The panda menace.

• Author: Halff, Antoine
• Position: Africa on My Mind - Chinese economy

I AM PRIMARILY an energy specialist--not a China specialist--but these days it is impossible to think about energy, the Middle East, the future of Africa or just about anything without thinking long and hard about China.

Like everyone in the energy sphere, I have seen my world transformed these last few years by the surge in China's demand for energy and other commodities. Many see China's achievements in this area as the triumph of mercantilism: A foreign policy blindly driven by short-term commercial interests and divorced from any other consideration, be it human rights, good governance, democracy or environmental sustainability. But China's advance is not without setbacks. Its very successes--especially in Africa--are generating a growing backlash that highlights the broader problems and limitations of its general "go-abroad" policy. As a result, Beijing is outgrowing pure mercantilism--and China is becoming a victim of its own success.

That China's growth means accumulating not just leverage but also liabilities is particularly clear in Africa. Beijing's advance there, eased by Western post-colonial neglect, has been especially rapid, but is now generating all kinds of adverse reactions. China's African forays have benefited from several factors. First, unlike the West, China has no colonial baggage in Africa but is still generally perceived as a partner in growth and emancipation. A leader of the Non-Aligned Movement, China provided African countries with political support and development assistance (medical, educational and otherwise) during the postwar decolonization period. Today, Chinese corporations in Africa have government, economic and political support that tie resource deals, massive aid and development packages. These include cheap loans (some of which have been written off altogether by Beijing as part of a debt-forgiveness program) and massive infrastructure projects (roads, railways, ports, dams, etc.). Such loans and aid packages come with "no strings attached": They are free of the governance requirements, such as transparency and accountability, generally associated with aid measures from international lending institutions like the IMF and the World Bank. Instead, China professes to separate business from politics and to practice a policy of "non-interference" in the domestic affairs of foreign states. Sometimes aid includes a military component: Beijing has been a key arms supplier to the Sudanese junta, has provided Zimbabwe with military equipment to jam opposition radio programs during electoral campaigns and recently has begun to supply the Nigerian regime with arms to quash rebel militias in the Niger Delta.

All those features have made China vastly popular with ruling elites, especially in such isolated regimes as Zimbabwe and Sudan. But the flip side is that Africa's civil society regards China's expansion with growing suspicion. China's arms deals expose it to charges of being an accomplice to human-rights abuses and armed aggression perpetrated by its trading partners. Beijing's claim that it does not interfere in the internal affairs of its partners is "untrue, provocative and insulting to many Africans who are aspiring to further democratic values", writes Sudanese commentator Ali Askouri, director of the London-based Piankhi Research Group. Likewise, China's willingness to back infrastructure projects with little consideration for their environmental impact and the poor environmental record of its mining and oil extractive companies in Africa are becoming increasingly controversial. "After so many years of being colonized by the Portuguese, are we now being colonized again, in the name of development but under the new flag of 'economic partnership with China'?" ask Mozambican environmental activists Anabela Lemos and Daniel Ribeiro. Lastly, China's propensity to flood African markets with cheap Chinese-manufactured goods, while undermining domestic manufacturers as it imports much of Africa's energy and raw materials, has prompted charges that Beijing simply stepped into the role of the colonial powers of yesteryear with whom it once stood in sharp contrast. In so doing, China risks squandering the capital of goodwill amassed during the decolonization era. "As far as Africa is concerned ... the giant panda will carry on from where the colonialists and imperialists left", warns John Blessing Karumbidza, economic historian and sociologist at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa.

Cracks are beginning to show in the Chinese-African partnership. While this burgeoning...