Africa gives China more than business

BARELY a month goes by without some new energy or mineral deal being struck between China and an African nation. These deals have transfixed the West, but China gets far more from the relationship than raw resources.

Africa offers China two important things – a chance to earn the global respect it believes it deserves in recognition of its growing economic clout, and friends who do not judge it, or who at least have little reason to directly fear China’s rise.Communist China’s friendly relations with Africa go back decades, to when Beijing backed newly independent states as well as liberation movements.China’s backing of the continent was vital in getting it into the UN in 1971.’You could argue that the contemporary driver is economic, but they’ve always had a political interest in Africa, from the mid-1950s onward,’ said Chris Alden, of the London School of Economics.Alden said as China became a more active player in multilateral affairs, it had come to recognise that it needed partners, and ‘Africa in many ways is a very suitable partner’.In 2006, President Hu Jintao promised a leap in investment, trade and aid at Beijing’s first summit with African leaders. At the G20 summit of big developed and developing economies last November, he raised the issue of Africa’s needs during the global economic turmoil.When Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao visits Egypt for the second Africa-China summit from November 8 to 9, analysts and diplomats expect him to match the US$5 billion (N$39,3 billion) in loans and credit offered then by Hu, or even exceed it.Africa’s combined gross national product is about US$1,2 trillion, roughly one quarter the size of China’s $4.4 trillion economy. ‘While savouring the fruits of its own growth, China has never forgotten its obligations to the African brothers,’ the official Xinhua news agency said in a recent commentary. Hu’s commitment to Africa appears to reflect his belief that the continent offers a friendly stage to demonstrate to the wider world that China’s growth and international policies are a global good.’They would like to demonstrate that their benign intentions are best represented in places like Africa,’ said Alden.Africa also offers China important diplomatic support that it invariably does not get from the US, Europe or even other countries in Asia, especially when it comes to contentious issues like UN votes on human rights.’We need the vote from African countries whenever we are facing voting events, like the Shanghai Expo, Olympic Games and human rights,’ said He Wenping at China’s Institute of West African and African Studies.Of course, none of this is to say that business deals and investments in mines and oil fields are not important.Trade between China and African countries has surged by an average annual 30 per cent for much of the past decade, driven by China’s appetite for oil and minerals, and its sales of clothes, cars, telecommunications and other goods to Africa.Yet the investments go beyond simply buying up natural resources. China’s largest bank, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, owns 20 per cent of Standard Bank. Huawei Technologies, China’s biggest telecoms equipment maker, is pushing south from its established stamping ground in north Africa. Peer ZTE is another Chinese player growing in importance in Africa.’Not everything is driven by politics – it’s driven by business,’ said Martyn Davies, executive director of Stellenbosch University’s Centre for Chinese Studies in South Africa. ‘All the companies that are investing in Africa are making a lot of money.’With developed markets either saturated or entry requirements too high, Chinese firms saw Africa as a great untapped market, added Duncan Innes-Ker, a China analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit. See also report on page 17.-Nampa-Reuters