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    Small Wars Journal SWJED's Avatar
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    Default China's Expanding Role in Africa


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    Default 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.

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    Default 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
    ...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....

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    Council Member Rob Thornton's Avatar
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    Default When China Ruled the Sea

    There is a great book called When China Ruled the Sea: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne (1405 -1433) by Louise Levathes.

    It discusses a period in Chinese history when it was very involved with discovery and trade. A period where it was very ambitious in diplomacy and very interested in the world.
    Regards, Rob

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    Default Anchors Away

    I heard/read somwhere about a month ago that China was going to budget 5 billion for road projects. I wonder how long it will be until they fully project force into the sea lanes. They've been in space already.

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    Council Member tequila's Avatar
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    I find it instructive whenever people warn of an impending China threat to compare defense budgets. China is, even if you triple their official budget, less than $100 bn. The latest U.S. defense budget request comes in at $481.4 bn --- and this completely excludes the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns at $140 bn.

    Frankly we should welcome China attempting to compete with us as a conventional peer. They will never match us and will end up wasting enormous resources trying to. Unfortunately I doubt they're that stupid.

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    Council Member Tom Odom's Avatar
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    Default Sales Brochure

    I will look at this more but the tone of the Executive Summary strikes me as hyped when it comes to expansion. What I have read so far reads more like a glossy sales brochure than an assessment.

    China has long been in Africa and in many ways was more effective at it than the US or the USSR because the Chinese tended toward a low-tech, man power intensive model. In contrast, the US talks low tech and adaptable project models that better meet local needs but in securing funding we often get driven toward high (or higher than the Chinese) tech solutions.

    Cuturally Communist Chinese models for communal agriculture in many cases better matched cultural tendencies even when they failed dramatically in execution.

    And even during the height of the Cold War, U.S. "allies" like Mobutu were more than willing to drag their skirts in front of the Chinese to prompt renewed fervor among their Western suitors. Witness this paragraph:

    Moreover, Beijing believes this history compares very favorably with the poor political and security legacy left to Africa by the U.S.-Soviet superpower rivalry of the Cold War era that stoked wars in places like Angola, Mozambique, and Ethiopia and created alliances with corrupt strongmen like Zaire’s President Mobutu and Somalia’s President Barre.
    The PRC was also a player in those arenas as well as in others.

    Overall I am not impressed. CSIS is usually much better.

    Tom

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    Default 3 Gorge Dam

    Another past reference cited it would produce 9 times the output of Hoover Dam when fully functional. That's alot of juice and it won't all go to commercial factories for consumer goods - some of the benefit has to go to China's military and naval expansion to my way of thinking seems the logical choice, but that's an aside from the Africa issue at hand. I can't see them wasting resources on look-good-feel-good PR like money for AIDS, but I could be wrong on that too. Where I was at in W. AFrica they had built a soccer stadium that was never used and they quickly saw there wasn't any benefit from being much involved with that small nation.

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    Council Member wm's Avatar
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    Default 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.

    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.

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    Council Member Tom Odom's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by wm View Post
    Here, from the BBC, is a great new idea for winning friends and influencing people that the Chinese have discovered.



    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.
    Not new WM

    They built one in Zaire (now the Congo) in the 1980s that made a great tropical planter when I was there in the 1990s.

    The Chinese have been doing this all over Africa for decades. They are especially good at roads--I drove on them in Sudan, Rwanda, Uganda, and all over southern Africa--except South Africa although that relationship has changed dramatically since the 90s.

    Best

    Tom

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    Council Member tequila's Avatar
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    Part of the old Sino vs. Soviet competition for H&M in Africa during the '70s and '80s. Zambia was always a main Chinese ally on the continent.

    The most remarkable part of the new wave of Chinese investment in Africa is the presence of large numbers of Chinese expatriates following Chinese companies. I predict that the Chinese will soon be as well-loved in Africa as they are throughout Southeast Asia (see the history of Africa's Lebanese and Indian populations for additional examples).

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    Council Member wm's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by tequila View Post
    PI predict that the Chinese will soon be as well-loved in Africa as they are throughout Southeast Asia (see the history of Africa's Lebanese and Indian populations for additional examples).
    I trust there was meant to be sarcasm in this post. I seem to remember reading that the Chinese were in disfavor along the coast of East Africa back when there was still a Sultan in Zanzibar.

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    Council Member Tom Odom's Avatar
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    Default Giving Up on Mugabe?

