At the end of last month, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) visited four African countries and attended the BRICS — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — summit in Johannesburg. It was a clear demonstration of the importance China places on the continent.
On Dec. 12, 2015, Xi announced that China would provide loans and financial assistance to Africa of up to US$60 billion, to assist the continent in developing infrastructure, improving farming and reducing poverty.
According to data cited at the 2015 Wharton Africa Business Forum, China has rapidly increased its investment in Africa, jumping from US$7 billion in 2008 to US$26 billion in 2013.
Despite these large sums, the Sino-African relationship is proving to be ridden with controversy.
Many observers believe that Beijing’s African infrastructure programs are exploitative. Others accuse China of engaging in neocolonial behavior, since the arrangement allows it to obtain much-needed raw materials for the development of its own economy.
Beijing has implemented the “Angola model” in many African countries — that is, providing massive sums of financial aid for infrastructure projects in return for a country’s natural resources.
Since 2000, spending on infrastructure projects in Africa has been steadily increasing, with the vast majority of the financing coming from China.
In 2004, Beijing provided Angola with US$4.5 billion of capital in exchange for oil supply. In 2008, it provided the Democratic Republic of the Congo with US$9 billion in return for cobalt.
By appropriating Africa’s natural resources through deceitful means, as opposed to providing countries with the development assistance that they require, Beijing has unleashed a form of neocolonialism on the continent.
Christopher Alden, a professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science’s department of international relations, believes that China’s model of financing infrastructure projects in return for natural resources means that it should be viewed as a colonial power.
Alden believes that once China successfully assumes a dominant role in Africa’s economy, it would be able to leverage its position to control African countries.
He suspects that Beijing is only really concerned with obtaining the continent’s natural resources and creating a new market for Chinese businesses to sell their goods.
Phineas Bbaala, a lecturer at the University of Zambia’s department of political and administrative studies, has also criticized China, arguing that although Africa’s trade relationship with Beijing has become increasingly close, China has not provided enough technology transfer, while some African nations have blindly and mechanically copied China’s development model.
Bbaala said that this would make the continent increasingly reliant on Beijing for its survival, which would be detrimental to its sustainable development.
Data released by the Chinese government shows that China is Africa’s largest trading partner as well as its primary investor. Total Chinese investment and financing in Africa already exceeds US$100 billion.
In her book A Dragon’s Gift Deborah Brautigam, director of the China-Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, says that China’s investment model in Africa differs from that of Western countries, as it explicitly ties Africa’s natural resources to infrastructure projects and uses a country’s natural resources as collateral for loans to fund infrastructure projects.
The model provides the continent with new opportunities and gives the leaders of African nations more options than before, Brautigam said, adding that the greatest attraction of Chinese capital for Africa’s leaders is that it often comes with no strings attached.
China was accused in February of having infiltrated the computer network of the African Union headquarters in Ethiopia.
Chinese officials have denied that they installed eavesdropping equipment in the building, but the revelations were exposed in the African version of French magazine Le Monde, an influential publication in Africa.
Mainstream media in the West, together with African media outlets, subsequently published follow-up reports.
Officials from the African Union have off the record accused Beijing of penetrating the building’s information technology (IT) system every evening between Jan.1, 2012, and Jan. 1 last year, and siphoning off confidential data from the system to a server in Shanghai.
IT technicians at the building are reported to have detected the leak when they discovered a spike in data usage between midnight and 2am every night. This activity continued daily for five years until the leak was discovered last year.
Despite the reports, the African Union has not dared to say a thing.
The 19-story building, constructed at a cost of US$200 million, was funded almost entirely by China and built by the China State Construction Engineering Corp. The building’s interior fittings and furnishings were supplied by Chinese companies — even the construction materials were imported from China.
Beijing has been cultivating Africa for a long time, investing in minerals and all sorts of large infrastructure projects. Despite this, there is not much love for China in Africa.
There are many reasons for this, but one of them is that the vast majority of Chinese companies that have spread out across the continent mostly employ Chinese workers, farming out the lowest paid jobs to the locals.
A report by the Web site Quartz said that Chinese businesses in African countries are often attacked and resented by locals because of issues such as environmental pollution and racial discrimination.
Moreover, the actions of these companies often make it seem as if Beijing is establishing pockets of Chinese territory.
Former US secretary of state Rex Tillerson once said that while China’s investment in Africa is perhaps helping the continent to renew its infrastructure, many African countries are now burdened with debt and have become over-reliant on China.
