Introduction
These days, the demand for energy of the world has increased dramatically. China has become a new competitor in the war of maintaining long-term energy supplies with many countries in the world like United Stated, Japan and European Union. In order to sustain the rapid increase in economy, China is intent on hunting new resources of oil and natural materials around the world. As a result of this attempt, China is forced to drive into the new market and they found that Africa is a potential energy market to develop (Hanson 2008). Besides shaking hand with many countries in Africa in order to have huge energy supply, China tries to gain political influence and military assistance. However, Chinese activities in African countries cause many effects on environment and face many problems related to ethical issues such as human rights, economic practices and political concerns (Brookes 2007).
The relationship between China and Africa
Africa continent is not new to the People's Republic of China. At the beginning, Chinese concern was ideological. Since the mid-fifties, Africa was an interesting place for new Chinese socialist revolution (Fatal Transaction 2008). The tension between China and the Soviet Union gave Beijing reason to turn to Africa. In the 1960s and 1970s, Chinese government increased political ties to some African countries. China had a good reputation over the continent through a variety of actions, for instance TanZam railway was built or the thousands of Africa students had scholarship and accepted to universities in China. In 1971, due to the fiasco in the Angolan civil war, China lost its reputation in Africa because they supported the same side as Americans and South Africans. In 1978, China had changed the focus from ideology to economics and more practical approach to Africa. By the mid-eighties, because of China's need for outside technology and expertise, Africa had lost its importance to the Chinese (Fatal Transaction 2008). Today, China's objectives now is to guarantee that Africa remains a protected source for oil and raw materials, a potential market for Chinese exports, and a base of support for China's expanding global interests (Shinn 2006).
The enormous energy demand of China
Today, due to the sky-rocketed increase of Chinese economy which has averaged annual 9 percent growth for the last two decades, it requires huge levels of energy such as oil, gas, coal, and electricity to maintain its increase (Hanson 2008). In 1993, China overtook Japan to become the second largest oil consumer right after the US in 2003 and the world's third largest oil importer after the US and Japan in 2004 and it sustained the third place until now (Brookes 2007). In 1993, China became a net importer of oil and its oil import will fly to 13.1 million barrels per day by 2030 from 3.5 million barrels per day in 2006 (Hanson 2008). In 2008, it was estimated that there was 3.9 million barrels per day imported to China (figure 1). From 2000 to 2005,China's energy consumption increased by 60%, explaining for approximately half of the growth in world energy consumption. By the year 2020, many analysts guess that 56 million cars, minivans, and sport-utility vehicles to be rolling on China's highways so the demand of the country for oil will reach 11 million barrels a day, consumption of natural gas could increase more than three times, to 3.6 trillion cubic feet per year, and coal use will leap by 76%, to 2.4 billion tons a year (Bloomberg 2004).
According to Edu Hassing, who is energy at the Asian Development Bank, there will be an enormous raise in energy consumption across the region especially in China. It means that the global oil prices and other energy sources will be influenced (Bloomberg 2004). Because of the huge need for energy demand, China was push to seek new sources of energy and it wanted to reduce its reliance on the unstable Middle Eastern sources of oil and natural gas. Africa was considered a very rich continent about mineral resources and it was still unexploited. The continent was predicted to hold 53% of the world's cobalt reserve which was a main component in mobile phone industry (Fatal Transaction 2008). Moreover, Africa was estimated to hold 9% of the world's oil reserve compared to 62% in the Middle East but most of industry analysts believed it could hold undiscovered oil reserves (Hanson 2008). These days, Africa supplied China with 30 percent of its energy imports met 5 percent of China's energy requests and competed the Middle East as a source of Chinese energy (Brookes 2007). In 2006, Angola, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Sudan were China's biggest suppliers in Africa. China has also sought supplies from Chad, Nigeria, Gabon and Algeria. In more details in Africa, Angola was by far the largest supplier, accounting for 50 percent of Africa's oil exports to China over 2001-2006 period (Foster et al. 2008). The next most important suppliers were Sudan (18 percent), Republic of Congo (13 percent) and Equatorial Guinea (11percent). From the viewpoint of African oil producers, China was also a very important customer whose imports account for 53 percent of the oil exports of Sudan, and 30 percent of the oil exports of Angola, over 2001-2006 period (figure 2). We could see that the amount of crude oil imported to China from Africa increasing dramatically from 1995 to 2007 and it nearly one-third of crude oil output to China (figure 3).
China tried to build good relationship with African energy suppliers through many engagements such as direct investment, aid, high-level visits and a strict policy of 'non interference in internal affairs' that some African governments feel comfortable (Brookes 2007). Chinese government had invested billions of dollars in building infrastructure, resource development and it had paid off billions more in debt in order to have better relationship with oil-rich African countries. For example, China had invested $3 billion in Nigerian oil that was now the world's eighth largest oil exporter. Beijing had at least $3 billion invested in the Sudanese energy sector, for a total of $10 billion since the 1990s. Angola was considered another potential African energy giant and it had received $2 billion for improving infrastructure that secured China to highly access its oil resources. Today, Angola outpaced Saudi Arabia to become China's leading oil supplier (Brookes 2007).
