``100 years of humiliation'' at the hands of foreign powers and an emerging sense of its responsibilities as a key stakeholder in the international system.

China's evolving relationship with Africa may well act as the forge within which the Middle Kingdom's new foreign and commercial policies are formed.

Just this week, amid growing criticism of China's role in Sudan, Beijing appointed a seasoned diplomat as its special Africa envoy, with a brief to focus on Darfur.

!§The Chinese government has decided to name ambassador Liu Guijin as a special representative for African affairs,!‥ Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said in Beijing Thursday. Beijing will also send a military engineering unit to help strengthen the overtaxed African Union peacekeeping force in the strife-torn region.

 


其他文章:
Duty to rescue - 23/02/2009
Brain trust of Dalian - 17/09/2007
In-house actions - 13/08/2007
Potent mix - 30/07/2007
Protecting brand China - 09/07/2007
Coming out clean - 18/06/2007
>> End of a honeymoon - 14/05/2007
Wheat from the chaff - 16/04/2007
Smartening up - 26/03/2007
Tycoon tales - 05/03/2007

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