China Courts Africa, Angling for Strategic Gains

Beijing has put on its best face to court Africa, “the land of myth and miracles,” as official posters call it. Political leaders of 48 of the 53 African countries, including 40 heads of state, are to arrive this weekend for a huge diplomatic event, the China-Africa forum.

The official purposes of the three-day event are to expand trade, to allow China to secure the oil and ore it needs for its booming economy and to offer aid to help African nations improve roads, railways and schools.

The unofficial purpose is to redraw the world’s strategic map by forming tighter political ties between China, which has the world’s fastest-growing major economy, and Africa, a continent whose leaders often complain about being neglected by the United States and Europe.

China’s economic goal is to secure Africa’s abundant supplies of oil, iron ore, copper and cotton at the lowest possible prices, analysts say. Chinese companies view Africa as an open market, neglected by Western multinationals, that they can cultivate with their trademark low-priced goods.

But if the goal is mostly mercenary, not unlike European objectives in Africa 150 years ago, the method is avowedly anti-imperialist.

The forum’s slogan ― “Peace, Friendship, Cooperation, Development” ― underscores China’s pledge not to discriminate or intervene. It even invited the five African countries ― Burkina Faso, Malawi, Gambia, Swaziland and São Tomé and Príncipe ― that still extend diplomatic recognition to its rival Taiwan, though none agreed to attend.

In the long term, Chinese officials say they hope not only that the overture will give their companies an edge in the competition for resources, but also that it will give their diplomats an advantage at the United Nations and other international organizations, where African countries can constitute a powerful voting bloc.

China’s trade with Africa is growing faster than with any other region except the Middle East, increasing tenfold in the past decade, to just shy of $40 billion last year. China buys timber from the Congo Republic, iron ore from South Africa and cobalt and copper from Zambia. An estimated 80,000 Chinese expatriates live in Africa, selling shoes, televisions and everything else the world’s factory produces.

More vitally, Africa has helped quench China’s growing thirst for oil. Angola, which China cultivated assiduously in recent years, has edged out Saudi Arabia as China’s largest foreign source of oil.

Sudan, shunned by the West for its genocidal civil war in Darfur, was a net oil importer before China arrived there in 1995. China has since invested heavily in oil extraction, helping Sudan export about $2 billion worth of crude annually, half of that to China.

Beijing’s aggressive pursuit of commodities has often been accompanied by generous aid programs, low-interest loans and other gifts that some Western interests say undermine efforts to foster good governing in Africa. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have expressed their concerns that China’s unrestricted lending, including a $2 billion credit line for corruption-plagued Angola, has undermined years of painstaking efforts to arrange conditional debt relief.

Some African economists complain, too, that China wants to extract raw materials for industry and then sell manufactured goods back to Africa, a mercantilist pattern that failed to bring sustained growth in the past.