Beijing: Hailed by some as a diplomatic triumph, China’s meeting with the representatives of 48 African states in Beijing at the weekend has also been described as another shift in the geopolitical center of gravity and a sign that China’s economic growth over the last two and a half decades has increasingly global implications. With Beijing’s high-rises and overpasses lined with triumphant billboards in which slogans about solidarity and common interest are set against a background of zebras, flamingos and golden beaches, the weekend Summit on Sino-African Cooperation has provided opportunities to build on the goodwill. But despite the historical ties that China has forged with Africa since the celebrated Bandung Conference in 1955, and despite a number of fresh humanitarian commitments relating to debt forgiveness and more investment in the education and health of Africa’s worst-off communities, China’s true motives in the continent have come under intense scrutiny. At the opening ceremony of the Summit on Saturday, President Hu Jintao unveiled eight new measures to boost ties and cement the “strategic partnership” between the two sides. More debt would be cancelled, he said, and special organizations would be established to aid cooperation between the two sides. And yet, behind all the carefully honed declarations about China’s commitments to the continent, it is its “mutually beneficial” interest in African resources that has received the most attention. China’s soft power is being employed to gain access to hard raw materials. The official line has focused on Chinese benevolence, but Liu Jianchao, China’s Foreign Affairs spokesman, conceded that there was more to it than aid. “This is not only a matter of China helping Africa,” he said at Friday’s press briefing. “China is also receiving considerable economic benefits.” China has been investing in oil and mineral projects in countries in which few others would dare to tread. China is the biggest investor in Sudan, from which its biggest oil company – the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) – produces around 20 mln tons of oil a year. The necessary political compromises that were made to facilitate CNPC’s sanctions-busting activities in Sudan – described by a company analyst a few years ago as “dancing with the Devil” – have led human rights groups to condemn China as a sponsor of genocide. The State-owned CNPC was forced to “ringfence” its Sudanese assets to head off opposition during the IPO of its listing vehicle, PetroChina, in New York in 2000. Meanwhile, as the international community shuns Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, China has stepped in with alacrity, emphasizing its principles of “non-interference” and “mutual benefit” while trying to gain exclusive access to the country’s chrome reserves. China signed a billion-dollar deal with Zimbabwe in June this year, promising to help reconstruct the country’s aging power network in exchange for resources. As in Sudan, China has been accused of helping to prop up a rogue regime. As an expert with CNPC said during a conference last week, China’s leaders have been touring Africa with increasing frequency, and China’s oil and mining companies have swept through the continent in the diplomatic slipstream, signing deals and memoranda in Nigeria, Niger, Algeria, Gabon, Tanzania, Libya and many more. An industry insider with close links to western Africa told Interfax last Friday that Chinese drillers and explorers are an increasingly dominant force in Africa’s oil regions. “It is amazing how quickly the Chinese have come into Africa’s oil industry,” she said. Locals are questioning the benefits. Instead of boosting employment in Africa, they tend to select their employees from their own bloated and underemployed workforce, leading to growing local resentment, she said. China is hoping to extend the principles of its national “Go West” campaign – in which the stagnant but resource-rich western hinterlands are enjoined to supply resources to the flourishing eastern coast – to the global stage. The copious amounts of oil and gas in western China have proved to be insufficient to feed the boom, and Africa could offer another significant source of energy. Angola was the biggest exporter to China in the first half of this year, and China also receives significant shipments from Sudan, Congo and Equatorial Guinea. In September, it also received 600,000 tons of crude from Chad, a month after restoring diplomatic ties with the country. The lack of recognition from the government in N’Djamena has not been an obstacle to trade between the two sides, but China has now promised big investment in the oil industry of Chad, one of Africa’s poorest countries. The switch by Chad was a result of China’s aggressive diplomatic efforts to wipe out the remnants of Taiwanese support on the continent. Only five countries continue to recognize Taipei as the legitimate seat of Chinese power, including Sao Tome and Principe, Swaziland, Gambia, Malawi and Burkina Faso. All were invited to the Beijing Summit at the weekend as observers, Liu said. The incentives were made very clear. Hu Jintao’s proposals to increase aid and trade directly specified that only those countries that recognized the People’s Republic would be included. Despite the obvious shift in the balance of power, this battle for recognition continues. Last month, China was worried by the prospects of an election victory for Michael Sata in Zambia. Sata promised to switch diplomatic recognition to Taiwan had he won, citing Chinese treatment of local workers in a number of lucrative copper mines in the country. China’s economic interests in Africa have led to charges of “neo-colonialism,” a word designed to trigger all the defense mechanisms that lie at the core of the People’s Republic. “The fundamental fact is, who is making these charges?” Liu said at the opening press briefing. He stressed the historical solidarity of China and Africa as the fellow victims of old-fashioned colonial powers, and repeated the watchwords of China’s foreign policy brief, “non-interference,” “double win,” “mutual benefit.” China’s new approach to Africa is, however, proving increasingly incompatible with its traditional ideological alignments. In the 1960s, China was building railroads, bridges, irrigation facilities and dams in Africa as part of the global battle for hearts and minds, trying to gain geopolitical leverage at the fringes of the Cold War. By now, its concerns are predominantly economic, and part of the efforts to find the resources to sustain its post-Mao boom. China has been sourcing cobalt in the Congo, manganese in Gabon and timber in Cameroon, and Africa has noticed the switch in priorities. By now, China must also pay attention to the sort of backlash stoked up by Zambia’s Michael Sata.