China’s Influence in Africa Arouses Some Resistance

By Michael Wines | The New York Times
February 10, 2007

JOHANNESBURG, Feb. 9 — China is often depicted as a juggernaut of sorts, its untroubled and unfettered rise into the ranks of global powers a fact that lesser nations can only watch with awe and trepidation. On Friday, President Hu Jintao of China completed a 12-day tour of Africa that suggested the reality was more nuanced.

More than that, the visit tested a basic tenet of China’s economic relations: that business is business, and what a partner nation’s people think about it is not China’s — or the world’s — preoccupation.

Mr. Hu swept through eight nations, among them some of China’s closest African allies, largest trading partners and most prominent objects of Chinese investment. He left behind a multibillion-dollar trail of forgiven debts, cheap new loans and pledges of schools and cultural centers, tokens of affection for a continent of strategic economic importance to Beijing’s future.

Yet in Zambia, Mr. Hu was greeted with public disdain, and forced to cancel one appearance, even as he showered more than $800 million in gifts and investments on the nation, one of the world’s poorest. In Namibia, a decades-old ally, a newspaper and human rights activists assailed China’s foreign policy as selfish and lacking morality.

In South Africa, a generally warm visit was clouded by President Thabo Mbeki’s recent warning that Africa risked becoming an economic colony of China, and by Johannesburg’s major newspaper, which devoted a full page this week to a scalding critique of China’s record on human rights and labor rights.

Mr. Hu’s stop in Sudan, where China has extensive oil interests, reignited criticism that Beijing has helped shield its ally and oil supplier from global outrage over attacks on civilians in Darfur.

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