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China's Bet on Africa
14/11/2006 By Xulio Ríos
On 3 November, 2006, commenced in Beijing the third China-Africa summit - the
largest diplomatic meeting organised by China -, ending two days later with a truly outstanding outcome and many commitments:
- to double, by 2009, the aid offered to Africa this year; to grant 3 billion dollars in preferential loans and 2 billion in preferential credits to African buyers in the next three years;
- to set up a special 5-billion-dollar fund to foster Chinese investment in Africa;
- to cancel more debts of some countries; to offer more scholarships to students;
- to provide more resources for technical training; to ensure cooperation within the sphere of energy;
- and to acknowledge China as a market economy, amongst others.
In January this year, China published its first official document concerning African
politics, which proposes a relationship formula based on association and exchange
aimed at development and explicitly excluding interference in internal affairs.
Beijing presents its progress in Africa as a development model for poor countries (many of them consider its success as an incentive to escape poverty) without neither imposing nor claiming political or economic reforms to have access to its technical or economic aid.
This way, China stands out, in the eyes of African states, as a more attractive world power than the US or the European Union.
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Keywords
Aid policy Central Africa China Development aid Horn of Africa North Africa Poverty reduction Southern Africa West AfricaBio author: Xulio Ríos
Director of the Observatory of Chinese Politics, a project promoted by the Galician Institute of International Analysis and Documentation (IGADI) and Casa Asia. Xulio Ríos is also Coordinator of the Ibero-American Network of Sinology, Adviser to the Casa Asia and Lecturer at the Institute of Graduate Studies.
