Ethiopians probably like to remember Beijing's giant gift of Roosevelt Street in the heart of the capital, Addis Ababa, Africa's tallest city. It was a very generous Chinese gift, and of high quality, contrary to the reputation of Asian Dragon products, at a cost of two hundred million dollars, hundreds of Chinese workers, a design similar to the design of a space base, and a construction that is the tallest in the Ethiopian capital with 21 floors that unleashed the sky of Addis Ababa (1). China completed everything to the fullest, and handed over the new headquarters of the African Union to the landlocked country in a ceremonial ceremony at the end of January 2012, in the presence of China's first political advisor at the time, Jia Quenglin, and Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. For five years, the gigantic building, with a conference hall among the largest on the continent, played its role perfectly in gathering the continent's poles, until January 2017, when, after all these years, the Ethiopians suddenly woke up to an intelligence nightmare that no one expected.
It all started with an excited computer technician working in the Federation building who noticed that the building's computer servers were jammed with data activity between 12 midnight and 2 am every day, even though no one was in the building at these late hours, and soon got excited to trace the source of the bug. To discover that the daily circulating data, and all the union's internal secrets stored on almost all the building's devices, are transferred and stored in other mysterious servers not in Addis Ababa, but in another place a full eight thousand kilometers from the Ethiopian capital, specifically in the Chinese city of Shanghai.
A high-ranking official of the African Union - who declined to be named - told the astonishing story of the leak of data to the French newspaper Le Monde, confirming that the union carried out a massive purge campaign (2), expelled all the Chinese engineers working in the building, and then conducted a complete replacement of all electronic servers with other private servers, refusing to offer China replaced it, and all correspondence exchanged daily between Union officials was encrypted, with it passing through another route instead of Ethio Telecom, the general operator of the Ethiopian telephone network, but the newspaper did not stop at that in its investigation, and recounted a scene that seemed to come from the heart of a cold intelligence war, when he attended An Algerian cyber security team was called by the federation to conduct a comprehensive survey of the building, to discover precise microphones planted in different places (3).
Soon, China officially denied, in the words of "Quang Welin", Beijing's ambassador to the African Union, what came of Le Monde's investigation, describing it as "preposterous, and absorbing it is very difficult." Then the new African Union President - at the time - Rwandan Paul Kagame supported it, saying: There are no espionage operations (4), before the ex-Prime Minister of Ethiopia "Haileh Desalegn" joined the denial party, stressing that the Sino-African relations are "very strategic and comprehensive", but all the statements of denial failed to respond to the exact details reported by "Le Monde".
Not long after that happened, and only four months after the espionage, the Congo announced its acceptance of another Chinese architectural gift (5) by taking over the construction of the Congolese Parliament at a huge cost probably exceeding 50 million euros, although the general Congolese behavior was tolerant of the fact that The building may be less than a concern for a country facing endless crises. We cannot ignore the possibility that Beijing's gift will be a generous exchange for other benefits that the Asian giant may reap from the African country torn by conflict and saturated with crises, and rich in its natural resources.
The billions of China scattered throughout Africa and its breadth summarize many relations that constitute the outcome of more than two decades of economic and political entanglements between them. You may always lean toward the Chinese side, one of the biggest consumers of African energy resources. At a time when everyone is seeking a share of the cake of Africa's abundant and almost free resources to those who know how to exploit them, which China has not been immune from for a few decades ago, since the first features of Sino-African relations were formed in the 1970s, Beijing seems to be on a date now with Redefining its African influence in one of the world's largest competition arenas.