Bilateral trade between China and Africa
In November 2006, the Chinese government held a significant summit with African leaders which nearly 50 leaders attended. China promised African leaders with supporting generous financial and military assistance. The summit concentrated on the statement which was 'The Three 50s': 50 year relationship between China and Africa, over 50 Africa nations' existence and $50 billion in two-sided Chinese - African trade (Brookes 2007). The summit strengthened the relationship between China and Africa in trading activities. According to the World Bank, eighty-five percent of Africa's exported to China come from five oil-rich countries (Angola, Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria, the Republic of Congo, and Sudan). China was interested in Africa not only with natural resources but also it saw Africa as a potential market for its manufacturing industry. China was the second highest trading partner with Africa just behind the United States and ahead of France and England. According to IMF Direction of Trade Statistics, in 2007, the overall value of trade between China and Africa reached US$59 billion, up from less than US$10 billion in 2001 bringing significant revenue to some of the world's poorest Africa nations (figure 4). This rapid growth could be explained by the increase in imports of oil from Sudan and other African countries. Other non-oil merchandises also were imported by Chinese companies such as timber, copper, gold and diamonds. In supreme conditions, Chinese imports of non-fuel mining products from Africa increased from $286 million in 2000 to $2.6 billion in 2006. In 2006, the import of diamonds had taken the biggest share (27%), followed by platinum (17%), copper (15%), cobalt and manganese (11% each) (Alden & Alves 2009). Recently, China started to import African manufactured merchandise such as processed food and household consumer goods (Hanson 2008).
Negative effects of Chinese companies in Africa
Chinese economy still focused on exporting policy and it continued to seek and enlarge new markets to remain the economic growth and increased foreign direct investment. There were over 800 Chinese companies operating in mostly all African countries. For companies that operate in Africa, they paid more attention about the market penetration and their influence rather than the profits (Brookes 2007). There were lots of critics about the presence of Chinese companies in some African countries. Their activities had many negative effects in Africa. Many Chinese companies had a low bid than other local African companies and Chinese contractors tended to use labor that directly imported from China. Some projects used more than 70 percent imported Chinese workers. Hence, this caused many problems for local employment and did not increase production or management skill development. Chinese traders had made a big impact for local traders that leaded to the anti-Chinese riots in African countries. Furthermore, cheap Chinese commodities spread out to African market such as textiles, flooding into local markets that Africa were trying to develop and threaten the livelihood of indigenous contractors. These cheap goods could lead to the unemployment and closing down African companies (Brookes 2007). For example, because of high unemployment in Algeria, 100 Algerians workers and Chinese imported workers conflicted with each other (Beech 2009). Although in South Africa which is China's biggest partner in trading, local labor communities had stated problems about unemployment on cheap clothing imports (Brookes 2007). In the mining section, there was a little attention about the health and safety standards for employees or harming the neighboring environment. Many Chinese companies took extractive operations of valued woods and timber without local processing. These kinds of activities led to many environmental and destructive effects (Keet 2007). In addition, when Chinese companies operated in African countries, they brought their capital equipment to the region. This could exclude the local suppliers and impact negatively to the local production of capital goods.
Political Concerns and Human Rights Issues in Africa
The presence of China among African countries had many criticisms on human rights issue. There were political reactions against over the labor practices in Zambia where Chinese contractors executed projects in copper mine. In fact, Zambian presidential competitors ran on a political forum to criticize the presence of China in the country. For the human rights issue in most of African countries, the local employees belong to Chinese funded-project were not respected as they deserve. Local workers who worked in Chinese projects criticized that their managers didn't pay attention to laws about national labor ensuring least amount of wages and bonuses. There was a strike on Zambian copper mine that 500 employees damaged a Chinese dorm and Chinese managers were kidnapped. In Sudan, nine Chinese workers were lost and five were killed (Beech 2009). Concurrently, the new policy of China in Africa which ensured the exclusive access to Africa natural resources with an aggressive political campaign to collaborate itself by supporting controversial regimes, had to face many problems in Sudan (Brookes 2007). For instance, there were more than 200.000 people had died, 2.5 million were homeless and innumerous numbers being raped and tortured because of Chinese non-interference policy in Darfur (Moyo 2009). In Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, China supported the Sudanese government by supplying weapons and assisted to build three weapons factories. China had fueled the conflict in Khartoum through its action and became the target of criticism by human rights (Squidoo 2009). Zimbabwe, another African country, also sought for China internationally support. United States and Britain backed by the United Nations Security Council resolution accused the policies of President Robert Mugabe. China's response to the resolution by giving military assistance and blocking anti-government media broadcast of the whole country. The support of China for African leaders Mugabe and Sudan's Bashir had subsided the pressure on human rights and political independence (Brookes 2007). Military assistance also happened in Guinea, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Burundi and Tanzania where Chinese military trainers were sent to help African military troops. Chinese government tried to make significant influences in African countries to gain major allies in the United Nations including Sudan, Zimbabwe and Nigeria. The purposes of these actions were to consolidate its political goals in the international community including deterring the independence of Taiwan and moving the attention on the human rights (Hanson 2008).
Conclusion
The presence of China in African countries showed that Chinese government tried to improve its influence to secure the supply of natural resources such as crude oil, coal, natural gas and increase the commercial market which allows cheap Chinese goods can penetrate to all of poorest nations in the Africa. China gave military assistance, economic aid and huge direct investment in some African countries in order to gain alliances in the United Nations to consolidate its voice and political power in the world. However, China had to face big problems on the ethical issues such as human rights and employee practices in Sudan, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Nigeria and South Africa.
Appendix
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