Xinhua sees “great potential in Sino-Africa non-governmental cooperation”

According to a Xinhua report dated 14 October, which has only now been circulated on International Rivers’ mailing list, a “China-Africa NGO seminar” has been organised within the FOCAC framework, to which ”20 persons in charge of NGOs and ambassadors from eight African countries and more than ten Chinese NGOs” had been invited.

The non-governmental communication is expected to be an important part of the Sino-African relations, and contribute to building the strategic partnership between the two sides, said Li Jinjun, secretary-general of China NGO network for International Exchanges (CNIE), the organizer of the seminar.

The event confirms the shift towards greater social engagement in China’s African activities (whether cosmetic or substantive) that several authors — such as Chris Alden — have commented on. A number of international NGOs, such as Oxfam, have been banking on the strategy of bringing NGOs from China and the investment recipient countries together with the idea of sharing the latters’ concerns with the former.  The prominent liberal economist Qin Hui has similarly expressed hope that Chinese civil activists might learn from their counterparts in Africa and Southeast Asia, and press Chinese companies to operate more responsibly at home as well as abroad.

This was not quite the idea of the organisers of this seminar, though. On the contrary,

“I found the African NGOs have a strong will to learn from China,” said Jiang Bo, secretary-general of China Education Association for International Exchanges.

His view was echoed by Ntobeko Melvin Gotyana, president of South Africa National NGO Coalition (SANGOCO). (…)

Peter Oloishura Nkuraiyia, executive director of NGO Co-ordination Board of Kenya, said that both Kenya and China are developing countries and China is more developed so that Kenya NGOs would like to learn from China from many aspects, especially on how to regulate the funds and how to seek help from the governments.

A book named Africa NGOs Studies and Sino-African Relations [非洲非政府组织与中非关系] was launched at the seminar. The book was written by experts of Zhejiang Normal University [沈蓓莉  and 刘鸿武, apparently CNIE staff] as a result of a project launched by the Chinese government.

These individuals sound like important people within Africa’s NGO circles. I wonder whether this account does reflect the sentiments of African NGOs, which have so far been largely negative on the Chinese presence (if one is to go by Western reports, that is). I am also very curious about this new publication.

ESRC Rising Powers Network: China

Frauke Urban (Institute for Development Studies, University of Sussex), Giles Mohan (Open University) and Xue Lan (Tsinghua University) are launching a research network called China as the new ’shaper’ of global development. The network is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (UK)’s Rising Powers programme.

The aims of the network are:

• Explore how China’s own development trajectory shapes its engagement with and impacts on different regions,
• Deepen our understanding of how and why China acts as an agent of global development,
• Assess the implications of China for low income countries and for the international development community more broadly.

The website of the network will be located at http://risingpowers.open.ac.uk.

The Back to Jerusalem movement

For the Centenary of the World Mission Conference, to be held next year in Edinburgh, Kim-kwong Chan has written a paper on the Back to Jerusalem movement, a movement among China’s house churches to evangelise the area between China and Jerusalem (essentially the Middle East), with the original aim to send 200,000 Chinese missionaries there within ten years. This project is consistent with the notion, popular in Chinese evangelicalism, that the Chinese are called upon to’”fulfil the Great Commission” of world evangelism by completing the last leg of the global evangelical relay. It also dovetails with secular sense of China´s mission as the new global modernizer that has picked up the torch the U.S. and Great Britain had carried before it.

Chan locates the origins of the BTJ movement in the 1940s, when a number of Chinese missionary groups were dislocated to the relatively peaceful Xinjiang. The Reverend Mark Ma, at a Bible school in Shaanxi, received a series of visions that “the Chinese church should assume responsibility to take the Gospel”to Xinjiang and, in order to complete the Great Commission, to the rest of the world.” An American missionary began to promote Ma’s group in the U.S. and the UK. The group was soon disbanded and its members imprisoned, but in the 1990s, veterans of this and other groups were joined by new evangelists. A veteran named Simon Zhao, who had spent twenty years in prison in Xinjiang, declared upon his release that he had received a vision similar to Mark Ma’s. Liu Zhenying, who escaped from prison and fled to Germany in 1997, has been popularised in a book by the New Zealand missionary Paul Hattaway. As a result, a number Western mission agencies have become interested in supporting the BTJ movement in what Chan calls an “outsourcing model:” they provide money and training, and China provides the missionaries. “Currently there are at least a couple dozen mission agencies who are actively involved … with more than a dozen [clandestine] training centers in China and at least another ten abroad, training potential BTJ missionaries.” They also hold clandestine international conferences. BTJ missionaries are found in at least 12, mostly Muslim countries, as students, entrepreneurs, and contract workers. Most are between 20 and 25, come from rural areas and poor backgrounds, and have a high school education. There is an abundant supply of recruits and selection is competitive.

Chan notes that much of the interest is practical: keen to evangelise the Middle East, Western churches have limited funding, and presumably there aren’t many missionaries willing to take the risk. The money that is spent on supporting one Western missionary is enough to finance ten Chinese, who live in much poorer conditions and are used to hardship and illegality from China (where they belong to the illegal house churches and most are rural). Some Chinese house churches have an explicit ideology of martyrdom (shared perhaps with traditional millenarian movements and the Falungong).

