China's Expanding Role in Africa
Some recent news items on China and Africa:
Pragmatists versus idealists
The Chinese are implementing a practical long term strategy to facilitate their national interests. On the other hand we're waging an ideologically based war (trying to democratize the Middle East) at the expense of ignoring, or worse compromising, our more important interests such as access to a reliable supply of oil, and lesser but still important access to stable markets. Terrorism and extremism is not an imaginary threat, but it is not a threat to our national survival unless we stupidly give the enemy a victory by over reacting. If it comes down to an armed conflict for access to oil, we'll need a large conventional army to secure it, not a few guys with armed UAVs.
China's Expanding Role in Africa
China’s Expanding Role in Africa: Implications for the United States, A Report of the CSIS Delegation to China on China-Africa-U.S. Relations November 28–December 1, 2006
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...While China’s more ambitious and complex Africa policy of today may in due course bring financial and political payoffs, alter the playing field in Africa, and create pressures for changes in U.S. policy approaches, multiple risks also attend China’s strategy. In particular, Beijing faces nine core challenges in translating its vision of a strategic partnership with Africa into a sustainable reality:
1. China will need to work assiduously to overcome obstacles tied to language, culture, religion, and racial bias.
2. Although the FOCAC Beijing Action Plan calls for increased exchanges between African and Chinese media, and for the two sides to facilitate the placement of resident correspondents in China and in African countries, Chinese media and popular culture have only very limited entry into African markets thus far. Knowledge and expertise about Africa in China’s policy advisory and think tank communities is thin and lacking in up-to-date, on-the-ground experience.
3. Evolving African popular opinion—the “African street”—is not currently factored systematically into Beijing’s thinking.
4. The Chinese approach is neither familiar nor well equipped to engage with the emergent and increasingly vocal and influential nongovernmental groups in Africa.
5. Adhering to a formal policy of noninterference and putting it into consistent practice will be difficult and likely clash over time with deepening Chinese interests.
6. In the future, China will be under increasing pressure to define how it will direct and coordinate internally the complex bundle of ambitious policy and programmatic initiatives it is advancing.
7. The Chinese diaspora business community poses special “reputational risks” related to bribery and counterfeiting, among other controversial practices.
8. Pressures will mount for China to do more to harmonize its donor activity in Africa with ongoing international assistance, especially with respect to debt.
9. Pressures will mount on Beijing to manage its relations better with its most important bilateral partner, the United States, vis-à-vis Africa....
China's Latest Foray in Africa
Here, from the BBC, is a great new idea for winning friends and influencing people that the Chinese have discovered.
Quote:
Zambia to have Chinese-built stadium
Teams might train in the stadium ahead of the 2010 World Cup
The Zambian and Chinese governments have signed an agreement for the construction of a 40,000-seater stadium in northern Zambia.
Sort of trumps the US "give a kid a soccer ball" initiative that I have heard tell of being used in IZ/AF to help us win hearts and minds.
Africa: China-U.S. Trilateral Dialogue
Sounds like we've kind of been on board for at least a year.
The following is a summary of the Africa-China-U.S. Trilateral Dialogue, co-sponsored by the Brenthurst Foundation, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Leon Sullivan Foundation meetings in South Africa, China, and the United States in August 2006 and March and September 2007.
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Over the course of the last thirteen months, delegates from Africa, China and the United States have met three times in an effort to identify strategies of cooperation among their respective nations with the goal of accelerating economic development in Africa. The meetings were held in Tswalu, South Africa in August 2006, in Beijing, in March 2007 and in Washington in September 2007.
The Trilateral Dialogue is a unique initiative. The purpose of this paper is to summarize the discussions which have taken place.
The Trilateral Dialogue process is in no way complete. There are issues that are still under discussion and there are other issues on which we have noted areas of divergence. Nevertheless, there has been a great deal of convergence, and that is what we want to share at this time in the hopes that we might stimulate other initiatives that will benefit Africa.
More at the link...
Who'll be the Global Soft superpower?
Looks like WM nailed this one..India is taking lessons from the Chinese ?
From The Times of India:
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China is soaking up resources in Africa and Latin America. And everybody else is eating their hearts out. Or are they? In its desire to lay hands on pretty much every mineral and fuel source it can find, China has laid out the diplomatic red carpet in these two regions. But while China has been totally unstoppable, India is moving in its slow, slightly chaotic way to improve its footprint in Africa and Latin America.
