Concerns Mount about Chinese Oil Interests in Africa

A resident of Nigeria's oil-rich delta region looks at flames from an oil firm's gas flare. China is investing heavily in Africa's oil fields

China has made no secret of the fact that it needs more natural resources to further develop its country and people. It's the most populous nation in the world, with a population of 1.3 billion. Some analysts see China's interest in Africa, and recent large-scale investments on the continent, as evidence that the country is bent on "plundering" Africa for its own selfish purposes. At the center of this exploitation, they say, is China's thirst for oil. Beijing, however, says it's dedicated to developing the continent, and underplays its influence in Africa's oil industries. In the third of a five-part series focusing on China in Africa, VOA's Darren Taylor explores the country's heightened interest in the continent's oil reserves.  

China received less than nine per cent of Africa's total oil exports last year, according to senior Chinese government official, Sun Baohong, who says 36 per cent of African oil in 2006 went to Europe, and 33 per cent to the United States. 

International security analyst, David Goldwyn, agrees that there's a lot of "hyperbole" about China's oil interests in Africa. 

"China's influence in the oil market in Africa is not so significant - but there are some real issues to be dealt with," he says.  

Goldwyn and other analysts are convinced that China cannot maintain its current growth without increasing its dependence on African oil.

"Energy is a big driver for Chinese behavior and that is because China at one point was self-sufficient, and as its economy has grown, it is now the world's second largest consumer of crude oil in the world – almost seven million barrels a day in 2005, and that number's certainly higher now. And they are the third largest importer at 3.1 million barrels a day – and that number's probably higher also," Goldwyn explains. 

He says China's relatively rapid growth from an impoverished, agrarian country to global economic power has been a "big shock" to the world, but that it is "unquestionably a good thing for the Chinese economy to grow – nobody blames the European economy and the US economy for growing and wanting more oil; nobody should blame China either. But the fact is: they need a lot more oil."

Where the US has failed to secure diverse oil supplies, Goldwyn asserts, China has succeeded.

"China has very successfully diversified its supplies away from what was a very dominant reliance on the Middle East, to where it now relies on Africa for a significant portion of its oil, and also Eurasia."

According to Goldwyn, the US gets most of its African oil from Nigeria and Angola, with a "scattering" from other countries.

"The 1.8 million barrels a day that we (the US) got from Africa in 2005 was 18 per cent of what the US consumed (that year). China took a lot less oil from Africa - out of 1.7 million barrels a day it imported, less than 800,000 came from Africa - but it was 31 percent of their imports," he outlines.

The message to be taken from this, says Goldwyn, is that Africa is a "very strategic supplier of oil to China – way more strategic than Africa is to the United States. Africa is important to the United States. But you can see the difference in priority that Africa has in Chinese foreign policy, and Africa has in US foreign policy, in small part, by this difference."

Stephen Morrison, of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic International Studies in Washington D.C., says competition between the West and China over African oil – specifically in the Gulf of Guinea - is set to increase significantly.

"There's every indication that the Gulf of Guinea's going to remain a very hotly competed and very attractive source, and that we're going to see more discoveries and more competition and it's going to be centered around Nigeria and Angola, but with other energy-rich states involved as well."

Goldwyn says the US remains the "most important" consumer of Nigerian and Angolan oil, but that China takes more oil from Congo-Brazzaville, Equatorial Guinea and Sudan.

"So you can see here that there is success for Chinese foreign policy in developing strong relationships with certain African suppliers, and that some countries are more important to it than others."

Goldwyn says there's also a lot of hype about China striving to "lock up" supplies of African oil for itself, but that this isn't supported by the facts. 

"Some of the supply that they own…they don't even take into China; it's traded on the open market."

Morrison says China's failure in 2005 to purchase Unical, the American oil and gas firm, was perceived in Beijing as a "spiteful" attempt by the West to thwart China's globalization efforts and economic expansion.

"The accelerated entry by the Chinese into Africa on the energy side of things, in the minds of policymakers and energy executives in China, is directly linked as a reaction to that defeat…This (failure to seize possession of Unical) has been a motivating experience for the Chinese."      

Goldwyn says China has lots in common with the West in terms of energy security. 

