When China Rules the World (56 page)

The evidence of the growing Chinese presence in Africa is everywhere: Chinese stallholders in Zambia, Chinese lumberjacks in the Central African Republic, Chinese tourists in Zimbabwe, Chinese newspapers in South Africa, Chinese geologists in Sudan, Chinese channels on African satellite television.
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There are estimated to be over 900 large-and medium-sized Chinese companies now operating in Africa,
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together with a vast number of small-scale entrepreneurs, especially in the retail trade. Chinese shops, in particular, have proliferated with great speed, at times causing considerable alarm in the local African population: in Oshikango, Namibia, for example, the first shop was opened in 1999, by 2004 there were twenty-two shops, and by 2006 no less than seventy-five. In the Senegalese capital Dakar an entire city boulevard, a stretch of about a kilometre, is lined with Chinese shops selling imported women’s shoes, consumer durables such as glassware, and electronic goods at rock-bottom prices.
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The rapidly growing number of direct flights between China and Africa are packed with Chinese businessmen, experts and construction workers; in contrast, there are few direct flights between Africa and the US, and the passengers are primarily aid workers with a smattering of tourists and businesspeople.
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The Chinese population in Africa has increased rapidly. It is estimated that it numbered 137,000 in 2001 but by 2007 had grown to over 400,000, compared with around 100,000 Western expatriates, and even this could be a serious underestimate.
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A more generous estimate, based on Table 5, suggests a Chinese population of over 500,000, but this is excluding Angola, where the figure is estimated at 40,000, and various other countries as well.
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The present wave of Chinese migration is very different from earlier phases in the late nineteenth century and in the 1950s and 1960s. Apart from being on a much greater scale, the migrants now originate from all over China, rather than mainly from the south and east, and comprise a multitude of backgrounds, with many seemingly intent on permanent residence; the process, furthermore, is receiving the active encouragement of the Chinese government.
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The burgeoning Chinese population is matched by a growing number of prosperous middle-class Chinese tourists. Tourism accounts for a substantial part of foreign exchange receipts in some African countries like Kenya and the Gambia, and it is anticipated that there will be 100 million Chinese tourists annually visiting Africa in the near future.
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An ambitious tourism complex, for example, on Lumley Beach in Freetown, Sierra Leone - not one of the countries where Chinese influence is most pronounced - is in the pipeline, with an artist’s impression in the Ministry of Tourism showing pagoda-style apartments and Chinese tourists strolling around a central fountain.
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A further significant illustration of the expanding Chinese presence in Africa is the growing contingent of Chinese troops involved in UN peacekeeping operations. In April 2002 there were only 110 Chinese personnel worldwide but by April 2006 this had grown to 1,271 (with China rising from 46th to 14th in the international country ranking): revealingly, around 80 per cent of these troops are in Africa, placing it well above countries such as the UK, US, France and Germany.
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In total, over 3,000 Chinese peacekeeping troops have participated in seven UN missions in Africa.
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China’s impact on Africa has so far, it would appear, been positive.
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First, it has driven up both demand and prices for those many African countries that are commodity exporters, at least until the onset of the global downturn. Sub-Saharan Africa’s GDP increased by an average of 4.4% in 2001-4, 5-6% in 2005-6, and a projected 7% in 2007, compared with 2.6% in 1999-2001,
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with China clearly the major factor since it has accounted for most of the increase in the global consumption of commodities since 1998.
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In addition, the growing availability of cheap Chinese manufactured goods has had a beneficial effect for consumers.
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The losers have been those countries that are not commodity exporters or those producers - as in South Africa, Kenya and Mauritius, for instance - which compete with Chinese manufacturing exports.
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Chinese textile exports have led to many redundancies in various African nations, notably South Africa, Lesotho and Kenya.
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Overall, however, there have been a lot more winners than losers. Second, China’s arrival as an alternative source of trade, aid and investment has created a competitive environment for African states where they are no longer simply dependent on Western nations, the IMF and the World Bank. The most dramatic illustration of this has been Angola, which was able to break off negotiations with the IMF in 2007 when China offered it a loan on more favourable terms.
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China’s involvement thus has had the effect of boosting the strategic importance of Africa in the world economy.
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Third, Chinese assistance tends to come in the form of a package, including important infrastructural projects like roads, railways and major public buildings, as well as the provision of technical expertise.
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(In contrast, most Western investment in Africa is concentrated in oil and other commodities and lacks the infrastructural dimension.) Fourth, Chinese aid has far fewer strings attached than that of Western nations and institutions. While the IMF and the World Bank have insisted, in accord with their ideological agenda, on the liberalization of foreign trade, privatization and a reduced role for the state, the Chinese stance is far less restrictive.
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In addition, the West frequently attaches political conditions concerning democracy and human rights while the Chinese insist on no such conditionality. This conforms to the Chinese emphasis on respect for sovereignty, which they regard as the most important principle in international law and which is directly related to their own historical experience during the ‘century of humiliation’. In April 2006, in an address to the Nigerian National Assembly, Hu Jintao declared: ‘China steadfastly supports the wish of the African countries to safeguard their independence and sovereignty and choose their roads of development according to their national conditions.’
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The contrasting approach of China and Western nations towards Africa, and developing countries in general, has led to a discussion amongst Africans about a distinctive Chinese model of development, characterized by large-scale, state-led investments in infrastructure and support services, and aid which is less tied to the donor’s economic interests and less overwhelmingly focused on the extraction of minerals as in the case of the West.
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China’s phenomenal growth, together with the huge reduction in poverty there, has also provoked enormous interest in what lessons it might offer for other developing nations.
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An important characteristic of the Chinese model has been the idea of strong government and the eschewing of the notion of democracy, an approach which has an obvious appeal amongst the more authoritarian African governments. In the light of the country’s economic success, the Chinese approach to governance seems destined to enjoy a much wider influence and resonance in the developing world. The Chinese academic Zhang Wei-Wei has argued that the Chinese model combines a number of features. In contrast to the Washington Consensus, it rejects shock therapy and the big bang in favour of a process of gradual reform based on working through existing institutions. It is predicated upon a strong developmental state capable of steering and leading the process of reform. It involves a process of selective learning, or cultural borrowing: China has drawn on foreign ideas, including the neo-liberal American model, as well as many that have been home-grown. Finally, it embraces sequencing and priorities, as evidenced, for example, by a commitment to economic reforms first and political ones later, or the priority given to reforms in the coastal provinces before those in the inland provinces.
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There has been considerable debate, in this context, about a Chinese model, sometimes described as the Beijing Consensus. There are certainly fundamental differences between the Chinese approach and the Washington Consensus, with the Chinese model both markedly less ideological and also distinctively pragmatic in the manner of the Asian tigers.

