Chinese Neo-Colonialism on the African Continent
While there can be no equivalence between one country, however large, and a continent of 53 countries, shorthand references to China and Africa can prove useful for the purposes of broad explanation and discussion. As Raine points out, Chinese engagement in the African continent was either minimal (pre-1949), ideologically driven (1960 and 70s), or restricted (1980s), the notion of China in Africa was one of convenience (Raine, 2009). However, in seeking to understand contemporary Chinese-African relations, such broad references hide the multiple interests, structures, and outlooks within both China and African nations combine to form what scholars now call ‘Sino-African’ relations. As the Chinese government seeks to deepen relations for its own strategic reasons, and as Chinese commercial interests accumulate, tensions and differences in priorities within Chinese interests and approaches are becoming increasingly apparent.
In the 1970s, China was one of the poorest countries in the world, its real per capita GDP being one-fortieth that of the United States (Zhu, 2012). Contrasted with today, where China’s GDP is almost one-fifth of the U.S. and economists argue that China is poised to overtake the United States as the largest economy in the world, we can understand how China’s demand for natural resources is simply insatiable. In order to meet this need, China has been authorizing billions of dollars in loans to African governments in exchange for exclusive access to these natural resources (Tiffen, 2014). With an increasing number of these governments now beholden to China, a new imperial empire is taking shape on the African continent.
Trade between the African continent and China grew 700% during the 1990s and China is currently Africa’s largest trading partner. In 2011, the volume of trade rose to USD 166 billion, up 33% from the year before. But this trade dependency works both ways as 1/3 of China’s oil comes from Angola and Nigeria. About 20% of China’s cotton demand is met through trade with Benin, Burkina Faso, and Mali. The majority of China’s chocolate is from Cote d’Ivoire. And Namibia is one of China’s main suppliers of fish, while Kenya remains of the main suppliers of Chinese coffee (Tiffen, 2014).
However, when it comes to extractives, the Chinese interest in iron mineral, copper, and lumber has prompted economic accords in which Chinese government organizations are allowed rights to tremendous plots of land for wood, or mines. And while China is authorizing billions of dollars in loans for development to African governments, these loans typically come with the catch that these funds are only open to tenders by Chinese companies. Yes, the Chinese government-backed construction companies are doing quite well where these policies are concerned. Rather than infusing the local African economies with cash, the main benefit has been to Chinese companies.
And make no mistake, these companies are financed by their own government in the first place, and then they are going further to actually import Chinese labor into Africa, instead of employing Africans themselves. According to Adam Tiffen, there are an estimated 1 million Chinese citizens now living and working in Africa (Tiffen, 2014). While this may not seem like much when considering the size of the continent of Africa in relation to the population and China and the amount of Chinese investment occurring in Africa, it does seem that China has crossed the tipping point at which they are now abandoning their foreign policy ideal of non-interference. Due to instability in Africa, China has begun acting more aggressively to protect its investments.
Tiffen mentions south-Sudan, which at the peak of its production, supplied 5% of China’s oil needs while China National Petroleum Corp. has a 40% stake in a joint venture developing the south-Sudanese oil fields. However, as a result of the rebellion in the region threatening Beijing’s oil investments, the Chinese were forced to intervene in order to help African mediators halt fighting after peace talks in Ethiopia failed. What’s more, in an unprecedented move, the Chinese have also agreed to lend 850 troops to a UN peacekeeping mission in Sudan (Tiffen, 2014).
At this point, Chinese officials were quick to dismiss this behavior as any sort of neo-colonialism. Chinese Premier Li Kequiang visited several areas of Africa and said, “I wish to assure our African friends, in all seriousness, that China will never pursue a colonialist path like some countries did or allow colonialism, which belonged to the past, to reappear in Africa.” However, Tiffen contends that the Chinese approach in Africa is a new form of colonialism. Their inclinations in Africa are exclusively to serve China; and that by joining government activity with corporate interests, the Chinese are securing rights to billions of dollars in important products. Being that African nations often face political pressure on the world stage to show some progress in terms of infrastructure and socio-economic development, they are pushed to barter their only significant sources of potential wealth for mediocre infrastructure that does little in the way of developing the economy and often is only worth a fraction of the value of the resources they sign over. Clearly, in this era of increased awareness towards creating sustainability, this partnership is unsustainable and is leading more towards an Africa dependent on the Chinese for future rehab of today’s new building projects.