"We both need security of supply because we want to keep our economies going. We both want access to acreage in other countries, because both have companies that try and exploit oil, develop oil and bring it to the market. We both need a safe operating environment because Chinese workers get kidnapped in Nigeria and other places just like US workers or European workers, and we both want to protect our investment. And both the US and (Europe) and China have political and moral and security goals."

Goldwyn says Africans also want a safe operating environment for their citizens, and they, too, want to promote development.

"They want to leverage oil wealth for development, to respect local communities, to maintain social peace, and they want to be more secure and not less secure because of the oil, and they have their own political, moral and security goals."

Western and Chinese companies are faced with a dilemma when operating in violence-prone oil regions in Africa, says Goldwyn.

"What's the best way to be safe? Is it to take sides in conflict areas; is it to be close to the government and to help the government do its job? Or is it to stay as far away as possible from the government when it's doing security? And here we have the Niger Delta and Sudan as case studies."

The Chinese are desperate to secure additional supplies of African oil, says Goldwyn, and are therefore willing to take great risks – including investing in and pouring manpower into strife-torn areas in Africa - to achieve their aims. Beijing has invested heavily, for example, in Nigeria's Delta region, where rebels are fighting the government for a share of the oil wealth.

In Ethiopia's Ogaden region, rebels recently attacked an oil field and killed nine Chinese oil workers, abducting several others.

But Goldwyn says the question observers of Africa's oil industries are asking is not one concerned with violence - but rather with corruption.

"There is no question that African governments leave money on the table - and large sums of it – when they do private deals rather than tendering (oil) blocs in an open way," he claims.  

Pang says concerns in the West that China's oil relationships with Africa are based on corruption are "hypocritical" given allegations that Western companies' have for years been bribing African politicians for access to oil.  

Sun, a former director of what she describes as China's "oil project" in Angola, says much of the criticism vented at China's involvement in Africa's oil sector is unfair.

"When we initiated our project of cooperation with Angola, I was not a genius, I was no professional to think out how to engage in oil transactions with Angola. What we did was to learn about how Angola had dealt in business with Brazil, Spain and even Germany. And I don't know why those countries are not picked for criticism. And now China is again and again picked for criticism with regard to its oil interests (in Africa)."

But Prof. Ian Taylor, of the Department of International Relations at Scotland's St. Andrews University, says this "what's good for the goose is good for the gander" approach doesn't help Africa, and its continued underdevelopment as a result of "economic mismanagement."   

He harks back to April last year, for evidence that some of China's policies in Africa aren't geared towards anti-corruption.

"When on the very same day that the Dutch were pulling out of Kenya and suspending nearly $150 million worth of aid to Kenya, on the grounds of corruption and mal-governance, the Chinese were signing off on an important oil exploration agreement with Nairobi."

Sun maintains that "good governance in Africa is in the Chinese interest" as well, but that China isn't willing to interfere in other countries' domestic affairs.   

Ultimately, says Goldwyn, it's up to African leaders to ensure that their people reap the benefits from their oil, and don't allow foreign companies – whether Western or Chinese – to corruptly exploit the continent's natural resources.   

But, says Taylor, many of Africa's political elite are themselves corrupt, and to expect them to suddenly change the way they do business and to dedicate themselves to helping their people instead of lining their own pockets, is "overstretching."   

"The question of which way behavior will go, is up to Africans – because the host sets the rules; the countries set the rules. And everyone who invests in a country is going to have to live by them," says Goldwyn.

Sun agrees that Africa's development, and its enhancement of its own natural resources, is in the hands of Africa, not of China.

"Africa must reach an African consensus to reach their development goals, not a Beijing consensus."

Chinese Weapons Sales to Africa Raise Fresh Concerns

Missiles exhibited at the Military Museum in Beijing. Observers are concerned about China's weapons sales to Africa

China is pouring investment into Africa in exchange for access to the continent's natural resources. Its trade with the continent is set to top $50 billion. But China is also selling weapons and ammunition to African states accused of human rights abuses. Some analysts see this as evidence that China is destabilizing rather than developing Africa, as it has pledged to do. But China says it's dedicated to peace on the continent, and it points to its peacekeeping operations in Africa as proof.  In the second of a five-part series, VOA's Darren Taylor focuses on the nature of China's evolving relationship with Africa, and specifically its arms sales to the continent.

