How Kenya's Railroad Explains China's Africa Strategy
IBTimes (US)
By Matt Schiavenza
on May 13 2014 4:42 PM
Photo: Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, next to Kenyan President Uhuru
Kenyatta, wears his hat shortly before driving out for a game drive at
the Nairobi National Park Reuters.
When China's Prime Minister Li Keqiang announced a deal with Kenya to
establish a new railroad, whose first stage will link the port city of
Mombasa to the capital, Nairobi, he framed the arrangement in terms
familiar to Sino-African relations: "All China's support for Africa
will come with no political strings attached," Li said. "We will not
interfere with Africa's internal affairs or ask something impossible
of Africa."
Li's words neatly encapsulate China's strategy in Africa, a continent
with which the Asian country enjoys over $200 billion annually in
trade. And the Kenya train investment is little different: Through
China's Exim bank, the country will loan Kenya $3.8 billion, 90
percent of the overall price tag, to finance the project, which is
expected to take three and a half years. Eventually, the railroad will
include stops in South Sudan, Rwanda and Uganda, linking major cities
in arguably Africa's most integrated region.
According to Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, the railroad will lower
freight costs from 20 U.S. cents a ton to 8 cents and will shorten
passenger journeys in the process. And, unlike similar deals with
European and American partners, China's investment does not come with
demands for transparency, media freedom or political openness. As
Yoweri Museveni, Uganda's longtime president, put it: "[The Chinese]
don't give lectures on how to run local governments and other issues I
don't want to mention." The statement -- uttered the same week that
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry crisscrossed the continent --
seemed a clear message to Washington: that African governments
beleaguered by the conditions that come with aid, such as abiding
labor and environmental standards, have found a deep-pocketed
alternative source of capital in China -- a source willing to let them
run their countries as they see fit.
But a closer scrutiny of the deal reveals a more complicated
relationship between China and Africa than Beijing publicly admits.
First, China's investment in the railroad is not a gift, but rather an
investment for which the country expects to profit. According to
Winslow Robertson, a China/Africa expert at the China Research
Network, Exim Bank will charge 4.4 percent interest on a loan over 20
years, terms that "will probably work out well, financially, for
China," upon repayment, he said. Finances aside, the railroad also
will reduce the cost of transporting east Africa's valuable natural
resources -- South Sudanese oil, for example -- to Mombasa for export
to China. Some Kenyan lawmakers have questioned whether the railroad's
cost will be worth it.
But the railroad also serves an important political purpose. Since
China's then-Premier Zhou Enlai first visited Africa a half-century
ago, China has sought to frame its relationship with Africa as fellow
developing countries just emerging from centuries of colonial
meddling. In many ways, this sense of solidarity has had a profound
historical effect. According to Robertson, African countries proved
decisive in helping Beijing obtain U.N. recognition in 1971, and in
the years since most of them have consistently supported the "One
China Policy," Beijing's official stance on Taiwan. And, no less
importantly, Chinese officials have shown no reluctance to deal with
regimes like Sudan and Zimbabwe that Western powers have attempted to
isolate.
But in recent years, China's much-vaunted "win-win" approach to Africa
has begun to fray. Chinese companies establishing operations on the
continent typically use a mostly Chinese labor force, including cooks,
and relatively few Chinese guest workers integrate with local African
communities. A language barrier (Chinese middle managers generally do
not speak English or French) makes communication with local workers
difficult, and while Chinese workers typically endure brutal labor
conditions without rancor, others may balk. While this approach has
helped expedite Chinese infrastructure projects in Africa, resentment
in local populations (notably in Zambia) has threatened the viability
of some projects. Howard French, a journalist and author of the new
book China's Second Continent, which discusses China's relationship
with Africa, told me that "citizens are often very skeptical about the
murky terms under which many big Chinese projects are negotiated and
suspect a kind of unholy collusion between Beijing, Chinese corporate
interests and the people that rule them."
This perception -- that China is a neo-colonialist power, no different
from the Europeans who once ruled the continent -- is one that Beijing
is eager to dispel.
Speaking after the rail deal announcement, Premier Li 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 belongs to the past, to reappear in Africa,"
China's investment in the East African rail project is designed, in
part, to avoid the perception that China is only interested in
extracting African resources. Zhang Xiangchen, China's deputy minister
of commerce, remarked on the trip that China is "paying more attention
to livelihood issues." and will be keeping a "closer look at issues
relating to the public."
As workers break ground on Kenya's new railway, the citizens of the
continent can only hope that Zhang's words will be true.
Matt Schiavenza
http://www.google.ca/gwt/x?gl=CA&hl=en-CA&u=http://www.ibtimes.com/what-kenya-railroad-says-about-chinas-approach-africa-1583863&source=s&q=How+Kenya's+Railroad+Explains+China's+Africa+Strategy&sa=X&ei=gKRyU4XVDam-sQSZw4K4AQ&ved=0CCMQFjAB
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