Valentina Pasquali – Washington Prism
New trade deals worth $2 billion were signed at a recent meeting of 48 African heads of state gathered in Beijing for the China-Africa summit, organized by the People’s Republic of China (PRC). China’s goal was to assess the status of its flourishing relations with the African continent.
Indicators of trade flows, arm sales, diplomatic ties and cultural exchanges are on the rise. Since 1995, trade between China and Africa has doubled each year. The overall volume rocketed to $39.7 billion in 2005.
Participants to the forum also passed an action plan, laying out cooperative programs from 2007 to 2009 under the framework of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC). China has already canceled 10. 5 billion RMB Yuan (Chinese currency, about $1.3 billion) in debt to 31 least developed countries in Africa, and has accorded zero-tariff treatment to 190 categories of import commodities from 29 countries. At the forum, China promised to stay the course and pledged to double its current aid by 2009.
The booming relation with Africa is among the brightest examples of the direction of Chinese foreign policy and of Beijing’s rising influence as a global power. China’s overall role on the international scene is marked by significant improvements in many of its bilateral dealings; like with its South and Southeast Asian neighbors, South Korea, and the European Union.
This can in part be attributed to President Hu Jintao’s focus on military and foreign policy issues according to Jamestown foundation fellow Willy Wo-Lap Lam. “Hu wants to be remembered as a foreign policy president, because he knows that domestic problems cannot be as easily solved,” said Willy Lam at a recent conference at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research center in Washington. Hu has a good record thus far. “He has exploited successfully the vacuum created by US President George Bush’ single-mind obsession with fighting the War on Terror,” Willy Lam continued. Contrary to its interactions in other regions, Bejing is one of the first players on the scene in Africa to be pushing for a stronger engagement. “They want to be the first movers, they want to get on the deal,” said international business consultant Walter Kansteiner, former Undersecretary of State for Africa. The basis of the China-Africa relationship is economic. Beijing looks at Africa as a way to feed its industrial base at home, which needs raw materials, especially timber and iron ore. China is trading in oil, copper, platinum, gold and nickel with Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, in timber with Cameroon, in iron ore with South Africa and Mozambique. Beijing is also assisting in building infrastructures, as like the railroad construction in Angola that is estimated to be employing between 10,000 and 40,000 Chinese workers. The United States is striving to get a better grasp of the scope and depth of such trends in China’s international economics policy as a way to make better-informed decisions for its dealings with Beijing. Such effort encounters a number of obstacles according to Paul Hare of the US-Angola Chamber of Commerce. “We do not know how much money is really on the table, we do not know how many Chinese are in Angola, we do not know how contracts are awarded, we do not know how many Angolans work for Chinese companies,” said Hare at a Conference in Washington D.C. In October 2000, Congress established the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) under the Floyd D. Spence National Defense Authorization Act. The USCC is intended as a means of monitoring, investigating, and submitting to Congress an annual report on the national security implications of the bilateral trade and economic relationship between the United States and the China. The commission is also responsible for providing recommendations to Congress for legislative and administrative action. The work of the USCC is centered on eight areas: proliferation practices, economic transfers, energy, U.S. capital markets, regional economic and security impacts, U.S.-China bilateral programs, WTO compliance, and the implications of restrictions on speech and access to information in China. On Nov. 16, at a press conference for the release of the USCC annual report to Congress the commission’s Chairman Larry Wortzel expressed concern about China’s current stance. “The Commission believes that while China is a global actor, its sense of responsibility has not kept up with its expanding power,” Wortzel said. The report offers recommendations to the US Congress on six different areas, from US-China bilateral trade relations, to China’s global and regional activities, to domestic issues such as media and its control over flow of information.
The USCC gives a harsh assessment of most of China’s policies. “The Commission hopes that China will use its position on the United Nations Security Council and its growing political influence in Asia, Africa, and elsewhere to address many serious problems. But this has not yet happened,” Wortzel said. The USCC urges the Bush administration to take action against currency manipulation on the part of the Chinese government, which does not let the RMB Yuan value float openly on international markets. It also calls for the US trade representative to press ahead on property rights issues because of China’s “manifest failures to enforce them.”
The commission further advises the administration to raise the issue of media and Internet freedom and to “remind its counterpart that jailing journalists for publishing information it finds distasteful only draws negative attention from the international community.” The report also encourages China’s assistance in a resolution of conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan. The Commission further writes that the US needs to secure “a resolution to the conflict that will halt the genocide occurring there and provide security and basic human rights for the affected population.” Sudan remains the most striking example of concern that China’s approach to Africa creates among US official. At a recent conference in Washington DC, Carolyn Bartholomew, vice-Chairman of the USCC Commission and former Chief of Staff for the incoming Speaker of the House, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), said; “China appears willing to deal with rogue states for oil or in order to counterbalance the United States.” She then added that “there is no more destructive bilateral relationship in Africa than that between China and Sudan, as far as US interests and the interests of the people of Sudan are concerned.”
In Washington, many worry about the ease with which China provides Africa with aid that is entirely unattached to any moral quandary. Beijing refuses to link its economic relations with the continent to human rights or democracy as the US and other Western countries want. “Chinese assistance to Africa is sincere, unselfish and has no strings attached," said China’s Premier Wen Jiabao at the China-Africa Forum.
As China’s growing diplomatic influence approaches the scale of its booming economic importance, the USCC writes that the US should be skeptical of “Beijing commitment to accept its geopolitical responsibilities.” With its increasing power being felt across many regions, the report argues that “China’s posture as a potential counterweight to the United States, and its disposition to support volatile and repressive regimes as its client states is of particular concern.”
Valentina Pasquali writes for Washington Prism |
