China – it’s an understatement to say – is interested in Africa. Other nations had shown interest before it. Not to mention France, which for historical reasons – colonial, its critics would say – considered it its own backyard just a few decades ago. Under Bill Clinton’s administration, the United States also took its chance there. We remember the trip by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and her statement to African officials, “Trade not aid,” with which America hoped to regain its foothold by stimulating economic exchanges. It achieved little success. In the late 1980s, Japan also endeavored to create a specific commercial dynamic in this direction. The Japanese Embassy in Paris had set up an office specifically dedicated to African affairs, presumably believing that it could benefit from the pathways and keys provided by its presence in the French capital. Is China succeeding where others have failed?
The African tour of Chinese President Hu Jintao has made Africans dream as it has worried Western powers. With a program of three billion dollars in preferential credits over three years including a plan to double public aid and zero-interest loans, the Chinese president has already fulfilled much of the promises announced at the China-Africa summit last November in Beijing. African exports of raw materials, in which China’s double-digit growth seems to make it insatiable, have increased twelvefold in value over the past six years. Trade between China and Africa is now five times higher than in 2001, with exchanges nearing fifty-six billion dollars. The long list of commitments made by Beijing can only capture Western attention. After all, China will be providing loans or debt relief to heavily indebted countries, subject to delicate negotiations between public creditors of the Paris Club—of which the Middle Kingdom is not a part. With Chinese investments on the African continent increasing by 327% in the last two years, the concerns of Africa’s traditional clients are not necessarily unfounded.
The official absence of political conditions allows China to appear as an uninterested partner. “China does not intend to repeat the feats of Western colonialists,” Chinese officials have hammered at each of their stops on the continent. Yet, one must not mention discreetly the wish expressed by President Hu Jintao to his counterparts not to establish – or to break – relations with Taiwan while inviting them to follow Chinese voting instructions at the United Nations Assembly and the Human Rights Commission. Everything has a price.
Nations that have not achieved a lasting foothold in Africa can always play Cassandras and predict China’s downfall due to corruption among elites and political instability that ultimately undermine any hope of return on investment. But China is not the West. In Africa, it brings in Asian populations whom it employs as a cheaper workforce than African workers. The locally manufactured products as well as nearby jobs might also be threatened in the long run by the “Chinese wave,” possibly creating social tensions as in Zambia. Not to mention investments in oil infrastructure in countries with poor human rights records like Sudan, where China refuses to leverage its influence. Criteria for good economic governance – not to mention political – are barely emerging in the speeches of the Chinese Communist Party. Washington has just filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization against Beijing, a member of the WTO since 2001. State subsidies practiced by China for its industries, problems of quotas in the textile field, and the issue of the yuan’s value – the Chinese currency – are the main grievances. Many WTO member states consider that China has received a lot from this membership for which it has, conversely, given very little.
The President of Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa and also the continent’s leading oil producer, said to the Chinese president at an official dinner: “We would like China to lead the world… and in that case, we just want to be behind you.” One would have thought that the African experience would have allowed its leaders to learn from the past: To be strong is to have friends; being weak generally only attracts “protectors.”