He said that investment model also poses a threat to the continent’s natural resources, and that this should not be conflated with the US’ sustainable investment model, which is designed to assist African countries in becoming self-sufficient.
As trade and economic ties flourish, Chinese companies with ties to the Chinese Communist Party have caused controversy in Africa. Strategic resource acquisition is perhaps the most obvious example of the unique relationship between Chinese businesses and their political masters in Beijing.
The buying up of Namibian uranium, Zambian copper and oil from Chad are all examples of this phenomenon.
On the streets and in the shops of every African country, cheap Chinese goods are in abundance. Some of the raw materials used to make these products come from Africa.
Beijing’s model of extracting resources, processing them in China and then selling them back to Africa was criticized by former Central Bank of Nigeria governor Lamido Sanusi.
“China takes our primary goods and sells us manufactured ones. This is also the essence of colonialism,” Sanusi said, writing in London’s Financial Times.
The reason that this model has been able to spread so quickly is chiefly because the interest-free loans that Beijing provides to African countries come attached with a series of conditions, such as a requirement to use Chinese workers, equipment or technology.
Beijing’s offer to Africa is that “we’ll give you money and help you to build things,” but in reality this “help” means that China takes control of the entire project and produces something that is incompatible with local culture.
One example of this is a recently completed 480km-long railway in Kenya that connects the capital, Nairobi, to the port in Mombasa.
China provided the Kenyan government with a US$3.8 billion loan to finance the project. Not only did it carry out the construction work, but after it was completed, the engineers and operators working on the railway are mainly Chinese.
This has lead to criticism from local media, saying: “The railway appears to have been transplanted in its entirety from China, even the information guides are written in Chinese” and “[the railway] lacks any connection to Kenya.”
European academics say that the large numbers of African refugees and migrants who have amassed in Europe in recent years are a product of Chinese colonialism.
China’s exploitation of the continent by cozying up to corrupt African leaders has caused an explosion in unemployment in Africa. Unable to make a living, many Africans have been left with no choice but to relocate to Europe in search of employment.
China’s Belt and Road Initiative, far from bringing benefits to Africa and Europe, has instead unleashed disaster across two continents.
Parris Chang is president of the Taiwan Institute for Political, Economic and Strategic Studies, a former deputy secretary-general of the National Security Council and professor emeritus of political science at Pennsylvania State University.
Translated by Edward Jones
Recently, China launched another diplomatic offensive against Taiwan, improperly linking its “one China principle” with UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 to constrain Taiwan’s diplomatic space. After Taiwan’s presidential election on Jan. 13, China persuaded Nauru to sever diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Nauru cited Resolution 2758 in its declaration of the diplomatic break. Subsequently, during the WHO Executive Board meeting that month, Beijing rallied countries including Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Belarus, Egypt, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, Laos, Russia, Syria and Pakistan to reiterate the “one China principle” in their statements, and assert that “Resolution 2758 has settled the status of Taiwan” to hinder Taiwan’s
Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s (李顯龍) decision to step down after 19 years and hand power to his deputy, Lawrence Wong (黃循財), on May 15 was expected — though, perhaps, not so soon. Most political analysts had been eyeing an end-of-year handover, to ensure more time for Wong to study and shadow the role, ahead of general elections that must be called by November next year. Wong — who is currently both deputy prime minister and minister of finance — would need a combination of fresh ideas, wisdom and experience as he writes the nation’s next chapter. The world that
The past few months have seen tremendous strides in India’s journey to develop a vibrant semiconductor and electronics ecosystem. The nation’s established prowess in information technology (IT) has earned it much-needed revenue and prestige across the globe. Now, through the convergence of engineering talent, supportive government policies, an expanding market and technologically adaptive entrepreneurship, India is striving to become part of global electronics and semiconductor supply chains. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Vision of “Make in India” and “Design in India” has been the guiding force behind the government’s incentive schemes that span skilling, design, fabrication, assembly, testing and packaging, and
Can US dialogue and cooperation with the communist dictatorship in Beijing help avert a Taiwan Strait crisis? Or is US President Joe Biden playing into Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) hands? With America preoccupied with the wars in Europe and the Middle East, Biden is seeking better relations with Xi’s regime. The goal is to responsibly manage US-China competition and prevent unintended conflict, thereby hoping to create greater space for the two countries to work together in areas where their interests align. The existing wars have already stretched US military resources thin, and the last thing Biden wants is yet another war.