South Africa, which will host China’s President Hu Jintao on Tuesday, sees mutual benefits flowing from Beijing’s push into Africa while being wary of being seen as a mere source for raw materials.
Hu is expected to receive the full red-carpet treatment when he arrives in the capital, Pretoria, on the latest leg of a sweep through the continent, which has already seen him stop over in such countries as Sudan, Liberia and Zambia.
In January 1998, nearly four years after Nelson Mandela had been made president in the country’s first multiracial elections, South Africa established diplomatic relations with Beijing and snapped ties with China arch-rival Taiwan, initiated during the apartheid era.
Since then, bilateral trade has taken off dramatically, with China becoming South Africa’s second-largest import trading partner in 2005 and eighth-largest export partner, according to the Foreign Ministry.
By the end of 2005, South Africa was exporting about $1,2-billion worth of goods to China while the level of imports was worth $4,35-billion.
While the balance of trade remains far in Beijing’s favour, Chinese firms are now getting involved in joint venture operations to access raw materials such as a tie-up involving Sinosteel and the Limpopo Province Development Corporation in a project that is mining 400 000 tonnes of chrome ore per year.
According to South Africa’s Foreign Ministry, ”China’s resource and energy needs have certainly contributed to Africa’s economic growth by boosting prices and exports from Africa and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future.”
Peter Draper, of the South African Institute of International Affairs, said there was a risk of South Africa being a dumping ground for cheap goods but said ”there is much more to gain on the broader economic relationship”.
”I am very positive about China,” said Draper. ”I think there are lots of potential benefits for South Africa for exports of resources.
”I do not believe that exporting resources is negative; they provide jobs, big foreign exchange earnings.”
South African President Thabo Mbeki has expressed confidence that China will not ”replicate the historic colonial economic relationship in terms of which Africa served as a source of raw materials and a market for goods manufactured in the countries of the colonisers”.
”China understands that she can only prosper on a sustainable basis if Africa prospers on a sustainable basis,” added Mbeki in a recent newsletter to members of his African National Congress.
Any suggestion of a colonial relationship, however, is deeply frowned up by Beijing as demonstrated on Monday when Vice-Minister of Commerce Wei Jianguo said the ”label of neo-colonialism cannot be applied to China”.
While in Sudan, where the China National Petroleum Corporation has huge stakes and produces about 500 000 barrels per day, Hu agreed to give Khartoum an interest-free loan of $12,8-million.
Human rights groups have criticised Beijing’s relationship with Sudan and another pariah in the West, Zimbabwe, where China has also been investing heavily.
Martin Davies, head of the centre for Chinese Studies at South Africa’s Stellenbosch University, said Beijing’s push into the continent had to be seen through its need to find raw materials to power its economy and not as part of a desire to exert greater influence.
”The differentiating factor is that Chinese investments in Africa will ultimately be based on commercial rationale, not political ones,” he said.
Some rights activists in South Africa have also argued it is wrong for Mbeki to be cosying up to Beijing given China’s own rights record.
But Donrich Jordaan, of Pretoria University’s Centre for International Political Studies, said Mbeki could never expect to influence Chinese policy.
”To promote the idea that South Africa must ‘encourage domestic changes’ in the domestic policies of other African states is realistic, but the idea that South Africa should pressurise China regarding its domestic policies is quite audacious,” he wrote in a recent paper. ”It is bad policy to promote unrealistic policy.” — Sapa-AFP