KEY POINTS:
China has been getting it in the neck this year for co-operating with African countries whose behaviour doesn't conform to Western ethical standards.
Actually, there are two issues, which often get conflated.
Providing loans is one thing established lenders like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank are
upset about, while human rights and environmental activists are angry about the Chinese co-operating with African governments on investment projects, often in oil-related areas.
The first thing to say is that the West must also face up to its responsibilities. It has had 50 years since the end of World War II to help Africa climb up the development ladder. Given the obvious failure of Western policies in Africa, the West can't be surprised when others step into the vacuum.
And China could be a better model for developing countries anyway. If there's one thing that China has proven, it's that human rights start with economics, rather than politics. China has followed a path of one-dimensional economic development which so far has had tremendous poverty alleviation success.
The West's more complex and often self-serving ideological packages have met with far more mixed results in Third World countries.
The World Bank has refused to invest or make loans in the Sudan for example, because the Government there won't guarantee minimum standards on the environment and human rights.
I find this risible. The environmental question really needs to be kept in perspective. Compared to raising people out of grinding poverty, the environment is completely unimportant. The World Bank's search for squeaky clean projects to invest in makes me wonder where it can invest outside of Scandinavia.
A bogeyman often cited by Western institutions as an argument against engagement with Africa is corruption. China never makes this argument, and I think they are right.
You can easily argue that some of the most extreme corruption comes in the richest countries. And that corruption does not always hold countries back. Japan is astonishingly corrupt, but also the second richest country in the world. China is very corrupt as well, not to mention the US. I'm not claiming I understand how the dynamic works, but from my experience in Asia, corruption seems to be little more than neutral, overall, in terms of determining the success or failure of GDP enlargement.
But you often get this intense moral puritanism out of Western countries, perfectly exemplified by the policy of economic sanctions: millions should suffer just to make sure that the leader should be hurt.
I remember that at the beginning of China's economic reforms, I would often bump into Chinese cadres off to Africa to scout out investment opportunities. When Chinese goods were really cheap, but also really badly made, Africa was one of the few places they could export to.
China's current economic model is ideally suited for the heavy industry type of investing which guarantees maximum job generation. That's similar to the role that Japan played from the 1980s onwards when it transferred its manufacturing plants to cheaper Asian locations. After all, what are Western countries going to invest in?
Banks and advertising agencies could be somewhat too sophisticated for your average dirt-poor Sudanese village. But opening up a mine shaft or factory will give local people a leg-up.
Some of the Chinese investments are in areas which are incredibly desolate, which will lead to major improvements in rail and road networks. Ports will also need to be significantly improved to deal with increased traffic. These changes will have huge positive knock-on effects.
It's pretty clear, as Iraq has shown, that populations are pragmatic about state-sanctioned human rights abuses as long as they are provided with a certain amount of stability: guarantees that they won't starve to death or be beaten up and killed by anybody other than the official security forces.
China itself is riddled with human rights abuses, which cause a great deal of grief and dissatisfaction. But that's balanced by the fact that foreign invaders are not rampaging through the country and people are not starving on a massive scale, or dying of mysterious epidemics.
It's arguable that the Chinese model of development has been more effective at bringing people out of poverty than the prescriptions from Washington or Brussels.
China's development has been highly unorthodox, given the crucial role of state-led investments and neo-mercantilist trade policies. Indeed, China's economy represents a form of state-centred capitalism which conforms to the economic definition of fascism. Vietnam has imported a great deal of these policies and the economy is booming.
That's an infinitely better record than what the West has achieved in Africa, where foreign policy considerations triggered genocidal wars and a massive debt crisis.
I'm not denying that making loans ultimately is all about power. Once you make a loan to a country, you have a hold over it. China's almost one trillion dollars in foreign reserves gives it an astonishing amount of firepower, especially considering its very low per capita wealth levels.
The IMF's capacity of making loans is well under half a billion. But if China chooses to use those funds for non-commercial purposes, it's treading a well-worn path.
I'm not sure how true the book Memoirs of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins is, but its premise that the US encouraged Third World countries to go heavily into debt to obtain leverage of them during the Cold War makes sense.
China can probably claim moral one-upmanship on the US, seeing that it is not engaged in an ideological conflict like the US was. It's likely that, for now at least, China's agenda is just economic, and that it's not interested in funding "freedom fighters" to topple left-wing governments.
If your goal is stable oil supplies, the last thing you want is guerrillas rampaging in your backyard.
