JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — Every time newspaper publisher Trevor Ncube visits his native Zimbabwe, he said, there seem to be more Chinese. He sees them shopping at boutiques, driving fancy cars, picking up their children from elite private schools.
And as in much of Africa, Ncube said, China’s reach into Zimbabwe’s economy is equally pervasive: The roads are filled with Chinese buses, the markets with Chinese goods, and Chinese-made planes are in the skies. Chinese companies are major investors in mining and telecommunications. The government in Beijing, meanwhile, backs Zimbabwe’s authoritarian president, Robert Mugabe.
“They are all over the place,” said Ncube, 43, who owns newspapers in Zimbabwe and South Africa. “If the British were our masters yesterday, the Chinese have come and taken their place.”
Such unease appears to be rising across Africa as Chinese become powerful players — and, in some places, the dominant ones — in economies across the continent. China’s appetite for raw materials is helping push sub-Saharan economies to their fastest growth in 30 years, and inexpensive Chinese-made products are suddenly available. Yet many Africans say the influx, while offering consumers more affordable goods, has not improved their economic situation and has hurt local companies.
African and Western activists say China’s increasingly close ties to troubled governments in Angola, Nigeria, Sudan and Zimbabwe are undermining efforts to nurture democracy and improve human rights.
When Chinese President Hu Jintao toured Africa in April, he implicitly responded to concerns about his country’s growing role on the continent.
“China’s development will not bring a threat to anyone but, instead, will only bring more opportunities and space for development to the world,” Hu told the Nigerian National Assembly, according to news reports.
He also restated China’s policy of making business deals without any expectation that governments will improve democracy, respect human rights or fight corruption. He said in Nairobi, that China follows “a policy of noninterference in other countries’ internal affairs.”
“See no evil”
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, who visited the Republic of Congo on Monday as part of a seven-nation African tour, aims to sign more deals to keep natural resources flowing to China.
He stopped earlier in Egypt and Ghana and heads next to Angola, China’s biggest African supplier of oil, accounting for 14 percent of its imports. He also is scheduled to visit South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda.
In Egypt, he signed 10 oil, natural-gas and telecommunications deals. He also agreed to give Egypt a $50 million loan and a $10 million grant to encourage investment in an industrial area northwest of the Gulf of Suez.
In Ghana, he signed an agreement to lend the small West African nation about $66 million to pay for a number of projects. One is a plan to upgrade Ghana’s communications network.
China’s overall trade with Africa rose from $10.6 billion in 2000 to $40 billion last year and continues to increase, according to Chinese government statistics.
Sub-Saharan Africa’s economic growth rate, meanwhile, has nearly doubled in the same period, from 3 percent to an estimated 5.8 percent this year, the best since 1974, according to the International Monetary Fund. Among the major factors, analysts and economists say, is the increasing trade with China.
“Those places that are energy-rich and mineral-rich are awash in cash,” said J. Stephen Morrison, head of the Africa program for the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“And that is driven in part by these new, rapid-growth Asian economies.”
China spent billions securing drilling rights in Nigeria, Sudan and Angola, and has exploration or extraction deals with Chad, Gabon, Mauritania, Kenya, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Ethiopia.
The Chinese also invested in the booming copper industry in Zambia and Congo and are major buyers of timber in Gabon, Cameroon, Mozambique, Equatorial Guinea and Liberia.
Chinese companies were widely criticized for keeping former president and war-crimes suspect, Charles Taylor, flush with cash and prolonging Liberia’s devastating civil war. The Chinese also helped push up the prices of other African exports, such as platinum, iron and coal.
Across Africa, meanwhile, Chinese companies have outbid other foreign firms on construction projects, winning contracts to pave highways, build hydroelectric dams, upgrade ports, lay railway tracks and build pipelines, all of which stand to help Chinese companies more effectively transport African resources.
Infrastructure improvements often are explicitly traded for raw-material contracts. In Angola, where the government has done little to alleviate poverty or stimulate democracy since the end of a civil war in 2002, China promised $2 billion in aid as part of a deal for oil rights. Human-rights activists say that influx of cash stiffened the government’s resolve against outside pressure, mostly from the West, to make improvements.
Countries that sign deals with Chinese companies also win diplomatic protection. China, as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, threatened to use its veto power to block sanctions against Sudan, which U.S. officials and others accuse of committing genocide in its Darfur region. That conflict has killed at least 180,000 people and forced more than 2 million from their homes in the past three years.
China also resisted efforts by the United Nations to investigate and punish Mugabe for a “cleanup campaign” last year in which police destroyed slums and markets, depriving 700,000 Zimbabweans of either their homes or their jobs.
China has been a significant supplier of jet fighters, military vehicles and guns to Zimbabwe, Sudan and other repressive governments.
“Wherever there are resources, the Chinese are going to go there,” said Peter Takirambudde, head of the Africa division for Human Rights Watch. “They see no evil. They hear no evil. That’s very bad for Africans.”
Mixed blessing
The Chinese influx can benefit African economies. Commodities used in manufacturing, such as oil, copper and platinum, are surging because of demand from China and other Asian nations. Copper prices have increased sixfold since a 2001 low, topping $8,000 a ton in recent trading. Platinum prices have tripled in that time.
The availability of Chinese motorcycles, air conditioners, T-shirts and kitchen utensils has meant lower prices for consumers across the continent. In South Africa, two companies plan to introduce Chinese automobiles to the domestic market at discount prices.
But the payoff to ordinary Africans, especially the poor or unemployed, is mixed.
In South Africa and Lesotho, low-cost Chinese imports have been blamed for tens of thousands of layoffs in the textile industry. And as the rates of economic growth climbed, Africans reported that their national economies and the financial conditions of individuals seem to have stagnated, according to Afrobarometer, a polling project that has sampled public opinion in 12 sub-Saharan countries since 2000.
In results released last month, 27 percent of those polled expressed satisfaction with their own finances, a drop from 31 percent in 2000. The sharpest decline was in Nigeria, where upbeat ratings of personal finances fell from 68 percent in 2000 to 45 percent. The decline came despite surging oil profits there and growing trade with China.
Material from The Associated Press is included in this report.
