New Chinese president courts Africa By John Chan
28 March 2013

China’s new president, Xi Jinping, visited Africa this week—first Tanzania,
then South Africa, where he participated in the BRICS (Brazil, Russia,
India, China and South Africa) summit, and finally the Republic of Congo.
Throughout his tour, Xi actively courted the continent’s governments, amid
an intensifying scramble between the major global powers for control over
Africa’s vast resources and potential markets.

Xi declared that China would treat Africa as an “equal” partner, in
contrast to the former Western colonial powers. Making Tanzania his first
stop, where he delivered a policy speech on Africa, was no accident. The
Tanzania-Zambia railroad, built in the 1970s, was one of China’s first
major infrastructure projects in Africa

Xi delivered his address on Sino-African relations in a conference hall
built by Chinese funds in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s largest city. Xi
declared: “With the growth of its economic and overall strength, China will
continue to offer, as always, necessary assistance to Africa, with no
political strings attached.”

China’s president offered a $20 billion line of credit to African countries
for 2013-15, pledging that China would “help African countries turn
resources endowment into development strength and achieve independent and
sustainable development.” Xi claimed that China would never treat African
countries as inferior, “not even when China grows stronger and enjoys
higher international status.”

Xi’s tour was designed to counter criticisms by sections of local African
elites, generally those more aligned to Africa’s former colonial powers,
that China practices “neo-colonialism.” Before Xi’s trip, Nigerian central
bank governor Lamido Sanusi wrote in the London-based *Financial Times*:
“China takes from us primary goods and sells us manufactured ones. This was
also the essence of colonialism.”

In response to such criticisms, Lu Shaye, who heads the Chinese foreign
ministry’s African department, retorted on Hong Kong television: “What have
Western countries done for Africa in the 50 years since independence?
Nothing.” Lu insisted that it was the West, not China, that was solely
interested in Africa’s resources.

Indeed China is not an imperialist power. Its accumulated investment in
Africa, while growing rapidly, is still small compared to the Western
imperialist powers, which had been exploiting the continent for centuries.
China has a negligible military presence in Africa, unlike the US and its
European allies.

Nevertheless, Chinese companies do not operate in Africa as benefactors.
Chinese loans and aid to Africa largely consist of infrastructure and
resources projects, such as mines and highway. These are offered in
exchange for, or to facilitate the transportation of, the supply of raw
materials, which China needs to secure, largely to make cheap goods for
Western markets.

While in Tanzania, Xi presided over the signing of several agreements.
These included plans for a massive $10 billion port project in Bagamoyo, 75
kilometres north of Dar es Salaam, to be built by the state-owned China
Merchants Group. The port will be connected to a special industrial zone,
which was the subject of a further agreement. While the official aim of
these projects is to make the region a trade hub, linking Asia and east
Africa, analysts have pointed to the port’s potential to host Chinese naval
ships, which are now active in the Indian Ocean.

In recent years, vast offshore gas deposits have been discovered off the
Tanzania-Mozambique coast. China is already financing the construction of a
532-kilometre gas pipeline, at a cost of $1.2 billion, linking recently
discovered gas reserves in the south of Tanzania to the port in Dar es
Salaam.

Access to energy sources also motivated Xi’s last stop, the Republic of
Congo, which now supplies 2 percent of China’s much-needed oil, with
considerable potential for that supply to grow.

Because of China’s huge resources purchases and growing investment in
Africa, sections of the local elites have oriented toward China, or sought
to use its influence as a counter-weight to Western interests. During Xi’s
visit to South Africa, President Jacob Zuma hailed “the rise of China,”
describing it as a model and “a source of inspiration” for his country.
Last week, Zuma warned Western companies to change their “colonial” mindset
when investing in Africa, and stop accusing China of “colonialism.”

China is now South Africa’s largest trading partner, but Europe remains a
major source of trade and investment. With this in mind, the South African
president told the *Financial Times*: “China is doing business in a
particular way and we think we can see the benefits, but we are very, very
careful.” Citing Africa’s experience of colonialism, Zuma said such a
relationship must “benefit both. And this is what we and China have been
agreeing.”

The fifth BRICS summit, hosted by South Africa, was entitled “BRICS and
Africa: Partnership for Development, Integration and Industrialisation.”
The theme summed up the desire of China, Russia, Brazil and India to expand
their economic presence in the continent. While China has surpassed the US
and European countries to become Africa’s largest trading partner (with
two-way trade worth nearly $US200 billion in 2012), Brazil’s trade with
Africa has also increased by 600 percent during the past decade. Brazilian
construction and mining companies are now active across the continent.

The ambitions of the BRICS countries, however, come into conflict with the
established Western powers that have long dominated the continent. China
has already had a painful lesson as a result of the US and European
intervention to overthrow the Libyan government in 2011. China lost
billions of dollars of investment and had to evacuate thousands of its
nationals. Since the beginning of this year, France, backed by the US, has
stepped up its military intervention in Mali, another strategic location.

Under George W. Bush, and now Obama, Washington has more openly turned to
military means to thwart China’s growing influence in Africa. A separate US
military command, AFRICOM, was established in 2007 as a direct response to
first China-Africa summit in 2006, to which Beijing invited the head of
states of more than 50 countries.

J. Peter Pham, an adviser to the US State and Defense Departments, declared
in 2007 that AFRICOM’s aims consisted of “protecting access to hydrocarbons
and other strategic resources which Africa has in abundance … and ensuring
that no other interested third parties, such as China, India, Japan, or
Russia, obtain monopolies or preferential treatment.”

The BRICS summit underscored the fact that the rivalry over Africa is bound
up with broader and intensifying global tensions. Ahead of the Durban
summit, Russia, the main architect behind BRICS, called for the creation of
a Moscow-based joint development bank, with each member contributing $10
billion, to rival the US- and European-dominated World Bank and
International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Russia also proposed a pool of funds, of up to $240 billion, to deal with
any financial emergency facing a BRICS member. Brazil said the new bank
would foster “greater autonomy from the IMF” and provide an “alternative
financial tool” to developing countries.

However, nothing concrete was agreed at the BRICS summit. Russian Finance
Minister Anton Siluanov claimed there was “positive movement,” but “no
decision on the creation of the bank.” Disagreements reportedly arose over
the size of contributions, given that China’s economy is 20 times larger
than South Africa’s, and four times bigger than India’s.

Nevertheless, Brazil and China, the two biggest economies in the BRICS,
signed a currency swap deal worth $30 billion, covering nearly half their
annual trade of $75 billion. That agreement pointed to the emergence of
potential rival currency blocs, amid worldwide financial turmoil and the
increasingly questionable status of the US dollar as the global trading
currency.
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