The United States and the West in general view China's relationship with Africa as a new form of colonialism in which China has exploited Africa's mineral and energy resources in order to advance its economic growth faster
Chinese officials have been appearing in a semi-permanent state of defense when it comes to Beijing's long arms in Africa for a long time, but the matter has changed a lot in the last few years, specifically when the speech of "Hillary Clinton", the US Secretary of State, in early August 2012 called for an offensive tone A rare Chinese towards America. At the time, Clinton called on African leaders, on a platform at a Senegalese university, to select “responsible and non-exploitative” economic partners, and reference (6) was unambiguously directed at China, especially after the latter announced about two weeks before Hillary’s speech that it would provide loans and investments Africa, worth $20 billion. Beijing picked up the signal, and decided to respond directly and offensively through its official news agency, Xinhua, saying that Clinton "Either she is ignorant of the facts of China's relations with Africa, or she chooses to ignore them, and in both cases her claims that China is trying to seize the continent's wealth for herself is a false claim, and that the friendship between China and Africa makes what Clinton said more than a lie.
The United States and the West in general consider China's relationship with Africa a new form of colonialism (7) as long as China has exploited Africa's resources of minerals and energy in order to push its economic growth forward in a faster manner, but what the West sees as colonialism China sees as a relationship of mutual win for both parties. While China is getting what it needs in minerals and energy resources, Africa is getting billions of dollars in loans, development projects, infrastructure and investments that push it towards achieving its long-delayed self-growth.So when Sino-African relations were established in the early fifties with the financing of the first railway line (8) to transport copper ore from Zambia to Tanzania, and then continued upward until the late nineties, Africa during this period and beyond did not need anyone to tell it to stay away On investing with China, not only for the benefits that it has actually obtained during the following years, but because China - unlike the West and America in particular - was not telling Africa what it needed (9), but rather adhered to reciprocal policies of non-interference in exchange for contentment with the already existing economic benefits, Or so the image is exported anyway.
This image was made public every time by announcing huge Chinese loans and investments in several African countries, most notably in December 2015 when Chinese President Xi Jinping announced investments and loans for African development worth $60 billion (10) . But Beijing's greatest influence in its positive image came through a huge set of educational grants for African students in China, and a package of training programs (11) that combine training young politicians and government officials with the achievement of Beijing's goals in spreading its culture and history to the heart of the continent.
Talking about China's redefinition of its role in Africa (12), and in a glimpse from the heart of the Kenyan capital, "Nairobi", "Barbara Njao" talks about when everything surrounding the "Africa Live" program seemed to be from the "charming" announcer, as Barbara puts it, And carefully selected video clips of images of African officials, government meetings, and military forces, everything seemed at one point to be working within an integrated African media system, and at another moment it became completely out of order with the knowledge that the television broadcast is taking place from a Chinese-owned station in Nairobi that it established in 2010. The goal of this is to "enter the real heart of Africa", a goal with which China has become the second most popular development model on the continent, even if it could not by any means surpass the United States, which remained on top in popularity, even if this popularity differed on the executive level.
The difference between the governmental and popular views was not only due to the free political training that China gives to its African men, who later become the pillars of its investments as well, but because one of the important popular criticisms of Beijing is that its investments mostly come in the form of government contracts surrounded by secrecy, which means The inability to calculate the size of the advantages and benefits that are supposed to occur or not, and another criticism comes as Chinese investments often bring in full Chinese labor to work on their projects and directly supervise them, which means the scarcity of local job opportunities provided by these investments to Africans (13). The third criticism revolves around the fact that African governments are the biggest beneficiaries of China's undeclared projects due to the scale of corruption that is magnified on the continent.
Anthony Kapando, in charge of the general secretariat’s task forces for the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), which became the ruling party in South Sudan after 2011, was so surprised that he did not stop talking about his travel in 2017 for a Chinese training delegated to him by the movement (14) From his visit to the railway station and the main airport in Shanghai, passing through the Central Party School in Beijing, to some industrial areas and police stations in different parts of China. Antony was so swayed by China's economic and industrial development that he did not need the training he received as one of thousands of African officials to be a propaganda in any way for the principles of Beijing or its ruling party.