The Chinese model is pretty straightforward - exchange between money and diplomatic influence in return for unfettered access to natural resources. Take Africa.
The Indian model is very different. From India's freedom struggle and subsequent commercial success of the Indian diaspora in Africa, the non-aligned movement etc, India has been a subterranean constant. The difference was, India was more an inspiration than a way to fill coffers.
But China forced India to think differently.
Then there's a sweet post on the Chinese Embassy website in South Africa.
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China's ties with Africa also provide a buffer from international criticism: its policy paper says its relationships with many African countries are based on "independence, equality, mutual respect and noninterference in each other's internal affairs".
This creates a quid pro quo relationship when China is investing in countries such as Zimbabwe or Sudan, in which neither side is questioned about human rights.
In Angola, China's $2bn soft loan enabled the government to resist pressure from the International Monetary Fund to improve the transparency of its oil sector and to tackle corruption.
African leaders have largely embraced China, with its anticolonial approach and ability to "get the job done".
How China's taking over Africa, and why the West should be VERY worried
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/a...ied/article.do
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Reminiscent of the West's imperial push in the 18th and 19th centuries - but on a much more dramatic, determined scale - China's rulers believe Africa can become a 'satellite' state, solving its own problems of over-population and shortage of natural resources at a stroke.
With little fanfare, a staggering 750,000 Chinese have settled in Africa over the past decade. More are on the way.
The strategy has been carefully devised by officials in Beijing, where one expert has estimated that China will eventually need to send 300 million people to Africa to solve the problems of over-population and pollution.
The plans appear on track. Across Africa, the red flag of China is flying. Lucrative deals are being struck to buy its commodities - oil, platinum, gold and minerals. New embassies and air routes are opening up. The continent's new Chinese elite can be seen everywhere, shopping at their own expensive boutiques, driving Mercedes and BMW limousines, sending their children to exclusive private schools.
The pot-holed roads are cluttered with Chinese buses, taking people to markets filled with cheap Chinese goods. More than a thousand miles of new Chinese railroads are crisscrossing the continent, carrying billions of tons of illegally-logged timber, diamonds and gold.
The trains are linked to ports dotted around the coast, waiting to carry the goods back to Beijing after unloading cargoes of cheap toys made in China.
Confucius Institutes (state-funded Chinese 'cultural centres') have sprung up throughout Africa, as far afield as the tiny land-locked countries of Burundi and Rwanda, teaching baffled local people how to do business in Mandarin and Cantonese.
Massive dams are being built, flooding nature reserves. The land is scarred with giant Chinese mines, with 'slave' labourers paid less than £1 a day to extract ore and minerals.
Pristine forests are being destroyed, with China taking up to 70 per cent of all timber from Africa.
All over this great continent, the Chinese presence is swelling into a flood. Angola has its own 'Chinatown', as do great African cities such as Dar es Salaam and Nairobi.
Exclusive, gated compounds, serving only Chinese food, and where no blacks are allowed, are being built all over the continent. 'African cloths' sold in markets on the continent are now almost always imported, bearing the legend: 'Made in China'.
From Nigeria in the north, to Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Angola in the west, across Chad and Sudan in the east, and south through Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique, China has seized a vice-like grip on a continent which officials have decided is crucial to the superpower's long-term survival.
'The Chinese are all over the place,' says Trevor Ncube, a prominent African businessman with publishing interests around the continent. 'If the British were our masters yesterday, the Chinese have taken their place.'
China introduced to Congolese Business Practices - 2 years later...
Kinshasa's Missing Millions -
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Evidence of Grand Corruption Mounts in
Beijing's Showcase $6 billion Barter Deal with the Kinshasa Government
Over US $23 million in signature bonuses payable on China's $6 billion Sino-Congolaise des Mines (Sicomines) deal with the Kinshasa government have been stolen according to a probe by a commission set up by the National Assembly.
And the final blow
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The Congolese shareholders say that they are getting tougher in negotiations. Before, they had to 'close their eyes' to certain details, such as feasibility studies carried out by the same company that would later implement the project, a practice that led to overestimating of costs.