BEIJING â€" China extended further economic commitments to African leaders during a regional summit on Thursday, as the fast-growing nation seeks to smooth relations with the resource-rich continent.
China will offer $20 billion in loans to African countries to support the development of their infrastructure, agriculture, manufacturing and small and medium-sized enterprises, Chinese President Hu Jintao said Thursday during the gathering in Beijing. The figure is double what China committed to in 2009.
Mr. Hu was speaking on the first day of a two-day gathering on China-Africa nations that included the leaders of some of the continent's biggest countries , including South Africa President Jacob Zuma; Kenya Prime Minister Raila Amollo Odinga; Equatorial Guinea President Teodoro Nguema Mbasogo; Niger President Mahamadou Issoufou; and Ivory Coast President Alassane Dramane.
Chinese officials this week have stressed the amount of aid Beijing has extended to Africa. Mr. Hu said trade between China and Africa has doubled in the past six years, and totaled $166.3 billion in 2011. China's direct investment in Africa has reached $15 billion in more than 50 countries, he said.
The state-run Xinhua news agency also said a China-Africa development fund backed by the China Development Bank has made investment commitments worth $2 billion in Africa, including investments in 60 projects across 30 African countries.
In recent years China has moved aggressively into the resource-rich region as it seeks more oil, metals and other commodities it needs to fuel growth. Unlike the U.S. and other countries, China hasn't attached political or environmental strings to much of its aid.
Africa has provided huge opportunities for Chinese companies, especially those involved in energy. Sinohydro Corp., which built most of China's Three Gorges Dam, has capitalized on the continent's vast hydropower resources by developing projects in 21 African countries. Big companies such as China Petrochemical Corp. and China National Petroleum Corp. have major oil and gas investments in Angola, Sudan and Libya, all of which are important exporters of crude oil to China.
Still, some in Africa have started to question China's growing presence, amid criticism over how some Chinese firms treat workers and the environment there. "China's central government is very limited in what it can do to control the huge proportion of Chinese activity in Africa," said Ian Taylor, a professor at the University of St. Andrews in the U.K.
"A lot of Chinese corporations don't take into account environmental sustainability in China itselfâ€"why should they be any different in Africa?" he said.
Underscoring the labor issues, a Chinese-owned miner last year fired 1,000 workers from a Zambian copper mine for participating in a strike over wages, drawing criticism from policymakers there.
Trade is also a growing issue. China's main imports from Africa include crude oil, copper, coal and iron-ore products, while Africa is a large buyer of products such as machinery and textiles.
"This trend in Sino-African trade benefits China, which enters African markets to sell its manufactured goods and buys primary products with little added value for Africa," according to Daouda Cisse, a researcher at the Center for Chinese Studies at Stellenbosch University, in a note. "With the rising purchasing power among Chinese and a shift towards consumer-driven growth in China, opportunities are presented to move towards a more balanced trade between China and Africa," he said.
China has struck back on the public relations front. A Xinhua commentary this week said critics are "warning of the 'new colonialism' looming on the continent in a veiled swipe at Beijing's efforts to forge closer ties with Africa.
"A retrospect of the more than a decade of bilateral cooperation would easily defeat such a biased and ill-grounded viewpoint," it said.
â€"Shangguan Zhoudong and Sarah Chen
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