[A-List] More on China-Africa

[Henry C.K. Liu]

    Is there any wonder why US neo-imperialists and their lackeys are
    sending out disinformation about China, given Chinese challenge to
    US dominance in Africa?


     From the World Socialist Website:


    China’s growing trade with Africa indicative of Sino-Western energy
    conflicts


          By Brian Smith
          24 January 2006

<http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/jan2006/chin-j24.shtml> Email the 
author <https://www.wsws.org/phpform/use/comments/form1.html>

Trade between China and Africa jumped 39 percent to $32.17 billion in 
the first 10 months of 2005, fuelled by increased oil imports and the 
export of Chinese goods, largely textiles. This follows rises of 59 
percent in 2004 and 50 percent in 2003.

The rate of increase in Sino-African trade could see China threatening 
the United States’ predominant position in the next period. US-Africa 
trade was $44.5 billion in 2004.

Energy is China’s main concern and over the last few years it has struck 
or expanded on existing oil deals with Angola, Algeria, Chad, Equatorial 
Guinea, Gabon, Nigeria and Sudan. Africa now supplies around one quarter 
of China’s energy imports.

China is expected to overtake both the UK and France this year to become 
the world’s fourth largest economy, and is growing at around 9.3 percent 
per year. China’s trade surplus was $90.8 billion for the first 11 
months of 2005, three times the level of 2004. This was boosted by 
textile exports following the end of the quota system. China’s excess 
capacity and reliance on exports is antagonising both the US and 
European Union.

In 2003 China overtook Japan to become the world’s second largest 
consumer of oil after the US. Demand is increasing rapidly and its oil 
consumption is growing by 7.5 percent per year, seven times more than 
the US. China’s energy needs accounted for 40 percent of the total 
growth in global oil demand over the past four years. It currently 
imports about one third of its consumption, but is projected to import 
two thirds by 2025.

By 2010 China is expected to have 90 times more cars than it had in 
1990, and is projected to surpass the total number of cars in the US by 
2030. China is also attempting to increase and diversify supplies, 
particularly away from the Middle East, where it currently sources about 
58 percent of it oil. Areas of interest include Russia, the Caspian 
Basin, the Americas, the East China Sea and particularly Africa.

Africa contains about 8 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves, 70 
percent of which is off the west coast in the Gulf of Guinea, which 
stretches from the Ivory Coast to Angola. The low sulphur content of 
West Africa’s oil makes it of further strategic importance.

Last year China displaced Japan as the second largest importer of 
African oil after the US, which currently imports about 15 percent of 
its oil from Africa. China first established a presence in Sudan’s 
Muglad oilfields 10 years ago, and filled the vacuum when the US broke 
diplomatic ties with Sudan in 1997. Currently between half and 60 
percent of Sudan’s oil exports go to China, amounting to around 7 
percent of China’s imported oil.

China has invested more than $8 billion in joint exploration contracts 
in Sudan, including the construction of a pipeline from the southern 
oilfields to the Red Sea and a tanker terminal at Port Sudan. About 
10,000 Chinese people work in the country.

China has greatly increased its investments throughout the continent in 
booming sectors such as mining, fishing, precious woods and telecoms, 
but also in less profitable sectors neglected or abandoned by the West, 
e.g., Zambia’s Chambezi copper mines and the supposedly exhausted oil 
reserves in Gabon.

There are currently around 700 Chinese firms operating in 49 African 
countries. According to the IMF Africa should experience growth of 5.8 
percent this year, the highest for 30 years, fuelled in large part by 
China’s trade with the continent.

“China is competing for anything and everything at this stage,” explains 
Dianna Games, a South African economic and political analyst. “They know 
Africa is wide open to them.”

China also exports manpower and technical expertise, sends doctors and 
nurses to the continent, establishes scholarships for African students 
at Chinese universities, trains African businessmen and trade officials, 
and encourages Chinese businessmen to invest in Africa.

China has invested heavily in privatisations and infrastructure projects 
intended to aid trade and the movement of goods, including: trains, 
roads, buildings, electricity and phone lines, mining prospects and oil 
refineries. It has also invested in tourism and has launched Nigeria’s 
first satellite.