Pang Zhongying, professor of international studies and the director of the Institute of Global Studies at Nankai University, describes China's relationship with Africa in largely favorable terms.

He says "three phases" underlie the country's economic relationship with the continent: "Common development, non-interference in domestic politics and the provision of aid that is not tied to political situations." 

China's economic strategy in Africa, according to Pang, hinges on its refusal to "interfere" in the politics of countries it does business with. There are no "political strings" attached to China's aid to and trade with Africa, unlike the assistance provided to the continent by Western donors, he says.

But some analysts debunk the claim of the benign nature of some of China's policies in Africa.  

David Goldwyn, an international energy consultant, uses China's relationship with Sudan as an example.

"Giving military aid to the government of Sudan is not a policy of non-interference. Giving military aid to the government of Sudan has an impact," he says.    

The Khartoum government is allegedly sponsoring a campaign of ethnic cleansing in Sudan's Darfur region, where the United Nations says at least 200,000 people have been killed since 2003. 

China's National Petroleum Corporation has invested heavily in Sudan's oil industry, and human rights activists say Khartoum is using much of the revenue generated by this investment to purchase weapons and ammunition – from China itself.

China's supply of money and arms to the administration of President Omar al-Bashir is perceived by many, including in Africa, as "propping up an unjust regime," says Goldwyn.  

In addition, many weapons found in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is wracked by civil war, are also of Chinese design and manufacture, says Goldwyn, and China supplied arms to both belligerents in the 1998-2000 war between Eritrea and Ethiopia. 

"There's certainly a feeling (in the international community) that China should begin to behave with more responsibility in Africa," Goldwyn says.   

But Pang says China's military relations with Africa are the "way of the world." He says "other countries, like the United States and in Europe, also sell their weapons to African countries." 

Pang adds: "When it (arms sales) becomes related to humanitarian crises, it becomes a politicized question. My point of view is: Don't politicize this question. Treat this question as a business question."   

But it's Goldwyn's view that China's weapons sales in Africa shouldn't be treated purely in commercial terms, because a "change in the correlation of forces within a country has an impact; it has an impact on the neighborhood and the level of conflict…It certainly had an impact in Sudan, in arming the government in a way that enabled it to do things that it could not have done otherwise." 

Pang's response is that China is a signatory to all the major international arms control treaties, and that it abides by them.

Sun Baohong, political attaché at the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., says her country, despite its sale of weapons and ammunition to Khartoum, is committed to peace in Africa, and specifically in the Darfur region.

"If the Darfur crisis could be solved tomorrow, we would be happy. A solution to the issue is in our best interests, because we have great investment in Sudan. But this does not mean that we have unique influence over the government of Sudan. We have influence there, but it has its limits," Sun explains, reiterating that China is "unwilling to dictate to other countries" regarding their "domestic issues."  

She emphasizes that China wants to foster "national reconciliation" in Sudan, because without this, Sun maintains, there will be no peace there.

As evidence of this dedication to peace in Darfur as well as throughout Africa, Sun says that "China has 435 peacekeepers in Darfur serving on medical and engineering teams" and has deployed "many" peacekeepers across Africa.

Stephen Morrison, head of the Africa Program at the US-based Center for Strategic International Studies, says there are 1,200 Chinese "blue helmets" (UN peacekeepers) spread across seven peacekeeping operations in Africa.

While he describes China's security provisions to Africa as "thin," Morrison says the country "certainly puts more boots on the ground than the United States." 

Pang says China isn't trying to change political systems through its peacekeeping efforts in Africa.

"The West has its reservations about this, because China continues to maintain the principles of sovereignty and equality and does not interfere in other countries domestic affairs. It does not export political models and values. It stresses neutrality," he explains. 

"In Chinese diplomacy, sovereignty trumps all other norms, including that of democracy," comments Professor Ian Taylor, of the Department of International Relations at Scotland's St. Andrews University.  

He points out that Chinese official media have described Africa's relatively recent wave of democratization as a "disaster" and Chinese commentators with close ties to the government have argued that multiparty politics fuels social turmoil, ethnic conflicts and civil wars.

