By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottown, PEI] Guardian
Last March, a number of African ambassadors accredited to China defended Beijing’s repression of Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang, where at least a million people are believed to have been detained in a sprawling network of camps and face forced labour, forced sterilisation, torture and genocide.
Adama Compaore, Daniel Owassa, and Gafar Karar, respectively the ambassadors of Burkina Faso, Congo-Brazzaville, and Sudan, spoke at the Seventh Ambassador Lecture in Beijing, titled “Xinjiang in the Eyes of African Ambassadors to China.”
“Some Western forces hyping up the so-called Xinjiang-related issues are actually launching unprovoked attacks on China to serve their own ulterior motives,” Compaore said. Owassa announced he supports anti-terrorism measures taken by the Chinese government and appreciates Xinjiang's “great development achievements in various fields in recent years.”
Karar has visited Xinjiang and contended that the Chinese government has cracked down on terrorist activities and effectively protected the lives and property of the people.
Even South Africa, a nation that, under Nelson Mandela, was a champion of human rights and which suffered under apartheid, is silent on Beijing’s crimes.
Increasingly, Africa’s pro-China position is pitting the continent against the West when it comes to human rights. Criticizing this, Carine Kaneza Nantulya, the Africa Advocacy Director within the Africa Division at Human Rights Watch, warned that African governments’ willingness to remain silent on Beijing’s suppression of rights “has real-world consequences.”
But Eric Olander, co-founder of the China Africa Project, noted that for African policymakers, not antagonising Beijing is a much more important foreign policy priority.
“What these critics don’t seem to understand is that as poor, developing countries -- many that are also highly indebted to Beijing and depend on China for the bulk of their trade -- they are not in a position to withstand the immediate blowback that would result from upsetting China.”
Africa is a region that offers some key benefits for the rulers in Beijing – vast supplies of natural resources, cheap labour, and a new market for Chinese goods. Indeed, writes Nadège Roland of the National Bureau of Asian Research in a June 2021 report, A New Great Game? Situating Africa in China’s Strategic Thinking, by 2040 “the African labour force will be close to 1.1 billion, surpassing China and India, and by 2030, 60 per cent of the world’s population under 30 will be concentrated on the African continent.”
With the emergence of the post-1990s model of mixing aid with commercial finance, Chinese aid to African industry and other business-focused sectors has increased dramatically.
The decision by African leaders to turn to China for infrastructure funding has transformed the continent’s landscape with expansive roads, bridges, railways, ports and an internet infrastructure that has ensured the continent is not left behind in the digital economy. Some of these projects are part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which 46 African countries have signed on to.
Ports are exceptionally important for the economic development of the region as 90 per cent of exports go through maritime channels. They will be spread along each coast of the continent. The Maritime Silk Road is now running as far south as Tanzania, along the Indian Ocean, and then up to the Gulf of Aden, the Red Sea, and the Mediterranean.
China can leverage its relationship with African countries for its own geostrategic ambitions. For instance, the construction of ports offers an important advantage when it comes to access to intelligence, territorial access points, docking of its navy, access to trade zones, and maritime chokepoints.
China’s military presence in Africa has grown alongside its rising economic presence. Such concerns have already started to materialize with China’s military base in Djibouti, along the Horn of Africa.
China also established Namibia’s military staff college and provides military training to Cameroon and Rwanda. And China trains Kenya’s paramilitary National Youth Service and sponsors a “politico-military school” in Uganda.
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Jan. 6, while on a visit to Kenya, announced that China would name a special envoy for the Horn of Africa. The region’s conflicts hamper its “tremendous potential for development.”
On his tour of East Africa, Wang also visited Eritrea, on the northern border of the Tigray region. Eritrea is aligned with the Ethiopian government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in the civil war raging in that country.
Six agreements were signed while Yang was in Kenya, including one trade agreement that will see avocados from Kenya shipped to China. Kenya will also receive 10 million COVID-19 vaccine doses from China.
Western governments remain at a serious disadvantage. Chinese investment is far less restrictive than that offered by the United States, European countries, and Canada, which attach conditions on governance policies, transparency, democracy, and respect for human rights.
Many African leaders are supportive of Chinese investment activities because they feel treated as equals, unlike their past experiences with the West. And China is making political use of those feelings.
Xi has suggested the Maritime Silk Road was inspired by Zheng He, an admiral who led a fleet on seven voyages to east Africa between 1405 and 1433.
This is now exploited by Beijing, by suggesting that China and Africa share the legacy of having been exploited, humiliated and victimized by European colonial powers. Chinese intellectuals have fashioned this into an anti-imperialist discourse for acceptance by their African counterparts.
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