The main objective of the emergence of Chinese international training programs since the seventies, especially for African politicians and soldiers, was to export the principles of the Chinese communist revolution to the world, and it can be said that Beijing no longer needs to allocate training programs to propaganda for itself in Africa, but rather dazzles those coming from their developing countries With all that it has achieved in terms of industrial and technological progress and economic boom, visitors do not realize a way to reach it except by following the wide-open road of China with aid and training. This fact did not prevent Beijing from continuing to invest in the education and nurturing of young political actors in the destination countries, which would then give them a chance to become the leaders of these countries themselves.
It is a path begun by Beijing since the seventies, as we mentioned, and the most prominent example of China's men in Africa is "Emmerson Mananagua", the next Zimbabwean president with a military coup in which China is allegedly involved, following a visit to China by the Commander-in-Chief of the Zimbabwean National Army, General Constantino Chiwenga Just days before the coup (15), it is believed that he won the approval of China to move his forces to overthrow the late President Robert Mugabe. The Zimbabwean army chief has a long friendship with the current president and former Vice President Mananagua, but the latter was the same who received his military training in China during the Zimbabwean civil war in the 1960s, and then returned to commit murder and torture against thousands of his compatriots during the war.
During that period and through the eighties and nineties, China's relations with Africa were still oscillating between the first attempts to assert its presence on the world stage, and the spread of civil wars and conflicts throughout the entire brown continent, making it most unfit for a rising country like China to focus its investments in it. . By the early second millennium, things were in the process of turning completely in favor of a Chinese incursion into Africa, becoming China's number one on the list of the continent's trading partners for a period that lasted for more than a decade, since the year 2000.
The model of China-Africa relations has been associated with a special kind of interdependence on two specific types of needs. Energy was at the top of the emerging needs of China in the nineties, and the destroyed infrastructure as a result of civil wars and wars of liberation was among the main needs of the brown continent, and both found in the other a way to meet its needs, which made “mutual benefit” the basis of those relations in their infancy, as China always repeats .This situation did not last long, and the Chinese conflict with Asian and global powers, led by the United States and Japan, was one of the reasons for this, while the instability and the continuation of wars in many areas of Africa, as well as the entrenchment of corruption and authoritarian regimes in most of its countries, were other reasons that made relations Bilateralism is a subject of global controversy, not only for its lack of transparency almost along the line, but also for China’s involvement in several direct dealings with governments and dictatorial regimes, so that these deals will be transformed from the development of the continent in the first place to a new role in which China has become the most beneficial in its dysfunctional and inconsistent African relations. balanced.
Zimbabwe is one of the most prominent examples of African countries that have long-standing relations and a huge trade exchange with Beijing compared to its neighbors, political relations in which China has long stood by Mugabe, sometimes by consolidating economic relations aimed at development, and at other times by using the veto, which prevented the imposition of international sanctions. On Zimbabwe in 2008. On the other hand, China’s relations with countries such as Congo, Nigeria and South Sudan remained a subject of great controversy, following accusations by the United States and the West that Beijing had only strong relations with countries rich in energy resources, excluding the rest of the continent, and despite Beijing’s permanent defense of itself, in practice. By establishing relations with Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda and a long list of countries considered poor, this did not prevent continued accusations of China misusing its African relations.
Relationships of interests related to Chinese investments in Africa were only one of several accusations leveled and still are against the Asian giant, accusations that some considered well-founded, while others considered them a “misunderstanding” of the nature of relations as well as the needs of both parties along the way, while the exploitation of the resources of an entire continent stands In favor of Chinese growth at the top of the list of these accusations, the comparison between the West or the United States, in particular, and China in their relationship with Africa puts Beijing in an unenviable position, and begins with it a series of endless repercussions and comparisons about the advantages of each of them and the importance of their existence, and about The impact of all this on Africa's volatile economic growth.
The blue helmets of soldiers in China's Shan Dong province appear as a distinctive sign of their affiliation with the international peacekeeping forces of the United Nations, and with it appear intense Chinese pride in the idealism that Beijing promotes in its foreign policy. It was not a matter of where or when these soldiers were deployed, but rather about China's global reputation that these forces promoted.
