China trade outweighs corruption fears for Africa
BEIJING (Reuters) - China's ties with Africa have been a magnet for critics worried about corruption and human rights on a continent struggling with both, but its investments are bringing more growth than risk for countries starved of trade.
Two-way trade flows have ballooned tenfold since 2000, to $107 billion last year, as China builds infrastructure, sells cheap goods and buys much-needed energy and mineral resources.
These deals have drawn criticism from activists and politicians, often Western, who say China is stripping Africa of raw materials while shoring up corrupt and oppressive regimes.
But African and Chinese businessmen and academics say Beijing is filling a yawning need for key infrastructure, and Chinese firms are also shaking up moribund markets where Western companies were doing little to develop local economies.
"We always talk about trade being more important than aid," said Adrian Davis, the China head of Britain's Department for International Development (DFID), which works with Beijing to support development in Africa.
"This is money going into Africa ... We are investing in health and education, but Africa also needs physical infrastructure which we in the West haven't been doing."
China's critics also say they are concerned about what it is funding, and how, as roads, stadia and government buildings built with Chinese cash spring up around the continent -- some of them aid, some of them trade, but many something in between.
Beijing entwines business and assistance more closely than Western governments, using infrastructure to pay for resources and often disbursing donated funds through the Commerce Ministry.
This makes it hard to put a figure on handouts, and the only official number for Africa covers all spending from 1949 to 2006.
"We put everything into a very big basket called economic cooperation; investment, humanitarian assistance, contracts. So it is difficult to figure out what belongs purely to aid," said He Wenping, an Africa expert at an official Beijing think-tank.
CUTTING OUT CASH
But Beijing is aware of the risk to its reputation and market access if projects are derailed by sleaze and its bankers have used their trade-aid model to curb dangers, experts say.
Bypassing host governments and paying Chinese firms directly to build a road or hospital, which is handed over when completed, cuts opportunities for the most predatory graft that often left other aid projects unfinished.
"The Chinese say: 'We will take your gold and put in so many schools, we will take your copper and put in a railway line'," said Kwaku Atuahene-Gima, a Ghanian citizen who is Professor at the China Europe International Business School.
"If that happens, that is a more effective way of developing the system than giving loans and aid money that go into the pockets of politicians and other people who squander it." Continued...
