China and Africa: Dragon’s return?

In the early 1960’s and into the 1970’s communist China wooed newly independent African states — those countries where political Uhuru often meant rejecting the Western former colonial powers and being equally wary of the Soviet Union.

In those days Mao’s China itself a poor and proudly proclaimed Third World country, used political and military ties with Africa to build up its diplomatic vote quiver in the United Nations, especially for the showdown with rival Republic of China on Taiwan.

But those battles are long past and today the People’s Republic of China still communist politically but decidedly State capitalist economically, has unleashed a new East Wind of commerce.

A landmark Sino-African Forum on Cooperation in Beijing will host nearly all 53 African rulers save for the five which still recognize Taiwan diplomatically, to a economic development extravaganza to an agenda for the future. The date symbolizes the 50th anniversary of relations between China and Egypt — when Nasser’s Egypt recognized Mao’s China in the wake of the Suez crisis.

But while PRC President Hu Jintao will no doubt recall that old time fraternal ties between the Afro-Asian bloc, the memories of then Premier Chou En-la’s landmark if politically high-octane trip to the African continent in the early 1960’s have been replaced with regular jaunts by the Beijing leadership which look more like commercial road shows than revolutionary communism.

China’s African two-way trade jumped from US$10 billion in 2000 to almost US$50 billion today reflecting the PRC’s global procurement mission of buying commodities and petroleum drilling rights near and far.

The PRC looks to Africa almost as a Monopoly Board, purchase everything you can as to corner and control markets. Yes, you will make mistakes and buy risk, but the long term is to acquire and control. China’s ten percent GDP growth rates simply devour commodities from resource rich Africa.

Angola has become China’s largest oil supplier ahead of Saudi Arabia. Oil thirsty Mainland China already imports about 770,000 barrels of oil daily from Africa. Sudan has also emerged as a major petroleum supplier to the People’s Republic.

Sudan’s case is instructive. Khartoum’s leader Omar Hassan al-Bashir has a special relationship with Beijing’s Marxist mandarins.

After all China is Sudan’s largest trading and investment partner — the PRC takes a benign political attitude towards the Sudanese regime and its ongoing genocide in the disputed Darfur region. Clearly Beijing serves as a political enabler on the Security Council for Sudan and many other African regimes by blocking any serious human rights oversight.

In a sense, China’s rose colored commercial ties, have allowed many African regimes to literally get away with murder and environmental degradation in their domestic policies.

Socialist Zimbabwe presents another such case. It was China who sidetracked U.N. Security Council oversight of the Mugabe regime’s forced resettlement of 700,000 people despite widespread outcry even from much of Africa.

But it’s not all pure political cover for rogue regimes. China will invest billions to build a new thousand mile long railroad in oil-rich Nigeria.

The mega plan recalls the 1960’s project in Tanzania linking up with the Zambian copper belt. And China has written off US$10 billion of African debt; nonetheless last year alone major Western donors forgave US$50 billion in African debt.

Still the fact that China is an active player has boosted commodity prices and has brought some long overdue economic growth to of between 4 and 5 percent to many African states illustrates a positive side.

While Beijing pledges “non-interference” in its political dealings with African states, the business bottom line remains that China is using the Dragon’s embrace to corner the raw material markets to sustain its corporate State.

John J. Metzler is a United Nations correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues.

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