"And of course this was welcomed by a variety of African leaders," Taylor says. 

"In fact, liberal democracy has been held up by the Chinese as a source of much of Africa's woes, which goes directly against the Western consensus that lack of democracy accounts for some of Africa's problems."

Sun says China's stance is that "African states must decide what's best for their people, without any interference from outside."

Taylor argues that such a position "makes very little real sense in a milieu dominated by corrupt regimes" in some African countries that are not dedicated to the development of their people, but to self-enrichment.  

"It's precisely because China doesn't ask any questions about the neo-patrimonial regimes it encounters in Africa, that it doesn't criticize the rampant corruption that goes with this and, crucially, doesn't seek to advance meddlesome initiatives related to democracy and good governance that Beijing is the preferred partner of choice for many African autocrats."     

Taylor is convinced that China's "hands-off policy" in Africa in Africa threatens to undermine the very development that China says it seeks to foster.

Goldwyn says it's important to remember that the protection of human rights and the fight against corruption are not Western norms.

"If you look at the African Union, and you look at NEPAD, these are African norms we're talking about here. We're talking about whether we're going to have governments in Africa that live up to the norms which they say they want to follow…. This is not ideological imperialism on the part of the United States or the Europeans; we're talking about living up to standards that Africans have set for themselves."

Goldwyn is certain that China is set to "adapt" some of its policies and strategies concerning Africa. 

"China is evolving its international role. I think the historical policy of non-interference is having to change, because when China does something it has an impact, and when China doesn't do something it has an impact also. And as an international player, those responsibilities are increasing."

Morrison agrees that China "is not going to able to play this so-called non-interference in local politics forever." He uses President Hu Jintao's visit earlier this year to eight African countries, where trade unions protested against poor labor conditions in Chinese factories and human rights groups demonstrated against Hu for China's perceived role in fomenting the Darfur crisis, to bolster his assertion.

"There was a threshold crossed" during Hu's visit to Africa, says Morrison: "The Chinese were surprised and in some cases shocked by the scope and level of intensity" around these issues.

He's of the opinion that the anti-Chinese demonstrations in Africa have contributed to China realizing that it will have to "expand its dialogue about these issues from state to state level, to engaging directly with civil society groups" in Africa. 

Sun agrees that there's room for such expansion, but insists once again that Africa's future with regard to good governance is in the continent's hands, not in China's.

China Attempts to Water Down Language in International Report on Cutting Greenhouse Gases

Delegates to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change meeting in Bangkok this week say China tried hard to tone down recommendations and targets for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. As VOA's Luis Ramirez reports from Beijing, the Chinese government is worried that tighter controls may mean job losses.

Cars drive on Beijing's second ring road in murky weather (file photo)

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said Friday that steps need to be taken now to reduce emissions. But China - already the world's number-two emitter after the United States and heading for number one - is hoping it can take action later.

The scientists and experts in Bangkok agreed the world needs to cut annual emissions of carbon dioxide by up to 85 percent by the year 2050 in order to slow global warming.

China, along with India and other developing countries, argued that the target for emission cuts was too high.

Paul Harris is political science professor at the Lignan University in Hong Kong, and an expert on the politics of climate change. He says China hoped to avoid taking measures that could hurt its roaring economy.

"What it's trying to do is to delay the date at which China is required to undertake really substantial limitations in its own emissions," he said. " So, by trying to mitigate the wording, China is trying to reduce the threshold at which it might have to do something that would be painful for itself."

Chinese leaders argued that China is still a poor and developing country. However, Harris says that argument is becoming more difficult for Beijing to sustain, as the world watches the skyrocketing economy pull millions into the middle class.

"In China, there are now tens of millions living modern western lifestyles, much like Americans," Harris said. "And it is these people that China is increasingly going to have difficulty denying exist within Chinese borders. So, on the one hand, China wants everyone to think that it is a poor, developing country that ought not be required to do anything, but on the other hand, everyone sees China as rapidly developing."

Scientists predict that China will soon overtake the United States as the leading emitter of greenhouse gases.

