Lgsy204.liang@yahoo.com

As the Chinese Prime Minister, Wen Jiabao, meets African leaders at the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in Sharm el-Sheikh today he will look back with some satisfaction on what has happened since the great meeting in Beijing three years ago when 48 out of Africa’s 53 rulers walked up the red carpet of the Great Hall of the People to freshwater pearl bracelet shakes hands with him and President Hu Jintao. Since that symbolic moment of friendship — or obeisance — trade with Africa has doubled from $50 billion to more than $100 billion, exceeding China’s own predictions. China may overtake the EU as Africa’s biggest trading partner before long.

China is already the most powerful outside player in Africa. It assiduously courted Africa’s 53 leaders for their votes as part of its policy to thwart Taiwan’s quest to join the UN. Only four countries have not succumbed to Beijing’s lure and now it feels politically strong enough to challenge the West in Africa. The tipping point was July 12, 2008, the day that China vetoed a British and American resolution at the UN that would have imposed a ban on arms sales on sterling silver jewelry Zimbabwe and a travel ban on its rulers. When Jack Straw was Foreign Secretary he said in a casual reference to China in Africa: “Welcome to the new colonialism.” The Chinese were so angry they cut all contact with the UK on African issues for a year. China is ready to demonstrate its new power there.

Economically China’s thirst for raw materials and oil has been good news for the continent, driving up its average annual growth rate to 5.4 per cent in the decade before the crash. For the first time millions of Africans can afford watches, new shirts, radios, even mobile phones, thanks to cheap Chinese goods — though clothes exports from China devastated South Africa’s textile industry. And to obtain sweet deals on raw materials, China wooed African rulers with freshwater pearl necklace grand infrastructure projects and promises of aid.

Despite the recession — and a resulting 30 per cent drop in the value of Africa-China trade this year — Chinese investment and aid have continued and Mr Wen may announce today increased aid to Africa to show China is not a fair-weather friend. Much of what Beijing calls aid is cheap credit to Chinese companies investing in Africa, but these companies are now being pushed away by state backers and told to find commercial lenders. Despite the shell jewelry fall-off in trade, China’s direct investment in Africa is expected to grow by nearly 80 per cent this year and now represents nearly a tenth of China’s total overseas direct investment. Unlike the short future time-frame of Western countries, Chinese companies plan to a 30-year horizon.

Many see China’s engagement in Africa as a catastrophe for the continent. There is a widespread perception that saintly Britain had adopted this poor little girl called Africa and was busy saving her from hunger, war, disease and poverty. Suddenly big, greedy China, flashing huge deals and cheap goods, has seduced the girl and is leading her astray, even raping her. And to make it worse for Britain, ungrateful Africa sometimes feels that although Chinese intentions may not be entirely honourable, China at least treats her like a freshwater pearl bracelet grown up.

African leaders do not necessarily love China, but its ambassadors do not lecture them about elections, corruption, transparency and human rights. They welcome its non- interfering, government-to- government approach. China’s presence allows these leaders to play off East and West and push against the demands of Western donors, the IMF and the World Bank.

When Westerners complain about China’s behaviour the Chinese point to the state of Africa and ask why it is still so poor after centuries of  trade and wholesale pearl jewelry Western influence, including some 60 years of colonialism.

These days China’s desperate search for mineral deals can lead it into the sort of mistakes the West made in the past. In Guinea, for example. Last year the thuggish army captain, Moussa Dadis Camara, seized power on the death of President Lansana Conté. In September his presidential guard shot and killed at least 150 opposition demonstrators — an action condemned by regional governments and the African Union, which promptly imposed sanctions.

Yet days later one of Camara’s ministers announced that inflatable a $7 billion deal had been struck with China. Its International Development Fund agreed to buy oil and mining concessions in return for building roads and railways. Foreign Ministry officials in Beijing insisted that this was a Hong Kong-based fund with no formal ties to the Chinese Government. Yet it operates in Angola and other African countries with the diplomatic support of Beijing.

In places such as Guinea and Sudan, the Chinese may have to learn the hard way that secret deals with governments — especially coup leaders — will not protect their investments or benefit Africa’s development. The Chinese want stability and consistency, but they will find that African governments can rarely deliver these. Although you may have official permission and may find Africa welcoming at first, it has ways of pearl jewelry tripping up hungry newcomers, frustrating their grand plans. You have to learn how to operate in Africa’s culture and hidden power structures.

Western countries cannot lecture China on behaving better in Africa. Prickly China is too defensive and the West’s own past makes hectoring unproductive. But Western countries, Britain in particular, do have in-depth knowledge and experience of Africa and could offer insights that China may welcome. The Department for International Development has already started to talk to the Chinese on such issues.

On democracy and respect for human rights, it is up to the British and Americans to try to persuade the Chinese that only these will create what they call stability and consistency in Africa’s fragile states. China may not adopt these virtues at home, but it may learn that in wholesale pearl jewelry Africa they are essential.

There was a time when we inhabitants of this green and pleasant land were subjects of the monarch. Subjects who had to petition the monarch for permission to do whatever it was that we wanted to do. Then we chopped the head off one king, sent another packing and settled on the peculiarly English version of pearl necklace liberty.

We were still subjects but we no longer had to beg for the freedom to do something. As long as we obeyed a fairly simple set of rules (don’t murder, don’t forge the Ace of  freshwater pearl jewelry Spades) we were free by right to do as we wished.

We could devise games that we would become rather bad at after we had taught them to the world: but it was because we did not have to petition for the right to form a club that we could invent football or cricket. Coffee shops could grow into magazines (The Spectator) that are still with us, or insurance markets (Lloyd’s) that now dominate the globe. No one could tell us not to, no one could refuse us the necessary certificate because there was no such document and freshwater loose pearl no one with the power to either offer it or deny it.

There are other forms of liberty, of course. It is undoubtedly liberating not to starve or to receive education as of right. But these do not preclude that earthier, more beef-and-bulldog, form: as long as we were not harming our neighbours, then we were free to loose pearl do as we wished, to associate and commune as we wished.

From this liberty grew the little platoons that make society work: mutual, friendly and provident societies, sports clubs, the Women’s Institutes and Boy Scouts. Other than the heinous denial of the right to join trade unions we enjoyed near perfect freedom of association. We did not need to ask for permission or even inform the authorities of what we were doing. By contrast, even until the middle of the last century, our confrères across the Channel had to apply to cultured pearl Paris for permission to form a club of more than 25 Frenchmen.

In our ever so much better modern world we are no  longer subjects: we are citizens. But now we must ask permission to do trivial things. No one may work with children without official approval. A bonfire cannot be lit without permission and a checklist. For two to sing folk songs in a pub requires a licence. A sports club must obey ’elf’n’safety clipboard wielders: no one but those approved, licensed, checked, granted permission by the State may do anything.

If you seek a reason for the decline of civil society, it is here. The attempt to regulate, to corrall, to approve, deprives us of that oxygen of liberty necessary to wish pearl jewelry build a society. We may no longer be subjects, but we are becoming less free.

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