As many are well aware, corruption is rampant throughout not only African politics, but Chinese politics as well, and this has enabled Chinese government-backed business to influence political decisions in Africa to sway in their favor. Of course, much like in mainland China, Chinese construction in Africa proper is undertaken with little regard for the detrimental impacts on the environment and the cultures of the areas. This results in unrestricted mining, unchecked destruction of the rainforest, and pollution of freshwater that will have lasting negative impacts on the regions.
The DRC, or the Democratic Republic of Congo, is one of the prime sources of a metal ore called coltan, with roughly 30% of the world’s supply being derived from the region. This is important because coltan is required to make an element called tantalum, which is used in smartphone capacitors and other such electronic symbols of the so-called “First World.” What’s more, the UN has estimated that up to ¾ of DRC sourced coltan is mined and sold illegally. Furthermore, these mine-and-trade operations are often run by local warlords as an extra stream of income to fund the ongoing guerilla campaigns against the central government of Kinshasa, and the neighboring governments of Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi.
“The war economy has set the standard for working conditions in mines throughout the DRC,” writes Colin Kinniburgh, “Children as young as six years old still make up an estimated 40% of the mining workforce” (Kinniburgh, 2014). By no means have companies and consumers in the global North ignored these troubling realities. Now, all 22 of the minerals used to power Apple products are guaranteed to be sourced through ethical means. Samsung and Nokia have similar policies in place. Fair-trade smartphones are now industry standard as a result.
Be that as it may, a section of Dodd-Frank prohibiting US organizations from partnering with degenerate mining outfits, combined with efforts to censure organizations with stakes in conflict minerals, has had unintended results. Mining operations have withdrawn from the DRC, leaving miners unemployed, and the way cleared for expanded militia control over local mineral sources. (Which are still mined, sans regulation; their harvest sold on the black market.) “The smelting companies that used to buy from eastern Congo have stopped,” reports David Aronson, “No one wants to be tarred with financing African warlords — especially the glamorous high-tech firms like Apple and Intel that are often the ultimate buyers of these minerals.” (Aronson, 2011)
Eastern Congo is left in a precarious position. The First World gets our digital technology, without a side of guilt. The warlords can continue to pillage the Congo without Western interference. And the Congolese are forced to work and likely die in the mines, or they can starve.
Now China is still a new player in the field of African resource investments. And given their poor record in regards to the social and environmental implications at home, as well as the challenges other companies have faced in the region, the Chinese have had a steep learning curve as far as going global is concerned. The United States’ Dodd-Frank financial reforms of 2010 included provisions barring US-listed companies from buying minerals that may be linked to armed groups. Now the European Union is looking to do the same. The Chinese, are also under pressure as some firms claim that Chinese traders and mineral smelters take advantage of the US’s new ban by buying suspected ‘conflict minerals’ at highly discounted rates.
In September 2011, the DRC government introduced laws obliging companies and traders to conduct due diligence on their suppliers. In May 2012, Kinshasa’s mines minister Martin Kabwelulu suspended Chinese-owned TTT and Huaying trading companies from conducting business in eastern Congo while Congolese officials investigate whether they have been dealing with companies linked to armed groups. This was likely in part due to an event which had occurred the month prior, in which local officials in the Ituri region of the Orientale province shut down the illegal mining operations of Fametal, which is a Chinese company that had received a license for exploration but still had no approval to mine.
In October of 2014, the Chinese Chamber of Commerce for Minerals, Metals and Chemicals Importers and Exporters (CCCMC) published what was considered by some at the time to be ground-breaking new guidelines for its mining and mineral trading companies operating overseas. The progressively ambitious standards cover wide-ranging aspects as to what constitutes responsible corporate behavior including labor rights, environmental protection, community relations, and preventing conflict and corruption. It was thought that by setting clear Guidelines that cover conflict minerals, CCCMC was demonstrating leadership appropriate to the country’s prominent international role as a permanent member of the UN Security Council (Mthembu-Salter, 2012).
Since Chinese companies are major players in the trade of minerals sourced from places like the DRC, putting these progressive guidelines into practice would help Chinese companies ensure their involvement in the minerals trade no longer risks contributing to social instability and violence around the world. Instead, it should provide benefits to local populations. Clause 2.4.6 of the guidelines state that implementing companies should:
-Conduct risk-based supply chain due diligence in order to prevent engagement with materials that may have funded or fueled the conflict.
-Conduct an assessment to define whether the mining project from which traded minerals originate or the mineral trading routes used are located in a conflict-affected and/or high-risk area.
-Adapt existing due diligence measures to the specific needs of conflict-affected and high-risk areas. Measures should be third-party audited and publically reported on.