Chinese peace missions have become "the most involved in international peacekeeping" (16), and in Africa in particular. But the respect and trust earned by Chinese peacekeepers did not reflect the same situation for Chinese companies and businessmen working and present in Africa, or the same financial policy that Beijing pursued with the continent. It was not only related to the size of the high interest that China places on its loans to Africa compared to the almost non-existent financial benefits of international loans and investments, but rather the Chinese human incursion into the depths of the continent through a wide network of private or state-owned companies, or Chinese immigrants coming individually to work in Africa, which Giving them thousands of job opportunities that Africans think they deserve.
China defends itself in return by saying that the volume of Chinese aid to Africa in the end represents only 5% of the volume of global aid, which represents a small value that ultimately gives it the advantage of achieving the required development inside China before anything else, although it will be rewarded in return. It is the 13% of the volume of loans it provides to the continent. A percentage whose value has vanished from a Western point of view globally in front of the high rate of benefits, and its value has vanished locally in view of its limited impact on the life of the public in Africa, although this impact appeared slightly and in some way in countries such as Guinea, Congo and Mali between 2003-2013, where the International Cooperation Organization estimated For every 1% increase in Chinese GDP, there is an increase of 0.3% in these countries as a result of mutual direct investment with China.
The peak of trade relations between China and Africa had begun to decline again after 2011 under the influence of the repercussions of the global financial crisis in 2008, and China’s subsequent quest to transform from an export-based economy to focus on internal growth, and with it attention to technical development as one of the aspects of the upcoming global competition, seeking With him, relations with China and Africa declined, although the first remained with it the largest trading partner of the second, while both retained a reciprocal influence, the greatest impact of which was manifested in the African Union's disregard of the espionage incident, which the two sides quickly denied.
In the second week of February 2018, the annual Gala, one of the most important and most watched programs of Chinese state television and known as the celebration of the Chinese New Year, witnessed the appearance of a scene on the stage of the program that topped the international media (17). In the scene that begins with a traditional and fun African dance, a Chinese woman plays the role of an old African woman (18) with very large plastic prosthetic buttocks, what social media considered "Chinese racism towards Africa", which was quickly denied by Beijing, defending the entire theatrical performance.
This simple scene encapsulates African-Chinese relations, and perhaps, rather, Africa's relations with the whole world.
In that part of the world things are very simple, and most of the world deals with traditional behavior but it still proves its effectiveness every time: there is a large continent located on the margins of the world that we can laugh at as we like, but it needs money from anywhere, and its inhabitants are tearing some of them apart Some are engaged in protracted wars with weapons from almost the same countries that donate those funds, in conflicts that may be ignited by these countries as well, and as a result of those wars the continent also needs huge continuous infrastructure, which the countries themselves can provide, in exchange for an acceptable level of loyalty, and a greater From the energy and resources that the colonial powers, in their various forms, continue to drain from the continent in an endless vicious cycle.
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China "gifted" the African Union a headquarters building and then allegedly bugged it for state secrets
A Addis-Abeba, le siège de l'Union africaine espionné par Pékin
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AU has no secret files, nothing for China to spy on
China to build Congo's new €50m for free
Hillary Clinton launches African tour with veiled attack on China
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The evolution of China-Africa ties in 1,200 years
China's Investments in Africa: What's the Real Story?
China's Xi offers another $60 billion to Africa, but says no to 'vanity' projects
Beijing is cultivating the next generation of African elites by training them in China
Chinese investment into Africa soars in 2016
China redefines its role in Africa
China's Foreign Policy Experiment in South Sudan
There's legitimate suspicion that China approved of Zimbabwe's coup
China's Foreign Policy Experiment in South Sudan
2018 - China - CCTV's Lunar New Year TV Gala Showcase 'Racist Blackface' African Sketch - 2/15/18