The New York Times published a long feature this weekend about China’s involvement in Angola: China’s African Adventure.
The journalist James Traub traveled around Angola trying to find Chinese work crews and Chinese investments in the country. One gets the feeling he was looking for something scandalous to report. In the lead paragraph, he describes coming across a Chinese construction crew rebuilding an old railway in the jungle: “The whole scene, invisible from the road, conjures the stupendous designs of the evil genius in a Bond film.”
But Traub does not find anything very sinister. The article is in fact a comprehensive and balanced review of recent Angolan history and China’s growing involvement in the country. Traub ends off with a cautionary note directed at the U.S.:
The People’s Republic has declared 2006 “the Year of Africa.” The West had its own unofficial Year of Africa in 2005, and it is instructive to compare the two. The industrial nations conducted a sort of moral crusade, with advocacy organizations exposing Africa’s dreadful sores and crying shame on the leaders of wealthy nations and those leaders then heroically pledging, at the G8 meeting in July, to raise their development assistance by billions and to open their markets to Africa. Once everyone had gone home, the aid increase turned out to be largely ephemeral and trade reform merely wishful. China, by contrast, offers a pragmatic relationship between equals: the “strategic partnership” promised in China’s African policy is premised on “mutual benefit, reciprocity and common prosperity.” And the benefits are very tangible….
…If we believe that a model of development that strengthens the hand of authoritarian leaders and does little, if anything, to empower the poor is a bad long-term strategy for Africa, then we are going to have to come up with a strategic partnership of our own. And it is not only a question of what is good for the African people. The United States has a real security interest in avoiding failed states and in blocking the spread of terrorism in East and North Africa. What’s more, the United States already imports 15 percent of its oil from Africa, mostly from Angola and Nigeria; that figure is bound to rise and could even double, eventually making Africa as large a supplier of oil as the Middle East now is. China’s Africa policy shows that globalization is increasingly divorced from Westernization. We have grown accustomed to the idea that Africa needs us; it’s time to recognize that we, like China, need Africa.