[ 2013-04-30 ]

China commits billions in aid to Africa as part of charm offensive
Database reveals government has backed 1,700
projects on continent since 2000 in apparent
attempt to win favour. The country's financial
commitments are significantly larger than previous
estimates


Soft power,hard cash.

How Beijing has spent billions on
aid and development in Africa.

Case studies
Many of the projects listed in AidData's database
defy expectations. The Guardian examined four:

The $40 million opera house on the outskirts of
Algeria's capital

Olympic pool with sun loungers and 'Southern Fried
Chicken' in Ghana

The China-Zambia Friendship Hospital in Lusaka

Thousands of African students and civil servants
in China on training programmes
China has committed $75bn (£48bn) on aid and
development projects in Africa in the past decade,
according to research which reveals the scale of
what some have called Beijing's escalating soft
power "charm offensive" to secure political and
economic clout on the continent.

The Chinese government releases very little
information on its foreign aid activities, which
remain state secrets. In one of the most ambitious
attempts to date to chip away at this secrecy, US
researchers have launched the largest public
database of Chinese development finance in Africa,
detailing almost 1,700 projects in 50 countries
between 2000 and 2011.

China's financial commitments are significantly
larger than previous estimates of the country's
development finance, though still less than the
estimated $90bn the US committed over that period.
Researchers at AidData, at the College of William
and Mary, have spent 18 months compiling and
encoding thousands of media reports to construct
the database, and hope users will contribute
further detail on the projects.

The data, which challenges what has for years been
the dominant story – Beijing's unrelenting quest
for natural resources – is likely to fuel
ongoing debate over China's motives in Africa.

There are few mining projects in the database and,
while transport, storage and energy initiatives
account for some of the largest sums, the data
also reveals how China has put hundreds of
millions of dollars towards health, education and
cultural projects.

AidData's database can be used to test some of the
hypotheses – and challenge some of the
misconceptions – about China's motivations

In Liberia, China has put millions towards the
installation of solar traffic lights in Monrovia
and financed a malaria prevention centre. In
Mozambique, China's projects include a National
School for Visual Arts in Maputo. In Algeria,
construction has begun on a multimillion dollar
1,400-seat opera house in the Ouled Fayet suburbs
of western Algiers.

The view from Beijing
Tania Branigan on domestic disquiet at China's
generosity
China has also sent thousands of doctors and
teachers to work in Africa, welcomed many more
students to learn in China or in Chinese language
classes abroad and rolled out a continent-wide
network of sports stadiums and concert halls.

"The dominant narrative has been one of China's
insatiable desire for resources. But in fact this
database suggests there may be many more things
going on," said Vijaya Ramachandran, senior fellow
at the Washington DC-based thinktank Centre for
Global Development and co-author of a report on
the AidData project.

Only a fraction of the database's projects
(totalling $16bn) would count as official
development assistance under the rules set by the
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development (OECD). Ramachandran, however, insists
China is still playing an important role in
closing funding gaps in Africa. "China is a major
emerging player in development finance and we need
to get a handle on what it is doing," she said.

While the scale of Chinese involvement in Africa
has grown substantially since 2000, its attempts
to secure influence on the continent are nothing
new

While aid from OECD countries stagnates or shrinks
under the pressure of budgets and an increasingly
sceptical public, a host of new emerging donors
– including Brazil, Venezuela, and Iran – are
expanding their work in other developing
countries. These countries have largely resisted
calls to disclose data or abide by international
aid transparency standards. This lack of
information has fuelled wild speculation over what
the donors are doing – and why.

The appeal of Chinese aid to African leaders
In this excerpt from Madam President, Malawi's
Joyce Banda explains why African countries often
prefer to deal with China than with Western
donors
Produced and directed by Nick and Marc Francis
While some insist the bottom line is China's
thirst for natural resources, others argue
Beijing's development projects on the continent
– from infrastructure to debt relief to
providing medical support – are also part of a
public diplomacy strategy to build up goodwill and
international support for the future.

New Chinese development projects are often
announced during high-level visits from state
officials, although many never make it past the
ceremonial pledges. Researchers found evidence
that almost 1,000 projects totalling $48.6bn, are
under way or complete. The rest either remain in
the pipeline or will never happen.

Many of the cultural and sporting projects across
the continent are probably "upfront sweeteners" to
win government favour, a "downpayment" for future
commercial deals, suggests Stephen Chan, professor
at the School of Oriental and African Studies in
London.

But Chan rejects the idea that China has a master
strategy in Africa. "There are 54 countries in
Africa. You're off your head if you think there's
one single agenda."

Deborah Bräutigam, head of the international
development programme at Johns Hopkins University,
said suggestions that China's aid to Africa was
all about natural resources were "widespread
misconceptions". "There are a lot of reasons
countries give aid and China is no different," she
said.

The Eight Principles of Chinese aid
In 1964, the Chinese government declared the Eight
Principles for Economic Aid and Technical
Assistance to Other Countries, which still inform
development policy today:
Equality and mutual benefit form the basis of
Chinese aid
China respects sovereignty, never attaches
conditions or asks for privileges
China helps lighten the burden with interest-free
or low-interest loans and by extending repayment
terms when necessary
The purpose of aid is to help countries become
self-reliant
Projects that require less investment but yield
quicker results are favoured
China provides quality equipment and materials
manufactured in China at international market
prices
China will help recipient countries master the
techniques of any technical assistance
Chinese experts will have the same standard of
living as those of the recipient country and are
not allowed to make special demands
Chinese education and training programmes, for
example, target students from across the
continent. "These are all about diplomacy, about
soft power ... like the Alliance Française and
the British Council ... all about presenting China
as an important global player. All the big
countries do this," she added.

Other programmes can be linked to China's trade
agenda. Chinese medical teams have worked in
Africa since 1963, but recently their objective
has expanded to include promotion of China's
pharmaceuticals such as antimalarials, according
to Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow for global health
at the Council on Foreign Relations. He said a
combination of economic interests and the need to
expand its political influence and improve its
international image was driving Chinese health aid
in Africa.

Beijing has also sought to improve its image on
the continent by financing the rapid expansion of
Chinese media outlets across the continent to
counter negative images of China and Africa with
upbeat stories. This is an explicit part of
China's official Africa policy, released in 2006,
which encourages exchange and co-operation between
African and Chinese media to "enhance mutual
understanding and enable objective and balanced
media coverage of each other".

The database includes Chinese projects to train
journalists in Angola and Zimbabwe, as well as an
exchange programme for journalists in China and
Ghana.

It contains records of Chinese-backed projects in
all but the four African states that maintain
diplomatic relations with Taiwan: Burkina Faso,
the Gambia, Sao Tome and Principe and Swaziland.

But last year Joseph Nye, the Harvard professor
who coined the term "soft power", said China would
see little return on its investments until it
relaxed its control over information.

"Great powers try to use culture and narrative to
create soft power that promotes their national
interests, but it's not an easy sell when the
message is inconsistent with their domestic
realities ... in an information age in which
credibility is the scarcest resource, the best
propaganda is not propaganda," he wrote in the
Wall Street Journal. "China is clamping down on
the internet and jailing human rights lawyers,
once again torpedoing its soft-power campaign."

Source - The Guardian

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