The Chinese burden? Brendan O'Neill April 1, 2008 5:00 PM http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/brendan_oneill/2008/04/the_chinese_burden.html As the Beijing Olympics approach, a sweeping left/right consensus has emerged in the west: that China's interventions in Africa are deeply problematic. Western officials, commentators and activists accuse China of "raping" Africa, plundering its resources, creating even greater inequalities between rich and poor, and cosying up to genocidal maniacs. On the right, magazines likes the Economist describe the Chinese as "the new colonialists"; on the left (well, ostensibly the left), human rights advocates slate China for "funding genocide" in Darfur. Others claim that by doing business with dodgy African regimes, China is undermining the west's attempts to "encourage good governance" on the once dark continent. This China-bashing dresses itself in radical lingo. Campaigners like to fantasise that they are taking a stand against "Chinese colonialism". In truth, there is an imperialistic bent to these criticisms of China for its record in Africa: the aim is not to liberate Africans from outside interference, but rather to preserve Africa as the playground of western do-gooders rather than Chinese businessmen. Western observers are disturbed by Chinese meddling in Africa because it undercuts their own self-styled role as the heroic saviours of the African savage. Save Darfur activists now campaign almost exclusively around attacking China for "funding the genocide". Their campaigning comes across as both nasty and naïve. Sunday's New York Times Magazine carried a revealing article about a new group, Dream for Darfur, which is promoting the idea that Beijing 2008 will be the "Genocide Olympics". One supporter of Dream for Darfur told the NYT: "Darfur is singular. China is the reason Darfur is happening." Such a statement is mind-bogglingly simple-minded. Darfur is anything but "singular". As Jonathan Steele argued on Cif recently, "There are around a dozen different rebel groups currently fighting the [Khartoum] government. To put the blame on only one party [China] makes no moral or political sense." Yet, as the NYT reporter pointed out, "For those on board with Dream for Darfur, connecting the dots between the summer games and hundreds of thousands of African corpses is not much more complicated" than saying "China is the reason Darfur is happening". Dream for Darfur called in Ben Cohen from the ice-cream maker Ben and Jerry's (the mind boggles) to wage a "jihad" against China's cute, cartoonish Olympic mascots: Beibei the fish, Jingjing the giant panda, and other big-haired symbols of modern China. Dream for Darfur told Cohen to "keep his message short". "The message here isn't hard: genocide bad; China helping", it advised. So Cohen is devising an anti-mascot campaign with the message: "Looks cute - supports genocide." That sums up the cartoonish politics of the wristband-wearing, latte-drinking, self-serving Save Darfur activists in New York and elsewhere. It seems clear that bashing China over its relations with Khartoum is not based on any serious political assessment of what is happening in Sudan and Darfur; indeed, it overlooks the fact that few serious international organisations describe the conflict as a genocide, and that, even though things are still dire in Darfur, they're not as bad as they were during the intense conflict period of 2003-2005. Instead, this is about humiliating China out of Sudan so that the west can take its rightful position as the hector-in-chief of the Khartoum government. Apparently only white, well-educated, celebrity-connected westerners have a right to determine what should happen in Sudan. As one commentator puts it: "Sudan's government feels it can ignore western revulsion at genocide because [thanks to China] it has no need of western money ... China, along with Sudan's other Arab and Asian partners, feels free to trample on basic standards of decency." Those indecent Chinese - how dare they block the righteous path of "western revulsion" against an African regime? Human Rights Watch is even more explicit. It recently complained that "China's growing foreign aid programme creates new options for [African] dictators who were previously dependent on those who insisted on human rights progress". In short, Chinese deal-making with African states has undermined the army of western officials, NGOs and conflict-resolution experts who believe that only they should have free rein to tell Africans how to behave. Attacking China for its support of Khartoum is not a liberationist or pro-African demand; rather it is underpinned by western protectionism, a desire to keep Africa as "The White Man's Burden" rather than allowing it to become "The Yellow Man's Burden". Indeed, some of the China-bashing over Africa is premised on what we might term "double racism": first there's the idea that Africans are inherently genocidal and need "western revulsion" to keep them in line; second there is the notion that the Chinese, who are not well-versed in western values, cannot be trusted to deal with Africa. Likewise, in discussions of aid to Africa, thinkers and activists on both the left and the right complain about China's "no strings" trading with Africa. As the BBC recently said: "China offers 'no-strings' aid, a marked contrast to Western donors who impose conditions on aid and tie trade sweeteners to human rights issues." In other words, where western activists use aid and trade to try to force changes in African governance and behaviour - effectively blackmailing governments to follow western diktat and making fecund men and women take lessons in condom-use as a condition of charity - the Chinese simply do business deals, build roads, construct factories and create jobs without demanding that Africans jump through hoops. Western do-gooders worry that African states will be drawn to China, since the Chinese treat them as grown-ups rather than as wayward children - "half-devil, half-child", as Kipling put it - who need to be reviled and mollycoddled in equal measure. There's no doubt that China is pursuing its own interests in Africa. But make no mistake: so are those who lambast China. They are jealously guarding their own colonialist influence over the African masses rather than striking a blow for African independence.
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