China Is Making Friends and Influencing People
Why Beijing's rising power is good—and Bad—for America
Such vows of nonintervention play well. A recent study by the Pew Global Attitudes Project found that nearly every nation studied in Africa had a favorable view of China. That's also evident among China's Asian neighbors, who for years eyed Beijing with apprehension. Particularly remarkable is China's popularity in Cambodia, despite the fact that Beijing in the 1970s backed the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime that killed some 2 million Cambodians, a quarter of the population. As one internal U.S. State Department report written in 2004 observed, "The People's Republic of China has achieved this amazing volte-face."
With over $1 trillion in currency reserves, China is investing far and wide. Its direct foreign investment in Africa has grown to $1.6 billion, from $100 million a decade ago, and China has provided billions more in loans. It has about 800 companies on the continent, and has signed deals, for instance, to build railways across Angola, satellites in Nigeria, and a mobile phone network in Ethiopia. In Central Asia, China two years ago opened a $700 million pipeline linking it and oil-rich Kazakhstan, while Beijing has announced plans to invest $100 billion in Latin America over the next 10 years. In the Philippines, Francis Chua, head of the Federation of Filipino-Chinese Chambers of Commerce and industry, says he hosts one group of would-be Chinese investors after another. "There is no week that passes here without a [business] delegation from China," he says.
Beijing backs up its investments with new promises of direct aid and project financing. At a recent summit in Shanghai, for instance, China announced it would offer $20 billion to Africa, putting it in a league with the biggest donors and lenders. Some of China's money goes toward enhancing its "soft power," such as promoting language training and cultural exchanges. China is funding some 100 "Confucius Institutes" in Chinese studies at universities around the globe, and it offers scholarships for foreigners, so that China currently has over 140,000 overseas students at its own universities.
Nowadays, China no longer can just mind its own business. Beijing "cannot help but be embroiled in political developments in the countries in which it is investing," argues Frank Ching, a Hong Kong-based columnist. If Chinese leaders did not already see their growing footprint, other countries are beginning to remind them. Two years ago, in Zambia, an accident at a Chinese-owned mining-explosives factory killed some 50 workers. When the company rerebuffed angry miners' families—and a protest led to company guards firing on demonstrating workers—Zambians began to take out their anger on China. Protesters attacked Chinese-owned companies, and last year a leading opposition politician denounced Chinese immigrants as "infestors."
Activists in nations from Peru to the Philippines worry that Chinese support is propping up awful governments or exporting China's own weak labor and environmental policies. African and western activists have launched a "Genocide Olympics" campaign to pressure Beijing to stop supporting Sudan, where China National Petroleum Corp. owns the largest stake in Sudan's major oil firm, and Beijing consistently protected Khartoum from United Nations actions on Darfur.
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