Into Africa

Embarking upon a 12-day tour of Africa earlier this year, Chinese President Hu Jintao likely expected a warm welcome. Over the past five years China had emerged as a new power on the continent: Trade between China and Africa is growing by nearly 50 percent annually, Beijing may soon become Africa's top aid donor, and in the winter China hosted nearly every African leader for a historic summit in Beijing. On Hu's previous trip to the continent, in 2004, African leaders basked in China's new interest.

But this time around, Hu found a far different welcome. Though he received polite applause from leaders across Africa, he had to cancel part of his trip to Zambia amid fears of street protests over poor safety records at a Chinese-owned mine there. In South Africa and other countries, he faced condemnation in the media for China's human rights abuses, while across the continent African opinion leaders wondered why China was not doing more to help stop the genocide in Darfur. Before Hu's visit, Nigerian militants had kidnapped Chinese workers; in April, Ethiopian militants killed nine Chinese oil workers.

"The Chinese used to be more populist," a spokesman for the militants told reporters. "But now they are turning into colonialists themselves. First there were the Russians, then the Americans, now it is them."

This souring romance may show the limits of China's Africa strategy. Until now, China has focused on trade, aid, and diplomacy on the continent -- emphasizing its "soft power," and vowing that it will not get involved in other countries' domestic politics. It is a strategy that is consciously different from that of the United States, which has emphasized its "hard power" through its military and counterterrorism cooperation with many African states. The US also sometimes takes a hard line, criticizing African governments' poor political and economic leadership.

But now China faces a decision that has implications far beyond Africa. As it grows into a great power, China's footprint on the continent will rapidly expand, and the country can no longer avoid responsibility for its actions -- or, as in Darfur, its lack of action. If it stays aloof, it may alienate average people around the world. But if it begins to intervene in the domestic affairs of others, it abandons the core of the strategy it has crafted to woo foreign countries.

"Nonintervention is our brand," boasted Zhou Yuxiao, a Chinese official, during a visit to South Africa last fall, "like intervention is the Americans' brand."

And it is Africa, the first place outside of Asia where China is exerting its influence, that may show what kind of power Beijing will become -- and give America clues on how to handle a rising China.

For years, China ignored most of the world. As Deng Xiaoping came to power in the late 1970s, he pleaded with his country, ruined by years of backward economic policies, to focus on China's own development. But over the past decade, China's breakneck economic growth fostered greater confidence within the Chinese public, and intellectuals began calling for the nation to take a larger role in global affairs.

A more confident Chinese leadership has chosen to demonstrate its appeal first in parts of the developing world, which offers a blank slate for Beijing, since most people in the developing world know little about China's record on human rights. Certainly, Chinese leaders also must have realized that Africa was a low priority for the United States, and if China could play a major role in Africa, it could stake its claim as a great global power, able to influence events far from its own neighborhood. Not coincidentally, Africa also offered a battleground with China's bitter rival Taiwan, along with untapped natural resources -- West Africa alone contains more than 80 percent of new global oil reserves.

China's aid programs have been critical to its charm offensive in Africa. From almost nothing a decade ago, the country has emerged as probably one of the five biggest donors on the continent, and at a summit last month, Chinese leaders announced they would offer Africa $20 billion in new financing. Unlike some Western donors, Beijing does not insist on economic or political reforms in exchange for aid. China's new, more savvy diplomats -- one 2005 report said half of China's foreign service were 35 years old or younger -- take pains to advertise Beijing's largesse.

Some of China's aid explicitly goes to programs to soften its image. While the United States has created fortress-like embassies and retreated from public diplomacy, Beijing promotes Chinese culture and language across the African continent. It has done so by creating Confucius Institutes in places like Nairobi, and Chinese-language programs at leading local universities. As the United States once did with the Peace Corps, China has begun to emphasize people-to-people contacts, for example launching a program to bring idealistic young Chinese to developing nations for volunteer projects.