Meanwhile, the Chinese government is ‘turning a blind eye’ to the training facilities. One can see why: technically, they are illegal. In the case of a crackdown on these missionaries no blame can be laid at Peking´s door, and it will not protest against their punishment. On the other hand, they can be a useful instrument of rapprochement between China and the usually anti-Chinese but powerful American Christian Right.

Chan does not discuss how successful the movement has been in gaining converts, but presumably not highly so. Yet this may be a new development in worldwide Chinese evangelical proselytising, which has so far been overwhelmingly directed at other Chinese. I wonder how easy this transition might be, as in my view the success of Chinese proselytising lies partly in ethnically homogeneous congregations for which shared experiences of migration and entrepreneurship or studying, as well as transnational links to mainland China, are central. If an army of outsourced Chinese missionaries arises, it is likely to merge in this network of Chinese evangelism rather than stay under Western command.

New report on Chinese bauxite mining in Indochina

The Heinrich Boell Foundation, WWF and the International Institute for Sustainable Development have released a new report by Kate Lazarus on China’s involvement in bauxite mining in Indochina. Mining companies are present in Laos but have not yet started operations; in Vietnam they have so far secured construction contracts, but even that has  attracted opposition and the government may backtrack; whereas in Cambodia they have so far only been involved in road building on the Bolaven Plateau that has coveted bauxite reserves. The report points out the synergy between highly energy-intensive aluminium smelting and the development of hydropower.

The report can be downloaded here.

International Crisis Group’s new report on China-Burma relations

Following the conquest of Kokang by Burmese government troops and the reported flight of tens of thousands of refugees to China (described as Chinese businessmen in Chinese media; see earlier entry), the International Crisis Group has published a new report entitled China’s Myanmar Dilemma. The report suggests that there is a conflict of interest between Peking, which supports the Burmese government, and the Yunnan provincial government, whose primary interests lie in maximizing profits from border trade and which hence prefers to deal with the so-called “ceasefire armies” and keep the Burmese government at arm’s length. Many Burmese border towns rely on China for electricity, water, and telecommunications, which of course also provides China a powerful weapon: thus, after a series of abductions of gamblers in early 2009, the Yunnan government cut off utilities to the casino town of Maijayang to pressure the local authorities to shut down the casino. The closest relations are maintained with the 20,000-strong United Wa State Army: in March, a Yunnan Province official participated in the 20th century celebrations of the UWSA’s victory over the Communist Party of Burma (!), and its political leader, Bao You-Xiang, epxressed its thanks to China for its support. At the end of last year, both Kachin and Wa leaders wrote a letter to Hu Jintao appealing for investment and aid.

The report also details Chinese involvement in hydropower projects (at least 63, including the Tasang Dam on the Salween, which is to be the largest dam in Southeast Asia) and mining (the latest and largest project, the Tagaung Taung nickel mine, was approved in 2008 with an investment of $800 million). Official Burmese figures say that 99% of the foreign investment in 2008, or about $900 million, came from China.

While the authors of the report seem to have had privileged access to officials in China, parts of it — particularly those describing on-the-ground sentiments — appear to be based on flimsy evidence. Thus, in reporting on anti-Chinese sentiments in northern Burma, statements like “Burmese feel that they are being pushed out” and “It has been estimated that 60 per cent of Myanmar’s economy is in Chinese hands” are based on a single interview.

It is tempting to see the “special zones” in Northern Burma as a return to the “overlapping sovereignty” of precolonial times when many of the principalities in the region paid tribute to China but were under the loose military control of Burma. What continues to interest me is the role and conceptualisation of Chinese ethnicity in these borderlands today. Do people like Bao You-Xiang see themselves as Chinese, Wa, or both? And how are they seen by others?

New China-in-Zambia masters theses in Amsterdam

Sarah Hardus and Roos Apotheker have recently completed masters theses respectively on perceptions of Chinese aid in Zambia and on practices corporate social responsibility in the new Zambian mining landscape. Hardus’ thesis will soon be available as a MqVU working paper, while Apotheker’s can be downloaded here.

Both theses have an ethnographic component, and Hardus was able to speak to a wide range of actors, from ex-presidential candidate Michael Sata to officials at the Chinese embassy, resulting in some fascinating quotes that paint a picture quite different from previous research on Zambia.

Yet another China in Africa book

Oh no… Amsterdam University Press has published yet another China in Africa book, The New Presence of China in Africa. The book is being launched at the International Institute of Social Studies in the Hague at 4 pm on 16 September.

According to the blurb, the book concludes

that China is in Africa for its own interests: selling Chinese products, assuring its supply of oil and other raw materials and enhancing its status as superpower. Interesting enough, most Africans appreciate China’s presence which they consider to be additional and an alternative for their dependency on Europa and the US.

Yeah.

I hope this really is the last book with this kind of title.

Shan organisation reports fighting around dam site in Burma

According to 1 September press release by the Shan Sapawa Environmental Organisation, disseminated on the International Rivers mailing list,

Shan activists are calling on China to immediately halt all investment in dams on the Salween River following the recent heavy fighting between the Burmese military regime and the Kokang ceasefire army near the site of the Upper Salween Dam planned by Chinese companies in northern Shan State.