    Here is a relevant piece frpm McClatchy news services on China and Zimbabwe:

    China draws back from role as 'all-weather friend' to Zimbabwe
    BEIJING — China acknowledged Tuesday that it has slowed investment in Zimbabwe, a longtime African ally teetering on economic collapse, in a sign that it may be heeding Western demands that it quit backing regimes considered despotic.

    The withdrawal of economic support from Zimbabwe's largest investor and only major global backer is a serious blow to Robert Mugabe, an 83-year-old liberation hero who has clung to power in Zimbabwe for nearly three decades
    And in the same piece:

    Elsewhere in Africa, China continues its free-spending campaign for resources.

    The latest example came Monday in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where news reports say Chinese officials signed deals for $5 billion in loans for construction of railways, highways, universities, housing complexes and investment to extract minerals, such as cobalt, copper, gold and diamonds.
    best

    Tom

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    Council Member AdamG's Avatar
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    Default How China's taking over Africa, and why the West should be VERY worried

    http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/a...ied/article.do

    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.'
    Last edited by davidbfpo; 06-20-2011 at 07:52 AM. Reason: Text in quotes

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    JFQ, 1st Qtr 09: China-Africa Relations in the 21st Century
    Over the past decade, while the United States and other Western powers focused on counterterrorism and traditional aid programs in Africa, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) developed a broad, unified strategy toward Africa. This policy spans government ministries and uses all four instruments of national power. China’s African Policy, announced in January 2006, is a bold step for the PRC as it demonstrates a fundamental foreign policy change for a government that once valued noninterference as its highest standard. Although the policy still espouses China’s historic respect for the sovereignty of other countries, the scope of its activities reveals a clear intent to advance Beijing’s involvement in Africa beyond historical levels and build strategic partnerships on the continent that will substantially increase China’s economic, political, and military presence. With U.S. Africa Command (USAFRICOM) now having full operational capability, it is important for officials to understand the extent of the PRC’s engagement in Africa, where it is going in the future, and the implications for USAFRICOM.....

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    IPCS, Oct 09: The Dragon on Safari: China’s Africa Policy
    In contrast to the political and military militancy of the 1970s, China’s current engagement with Africa should be viewed within the context of globalization in the aftermath of the Cold War. This new relationship is voluntarily focused on economic and technological cooperation for the sake of development. In fact, the current emphasis of China’s Africa policy is based on the classical foundations of what is described as a tripod of historical legitimacies, namely:
    • Historical links to liberation movements (historical legitimacy)

    • A Third World ideological heritage dating back to the Cold War (ideological legitimacy)

    • An evolving partnership based on principles of non-interference and neutrality (political legitimacy)

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    Default China introduced to Congolese Business Practices - 2 years later...

    Kinshasa's Missing Millions -

    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

    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.
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    Wow... what comes around.

    The Chinese have been major players in most of central Africa for 40+ years. Odd that is now only receiving the attention it should.
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    Quote Originally Posted by AdamG View Post
    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...

    ...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...

    ...Exclusive, gated compounds, serving only Chinese food, and where no blacks are allowed, are being built all over the continent...

    ...'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.'
    I once met an Angolan businessman in Dubai who told me "we didn't know what racism was until we met the Chinese".

    I'm not entirely sure that it's "the West" that should be "very worried" over all this, It looks to me like something that could very easily blow up in the faces of the Chinese, especially with Chinese-owned farms worked by Chinese labor setting up. How long before the backlash starts? How long before a government that's cut all kinds of cozy deals with the Chinese is threatened by insurgents who want to nationalize Chinese investments and throw the colonists out, and the Chinese are suddenly debating how to "do FID", "do COIN", and otherwise maintain a friendly government that can't govern in power?

    I don't see any reason to suspect that China's colonization of Africa will end any better - or any differently - than Europe's. Let them go ahead and bite off bigger and bigger pieces; not like there's anything we can do to stop them, and sooner or later they'll choke on it.
    “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”

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    Jabin Jacob, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies in New Delhi, is also skeptical about the string of pearls theory.

    He says India's policy planners should be more concerned with the way China is using its military in what are called "military operations other than war," such as anti-piracy patrols off the coast of Somalia.

    "How will you deal with a China that is actively crisscrossing the Indian Ocean, and building up relations with other Indian Ocean littoral states where India has traditionally held sway?" he asks.

    India needs to involve itself actively with its smaller neighbors and their problems, if it wants to maintain its influence, he says.
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