Ape Rifle

In 2006, China sells. From over-hyped IPOs of mismanaged, loan-happy banks to the nuclear test in North Korea, the world’s favourite post-socialist country is all over the news as usual. Most recently, the Middle Kingdom has dominated the satellite signals beamed into my humble abode by way of a little party Beijing put together for Africa.

The China-Africa Summit- in which Hu and crew invited more than 40 African states to talk trade, aid and gloss over state-sponsored abuses –is yet another event tailor-made to bolster the popular narrative predicting China’s takeover of the world sometime in the next 20 days or so. Quite sadly, one of the few ways to get Western media to even notice Africa apart from wars and famine is to throw the word ‘China’ in front of it.

Watching this spectacle unfold from thousands of miles away in southern Africa, I found myself bemused and waxing nostalgic for the surreality that is Planet China. Beijing welcomed its esteemed guests in that most Chinese of ways- by shutting down factories and construction sites, banning 500,000 cars from its streets and praying for blue sky. It also plastered giant billboards of badly Photo-shopped African wildlife across town and spiced up the usual song-and-dance craptaculars with some African beats. Just another day in China’s endlessly fascinating attempt to convince the world it is not crowded, chaotic, polluted or composed of anything other than smiling people and beautiful skyscrapers.

Of course, questions have been raised in the usual circles as to whether China’s newfound love for Africa will amount to anything more than a business-as-usual, opportunistic plundering of the continent’s resources. I, for one, highly doubt the Chinese leadership loses any sleep over the plight of African peoples beyond their ability to mine and cut down trees. But at least you can give them credit for consistency: Chinese leaders have, on numerous occasions, shown precious little concern over the plight of their own people. China is thus offering a blind eye to the usual state-sponsored human misery in some of its newfound trade partners, not because it believes in any inherent morality of ‘non-interference’ but rather because it has its own collection of internal “issues” to pretend don’t exist.

It is also no shock that some of these African leaders are jubilant to be wined and dined with such pomp and circumstance, using the opportunity to take potshots at the West for “ignoring” them. What head of state doesn’t enjoy being treated as the centre of the world by someone important? The Chinese are masters at this game, based on their own history of self-congratulatory officialdom, and as a result put together just the right kind of lavish reception. Beijing realizes that opening up Africa to its advantage necessitates giving the continent’s leaders, at least superficially, what they crave: respect. Whatever happens to the people of the various African countries involved is obviously of much less concern.

The Chinese leadership, I believe, approaches Africa as a two-fold opportunity. In the more immediate term, the continent offers up a wealth of resources in countries such as Sudan where Western interests fear to tread lest they sink under a barrage of public outcry. In the race for resources, China has the distinct advantage of having even less qualms than self-interested Western powers in dealing with questionable regimes to get what it wants (and given the low standards set by Western countries, that says a lot). The Chinese will be busy pumping oil in places that Western-based, multinational oil companies can now only quietly dream of exploiting.

In the longer term, however, the Chinese leadership also understands the need to foster new markets for the incredible, and still growing, amounts of trinkets and consumer goods that China pumps out on an annual basis. And from an industrial-consumerist point of view, the African continent is commonly perceived as the last, great untapped ‘market’ on earth. Fueling the material growth of Africa would satiate China’s dangerous addiction to exports for a few years if not decades, particularly if trade friction with traditional markets such as the US and Europe grow to unbearable levels. Engagement with Africa offers the opportunity to both feed and satisfy the Chinese industrial behemoth.

But then there is the other side of the coin: what does all this mean for African countries? It is perhaps in places such as Pemba that we might begin to find some answers. Far from the world of extravagant receptions and mass production, this quiet little town isn’t exactly a nerve centre in the machinations of international commerce. And yet these dusty streets are also the frontlines of geopolitical change, a place where the dynamics of China’s engagement with Africa hit the ground running under several guises.

First, it is fairly common knowledge around here that Chinese businessmen are illegally logging old growth trees in the region, some even operating within the nearby national park. This is the sort of thing that fuels arguments questioning China’s ‘good will’ towards Africa: taking advantage of desperate rural poverty and extremely weak enforcement capabilities to clear-cut pristine forests aren’t exactly the sorts of actions that win ‘responsible international player’ awards. However, given China’s quasi-apocalyptic levels of environmental degradation at home, in which industrialism gone wild has turned swathes of its land into noxious cesspools, in these actions it can hardly be accused of hypocrisy or double standards unlike many Western countries. Utter disregard for environmental consequences is a trademark of the Chinese development model, and one that might unfortunately spread as the country increasingly engages the world.

At the same time, however, Pemba just recently launched a city bus service with three shiny new (and decidedly out of place) municipal buses of Chinese provenance. This is a particularly welcome addition: despite being a ‘small’ town, Pemba is remarkably spread out across three areas- the old port, the newer town centre and the beach strip - all several kilometers apart. It is the sort of place where the fundamental lack of public infrastructure means a private vehicle is essential to getting around if you do not wish to walk for hours like the large majority of the population who cannot afford either. So it’s very refreshing to see some public transportation initiatives, and personally it’s nice to know I can now get to the beach on weekends for 1/20^th the cost of a taxi (well, unless I walk like I often do, but that takes an hour and a half). In this case, we can be happy that China does have double standards: while its own streets are an absolute mess of gridlock going nowhere fast thanks to short-sighted urban planning and a baffling push for private car ownership, across the world it helps a small Mozambican town get around a little better. Thank you, China.

So what to make of all this? What do events in Pemba have to say about the nature of China’s relationship with Africa? I suspect they tell us that, once the hyperbole of alarmist politics is stripped away, we are left with both positive and negative aspects as tends to happen in this place we call reality.