Hu Jintao Visits Sudan, Supports Darfur Genocide

By Cao Changqing - Observe China Magazine | The Epoch Times
March 04, 2007

Western commentators are wondering what China's new foreign policy is, in light of communist leader Hu Jintao's recent visits to eight African countries.

Willy Lam, currently a CNN commentator on Chinese issues said that Hu's visit to Africa is an indication that he had abandoned Deng Xiaoping's attitude to "bide our time and focus on building ourselves." Instead he intends to be the leader of a rising superpower. In Lin's opinion, the destruction of a satellite last month by the People's Liberation Army was also a sign of Hu's change in foreign policy.

Recently the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has adopted a very aggressive policy towards African countries. Hu visited Africa twice within a year. Just three months ago, China invited 48 African leaders to attend a forum on China-Africa relations in Beijing and generously wrote off 33 African countries' debts with China in a bid to win them over.

Before Hu's visit to Africa, at a press conference, the CCP's Ministry of Foreign Affairs stressed that the main purpose of Hu's visit was to encourage the peaceful development of Africa. At that time, the U.S. media had high hopes that Hu's trip might be able to stop the genocide in Sudan. New York Times reporter Howard French published an article from Shanghai titled "Chinese Leader to Visit Sudan For Talks on Darfur Conflict."

However, Hu actually went to Sudan to reward the Sudanese president who advocates genocide and promised to help him build a presidential palace. Washington Post columnist Sebastian Mallaby wrote a column on Feb. 5 titled "A Palace for Sudan—China's No-Strings Aid Undermines the West." In this article, Mallaby considered that it wasn't coincidental that Hu agreed to finance a palace for the Sudanese president since, in recent years, China had never agreed to build a presidential palace for any country. Hence the decision to choose Sudan was a deliberate act against the Western world.

In recent years, the Sudanese government has received much criticism from Western society for its suppression of the independent movement in the Darfur region. According to human rights organizations, in the past four years, more than 200,000 were killed in this genocide. Western countries including the U.S. have discontinued aid to Sudan and requested the U.N. to impose economic sanctions. Beijing opposed this decision and even threatened to veto it. On Hu's visit to Sudan, not only did he not censure the government for carrying out genocide, instead he agreed to give the brutal dictator 140 million yuan (US$18 million) in aid to build a presidential palace, condoning and rewarding the Sudanese dictator.

China even plans to double its aid to African countries in the next three years, offering them $3 billion in low-interest loans and $2 billion in export credits. Western critics say China is throwing its silver dollars into Africa with total disregard of the fact that 600 million people in China continue to earn less than $2 a day and 5 percent of the Chinese population (60 million) still live below the U.N.'s poverty line. Hence the CCP's African policy is an inhuman policy. It overlooks the 200,000 deaths in the genocide in Sudan and does not care whether its Chinese citizens live or die. It only cares for ideology not human lives.

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