China's Benign Involvement in Africa
Still on China's involvement in Africa, and still a pro-China view, but something which we are not hearing enough of.
In an article by He Wenping titled Untainted Picture of China's Africa Policy (China Daily, 5 August 2008), the author noted that despite "overzealous hyping by the western media about China's cooperation model of infrastructure in exchange for resources," only 7 per cent of China' s investment in Africa infrastructure is connected to the excavation (a careful choice of word to avoid "exploitation"?) of natural resources.
He added that China's involvement in Africa is totally different from the "brutal and bloody ways" in which the "Western colonists (had) plundered African resources in the distant past".
Rather, China cooperated with Africa in resource development, following the principle of "reciprocity, mutual benefit, and joint development." Such an approach is aimed at helping African countries "turn their disadvantage in natural resources into competitiveness and pushing African countries and regions toward sustainable development."
As evidence, He (He, incidentally, is a she) cited the example of Sudan where by the end of 2003, China had invested a total of $2.7 billion, laying 1,560 km of oil pipelines, as well as building an oil refinery with an annual production capacity of 2.6 million tons of crude oil and a number of gas stations.
These projects reportedly turned Sudan from oil importer into an oil exporter, and gave the country an "oil industy setup complete with prospecting, production, refining, transportation and sale operations."
But turning to Nigeria, which does not have the benefit of "joint development" with China, it is a country that exports crude oil while still "relying on imported gasoline more than 50 years after Royal Shell started extracting oil there, because it has yet to possess a complete oil industry with both extracting and processing capabilities."
He is a researcher with the Institute of West Asian and African Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
In an article by He Wenping titled Untainted Picture of China's Africa Policy (China Daily, 5 August 2008), the author noted that despite "overzealous hyping by the western media about China's cooperation model of infrastructure in exchange for resources," only 7 per cent of China' s investment in Africa infrastructure is connected to the excavation (a careful choice of word to avoid "exploitation"?) of natural resources.
He added that China's involvement in Africa is totally different from the "brutal and bloody ways" in which the "Western colonists (had) plundered African resources in the distant past".
Rather, China cooperated with Africa in resource development, following the principle of "reciprocity, mutual benefit, and joint development." Such an approach is aimed at helping African countries "turn their disadvantage in natural resources into competitiveness and pushing African countries and regions toward sustainable development."
As evidence, He (He, incidentally, is a she) cited the example of Sudan where by the end of 2003, China had invested a total of $2.7 billion, laying 1,560 km of oil pipelines, as well as building an oil refinery with an annual production capacity of 2.6 million tons of crude oil and a number of gas stations.
These projects reportedly turned Sudan from oil importer into an oil exporter, and gave the country an "oil industy setup complete with prospecting, production, refining, transportation and sale operations."
But turning to Nigeria, which does not have the benefit of "joint development" with China, it is a country that exports crude oil while still "relying on imported gasoline more than 50 years after Royal Shell started extracting oil there, because it has yet to possess a complete oil industry with both extracting and processing capabilities."
He is a researcher with the Institute of West Asian and African Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
posted by Maria Siow @ 10:31 PM
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