ANALYSIS-Ethiopia attack shows dangers of China's Africa push
26 Apr 2007 09:04:34 GMT Source: Reuters
By Andrew Heavens ADDIS ABABA, April 26 (Reuters) - A deadly guerrilla attack on an oil installation in Ethiopia's remote east has highlighted the growing penetration and perils of Chinese interests in the vast Horn of Africa nation and the continent as a whole. The most visible evidence of China's presence lies in the miles upon miles of Chinese-engineered roads rolling across almost every region. Key trade routes limited to single-lane, rutted tracks for centuries are being transformed into smooth, asphalted highways. China is now Ethiopia's largest trading partner, according to its embassy here. More than $130 million of exports headed out to Beijing from January to September last year alone, according to the latest figures available. But the widening of Chinese interests exposes them to potentially dangerous areas in every corner of Ethiopia. The nine Chinese workers killed by separatist rebels on Tuesday were searching for signs of hydrocarbon riches in Ethiopia's harsh Somali region. Chinese construction camps have sprung up in the Tigray region, close to the contested border with Eritrea, and the desert area of Afar, scene of last month's kidnapping of Ethiopian and European travellers. Outside Ethiopia, there are concerns about the low wages offered by Chinese firms to African workers. But here, where workers can earn as little as 10 birr ($1.10) a day in the domestic construction industry, reaction to the Asian visitors has been much more positive. "These Chinese are true gentlemen," businessman Abdulahi Asawe told Reuters from his base in the Somali region's capital Jijiga, just over an hour's drive from Tuesday's attack. "Just last year you could barely get one lorry at a time down the road from Jijiga to Dire Dawa," he said, referring to a city on the trading route to Djibouti and the Red Sea. "Now they have blasted away two lanes and the asphalt is coming." HIGH STAKES Beyond roads, Chinese traders have dipped into restaurants, large-scale construction and even bamboo furniture-making. Trade has been sweetened by zero-tariff deals on a range of Ethiopian commodities that increased bilateral business between the two countries by around 55 percent in 2006 to $394 million. The only sign of souring relations came when China started dabbling in Ethiopian oil. The separatist Ogaden National Liberation Front, which claimed credit for Tuesday's attack, said it had warned China not to touch its region's natural resources. "Unfortunately this warning fell on deaf ears," the group said. The Somali region slaughter came after the abduction of Chinese oil workers in volatile southern Nigeria. Other anti-China rumblings have been heard in Zambia, over investment policies, and South Africa, over lost jobs in the textile industry. Beijing is also under political pressure for dealing generously with Sudan despite the Darfur conflict. China will not be shutting up its African shop soon because it banks on African raw materials to fuel its booming economy. Two-way trade with the continent rose from about $3 billion in 1995 to $40 billion in 2005 and is expected to reach $100 billion by 2010. But Beijing may start showing a little more discretion about precisely where it does business. "Anti-government organizations adopt terrorist tactics and attack multi-national companies to put the Ethiopian authorities in a corner and attract international attention to achieve their goal," Liu Naiya, an African studies' expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told China Daily after the attack. "These frequent tragedies also remind us that China has to take real steps to overcome the challenges arising out of its expanding foreign trade cooperation."
