We Love China

When I first went to Africa in the early 1980s, it was rare to see a Chinese face, other than in embassies or Chinese restaurants. Now, the Chinese are everywhere—building the new State House in Uganda, starting joint businesses in South Africa and, most significantly, establishing themselves in countries with natural resources. Chinese companies are involved in mining, timber, fishing and precious stones. Above all, they are involved in oil.

Second only to the United States in its oil consumption, China needs Africa’s resources to fuel its own phenomenal growth. In oil-rich countries like Angola, Chad, Nigeria and Sudan, the influence of former colonial powers is waning. The Chinese government imposes no political conditions on African governments before signing contracts for exploration or production. No Chinese pressure groups lobby Chinese oil companies about ‘transparency’ or environmental damage. Not surprisingly, African governments welcome these undemanding new investors.

I employed a young Sudanese journalist, Nima Elbagir, to find out how Chinese investment was changing Sudan, 2,500 miles from Sierra Leone on the other side of the continent. She got hold of the Sudanese energy ministry video archive of Chinese activities in the oil sector: earnest seismologists on their knees tapping the dry, brown desert for the latest oil find; the Sudanese President, Omar al-Bashir, and the head of the African division of the Chinese National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) at a ribbon cutting ceremony for the new oil refinery at Al Jaily, north of Khartoum. She filmed billboards across the capital showing smiling Sudanese and Chinese oil workers in yellow hard hats shaking hands, with the legend — in Chinese, Arabic and English — CNPC: YOUR CLOSE FRIEND AND FAITHFUL PARTNER.

Sixty per cent of Sudan’s oil goes to China; twelve per cent of China’s oil comes from Sudan. No wonder the Sudanese government is untroubled by the oil sanctions which prevent American investment. ‘With the Chinese, we don’t feel any interference in our Sudanese traditions or politics or beliefs or behaviours,’ Awad al-Jaz, Sudan’s energy minister said when Nima interviewed him on camera in Khartoum. He smiled as if trying to suppress a laugh. ‘Business is business. There is no other business but the business.’

In 2004, when Britain and the US pushed for a punitive UN Security Council resolution against Sudan for the mass killing of civilians in Darfur, China threatened a veto. The weaker resolution which passed with Chinese approval had little impact. Chinese companies have built three small-arms factories near Khartoum; most of the weapons used by government forces and militia in Darfur are manufactured there or in China.

Human rights workers have a new problem here. As their economic interest in Africa has declined, Europe and America have gone along with calls for ‘good governance’ and an end to human rights abuse in Africa. It is easy to moralize at regimes which you have no reason to cultivate. But such regimes will not cow to this new moralizing if China is offering practical support without conditions. In May 2005, President Robert Mugabe —regarded as a pariah by Europe and the United States — told the crowd celebrating twenty-five years of Zimbabwe’s independence: ‘We have turned east, where the sun rises, and given our back to the west, where the sun sets.’

When white farmers dominated commercial agriculture, Zimbabwe used to sell tobacco at international auction. Now the auction houses in Harare are silent — tobacco goes directly to China’s 300 million smokers, as payment in kind for loans and investment from Chinese banks to Zimbabwe's bankrupt state-run companies. As Zimbabwe’s agricultural sector collapses, the Chinese are taking over land the Zimbabwean government confiscated from white farmers, and cultivating the crops they need. On a recent visit to Beijing, President Mugabe — who was armed by the Chinese during the bush war against Ian Smith’s Rhodesian forces — was given an honorary professorship at the Foreign Affairs University for his ‘remarkable contribution in the work of diplomacy and international relations’. The same week, a UN report condemned his government for demolishing 700,000 homes and businesses 'with indifference to human suffering’.

In Freetown last June, rainstorms made the electricity cut out even more frequently than usual. The hi-tech console controlling the lights and TV in each room at the Bintumani bleeped in the night, as the power surged and faded. The new casino, a joint venture by a Chinese man called Henry and an Irishman called Derek with collar-length hair and a 1970s wide-lapel suit, was not busy. Chinese businessmen spun the roulette wheel, while a few glum Lebanese played slot machines, gambling with money they may soon lose anyway, as the Chinese break their traditional monopoly on trade in West Africa.

Sierra Leone’s ambassador to Beijing, Sahr Johnny, was hosting a Chinese delegation planning investments in hydroelectric power and agriculture. ‘The Chinese are doing more than the G8 to make poverty history,’ he said. ‘If a G8 country had wanted to rebuild the stadium, we’d still be holding meetings! The Chinese just come and do it. They don't hold meetings about environmental impact assessment, human rights, bad governance and good governance. I’m not saying it’s right, just that Chinese investment is succeeding because they don't set high benchmarks.’

Like most African diplomats, Mr Johnny sent his children abroad to study. The two girls work in Britain, but his son is in Hong Kong, learning Mandarin and Cantonese.