The two Chinese workers arrested for attempted murder

There was an interesting story in New Century Weekly (新世纪周刊) a few weeks back that is worth a look (available here in Chinese). It is a lengthy investigative piece by journalists Chen Zhu and Zhang Boling on the shooting of local workers at a Chinese-owned coal mine in southern Zambia, following protests over working conditions and lack of pay. Eleven were injured after two Chinese supervisors, apparently fearing for their lives, opened fire with shotguns. The supervisors (pictured) were later arrested on charges of attempted murder but have since been released on bail. The incident has led to protests outside the Chinese Embassy in the Zambian capital of Lusaka and has again put Zambia’s relations with China under the spotlight. Tensions will likely be further exacerbated if the trial is perceived to be a whitewash, as some have predicted. The case has also received some coverage in the international media.

The New Century Weekly article traces the origins of the shooting to long-standing problems in the management of the mine. At the centre of the story is the mine owner, Xu Jianxue, a Jiangxi native who first went to Zambia in the early 1990s as a translator for a Chinese company. He ended up staying after the project ended, establishing a construction company that went on to win a series of big infrastructure contracts from the Zambian government. Business was so successful that Xu invited his four brothers to join him in 2000. When Zambia began selling mineral rights in 2003, Xu secured a number of concessions near the southern town of Sinazongwe. Despite the difficulties investors have traditionally had in the area, he has apparently been able to turn over a healthy profit for his venture, Collum Coal Mining Industries.

Xu is described vividly in the article as a believer in “Mao Zedong thought” and as sporting a Mao-style haircut. He is cast as a throwback to an earlier China, reliant on guanxi and bribes to secure business and ignorant of modern management practices. Xu and his brothers are said to live very comfortably in Lusaka, leaving the day-to-day running of the mines in the hands of friends and relatives who have followed them to Zambia from Jiangxi. These men, the authors claim, are mostly uneducated labourers with no language skills, who find themselves suddenly thrust into senior positions on their arrival. They live in a gated compound and have little understanding of local culture. There are 70 Chinese managers working at the mine, who are responsible for around 600 local workers.

The authors claim that the root of the problem is that the workers are employed on temporary contracts, which means they do not receive the food, housing and medical benefits stipulated by Zambian labour laws.  Workers are also, according to one Chinese source quoted in the article, subjected to occasional physical beatings. These conditions have generated a series of clashes between labour and management, of which the shooting is only the most recent and severe. There have been repeated strikes and the local government threatened to close the mine in 2006 until eventually being dissuaded, probably through a combination of bribery and pressure from the central government.

The article is interesting not only for the information it unearths, but for the tone it deploys. Criticisms of Chinese companies operating in Africa are commonplace in the western media but not in China, at least not in a publication as prominent as New Century Weekly. No doubt part of the reason lies in the fact that Collum Coal Mining is not formally a Chinese entity; it is registered in Zambia and has no parent company in China. This perhaps permits a greater degree of licentiousness than might normally be the case. Indeed, Xu’s company is contrasted in the article with the supposedly more responsible behaviour of Chinese state-owned and private enterprises, both of which are subject to tighter supervision and regulation by the Ministry of Commerce. Disparaging quotes from staff at China’s Embassy in Zambia make clear they are frustrated by the free-wheeling behaviour of Chinese entrepreneurs like Xu, whose pursuit of profit risks tarnishing China’s image in Africa.

The final point to make is that the article again highlights the dangers of thinking in terms of a monolithic “China Inc.” in Africa. There are a wide range of Chinese actors operating on the continent, from individual entrepreneurs to huge state-owned oil companies, each of whose interests may run contrary to those of others. Struggling to manage these different forces is the Chinese government, whose ability to offer strategic direction is itself hampered by the existence of competing bureaucratic objectives between departments. The latest incident in Zambia shows that the story of “China-in-Africa” is as much about the freeing-up of market forces in China and the subsequent loss of central government control as anything else.

A conference was held in Beijing earlier this week between representatives from China, African states and members of the OECD – the “rich man’s club” – to promote “mutual learning” on development and aid policy. Its focus was on the role of infrastructure in stimulating economic growth, looking particularly at the relevance for Africa of China’s experience in building effective transport, telecommunications, energy and water systems. The conference forms part of the effort made by the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee, the body through which the “established” donors coordinate their aid, to engage with “emerging” donors – primarily China – whose approach to overseas development is seen as posing a possible challenge to existing norms.

Choosing infrastructure as the subject of discussion was significant because it has been an area notoriously neglected in international development. From the 1970s, Western donors and the international financial institutions cut funding for “hard” infrastructure projects in favor of policies aimed at building the “soft” infrastructure of good governance, environmental sustainability and civil society. Those “hard” infrastructure projects that were commissioned were often farmed out to private corporations, with typically disastrous results. This reflected the ideological biases of this era, when the ascendance of market economics and “structural adjustment” packages led to deep antagonism to anything that smacked of statism.

