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Thread: China's Expanding Role in Africa

  1. #41
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    The Jamestown Foundation's China Brief, 31 Jan 08:

    Feeding the Dragon: China's Quest for African Minerals
    While much of the attention on China’s emergence onto the global economic stage as an industrial powerhouse has focused on the accumulation of its massive trade surpluses, most Western observers probing Beijing’s interest in Africa’s rich natural resources have concentrated on the Middle Kingdom’s seemingly insatiable appetite for energy resources. Africa currently contributes 12 percent of the world's liquid hydrocarbon (oil) production. In 2013, African oil production is projected to rise to 10.7-11.4 million bpd, and by 2018 to 12.4-14.5 million bpd. In 2007, African oil constituted more than 22 percent of the United States' total usage and 28 percent of China’s—the latter case including approximately 60 percent of the Sudan's oil export—compared to the 2006 figures of 9 percent for China, 33 percent for the United States and 36 percent for Europe.

    A less mainstream but perhaps more significant issue for Sino-African relations is China’s growing interest in Africa’s rich mineral resources—where Beijing’s shopping list literally runs the gamut, from aluminum to zirconium. Considering China’s dynamic economy and robust growth, its interest in African minerals may well prove in the long run more strategically important in its grand strategy than African oil—especially if China's deals with Central Asian energy exporters prove successful. The minerals sought by China affect every aspect of its economy, from the minerals like titanium needed for producing military aircraft to the iron ore needed to fuel its export of consumer goods, to its surging diamond trade for the country’s growing appetite for luxury items.....

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    Chatham House transcript of 22 Feb 08 remarks of Chinese govt special rep on Darfur, Ambassador Liu Guijin: Darfur and Sino-African Relations
    China's historic engagement in Africa has strengthened in recent years and with that the complexity of its relations with African nations has increased. From a focus on Darfur, Ambassador Liu expanded to speak about China's role in Africa. Ambassador Liu presented on China's perspective on Africa, how it views its own position vis-à-vis Africa, and its policy priorities.....

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    Three papers from CSIS, 4 Jun 08:

    China in Nigeria
    ....This paper focuses on how various stakeholders in Nigeria view China’s engagement. The study is based on interviews with a wide array of actors, including Nigerian government officials, businessmen, academics, and residents of Chinese extraction who have lived and operated in Nigeria for many years. Other groups interviewed for the study include Chinese diplomats in Nigeria, Chinese traders and leaders, and Chinese project teams.....
    Angola and China: A Pragmatic Partnership
    ....With 2008 marking the 25th anniversary of the establishment of bilateral relations between the two countries, this paper takes a fresh look at the issue of Angola and China’s partnership. The study benefits from fieldwork carried out in Angola in September 2007 and January 2008 and includes numerous interviews with Angolan officials. Chinese embassy personnel in Luanda declined to comment on the report....
    Economic Relations Between Kenya and China, 1963-2007
    ....It begins with the backdrop to contemporary economic relations between China and Kenya by revisiting the hostile relations between the two countries in the Mao Zedong era, over the relevance of a socialist revolution in Kenya. In the wake of Deng Xiaoping’s “four modernizations,” that hostility gradually mutated into a fruitful phase of interaction between China and Kenya. From the evidence presented by this paper, economic interaction between China and Kenya—particularly after 2002—derogate from the received wisdom of a predatory China let loose among hapless Africans (at worst) or a calculatingly benign Beijing out to gain more from the deals than its African partners (at best). It also brings into center stage, the power of agency, demonstrating that African states are indeed capable of making choices that benefit them in the intensified phase of trade and investment in cooperation with China. It concludes that Kenya’s case may not be as exceptional as it seems at first blush.....

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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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    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.
    The real question with DRC is who is complaining? If it's the chinese: why not. If it's the congolese... I just found the thief: the national assembly commission.

    The Chinese have been major players in most of central Africa for 40+ years. Odd that is now only receiving the attention it should.
    Right: Chinese trained nice guys as Bob Mugabe or young Kabila... Their military presence has been quite obvious since more than 40 years.

    What has change now is, chineses come to settle in Africa. Algeria is an interresting example. Few month ago there were anti chinese riots in Alger. Today, they are one of the biggest business community and they are the first foreigners community in Algeria...
    China involvement into Sudan electoral process is also interresting. They are no more challenging only Western economical interrests in Africa. Soon they will move from their "we do not get involve into your governance" policy to a much more "administrate your country as I said because it belongs to me" policy.