"If one nation-state is able to make its power appear reasonable in the eyes of another people, then its desires will encounter less resistance," mused Wang Huning of the Central Committee's Policy Research Office.

Until recently, China's charm offensive appeared to be working. Polls in nations like South Africa showed more than 60 percent of people viewed China warmly, and the local media enthused about how the country's voracious demand for resources has given commodity-dependent African states a new lease on life, and a chance to reduce Africa's crippling trade deficits by exporting resources to China.

Many African leaders, who had failed to slash poverty rates using Western economic reforms, saw in Beijing a model of successful development. The president of the African Development Bank, the continent's major lending institution, urged his colleagues to study how China developed.

But popular opinion is beginning to turn. Because China was a relative newcomer to Africa, for several years it enjoyed a grace period with local activists. But a series of accidents at Chinese-owned mines and companies in Africa, highlighted in the local media, made many Africans question whether China was exporting its own poor labor and environmental standards. After accidents at a Chinese-owned copper mine in Zambia killed some 50 Zambians, workers protested against China, and ultimately some Zambians targeted Chinese-owned shops in Lusaka.

African civil society, which once welcomed China as an alternative to the West, also has begun to make its voice heard. Many African activists realize that the conditions Western lenders propose -- conditions designed to make sure aid follows labor and environmental standards -- help ensure money goes to social welfare. The International Rivers Network, a global environmental group, recently revealed that China supported the Merowe Dam, a project in Sudan that might have displaced as many as 70,000 people. Justica Ambiental, a Mozambican NGO, sent representatives to Shanghai this month to launch similar complaints about a China-backed dam in Mozambique.

Some African leaders also have begun to wonder if the continent is headed for a new mercantilism -- if China will buy Africa's resources and sell it manufactured products, doing little to upgrade Africans' skills.

"The key must be mutual benefit," Trevor Manuel, the finance minister of South Africa told a group of Chinese officials. "Otherwise we might end up with a few holes in the ground where the resources have been extracted, and all the added value will be in China."

Now China is beginning to see that it cannot cultivate only leaders and ignore unions, newspapers, and NGOs like Justica Ambiental either in Africa or in other parts of the world. To soothe fears in South Africa that China will destroy local industries, Beijing agreed to self-imposed quotas on imports of Chinese textiles, and Hu has emphasized that China wants an equitable trade relationship with Africa.

Then there is Darfur. Over the past decade, as Sudan developed a major oil industry, China's leading oil companies have invested some $10 billion, making them critical to that nation's economy; China also sold arms to the Sudanese government and repeatedly blocked any United Nations actions against Khartoum. When reports of mass killing first emerged in Darfur in 2004, some Chinese diplomats wrote them off as hype created by America, which they believe never misses an opportunity to criticize Beijing.

But by 2007, it became clear that Darfur was not only a concern of Western human rights groups. African leaders themselves called for solutions to the crisis, and some of Africa's elite wondered why China, a country that supposedly stood on the side of developing nations, stood by silently as the leaders of one of those nations eliminated their own people.

After three years of unflinchingly backing Khartoum, this spring a top Chinese official suddenly realized there were refugees in Darfur, and visited refugee camps there. China then openly attempted to push Khartoum to allow a peacekeeping force into Darfur, and appointed a special envoy to Sudan. In the past year, top Chinese officials have also pointedly ignored Zimbabwe, another pariah that has been a friend of Beijing.

If China doesn't change, it will reap the results. Already, in other parts of the world, Beijing's soft power has not made up for its backing of dictators; in Burma, locals have taken out their frustration at Beijing's support through violence against Chinese migrants. If Beijing is not careful, it will find its Burma headache repeated across the African continent -- and, potentially, the world.

Joshua Kurlantzick is the author of "Charm Offensive: How China's Soft Power Is Transforming the Globe" (Yale), from which this essay is adapted.