In the late 19th century Cecil Rhodes, the De Beers Corporation founder, evaluating possible risks to his plans in Africa named the “Yellow Peril”, unexpectedly for all, and said that he would never let Chinese immigrants into Rhodesia. The laconic and blunt verbiage of Cecil Rhodes like, for instance, his notorious phrase about “educated Africans fraught with danger” were highly valued by his contemporaries, but in that particular case, his fears caused perplexity, to say the least. At the time, C. Rhodes had quite enough problems with Boers, Ndebeles and Shonas and there were no omens of any Chinese competitors, political or economic, even on the horizon. Great Britain, France and Germany were absorbed in slicing the “African pie” while China was dormant in its semi-colonial state and any serious Chinese expansion in Africa at that time seemed fantastic. Of Rhodes’ contemporaries with strategic interests in the Black Continent, only his good acquaintance Kaiser Wilhelm II duly appreciated the prophesy, ordering an impressive allegoric painting entitled “The Yellow Peril”, and a couple of years later sent a military expedition to China instructing his officers in indigenously German traditions: “Do not show any mercy. Do not take any prisoners of war. The word “German” must terrify China for the next one thousand years!”
It took two generations and two world wars before the first solid Chinese project was realized in Africa – in 1956, the People’s Republic of China built a railway in Tanzania. After another half a century, Rhodes’ prophecy finally turned true – China became the major competitor of the West in Africa. Today in 49 African countries, there are over 800 enterprises with Chinese participation. Only the official statistics say that more than 80 000 Chinese (according to unofficial data, the figure is four times as much) are working in Africa and about 15 000 African students are studying at higher educational institutions in China. The annual bilateral trade turnover surpassed the level of $55 billion while its annual growth rate is more than 30%. China is the second to the U.S.A. only by its import of raw materials from Africa and the gap is quickly narrowing; as for its export of goods and services to Africa, China outstripped the U.S.A. as far back as 2003; its supply range “clears away” almost all the needs of the continent – from cheap textiles and home electronics to mining machinery, weapons and commercial space flights.
There are three major components featuring in the Chinese expansion to Africa: deideologization; huge credits whose significant part covers the infrastructural development; and non-transparent export of weapons and services within the frames of military-technical cooperation.
If some African regime provides access to coveted resources on acceptable terms, its political image is of no importance to China any more. Such a pragmatic Chinese stance sets new rules in the African game. The demands addressed to African states to improve their political systems, to observe human rights, to develop civil societies and democratic institutions, to fight down corruption – all those finely tuned influence tools worked out by Western importers of African mineral resources in the course of last thirty years were discarded by China as needless trash. If one takes into consideration that all possible options of “a socialist way of development” ebbed in Africa by the time of the U.S.S.R. collapse, it should be admitted that China not only occupied free niches but also cornered its Western competitors. The positions of authoritarian rulers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo, Sudan, Zimbabwe and Angola have become more stable against the claims of not only human rights organizations, but also against those of the International Monetary Fund after they acquired a so powerful and unruffled partner.
The Chinese investment policy in Africa is worth admiring. By 2010, the amount of annual investments is expected to reach $10 billion and the trade turnover may exceed $100 billion a year or 25% of the Chinese foreign trade turnover taken as a whole. It should be noted that China not only invests in mining projects, but also puts huge amounts of money into the infrastructure of African countries. According to an agreement reached in September 2007 between China and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the latter will receive a $5 billion credit of which $2 billion will be allocated to develop mining projects and $3 billion to build automobile roads and railways, 30 hospitals, 5000 residential houses and 2 universities. Such generosity arouses skeptic assessments among Chinese competitors; thus, according to Raymond W. Copson, an expert on African affairs at the Congressional Research Service of the U.S. Library of Congress, “It is unlikely that the U.S.A. will want to rival with China in granting big loans pegged to large-scale projects aimed at infrastructural development. This is actually a kind of “assistance with supplementary conditions”: experts in the field of development have long recognized such policy ineffective.” Such practice is indeed inefficient for any European state, including Russia, as well as for the U.S.A. and Canada. However, China has a resource unavailable to any of its competitors. The quickly erected infrastructure is not only and not so much a tool to win the sympathy of black leaders and the preferences in mining projects, but a source of jobs. However, these jobs are not for Africans. In Africa, there are no local specialists to staff the impetuously built scores of new hospitals, schools, railways, telecommunication networks and universities. But there are a lot of such specialists in China – hundreds of thousands of professionals ready to work in Africa on terms unacceptable neither for Europeans nor for Americans. Today, according to some estimates, there are about 300 000 of them in Africa and if by 2010 the flow of Chinese investments will more than triple there will be millions of them there.