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    LUSAKA (AFP) – US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged African countries to lift trade barriers with the United States here Friday and voiced concern about China's aid and investment practices in Africa.
    The first US chief diplomat to visit Zambia since 1976, Clinton attended annual talks over a US preferential trade deal at a time when China has overtaken the United States as Africa's top trading partner.
    "China's presence in Africa reflects the reality that it has important and growing interests here on the continent," Clinton said during a press conference with Zambian President Rupiah Banda.
    "The United States does not see these interests inherently incompatible with our own interests. We do not see China's rise as a zero-sum game. We hope that it will become succesful in its economic efforts," she said.
    http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110610...MzOWNvbmNlcm5l
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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.
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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.
    http://www.npr.org/2011/06/20/137061...s-ports-nearby
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    Adam,

    A very interresting point. India is with China an emerging power in Africa. But also a power which is present since now several centuries. It's always supprising for new comers to see a huge Hindu temple in Kampala, Uganda, in the middle of the African continent.
    Also India has been involved since several years in peace keeping operations (in competition with Pakistan) in Central Africa.
    I do not know how far Africa is a priority for the Indian authorities but they are every where (Just like the Chinese). And not just to run smal street shops. Indian companies in Cebtral Africa are deeply involvedinto mining activities (just like the Chinese), large scale farming (just like the Chinese), cheap goods import (just like the Chinese)...

    India VS China is coming to be the next big struggle in Africa.

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    Indians in Africa should not be surprising.

    They had gone as labour for the British.

    They stayed behind and became commercial successes.

    I believe of late the Indian Govt is looking at Africa commercially.

    I think Indians should do better than the Chinese since they will be able to adjust to the laid back attitude of Africa since they too are laid back in attitude.

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    Default Chinese Defense Minsiter visits Ghana, Uganda and Seychelles

    The Chinese seem to be getting in on the game. This is exactly the reason why we didn't want noisy announcements and high profile visits by senior AFRICOM officials. We don't want another great power struggle for Africa.

    We had one in the run-up to the Berlin conference and another during the Cold War. Africa came out pretty badly after both events: The Berlin conference left us with borders that made no sense and Soviet - American rivalry kept people like Mobutu and Siad Barre in power, murdered Lumumba and made Africa lose at least forty years of constructive engagement with the rest of the World.

    Excerpt:

    Liang Guanglie, state councilor and minister of national defense of the People's Republic of China (PRC), and his party left Beijing on November 21, 2011 for the Republic of Ghana, the Republic of Uganda and the Republic of Seychelles for an official goodwill visit at the invitation of the ministries of defense of the three countries.

    Liang Guanglie’s principal entourage includes Zhu Fuxi, director of the Political Department of the Air Force of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), and Zheng Chuanfu, commander of the PLA Beijing Garrison.

    Qian Lihua, director-general of the Foreign Affairs Office of the Ministry of National Defense of the PRC, saw Liang Guanglie and his party off at the airport.
    The link: http://eng.mod.gov.cn/DefenseNews/20...nt_4318072.htm
    Last edited by davidbfpo; 11-30-2011 at 08:53 PM. Reason: Link moved to this post

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    (It was also a news headline in Al Jazeera English today. Saw footage of a sizable contingent of the PLA being received by the Ugandan military).

    I think the US should take a long, hard, look at its relationship with Africa and the Middle East. It is too clouded by fear, threats and hysterics for the good of Africa, the Middle East or the US itself.

    Like it or not, Africa is fast becoming a Chinese area of influence (just like Central Asia is a Russian area of influence). The US spent the last decade "baiting the bear". Predictably, the Russians retaliated - and when they did (in Georgia), they used your own Iraq rules, and the result wasn't pretty.

    We don't want to be caught in the middle of a super power battle for influence.

    And don't tell me you only have the best of intentions, the British said the same thing (or so my grandfather would have told me).
    Last edited by davidbfpo; 11-30-2011 at 08:51 PM. Reason: Link moved to relevant post

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    I know the Chinese have been in Central Africa for quite some time. They even have a more colourful history in Southern Africa.

    I've lived long enough to understand that the best indicator of future proxy wars is the increased profile of public engagements by the future competitors. We saw it with the Soviets and Americans and we are replaying that movie right now.

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    Default Deborah Brautigam on China's role in Africa

    Very interesting talk given by an expert. Dispel's several myths about the Chinese.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Za8euDy9n7w

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    Default China in Africa: a different viewpoint

    A good talk, but at 45 minutes long others may prefer a review of the professor's book:http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...m-1854588.html

    There's also her blogsite:http://www.chinaafricarealstory.com/
    davidbfpo

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    I've visited her site, but am yet to read her book. She does make some very interesting points, that are shared by many educated Africans:

    1. China sees Africa as an opportunity, the West sees Africa as a charity case. Consequently, many components of Western engagement are not driven by economics, but more to satisfy post-colonial guilt. For example, the US is spending $600 million on aid to Nigeria, but this money is not likely to lead to economic growth (and significant amounts of it are likely to be embezzled or spent as consulting fees).

    2. China has had a consistent policy towards Africa - (to create prosperity, build a road). While the West has oscillated from "integrated rural development", to "import substitution", to "industrial development", to "structural adjustment programs" and finally now "Millennium Development Goals".

    Another book making the rounds is Dead Aid, by Dambisa Moyo. In that book, there is a chapter titled The Chinese are our friends. The book raised a storm in the development community, but it resonated with most African intellectuals.

    This is not to say that the Chinese don't have their faults, but fifty years of Western development policy have not produced many tangible results. True, Governments may be corrupt and institutions may be weak, but are we going to wait for corruption to be eliminated before we build roads and power stations?

    There is an economic component to the future security of the African continent, and whether we like it or not, the Chinese have a role to play (probably the most important role after Africans).

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