Analysts Explain Significance of Evolving Relationship Between China and Africa

China's President Hu Jintao greets Chinese citizens living in Mozambique during his African tour in February

In recent years, China's activities in Africa have expanded dramatically. Chinese political and business leaders are visiting the continent regularly, and the giant of the Far East is pouring investment and aid into Africa. In exchange, it's securing access to the continent's natural resources, which Beijing considers essential for the further development of China, the most populous country in the world. Chinese officials maintain that they will not "plunder" Africa, but aim to forge relationships on the continent that will be of "mutual benefit." However, concerns remain that China's policies in Africa are not conducive to protecting human rights and combating corruption. Nevertheless, analysts agree that China's new engagement with Africa represents a major transition in the continent's strategic landscape. In the first of a five-part series, VOA's Darren Taylor provides an introduction to China's current relationship with Africa.

"China's unfolding relationship with Africa is perhaps the most significant economic development on the continent in modern times," says the director of the African Studies Program at the Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C., Dr Peter Lewis. 

"Images of Africa that are projected within China are very different from the kinds of images that we see of Africa (in the West). In China, Africa is projected as a continent of opportunity, a continent that is on the move, a continent that is not marginal but very central – which is very different from how Africa is portrayed often in the media in the West," says Prof. Deborah Brautigam, of American University's School of International Service, who has been studying China's evolving relationship in Africa since the early 1980s and has written several books on the subject.

China's investment in Africa now stands at $1.5 billion a year, there are at least 700 Chinese enterprises operating on the continent, and China's trade with Africa is approaching $50 billion, according to Lewis. This has made China the second-largest trading partner with sub-Saharan Africa, eclipsing one of the continent's former colonial powers, Britain, which formerly enjoyed the highest economic profile in Africa.

"Aid flows from China to Africa have doubled, even tripled, in the last several years," Lewis says.

In terms of debt relief, China recently wrote off $1.3 billion owed it by African countries, which has led to a fresh injection of good feeling in Africa towards the Chinese.  

Reflecting China's increased interest in the continent, and Africa's willingness to cooperate with Beijing, last November President Hu Jintao hosted 44 African heads of state at the China-Africa summit.

"It's difficult to recall another international event at which 44 African heads of state have attended, excepting perhaps the General Assembly meetings at the UN," says Lewis.

Then, in February this year, Hu visited eight African countries, including continental powerhouse South Africa. 

"China's new engagement with Africa has been dramatic; it has been widespread; it has been reflected in economic, political and security relationships; and it has invited different perspectives," Lewis commented.

"Some people see it as a competitive challenge – as a resource race, an energy competition, a head-to-head zero-sum relationship between the US or Western energy consumers and China's burgeoning economy and its burgeoning demand for energy."

Other observers have interpreted these new relationships between China and Africa as an opportunity for development in sub-Saharan Africa – a region that has been badly marginalized in the international economy over the last two decades, accounting for less than two percent of global trade flows, and only about one percent of direct foreign investment worldwide.

"The prospect of increased attention, focus and economic engagement with Africa would seem to present new opportunities, new possibilities, new resources – and a counterweight, a reduction, of Africa's troubling marginality in the global economic system," Lewis explains. 

Other analysts have also pointed to the alternative model of development presented by Beijing.

"China, after all, was not long ago a poor, agrarian country, broadly similar to some of the development challenges facing sub-Saharan Africa. And as a poor, agrarian country that has become rich in a rather breathtaking climb to greater prosperity, many analysts have said that this presents possibilities for Africa – an alternative development model," says Lewis.

Certain commentators are convinced that China offers Africa a way out of poverty that doesn't involve dependence on the developed world for charity.

But critics have also pointed to "troubling" aspects of the relationship, says Lewis: "(Some see) challenges for governance, economic development and security, arising from the Chinese relationship with Africa. Some critics have said that it represents a new colonialism, that China is basically going in for self-serving interests, principally concerned with natural resources and energy, engaged in lopsided deals with African countries, and that there are not balanced or mutual benefits here."

Other critics have highlighted Beijing's relationship with so-called "rogue states" such as Zimbabwe, Equatorial Guinea and Sudan – countries that are perceived to be engaged in large-scale corruption and human rights abuses.

There's a view in the West, says Lewis, that China's relationship will effectively "bail out dictatorships and provide new opportunities for authoritarian regimes" and will detract from democracy efforts in Africa.  