Heavy clashes have taken place just east of the town of Kunlong, about 15 kms from the planned dam site. Fighting broke out on August 27, 2009, after the regime deployed thousands of troops to seize control of the Kokang territory, shattering the 20-year ceasefire and causing over 30,000 refugees to flee to China. Kokang forces have sought to repel the Burma Army troops.

Plans to build the Upper Salween Dam, also known as the Kunlong Dam, were announced in April 2007 by two Chinese companies, Hanergy Holding Group (formerly Farsighted Investment Group) and Gold Water Resources Company. Since then a team of Chinese and Burmese technicians have been conducting feasibility studies for the 2,400 MW dam, 25 kms from the Chinese border.

The Kunlong Dam is one of five mega dams being planned on the Salween in Burma by the SPDC and Chinese and Thai companies, to produce electricity to be sold to China and Thailand. The Shan Sapawa Environmental Organisation, together with the Salween Watch coalition of environmental groups from Thailand and Burma, has been monitoring the controversial dam plans for ten years and advocating for their immediate halt.

“The renewed fighting and the flood of refugees into Yunnan should be a wake-up call to China about the risks of investing in Burma,” said Sapawa spokesperson Sai Khur Hseng.   ”Not only is there no free and informed consent to these dam projects, but they are being built over the dead bodies of our people.”

The other mega dam being planned in Shan State is the giant 7,110 MW Ta Sang dam, 100 km from the Thai border. In early August, the regime renewed a scorched earth campaign in townships close to the Ta Sang dam site, torturing and killing civilians and driving 10,000 villagers from their homes.

In an earlier post, I noted the cooperation (or perhaps sometimes multiple identities) between environmental and ethnic organisations in northern Burma, how they represent a certain potential form of sovereignty in that highly contested terrain, and how the ethnic Chinese enclaves (like Kokang) represent another, more real form. What is particularly interesting in this news release is the claim that 30,000 refugees have fled the fighting to China. China is not a state that officially allows refugee flows across its border, so if this is true it raises additional questions about the nature of sovereignty and border in Kokang and the other “special zones.” Or are these people who possess Chinese citizenship?

Conference panel on “The Rising Powers and the ‘new’ geographies of international development”

Giles Mohan and Marcus Power are organising a panel with this title at the Association of American Geographers annual meeting in Washington, DC, on 14-18 April 2010. The call for papers lists the following possible themes:

• To what extent is there a new aid architecture and what does the emergence of the Rising Powers mean for established donors and questions of aid effectiveness?
• Given that much of the interest of the Rising Powers in the developing world is resource access of various kinds how far are developing countries being ‘fixed’ into specific roles with the potential for a resource curse to deepen?
• As the Rising Powers gain in economic power what impacts are they having, or likely to have, on institutions of global governance and the balance of world power?
• Given the need to industrialise and urbanise what impacts are the Rising Powers having on the environment & climate change, as well as on the governance mechanisms to mitigate such change?
• To what extent are we seeing genuine forms of ‘South-South’ cooperation and what policy space does the existence of the Rising Powers afford the poorest developing countries?
• What does the existence of these the Rising Powers mean for normative debates about the very nature of ‘development’? 

Those interested in submitting a paper should contact Dr Giles Mohan (g.mohan [at] open.ac.uk, tel. +44 (0)1908 653654)  or Dr Marcus Power (marcus.power [at] durham.ac.uk, tel. +44 (0)191 334 1828).

China Newsweek cover story on Africans in China

A month after the clash between Nigerians and the police in Canton (see my 17 July post), the cover story of the curent (17 August) China Newsweek (中国新闻周刊, no relation to Newsweek) is entitled “Does China need an immigration bureau?” Of the series of articles, three are about the background of the clash in Canton. Although it notes that Africans are blamed by locals and police for a rise in crime and drug use, the tone of the articles is generally sympathetic or neutral; the authors talk about stereotypes on both sides.

The articles say that Africans increasingly avoid going out in order not to run into police checks. But one case the authors describe of a man who, like the one who died, jumped out of the window to avoid being caught, was not deported, his earnings were not confiscated, and his medical treatment was paid by the police.

The report says that there are officially 20 thousand African residents in Canton, but that many Africans’ visas and even passports have expired. Some African interviewees  say that this is not a crime, and it seems that while the city authorities have since 2005 conducted several campaigns to ferret out and deport such people, they do not treat it as quite serious a crime as their European or American counterparts do. In fact, the protest by African traders in front of the local police precinct had to do with indignation over their lack of legal papers, suggesting that these “illegals” have not been deprived of their voice to the same extent as in Europe.

Researchers and police officials interviewed (in private capacity, as officially police refused to comment on the topic) by the authors offer views that are strikingly similar to those about Chinese traders in Europe: they are illegal, they all look alike, they spread diseases (although AIDS is particularly associated with Africans). But the reporting is less strident than mainstream European media tend to be, and at least partly along the lines of “Chinese people need to learn to live with foreigners.”