In summer 2006, Amnesty International published a report under the title “China: Sustaining conflict and human rights abuses”, which analyses the Chinese practice of armaments export to some African countries. The summary was as follows: China is quickly turning into one of the largest and irresponsible world exporters of armaments. The Chinese export of armaments, which is in excess of $1 billion annually, often involves exchange of armaments for rough materials supplied to the rapidly expanding Chinese economy. However, this trade segment is kept under the veil of secrecy; Beijing does not publish any data on armaments export and during the last eight years did not submit any data to the register of conventional armaments of the United Nations.” Today in Africa there is not a single conflict without Chinese armaments, ammunition and military equipment; the total supply of arms is indeed not clear, but the Chinese khaki-color business may be observed in the area from Sudan to South Africa and from Angola to Uganda. Non-transparency of this business is quite explicable taking into account non-conventional solutions, like for instance the organization of a security system for the oil facilities in Sudan engaging 4 000 commandos disguised as workers, as well as using prisoners at some of the mining companies. It remains to be added that during the last five years the staff of the “African Department” of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the People’s Liberation Army of China more than tripled exceeding 10 000 agents – an unprecedented figure in the entire history of this organization.
Today the main African resource for China is oil. The African share in the Chinese oil import toppled 30% and Beijing has set the target to raise this index up to 45% by 2015. In spring 2006, CNOOC, a Chinese government oil and gas corporation, entered a deal to buy 45% of the Nigerian Akpo oil field for $2.27 billion. Simultaneously, another government corporation, CNPC, is expanding its presence in Nigeria and Sudan, while Sinopec follows suit in Angola and Gabon. Angola has already received a $2 billion worth credit and Gabon has entered an agreement on a $3 billion loan from China, which is going to obtain 85% of the world’s largest iron ore deposit at Belinga.
Diamond mining is currently on the outskirts of Chinese interests in Africa. So far, Chinese participation is limited to developing several minor alluvial deposits, dealing and involvement in the nascent African diamond-cutting business. However, there are all the grounds to suggest that in the nearest 2 or 3 years the situation will be rapidly changing. According to the General Secretary of the Chinese Diamond Administration, in 2007 China will import almost $900 million worth of rough diamonds, the next year this figure will come up to $1.3 billion and in another year to $1.8 billion. In 2010, the Chinese demand for diamonds will reach $2.5 billion. These figures quite correlate with the 2006-2007 data on unprecedented Chinese loans granted under government guarantees to those African countries, which are most probable to discover massive primary diamond deposits: to the D.R.C. ($5 billion), Zimbabwe ($2 billion) and Angola ($2 billion). It is known that Chinese firms are engaged in intensive geologic prospecting on the territories of these countries and the information obtained during these works is carefully protected.
The African game played by China according to its own rules brought impressive success. How long will it last? So far, Beijing is impassible to the avalanche of reproofs from mass media, public organizations and the International Monetary Fund accusing it of a “new colonization of Africa”, disregard of human rights, non-compliance with armaments export conventions and dumping credits. However, there are signs of much more serious undertakings going on. In September 2008, there will be given a start to the Africa Command of the U.S.A. Armed Forces (AFRICOM) with an area of responsibility covering all of Africa except Egypt. This is a new command established for the first time and, according to some analysts, it will be rendered operational mainly due to the Chinese expansion in Africa. As always, the State Department explained it encouragingly saying, “There is an opportunity of a more consistent and clear cut approach to the region. Africa consists of weak countries sometimes even incapable of independent functioning. It may be expected that by strengthening the armed forces of African countries and raising their operational efficiency we shall help them to become active participants of regional peacekeeping operations.”
Well, the “ultima ratio regum”, currently often called “peacekeeping operations”, has many times been used to solve economic contradictions in Africa. Geniuses like Cecil Rhodes are capable to guess the ways of History. Kaiser will take care of tactics.