As was pointed out at the conference, although China has privatized swaths of its economy over the past 30 years, it has also not exactly conformed to “neo-liberal” prescriptions because the state has retained a key role for itself within the national economy. It has allowed the Chinese government to pursue a program of intense infrastructure development, often against the advice of the World Bank. Initially facilitated by oil-backed loans and technical assistance from Japan, it has since been funded through China’s own considerable reserves. The chief economist of China’s ExIm Bank said at the conference that infrastructure development had been vital to enhancing agricultural production in China as well as giving it “comparative advantage” as a site for FDI. China’s dense network of modern roads, railways and ports are widely seen as central components in its “model” of economic growth, often contrasted, for example, with India.

China’s experience of development informs its approach to Africa, where it has emerged as a major infrastructure financier over recent years. One participant offered the “conservative” estimate (official figures are not published) that Chinese finance for African infrastructure projects reached $6 billion in 2009, making it Africa’s largest source of external infrastructure assistance. This is mostly a mixture of concessional and non-concessional loans, disbursed by the ExIm Bank and targeted at the transport, power and telecommunications sectors. It is having some impact on easing Africa’s huge infrastructure backlog. The Infrastructure Consortium for Africa has said there is a $45 billion shortfall in annual spending on infrastructure, which is hindering regional integration and the delivery of essential services, such as water and electricity.

The conference was interesting because of the apparent enthusiasm displayed by the OECD for the Chinese agenda. Some concerns were expressed, notably about environmental implications of infrastructure development and its actual impact on poverty reduction. But the overall tone was one of interest in the “lessons” for developing countries from China’s management of its own infrastructure bottlenecks and the value of an infrastructure-focused approach in Africa. There was a lot of China-friendly language about the importance of the “capable state”, ideological pragmatism and long-term planning horizons in promoting growth. This renewed interest in infrastructure points to the possible revival of the type of development assistance the West practiced in the 1950s and 1960s before it became unfashionable.

The OECD initiated a dialogue with China probably on the presumption that China could be slowly integrated into the existing frameworks that guide international development. But, judging by this conference, “socialization” could be working in the opposite direction. At least in the area of development policy, Western governments – no doubt chastened by the economic crisis – are rethinking some of their ideas and practices with reference to Chinese examples. This is the right approach to addressing global governance issues in the 21st century. It also has the potential to be of real benefit to Africa.

Plenty of coverage and research in the West has suggested that, after an initial “honeymoon period”, China is now struggling to adjust to complexities wrought by the dramatic expansion in its ties with African states. Investments are not yielding promised returns. There has been a litany of kidnappings and attacks on Chinese workers. The perception of cozy ties between Beijing and “pariah” regimes has brought international reputational costs. Pressure from trade unions and civil society is forcing Chinese companies to rethink labor and environmental practices. From the heady days of the 2006 China-Africa summit, the relationship now appears to be characterized by mounting problems and growing doubts.

The widespread presumption is that China is going through a “learning” experience in Africa. After initially trying to stake out a different approach to the continent, it is now predictably gravitating towards the models and frameworks through which the more “experienced” West has come to structure its interactions with African states. The more distinctive aspects of China’s approach in Africa – such as the policy of “non-interference” in another state’s internal affairs or its refusal to attach “conditions” to aid – are now thought subject to change. China’s lending institutions and major enterprises are signing up to international CSR agreements and collaborating on joint projects in Africa with Western companies. Official engagement and dialogue aim to gradually draw China into webs of Western-shaped multilateral security and development cooperation. China, according to this analysis, is on a path towards adopting the dispositions and concerns of a “northern” power in Africa.

There is certainly plenty of awareness in China about the difficulties it faces in Africa. Beneath the diplomatic rhetoric, policymakers are quite open about the problems faced by the government, many of which stem from managing the growing number of Chinese actors – from large state-owned enterprises to individual entrepreneurs – now active in Africa. Streams of publications by domestic research institutes debate how to improve Chinese policy in Africa, tackling subjects such as enhancing soft power, lowering trade tensions, ensuring the better targeting of aid, and looking at how to widen forms of communication beyond the state-state level. This is a clearly a period of flux as China reflects on its approach to Africa.

Whilst willing to learn from aspects of the West’s engagement of Africa, China remains nevertheless deeply reluctant to fully embrace existing practices and norms. This is partly about retaining competitive advantage. Beijing is aware that most African states have welcomed China’s rise as an opportunity to break out of the donor monopoly imposed by the established powers. But it is also about China’s identity as a fellow “developing” country and an old practitioner of “south-south cooperation”. China’s “Africa hands” will in conversation stress the continuities between existing and past policy, referencing the considerable assistance given by China to Africa in the 1960s and drawing on a language of political solidarity that has its roots in Maoist “Third Worldism”. These traditions and discourse remain constitutive even though China is now an essentially status quo actor rather than a fomenter of global revolution.

This should caution against assuming that engagement of China will lead to convergence on the West’s terms. I do not see any great shift in China’s policy of non-interference considering the “business as usual” approach it took to recent coups in Guinea, Madagascar and Niger. There remains only perfunctory interest in joining the types of donor groupings that develop policies of aid conditionality. Analysts I have spoken to suggest the drive is instead towards building greater capabilities and know-how on Africa lest China finds itself otherwise subsumed within Western thinking and practice. A new think-tank on Sino-African affairs has been established and the Beijing-based International Poverty Reduction Center continues to expand, annually training dozens of high-level African officials in the “lessons” to be learned from China’s experience of economic development. Changes may be coming to China’s Africa policy, but they are unlikely to be in the direction that the West wants or expects.