At any given time, roughly 800 Chinese state-owned or state-controlled corporations are operating in Africa, with China's Export-Import Bank funding more than 300 projects in at least 36 countries. Tens of thousands of small private companies and entrepreneurs are also on the ground. In tiny Lesotho, nearly half the supermarkets are owned and run by Chinese. Mauritius, home to many Chinese-owned factories, just added the Chinese language to the national school curriculum. The value of Chinese aid in Africa -- a closely guarded secret -- is now thought to have overtaken World Bank assistance.
Influence of that magnitude threatens to wipe out a decade's worth of efforts by global institutions to push African governments to improve human rights and government transparency. As Sahr Johnny, the Sierra Leonean ambassador in Beijing, once said about China's projects in Africa: "They just come and do it. We don't hold meetings about environmental-impact assessment, human rights, bad governance and good governance. I'm not saying that's right. I'm just saying Chinese investment is succeeding because they don't set high benchmarks."
China's influence threatens to wipe out a decade's worth of efforts to improve African human rights and government transparency.
Clem Sunter ran the gold-and-uranium unit of Anglo-American Mining in the 1990s, and today oversees its social-responsibility fund. In 2006, he was invited to Beijing to do scenario planning with members of the Communist Party elite, a rare invitation for a foreigner. To grasp why Africa is China's "continent of choice," as he puts it, one must first appreciate how desperate China's leaders are for what the sub-Sahara has to offer. China is on track to surpass America as the world's largest economy within a few decades, and it needs to maintain that fantastical rate of growth in order to avoid adding 25 million people to the unemployment ranks each year. That is nothing short of a crisis: Unaddressed, it could lead to the undoing of the Communist Party. China is already facing 80,000 social protests per year, and the figure is rising fast. So the dragon must be fed. As bureaucrats in Beijing like to say, "China is like an elephant riding a bicycle. If it slows down, it could fall off, and the earth might quake."
Africa is one of the only places in the world where so many resources are still up for grabs. It holds 90% of the world's cobalt, 90% of its platinum, 50% of its gold, 98% of its chromium, 64% of its manganese, and one-third of its uranium. Its forests are still considered the most pristine in the world. It is rich in diamonds, has more oil reserves than North America, and is estimated to have 40% of the world's potential hydroelectric power. It already supplies a third of the oil fueling China's economic boom.
Sino-African trade hit $73 billion in 2007, a staggering thirty-fold increase in less than a decade. China recently passed France to become the sub-Sahara's second-largest trading partner, and will likely pass the United States by 2010. In terms of cumulative direct investment, America still reigns at about $19 billion, virtually all of it concentrated in oil and in a few countries. But at $2 billion and growing fast, China is gaining ground, while spreading its investments across many resources and infrastructure projects, from Angola to Zimbabwe. China today has the largest number of embassies, consulates, and diplomats in Africa, and hardly a week goes by without the announcement of a new deal or project. As the famed Hong Kong contrarian investor Marc "Dr. Doom" Faber has put it: "There is no continent better suited to China than Africa."
On the long drive back to Quelimane from Alman's forest outpost, we approach the town of Nicoadala, the only real checkpoint before timber is loaded onto container ships. A few miles before the checkpoint, a lumber truck we've followed for miles suddenly stops beside the highway. A man climbs down and vanishes into a white residential house hidden behind some landscaping. He emerges 30 minutes later and the truck continues to the checkpoint, where a man who identifies himself as João Mário Mafundisse -- an agronomist and part-time forest cop -- approaches our vehicle. We expect him to chase us away, but he instead unleashes a torrent of frustration. "The Chinese pay the control man here," he says, jabbing a finger at the checkpoint office. "It's a bad problem. The Chinese give money to the Mozambique people to cut too much and take the logs to Asia, and the Mozambique people never have development. Government controls are not effective because of corruption."
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Recent Comments | 26 Total
May 25, 2008 at 4:59am by Frank Lowe
China buy from everyone, not only from Africa. Australian have been busy digging up what have you all over their continent to sell to china. Similarly American and Canadian gurard their export of agricultural and farm products zealously. They even secretly financed research to smear their competitors from the third world to get ahead.
The real problem in Africa is the meddling of westerners who don't allow the African to learn their lesson one step at a time. while the west took two hundred years to move from savagery and slavery to segregation/apartheid to equal right, they expect the african to change overnight.
The solution in Africa is stop meddling the politic there, stop export of weapons, no smeaky support of agents provocateur. Let them decide where they want to go, anyhow its their continent.
June 3, 2008 at 4:04pm by James Belle
I fear for africa, just as it struggles to recover from the exploitations of colonialism here comes the Chinese to deliver some more exploitation.
June 3, 2008 at 4:54pm by Christopher Scherer
Africa is in a very difficult spot. The need for money, jobs and some sense of security far out ways the fear of losing their natural resources. Hopefully, articles like this can shine a spotlight on the region and call more attention to what is happening there before it is too late. Maybe the will of the UN, the African Union or the Southern African Development Community, all of which Mozambique is a part of, could stem the tide of what appears to be a lopsided trading agreement.
June 4, 2008 at 2:37am by Long Pan
I was a Fast Company subscriber for a year and stopped doing that because of the poor quality of the articles. This one is no exception. There is no solid facts. Simply just a collection of highly biased second hand materials, which have no relation to his personal experience in Africa whatsoever. I don't even bother to comment on his amateur writing.
Fast Company editors, if your goal is to provide trash, congratulations, you are getting there!
June 9, 2008 at 10:28pm by sanch indigo
China Supplies America's demands. America's appetite for inexpensive poor quality products transformed China as the New Colonial Power in Africa. The Chinese are doing exactly what the europeans did, rape africa of her natural resources to develop there our country. Its a cycle the chinese didn't start it , they are just beating the Europeans at their our game. Lets all be socially responsible consumers and investors ,that will solve the problem. Americans cant afford to boycott chinese products, Gas price is out of control, Cheap Chinese goods is all we have left. We cant afford to buy products made in america , thanks to Nixon and Bush. The Flag on White House is made in China , not America. So the cycle will continue until africa saves herself or its natural resources go dry and when that happens there's Mars waiting to be exploited
June 19, 2008 at 4:42pm by Darrick Smith
Long Pan, you shouldn't be commenting on anyone's "amateur writing", given the multiple errors in your post.
September 4, 2008 at 12:58pm by Patrick Keller
Africans are so stupid. Can't they see that history is repeating itself. The same thing that happen during the The Renaissance and the Commercial Revolution of Europe in the 15th-18th centuries is happening again. It is just a repeat of the transatlantic slave trade. Human flesh then was a great resource that outsiders such as Europe and the Middle East were taking advantage of to grow their wealth and power. Now China is taking the rest of what is left of Africa. Africa continues to settle for sin(corruption, greed and violence) as it did before by selling their own people to the Europeans. They need to acquire wisdom, understanding and knowledge unless they perish.
June 5, 2009 at 1:46pm by M Claxton
I have noticed a lot of shrill China bashing in the western press these days. It seems to make western European based people's uptight to see non European descended people getting together , working out deals and approaching their level of development. I remain highly skeptical and suspicious at the emotional manipulation that is implied in these articles. To equate China in Africa and the Chinese with the Euro Americans is really ridiculous. When did China commit a Holocaust like the middle passage? No European descended person can point a finger, and after all of the years of Africa's suffering from this group what does it have to show for it? China is bring some of its money to set Africa up and plug it into the world development chain. That is a good thing.