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, for example – in rejecting what he terms American and especially British interference in his country's affairs – has stated that he does not need monetary or food aid from the West for his impoverished and famine-ravaged country, because China is providing for Zimbabwe's needs. President Mugabe has repeatedly said he prefers to forge strong relations with China because it, unlike the West, does not place any political conditions on its investments and aid.   

Security analyst David Goldwyn of Goldwyn International, an international energy consultancy firm, says "some of what China is doing is incredibly helpful towards Africa in terms of aid, and investment and infrastructure – and some of it is unhelpful, in that I think it does undermine a lot of the progress that's been made on good governance – maybe unintentionally, but I think it's a fact."                 

According to Pang Zhongying, a professor of international studies and the director of the Institute of Global Studies at Nankai University, the "fear and paranoia" about China's entry into Africa that is sometimes prevalent in "especially the United States and Europe" is "needless."

"The West's current concerns and debates are overreacted and exaggerated. China's renewed Africa policy can be a great opportunity for China-Western dialogues, and cooperation. China-Africa strategic partnership can lead to an Africa-China-West triangle for Africa's peace and development," he says. 

But Pang also questions the West's motives in "sometimes vilifying every move China makes" inside Africa. 

"Why all the noise about China in Africa now, when China has had good relations with Africa since the 1950s?" he asks.

In the 1950s, when many African countries were fighting against colonialism, China's Marxist leader Mao Zedong established political ties with them and showed solidarity with Africans. China began providing arms, ammunition and training to liberation movements' military wings. In the 1960s, when many African countries gained independence, China constructed roads and railways throughout sub-Saharan Africa. This relationship with the continent has evolved today into President Hu's and Premier Wen Jiabao's extended economic links with Africa, chiefly in the form of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), an alliance between China and what its government terms "friendly" African countries for "collective consultation and dialogue and a cooperation mechanism between the developing countries, which falls into the category of South-South cooperation." 

Pang says China "makes no secret" that, through stronger ties with Africa, it hopes to secure the natural resources it needs to continue with its ambitious domestic economic development agenda to satisfy its rapidly growing population, which now stands at 1.3 billion people, by far the largest in the world. 

"But China does not want to plunder Africa," he stresses. "China's relations with Africa will be based on mutual benefit…. Development is the greatest common denominator between China and Africa. Chinese leaders say repeatedly that China is the world's largest developing country. And Africa is the continent with the largest number of developing countries. So common development can be a common objective to pursue between China and Africa."

But Pang insists that despite all the hype, China's rise in Africa is "limited."

"The value of China's trade with Africa at the moment is about $50 billion – this amount equals the amount of aid African countries last year received from the European Union."

Pang says China's policy of "trade rather than aid" to Africa "shows that the hat of neo-colonialism does not fit China; it is a partner – not a new colonizer."

He predicts that the value of China's trade with Africa will grow to at least $100 billion by 2010 and says China believes it has a duty to help Africa to develop.

"China is itself not a developed country; it has far more in common with Africa than the West. Like Africa, its economy also depends largely on foreign direct investment," he explains.

Out of China's burgeoning economic relationship with Africa, other results have sprung, such as the country's increasing involvement in peacekeeping operations in war-torn nations such as the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan.

China continues to build infrastructure throughout Africa, including sports stadiums and hospitals, and has also established the Confucius Institute in Nairobi, to facilitate cooperation and "better understanding" between China and Africa, says Pang.

Professor Deborah Brautigam of American University's International Studies Department has written several books on China's evolving relationship with Africa. She says only in recent years has China started emerging into a role as a great world power, despite the fact that it has long held a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.  

"What we're seeing today are some of those growing pains still, of China as a great power now in the security area, China as a great power in the economy, China as a great power as a political force, China as a great power as a cultural force. And all of those forms of hard and soft power we see projecting into Africa, in ways that they hadn't been very visible before," Brautigam explains.

"As a result of that, the Chinese are now finding their people being taken as hostage in southern Nigeria, they're finding that people are yelling and protesting as their leaders come to town – just as they did and they still do when they say, 'Yankee, go home!' when American presidents (visit developing countries). This is a new role for China."