Since the China-Africa Forum in 2000, China has scrapped tariffs on 190 
kinds of imported goods from 28 of the least developed African 
countries, and cancelled $1.2 billion in debt.

China’s export bank has recently given a soft loan to Angola, which has 
given it a stake in oil exploration in shallow waters off the coast. The 
loan is to be used for infrastructure projects, many of which facilitate 
the development of the petroleum industry and wider trade.

Projects under way include railways, roads, a fibre-optic network, 
schools, hospitals, offices and housing developments of up to 5,000 
units. A new airport with direct flights from Luanda to Beijing is also 
planned.

The deal guarantees Angola just 30 percent of the construction 
contracts, with Chinese companies expected to win the remainder. This 
has caused some concern in Angola’s unions, but not in the government. 
“Why would you stop these guys coming?” asks Isaac Maria dos Anjos, a 
ruling party MP. “It absolutely will help the ruling party. We have to 
build hospitals. We have to build bridges. And we will do a lot of it in 
just one year,” i.e., before the next election.

Angolan Finance Minister Jose Pedro de Morais explained that Angola’s 
infrastructure is being rebuilt quickly, which has helped it to 
normalise relations with other banks who are now ready to expand their 
lines of credit.

China’s loan, and its policy of non-interference, has made Angola less 
interested in accepting an IMF conditional loan, which calls for 
economic transparency and the opening up of its books to corporate 
governance concerning its oil contracts.

The multinationals who have traditionally and historically exploited the 
continent’s resources are alarmed at China’s rapid incursions into 
African trade, as are US policymakers and the Western press.

Western analysts have criticised China by claiming that Chinese money is 
enriching corrupt leaders, buying influence, gaining access to 
resources, and is being used as a means to garner support regarding 
Taiwan and United Nations Security Council issues.

Gal Luft of the neo-conservative think tank Institute for the Analysis 
of Global Security, complains along these lines, saying that “it will be 
much easier for [some African] countries to work with Chinese companies, 
rather than American and European companies, which are becoming more 
restricted by the publish-what-you-pay initiative and others calling for 
greater transparency.”

The US Council on Foreign Relations has also issued a bipartisan report 
accusing the Bush administration of lacking a comprehensive, long-term 
strategy for dealing with Africa and urging policymakers to give it 
greater attention. It calls for an upgrade in diplomatic and 
intelligence capabilities by appointing an ambassador to the African 
Union and opening more missions in key African cities, particularly in 
energy-producing countries.

The report criticises the shortcomings of a humanitarian approach, and 
calls for a comprehensive elaboration of US interests. “The United 
States must recognise and act on its rising national interests on the 
continent through a far higher mobilisation of leadership and focused 
resources that target Africa’s new realities.”

It lists a hierarchy of US interests: oil and gas; growing competition 
with China; war on terrorism; HIV/AIDS pandemic; conflict resolution and 
peacekeeping; democracy and human rights; and long-term economic 
development.

The report hypocritically bleats that China “does not share US concern 
for issues of governance, human rights or economic policy.” Duncan 
Innes-Ker, of the Economist Intelligence Unit, concurs. He believes 
“Chinese firms are a little less ethically constrained” than their 
Western counterparts.

China has become more forthright in its arms sales in line with its 
growing economic influence. It sold an estimated $1 billion worth of 
arms to Ethiopia and Eritrea during their border conflict between 1998 
and 2000, comparable to the US selling arms to both sides during the 
Iran-Iraq war. It has also sold arms to both Zimbabwe and Sudan whilst 
they have been under Western arms embargoes, and has sold helicopters to 
Mali and Angola, arms to Namibia and Sierra Leone, and army uniforms to 
Mozambique.

In 2004 China contributed more than 1,500 troops to UN peacekeeping 
across the continent, primarily in the Democratic Republic of Congo and 
Liberia. Chinese peacekeepers were sent to Liberia two months after 
Liberia switched its diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China. “The 
centre of gravity of oil is shifting,” believes Daniel Yergin, chair of 
the Cambridge Energy Research Associates. “Last year, Asia consumed more 
oil than North America”.

This shift is having an impact on Africa where it will stimulate more 
intense rivalries for access to that continent’s resources.