China is in fact supplying arms to repressive African regimes, the kind that kill old folks and babies.
Finally, Beijing increasingly views Africa as a center for military-military cooperation and a market for China's growing arms industry. Today, Chinese firms rank among the top suppliers of conventional arms in Africa. Between 1996 and 2003, Chinese arms sales to Africa were second only to Russia's. In particular, China has developed close military ties with Zimbabwe, Sudan, and Ethiopia, three of Africa's most strategically important states.
In April 2005, Zimbabwe's air force received six jet aircraft for "low-intensity" military operations. The year before, a Chinese radar system was installed at President Robert Mugabe's mansion in the Harare suburbs. Most important, in June 2004, Zimbabwe reportedly purchased 12 jet fighters and 100 military vehicles, worth an estimated $240 million. This order, which had been kept secret, was also reported to have circumvented the state procurement board tasked with appropriating Zimbabwe's $136 million defense budget.
China has become the largest supplier of arms to Sudan, according to a former Sudanese government minister. Chinese-made tanks, fighter planes, bombers, helicopters, machine guns, and rocket-propelled grenades supplied Khartoum's forces in the north-south civil war.
And even as world leaders remain fearful of new conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea, China has extended arms sales to both nations. (During the war between Ethiopia and Eritrea from 1998 to 2000, China bypassed a UN arms embargo and sold over $1 billion in weapons to both states.) Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and Chinese Lieutenant General Zhu Wenquan met in Addis Ababa in August 2005. They agreed that "Ethiopia and China shall forge mutual cooperation in military training, exchange of military technologies, and peacekeeping missions, among others." The previous week, Zhu had met with the commander of the Eritrean Air Force. At that gathering, Zhu had said it was China's desire "for the armies of the two sisterly countries to cooperate in various training."
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Just as Gabon, Sudan, Angola, and other nations now look to China first, so too Mugabe now calls China his "number one friend," while the leaders of Rwanda, where the government is accused of rigging polls and locking up opposition leaders, have lavished praise on Beijing. "It's a different way of doing business," Rwanda's finance minister told reporters, pleased that China has offered aid without any preconditions, such as improving Rwanda's human rights record. Sudanese officials, too, give thanks to Beijing: "We have our supporters," the deputy head of Sudan's parliament said wryly after Washington attempted, with little luck, to sanction Sudan at the United Nations. As Mugabe put it, China is becoming "an alternative global power point."
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In this fragile environment, Chinese influence could complicate democratic consolidation and good governance. It might also undermine China's own efforts to be seen as a responsible global power. In Zimbabwe last year, the country held a dismal election; before the vote, candidates and poll workers from the Movement for Democratic Change, the leading opposition party, were threatened, beaten, and even killed. Mugabe had gerrymandered parliament so he would be guaranteed to start with more seats than the MDC before votes were even counted. On Election Day, when Mugabe unsurprisingly won a smashing victory, and the MDC unsurprisingly cried foul, no major international power would endorse the outcome-except China.
In the run-up to the election, China had delivered to Zimbabwe agricultural equipment, electricity transformers, and planeloads of T-shirts bearing the insignia of Mugabe's party. Chinese businesses also reportedly offered the government jamming devices to be used against Zimbabwean opposition radio stations, and Beijing is said to have sent Harare riot control gear, in case of demonstrations. Mugabe was ecstatic at his good fortune. "The Chinese are our good friends, you see," he told a British interviewer.
Beyond Zimbabwe, Beijing has been criticized for blocking Western efforts to isolate and punish the Sudanese government. In the fall of 2004, when the United States submitted draft resolutions to the United Nations that would have called for tough action against ethnic cleansing in Darfur, China's UN ambassador quietly defanged the drafts, rendering them useless.
Chinese support also has helped African leaders maintain controls on information. Beijing aids African regimes with training on press and Internet monitoring. Tracing China's efforts in this area is difficult, but China's official press even alluded to these media initiatives. On November 11, 2005, the People's Daily proclaimed, "In the information sector, China has trained dozens of media from 35 African countries for the past two years." The day before, the group Reporters without Borders released an analysis of Mugabe's media activities, finding that "the use of Chinese technology in a totally hypocritical and non-transparent fashion reveals the government's iron resolve to abolish freedom of opinion in Zimbabwe."
China's unwillingness to put any conditions on its assistance to Africa could undermine years of international efforts to link aid to better governance. Already, international corruption watchdogs like Global Witness have warned that China's $2 billion aid to Angola, given in advance and without pressure for poverty reduction, will allow the Angolan government to revert to its old habits, skimming the petroleum cream for itself. Today, the majority of Angola's roughly 13 million people still live in poverty, while elites have siphoned off much of the nation's oil wealth. Yet in November 2005, José Pedro de Morais, Angola's finance minister, said he expected future Chinese loans would exceed $2 billion. "When we ask our Chinese counterparts if they are willing to provide more loans, they say yes," he remarked.
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