It is still far too early to make any considered judgement about the likely long-term merits and demerits of China’s relationship with Africa.
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The experience has been brief and the literature remains thin. The most obvious danger for Africa lies in the fundamental inequality that exists at the heart of their relationship: China’s economy is far bigger and more advanced, the nearest economic challenger, South Africa, being diminutive in comparison, while the population of Africa as a whole is less than that of China’s. The economic disparity between Africa and China, furthermore, seems likely to grow apace. Whatever the differences in approach between the Western powers and China, it seems likely that many of the problems in the relationship between the West and Africa, emanating from the fundamental structural inequality between them, seem likely to be reproduced in some degree in China’s relationship with Africa.
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The danger facing African countries is that they get locked into being mere suppliers of primary commodities, unable for a variety of reasons - including unfavourable terms of trade and Chinese competition, together with domestic corruption and a lack of strategic will - to move beyond this and broaden their economic development through industrialization.

At a conference in Beijing in 2005, Moeletsi Mbeki, deputy chairman of the South African Institute of International Affairs, spelt out these fears:

Africa sells raw materials to China and China sells manufactured products to Africa. This is a dangerous equation that reproduces Africa’s old relationship with colonial powers.
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The equation is not sustainable for a number of reasons. First, Africa needs to preserve its natural resources to use in the future for its own industrialization. Secondly, China’s export strategy is contributing to the deindustrialization of some middle-income countries . . . it is in the interests of both Africa and China to find solutions to these strategies.
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Perhaps the country that most exemplifies this inequality is Zimbabwe, where the Chinese enjoy a powerful presence in the economy, controlling key strategic areas like the railways, electricity supply, Air Zimbabwe and the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation.
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The fact that China has a carefully worked-out and comprehensive strategic approach to its relationship with Africa, while the African response, in contrast, is fragmented between the many different nations, poorly informed about China, and based on an essentially pragmatic rather than strategic view, serves only to exacerbate this inequality.
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The danger is that African nations enter into agreements with China over the exploitation of their natural resources which are too favourable to China, or use the revenues gained in a short-term fashion, perhaps corruptly, to benefit various interest groups, or possibly both.

Although China’s presence has been hugely welcomed across the continent, and has generated considerable enthusiasm,
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there is also unease and concern. This has been most manifest in Zambia, where in the last presidential election in 2006 the opposition candidate propounded a strongly anti-Chinese line, declaring that ‘Zambia is becoming a province - no, a district - of China’, and gained 29 per cent of the vote, prompting the Chinese ambassador to imply that China might withdraw its investments in the event of his winning.
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One of the strongest and most persistent criticisms is that Chinese companies prefer to employ Chinese rather than local workers, with the proportion of Chinese workers sometimes reaching as high as 70 per cent.
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There are also frequent complaints that Chinese managers display negative attitudes towards local people.
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Both of these, of course, touch directly upon the problem of Chinese attitudes towards those of darker skin, and especially Africans, which I discussed in Chapter 8. The evidence is still too sparse to draw any proper conclusions as yet, though the problem is unsurprising. There is a widely held view, especially in the West, that China’s refusal to require any conditionality in terms of governance means that it is prone to turn a blind eye to human rights abuses, such as those in Darfur.
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That has certainly been the case, but the Chinese have recently shown growing sensitivity towards Western criticism, as well as that from within the continent, and as a result have helped to pressure the Sudanese government into accepting the presence of a joint United Nations/ African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur.
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There is little evidence, however, that China’s record in Africa is any worse - and in fact is almost certainly far better - than the West’s own miserable catalogue of support for corrupt and dictatorial regimes on the continent, not to mention its colonial legacy.
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Finally, in a rather different vein, the Chinese have become the target of terrorist groups, for example in the Niger Delta and Ethiopia, a phenomenon which is surely set to grow as the Chinese presence and influence expands and they assume the role, visibility and responsibilities of a global power not only in Africa but elsewhere too.
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