China's leaders are responding to such concerns and criticism. During an eight-country tour in Africa early this year, Chinese President Hu Jintao was at pains to change that perception. In a speech to South African university students, he emphasized "mutually beneficial economic cooperation". In Namibia, he counseled managers of Chinese companies on bearing social responsibility and promoting harmony with local people.
"The Chinese government does not encourage Chinese enterprises to take other countries' markets by purely increasing the quantity of their exports," Hu said during the tour.
To ease tension brought about by China's textile and apparel products, China has announced a series of measures, including voluntarily capping clothing exports to South Africa, providing technical training and assistance to textile industries of African countries and prohibiting 28 categories of textile investment projects.
Although China has been running a deficit in trade with Africa in recent years, China has promised to further expand imports from African countries.
At the Beijing Summit of the China-Africa Cooperation Forum in November 2006, President Hu announced eight steps to consolidate the "new type of strategic partnership" between China and Africa, including further opening China's markets to exports from Africa's least developed countries by increasing from 190 to 440 the number of products receiving zero-tariff treatment.
The measures also include building three to five trade and economic cooperation zones in Africa in the next three years, providing 3 billion U.S. dollars in preferential loans and 2 billion U.S. dollars in preferential buyer's credits to African countries and training 15,000 African professionals.
During the summit, the Chinese authorities also said they would further regulate their African activities and improve management of African projects. Premier Wen Jiabao said that projects implemented by Chinese firms should be conducted in an "open, fair, just, rational and transparent" manner and more efforts would be made to ensure that Chinese projects were high quality, safe and environment-friendly.
China's active economic involvement in Africa also caused alarm and suspicion particularly among those countries that previously used to enjoy unfettered market access to Africa.
Some skeptics claim China's interests in Africa are oil and resources-driven and that its closer economic and trade ties will lead to a kind of "neo-colonialism."
Chinese Commerce Minister Bo Xilai dismissed such accusation during the annual parliamentary session in March 2007, saying, "China was once a victim of colonialism and it has never had a record of colonizing other countries." (more)
Source: Xinhua
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