-When operating in a conflict-affected and/or high-risk area, take steps to monitor business relations, transactions, and flows of funds and resources and avoid the trade of conflict minerals (CCCMC, 2014).
In 2009, the UN Environment Program identified that at least forty percent of all intrastate conflicts in the sixty years prior had links to natural resources and that the presence of natural resources makes conflicts twice as likely to recur. Central to these links is the trade-in conflict resources. Current cases of conflict resources include the funding of abusive state and non-state armed groups through the trade-in minerals, precious stones such as diamonds, and other natural resources in Colombia, Afghanistan, and the Central African Republic. Revenues from the resource trade also provide off-budget funding to government security forces and corrupt officials, often further weakening already fragile states. In many instances, the groups are responsible for widespread violence against civilians.
But recent efforts to break the links between international supply chains and violence in countries that produce natural resources have focused primarily on DRC, where trade in tin, tungsten, tantalum (derived from coltan ore), and gold has fueled the conflict for almost fifteen years. In DRC’s eastern provinces, North and South Kivu, foreign and Congolese armed groups and members of the Congolese army have made millions of dollars through controlling mines and mineral trading routes. Illegal control of minerals trade provides off-budget cash to rogue elements within the Congolese army and partially-integrated militia. In some cases, competition over access to lucrative mining areas provides an incentive to continue fighting. Consequently, minerals have contributed to widespread instability and violence, which have had a devastating impact on the local population. In fact, the conflict in the DRC has led to more deaths than any other conflict since WWII. The majority of these deaths being the result of preventable diseases (Mthembu-Salter, 2012).
Chinese companies continue to play a significant role in the mineral trade in eastern DRC’s Kivu Province and remain at risk of being associated with the conflict. It is important to note that Chinese companies are not the only firms involved in sourcing minerals from eastern DRC. However, they do currently play a leading role in such trade. Export statistics for North Kivu show that CMM and Huaying are amongst the five trading houses that exported tin and tantalum from the provincial capital, Goma, in 2013. Over this period, exports from the two Chinese companies accounted for over 65% of the total official exports of tin and tantalum combined. In 2013, CMM exported 245 tons of tin and 124 tons of tantalum while Huaying exported 347 tons of tin from Goma. The entirety of tin and tantalum exported by CMM and Huaying from Goma in 2013 was sold to companies listed as based in Hong Kong or mainland China (Studies and Threat Analysis Section, UNODC, 2010).
On April 3rdof this year, it was reported that Guinea-Bissau has seen a boom in illegal logging over the past five years that is threatening the country’s ecological balance. The government, following a cabinet meeting in the capital Bissau, announced new measures were being introduced including a moratorium on new logging and an order to seize already cut timber, banning its export. An estimated 104.000 logs waiting to be illegally exported to China had already been seized. According to the top UN official in Guinea-Bissau, the rise in illegal timber exports was likely the consequence of a decline in cocaine trafficking after a U.S. sting operation targeted the head of the army in 2013 (Guinea-Bissau declares logging moratorium as illegal trade to China rises, 2015).
The illegal ivory trade is exploding in China, overwhelming efforts to enforce the law, according to the results of a new study co-authored by seasoned ivory market researchers, Lucy Vigne and Esmond Martin. Skyrocketing demand for ivory in China, in which the wholesale price of raw elephant tusks has tripled in just four years since 2010, have sparked a booming trade in smuggled ivory that is driving the unsustainable killing of elephants in Africa. They found that the growing legal ivory trade in China is providing a smokescreen for illegal activity. The number of authorized factories and retail outlets has quadrupled in the last decade, but illegal shops outnumbered legal ones by a factor of three in Beijing and a factor of eight in Shanghai.
Vendors in both cities reported that over 90% of their customers were Chinese, something unseen in the trade since the mid-19thcentury. In the mid-1980s most ivory buyers originated from Japan, Europe and the US (in that order), but after a ban by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in 1990 the trade collapsed. In 2008 CITES allowed the sale of 62 tons of ivory to China, reigniting an ivory industry fueled by demand from newly wealthy Chinese. While the Chinese government has increased enforcement of the ivory trade in recent years, closing down at least 10 officially designated factories and retail outlets, jailing hundreds of dealers, and sentencing nearly 40 smugglers to life in prison. Even though through added pressure, the so-called grey market, where live auctions for ivory took place, shrunk by 97%, official inspections have been unable to keep up with the escalation of the illegal market (Kahumbu, 2014).
