PREVIEW - Hu visit may mark end of China's African honeymoon
28 Jan 2007 09:42:14 GMT Source: Reuters
By Andrew Quinn JOHANNESBURG, Jan 28 (Reuters) - Less than a year after his last visit, Chinese President Hu Jintao will make another swing through Africa this week amid growing signs that Beijing's African honeymoon may be nearing its end. Hu's eight nation tour starts in Cameroon on Jan. 30 and is expected to yield a stream of business deals and aid pledges, part of a flood of Chinese largesse towards the world's poorest continent in the last three years. African governments generally welcome the growth in Chinese economic ties, which have thus far centred on oil and other raw materials and come free of the political conditions often imposed by Western countries. At a landmark Sino-African summit in Beijing last year, Hu offered $5 billion in loans and credits to Africa along with a doubling of aid. Two-way trade, meanwhile, rose from about $3 billion in 1995 to $40 billion in 2005 and is expected to reach $100 billion by 2010 while it has already pumped some $6 billion in investments into the continent. But increasingly analysts warn that poor African countries may come out the losers unless they carefully examine deals with China and protect their weak manufacturing sectors from a flood of cheaper Chinese imports. "The phenomenal growth and dynamism of this Asian giant economy inspires a double sense of respect and worry," said Professor Touna Mama, an economic adviser to the Cameroonian prime minister. For Beijing, Hu's Africa trip may also mark the start of a more sober assessment of its African relationships. One of his stops, Sudan, is a key oil supplier for Beijing but also a diplomatic liability as Western countries push China to use its leverage on Khartoum on the Darfur crisis. China's African headaches don't end there. Over the past year Beijing has seen its oil workers kidnapped in Nigeria, its investment policies attacked in Zambia's elections and its textile exports to South Africa criticised for destroying jobs. "The massive growth in trade is what grips the imagination, but Africa now has to look at the details: who is really gaining from these deals, and by how much," said John Rocha, a South African economic analyst. "What we are seeing now is the product of a careful, meticulous planning process by the Chinese. Unfortunately the same cannot be said from the African side." "NO SINISTER AGENDA" Hu will visit Cameroon, Sudan, Namibia, South Africa, the Seychelles, Liberia, Zambia and Mozambique between Jan. 30 and Feb. 10. South African Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad said Pretoria -- which will host Hu from Feb 6-8 -- will push to cut Beijing's $3 billion trade surplus, but still believed China's courtship of Africa was hugely beneficial. "There is no sinister agenda," Pahad told a recent news briefing. "They just realise the potential for Africa." Other analysts say China's partnerships with Africa are also spurring renewed interest in the continent among China's rivals including the United States, Russia and Europe, bringing additional benefits. Eckart Naumann, an economist at South Africa's Trade Law Centre, said recent U.S. moves to improve trade relations with African countries could be attributed in part to fear of China's growing influence on the continent. "Much of the current scramble for Africa must surely be the competing interest shown by China," he said in a recent article. But not all Africans are convinced that China should be given carte blanche. Hu may run into discontent during his stop in Zambia, where workers at Chinese-owned copper mines have rioted over poor pay conditions and opposition leaders have criticised the government for being too close to Beijing. The Chinese visitors may also hear grumbling over Beijing's slow moves to help improve Africa's own manufacturing capabilities and its insistence on using imported Chinese labour to build major infrastructure projects despite Africa's own huge unemployment problem. "Our challenge is to how to break away from exporting raw materials to exporting value-added products," said Tarah Shaanika, head of the Namibian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Professor Macharia Munene at United States International University in Nairobi said Africa's excitement over its new links with China was driven in part by the terrible deals it has received from traditional economic partners in the West. "The Chinese are agreeing to reciprocity and to treating African countries a little more fairly than the West did, and that is why they look very attractive," he said. "It is not a benevolent thing, it is a trade-off. It will be folly of us to think that the Chinese are not interested in their own interests." (additional reporting by Helen Nyambura-Mwaura in Nairobi, Shapi Shacinda in Lusaka, Desiewaar Heita in Windhoek, and Tansa Musa in Cameroon)
