La Chine en Afrique

Un article du Devoir

Les succès de la «Chinafrique»

23 avril 2014 | Jean-Frédéric Légaré-Tremblay | Actualités internationales

La Chine est devenue le premier partenaire commercial de l’Afrique. Un succès économique qui s’accompagne d’une proximité diplomatique et qui permet aux capitales africaines de s’affranchir des relations néocoloniales, estime Mamoudou Gazibo, membre du CÉRIUM et professeur de science politique à l’Université de Montréal.

Le succès chinois est dû à plusieurs facteurs. J’en cite trois: l’échec des politiques de développement du «consensus de Washington» impulsées par les pays occidentaux et les institutions financières internationales; l’émergence de la Chine par la voie alternative du «consensus de Beijing», vue comme un modèle en Afrique; et la manière de faire chinoise, non contraignante, perçue par des dirigeants africains comme plus respectueuse, plus simple et plus efficace. (….)

 

Un article du Spiegel

Billions from Beijing: Africans Divided over Chinese Presence

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China attaches no political conditions to economic cooperation, unlike the West, which, at least on paper, demands good governance, the rule of law, anti-corruption measures and protections for human rights.

This is one of the reasons that despots like Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe hold the Chinese in such high regard. Cooperating with China fills their empty coffers and enables them to secure their hold on power. And Africa’s dictators are not badgered when they oppress and prey on their own people.

For example, Beijing wasn’t overly troubled when the regime in Sudan waged a criminal war of forced displacement in Darfur. It continued to supply the Sudanese government with weapons and blocked resolutions in the United Nations Security Council. Beijing’s primary concern was that Sudanese oil would continue to flow. Next to Angola, Sudan is China’s second-most important source of oil in Africa.

China is Africa’s No. 1 investor as the natural resources and food-hungry country has invested more than $75B on the continent during the past decade.

That massive outlay has proved to be a double-edged sword for Africans. While Chinese companies have built or improved the African infrastructure of roads, bridges, ports and communications networks, their managers and 250K-plus Chinese workers are accused of treating Africans in a ruthless and racist way.

Germany’s Der Spiegel in November ran an article called “Billions from Beijing: Africans Divided over China’s Presence” in which China was taken to task for running dangerous mines, propping up dictatorships and flooding the 1B population market with shoddy products to kill native businesses.

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China’s economic offensive in Africa began before the turn of the millennium. At first, it was very gradual and inconspicuous. But, since 2000, trade volumes between China and Africa have grown twentyfold, reaching $200 billion in 2012. China has surged ahead of the old major powers – France, the United Kingdom and the United States — to become Africa’s most important trading partner.

A Chinese ‘Irruption’

For years, China has engaged in an intensive campaign of visiting the continent. Presidents, heads of the government and ministers have traveled to almost all sub-Saharan countries that support China’s policies and do not recognize Taiwan. They have forgiven debt, granted billions in loans, sealed defense deals and handed out generous aid packages. Most of all, however, they have secured access to Africa’s natural resources.

China’s “irruption onto the African scene has been the most dramatic and important factor in the external relations of the continent — perhaps in the development of Africa as a whole — since the end of the Cold War,” wrote Christopher Clapham of Cambridge, England-based Center of African Studies.

There are now more than 2,000 Chinese companies and well over a million Chinese citizens in sub-Saharan Africa. They can be encountered in the major cities, in mining centers and oil fields, on plantations and even in the most remote jungle villages. They include managers and military advisers, doctors and agronomists, engineers and importers, itinerant traders, small business owners and contract workers employed on countless construction sites.

The Chinese are building conspicuous signs of their presence everywhere: presidential palaces, ministries, military barracks, conference centers, museums, stadiums, broadcasting companies, hotel complexes and large-scale agricultural operations. They are renovating railroad lines, paving thousands of kilometers of roads and building airports, dams, power plants and hospitals. Indeed, the Chinese are modernizing a large segment of the continent’s infrastructure.

The Washington-based Center for Global Development estimates that, between 2000 and 2011, China provided about €75 billion in aid to Africa for a total of 1,673 projects, or roughly as much as the United States did in the same period. However, it is sometimes hard to tell where profitable investment ends and altruistic initiatives begin.

The competition from the West is often left empty-handed. Chinese state-owned companies operate with less bureaucracy, are faster and cheaper and, as a rule, provide financing for projects with low-interest loans from state-owned banks.

In return for developing the infrastructure, the Chinese receive lucrative licenses to exploit natural resources and fossil fuels. For instance, Angola, a war-torn and marginalized country until not too long ago, has become one of China’s key oil suppliers, competing with Saudi Arabia for the top position.