Part of the problem is that many Chinese do not realize that you have to kill the elephant in order to collect the ivory. So says Grace Ge Gabriel, Asia regional director at the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW). “The Chinese word for ivory, xiangya, literally means elephant’s teeth. It has led to a very deep and wide misconception that ivory can be harvested without killing elephants.” In a 2007 survey, IFAW reported that 70% of Chinese polled did not know that ivory came from dead elephants (Lijas, 2013).
China’s engagements in Africa may be resource focused, and these engagements may be supported by the CCP’s medium-term thinking about China’s strategic requirements, but there is a danger that recognizing these realities can lead to the misguided identification of a uniform and linear ‘Africa strategy’, whereby Beijing issues demands in accordance with its thinking and Chinese companies go forth and deliver. While Beijing has developed an impressive array of mechanisms for advancing these Sino-African relations at regional, national, and continental levels, deploying these mechanisms doesn’t seem to always work so well together, and sometimes their aims are not always complimentary. The difficulties of coordinating any overarching strategy in Africa are evident.
As the Sino-African relationship increases, so too does the anxiety of the Chinese state about managing all the aspects involved. On the one hand, it seeks to develop partnerships that deliver results against key strategic requirements. On the other hand, the Chinese government wants to make sure it retains sufficient control over such partnerships to advance its broader national interests, such as the preservation of stable relations with the US. The idea is that success in securing China’s prime domestic strategic requirements does not come at the price of unnecessary damage to its key international strategic relations (Raine, 2009).
In contrast to China, the United States and the European Union have taken a more measured approach to their relations in Africa in recent years. Motivated in part by economic necessity, but also by the desire to build local capacity within their African trading partners, both the US and EU have conditioned much of their economic assistance on social and economic reform. In countries like South Sudan, the contrast is stark. While the US, Britain, and Norway are South Sudan’s biggest donor countries in terms of economic assistance, they do not have any stakes in South Sudanese oil production.
By requiring political, economic, and social reform as a pre-condition of much of US and EU assistance, the true costs of development aid are apparent upfront. Preconditions are designed to work for the long-term benefit of local governance and indigenous populations, and excesses are often tempered by social and environmental restraints. While not perfect by any means, this focus on investment as opposed to exploitation creates far less excessive imbalances and stands to benefit Africa to a far greater degree over the long term.
To reiterate, China’s approach in Africa is a new form of economic colonialism. Chinese state-backed companies will continue to extract precious natural resources with little to no benefit derived by the indigenous populations. China’s expanding economic influence will result in an increasing dependence that will dominate African economies and politics, should Sino-African relations continue without revision and regulation. This approach is unsustainable and will likely have dire consequences.
References
Aronson, D. (2011, 08 07). How Congress Devastated Congo. Retrieved from The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/08/opinion/how-congress-devastated-congo.html?_r=0
Guinea-Bissau declares logging moratorium as illegal trade to China rises. (2015, 04 03). Retrieved from The Africa Report: http://www.theafricareport.com/West-Africa/guinea-bissau-declares-logging-moratorium-as-illegal-trade-to-china-rise.html
Kahumbu, P. (2014, 12 09). China must act, but Africa needs to take the lead to stop ivory trade. Retrieved from The Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/africa-wild/2014/dec/09/china-must-act-but-africa-take-the-lead-in-stopping-ivory-trade
Kinniburgh, C. (2014, 01 06). Beyond “Conflict Minerals” :The Congo’s Resource Curse Lives On. Retrieved from Dissent Magazine: http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/beyond-conflict-minerals-the-congos-resource-curse-lives-on
Lijas, P. (2013, 11 01). The ivory trade is out of control, and China needs to do more to stop it. Retrieved from Time: http://world.time.com/2013/11/01/the-ivory-trade-is-out-of-control-and-china-needs-to-do-more-to-stop-it/
Mthembu-Salter, G. (2012, 09 04). Taking the conflict out of congo’s ‘conflict minerals’. Retrieved from The Africa Report: http://www.theafricareport.com/News-Analysis/taking-the-conflict-out-of-congos-conflict-minerals.html
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Raine, S. (2009). China’s African Challenges. London: Routledge.
Studies and Threat Analysis Section, UNODC. (2010). Globalization of Crime: A Transnational Organized Crime Threat Assessment. United Nations publication.
Tiffen, A. (2014, 08 19). The New Neo-Colonialism in Africa. Retrieved from Global Policy Journal: http://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/19/08/2014/new-neo-colonialism-africa
Zhu, X. (2012). Understanding China’s Growth: Past, Present, and Future. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 26(4), 103–124. Retrieved November 30, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23290282
Originally published at matthewgarvinblog.wordpress.com on November 19, 2015.
