the human province

Following the problems that a Chinese boat has had trying to unload 77 tons of weapons in Durban, South Africa destined for the regime in Zimbabwe, it seems like it might be going back home after the South African High Court banned the transport of the weapons and ammo and after the remarks of Zambian president and head of the Southern African Development Community:

The impromptu coalition of trade unions, church leaders and organizations trying to stop the delivery gained an important ally on Monday when Levy Mwanawasa, the president of Zambia, who heads a bloc of 14 southern African nations, called on other countries in the region not to let the ship dock in their ports.

“He actually said that it would be good for China to play a more useful role in the Zimbabwe crisis than supplying arms,” said a spokesman for the Zambian government, who asked not to be identified. “We don’t want a situation which will escalate the situation in Zimbabwe more than what it is.”

This photo from the NY Times of the Chinese embassy in Pretoria shows that the Chinese may no longer be getting a free pass from the media and other countries for their involvement in developing nations:

Here's another example of how China is helping out Africa:

A Chinese ship loaded with armaments for Zimbabwe steamed into the port of Durban this week and set off a political firefight, putting newfound pressure on South Africa — and now China — to reduce support for Zimbabwe’s government as it cracks down on its rivals after a disputed election.

The arms shipment was ordered from China before the elections, but its arrival amid Zimbabwe’s political crisis illuminated deep fissures within South Africa over how to respond, and brought new scrutiny on China at a time when its human rights record is already under fire for suppressing protesters in Tibet and supplying arms to the government of Sudan.

Both China and South Africa have some accounting to do as far as Zimbabwe is concerned. Kudos, though, go to the South African dock workers who refused to unload the shipment. And despite her misuse of the term "genocide," Helen Zille, leader of South Africa's opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, does well to remind us that, as the Guardian puts it, "a consignment of Chinese machetes had prefaced the genocide in Rwanda. After all, 77 tons of weapons can be used to kill a lot of people.

The London Review has a summary piece about China's new love affair with Africa. If you've been keeping up with Chinese affairs on the continent, there probably won't be much new information in this piece, but it's a nice summary, and it's helpful to have it all in one piece. It's a subscription only article, but the main gist is summed up here:

In all likelihood China will be neither a saviour nor a destroyer. Some African opinion leaders have realised that it does not really stand for a different model. ‘Non-interference’ is not a value so much as a thin shield for old-fashioned realpolitik. China, like any other major power, generally puts its own strategic interests first. If its clients prove too embarrassing, it will restrain them, just as the United States once dumped Mobutu Sese Seko, when his taste for champagne, diamonds and bloodshed proved too embarrassing. Yet if China’s interests are better served by protecting rogues, it will protect them. If Chinese companies can get away with destroying Africa’s environment and paying little attention to its workers, they probably will. If they cannot – because local activists or consumers call them on it, or because it affects their sales in Africa and the West – perhaps they won’t.

Like the Western powers, China seems set to traffic in whatever images of Africa suit it: before the 2006 China-Africa summit in Beijing, Chinese officials plastered the city with posters of tribal warriors and lions that might have been taken from the National Geographic fifty years ago. Like the colonial powers, China will buy Africa’s resources and sell it manufactured products, regardless of whether Africa manages to produce anything that China wants to buy or succeeds in using China’s largesse to upgrade its own industries. ‘The key must be mutual benefit,’ Trevor Manuel, South Africa’s finance minister, told a group of Chinese officials. ‘Otherwise we might end up with a few holes in the ground where the resources have been extracted, and all the added value will be in China.’

Last summer, when the main opposition leader in Zambia, infuriated by the deaths in the explosives factory, made Chinese investment an issue in the presidential election, the Chinese Embassy threatened to break off relations with Zambia if he was elected. Hardly a model of non-interference.

I used to subscribe to Le Monde Diplomatique. It would come at the end of each month, and I'd open it up and give it a read. Some of the articles were really, really interesting, others not at all. After a while, I started realizing that the name was sort of a misnomer, because fully a third of each issue's content was about the US and how terrible it was. I began thinking to myself that it should be called Les Etats-Unis Diplomatique instead.

Then I read a couple of articles in succession. One was about Scorsese's film "The Gangs of New York," and spent several pages explaining how violence was an American characteristic and how even since the beginning of the country that violence had been a part of the American landscape. All of this based not on violent crime rates or the second amendment or gun ownership, but rather on "The Gangs of New York," a film that was so loosely based on Herbert Asbury's book (which itself was sexed up and shows many "journalistic liberties" --  a better book is Sante's Low Life) that it was nominated for "best original screenplay" rather than screenplay adapted from another work. Oh, and the author noted that Thomas Jefferson was the first president of the Republic. This was what was passing for intelligent criticism of the US in Le Monde Diplo?

That article really, really annoyed me, but the straw that broke the camel's back was an article on China. It was a super-long article that went into a lot of otherwise interesting aspects of the Chinese economy and the country's place in the world today. A lot of noise was made, over and over again, about how China was a counterweight for the US and how that was a good thing considering American behavior in Iraq and human rights violations and whatnot. How much of this article was devoted to China's record on human rights? None. Don't get me wrong, anyone who reads this blog knows that I'm very hard on the US, and in particular American foreign policy in the Middle East and eroding domestic civil rights. But to talk about Guantanamo Bay and Iraq but not mention Tibet, Inner Mongolia or the Uighurs in Xinjiang (or for that matter, Sudan) when talking about how the US and China behave in the world is absurd. It's the same kind of attitude that discredited so many European leftists when they refused to condemn Stalin while he was committing genocide in the Ukraine and occupying Eastern Europe with an iron first. It's intellectually dishonest.

So in the end, I stopped reading Le Monde Diplo, because I found much of it to be trite and couldn't get past its enormous blind spots, especially concerning France herself. So that's why I was wary to start checking out the magazine's blogs. I thought maybe I'd be pleasantly surprised, but this Letter from Lebanon and its subtle finger pointing (in the form of a quote, to be sure, but without any explanation or caveat) and not-so subtle comment section where the ramblings of Franklin Lamb are taken as the gospel truth so long as the US is guilty, has made me realize that I was better off (as was my blood pressure) not reading Le Monde Diplo at all.

Note: I do, however, still enjoy reading some of Alain Gresh's stuff, because he's much more nuanced and actually knows the region very well.

Lee Feinstein has a piece in TPM's America Abroad outlining the relationship between China and Sudan. To answer a charge from comments that my evidence (also in comments) that China is still supplying Sudan with weapons was "google-y and anecdotal," here is what Feinstein has to say about Chinese arms in Sudan. (Incidentally, I'm not sure I even understand how coming across an article in the Sudan Times and a report from Amnesty International by using google is supposed to make those sources any less valid. Furthermore, I'm not sure how a report by Amnesty International is "anecdotal.")

China maintains a defense relationship with Sudan, despite the UN arms embargo that has been in place for Darfur since 2005. The Security Council imposed an embargo on all nongovernmental forces operating in Darfur in July 2004, and expanded it to include government forces as well in 2005. Sales to Khartoum are still permitted, although a UN panel, which visited Sudan in August 2005 to investigate violations of the embargo, recommended in April 2006 that the Security Council expand the embargo to the entire country.

Information about recent Chinese arms sales to Sudan is difficult to discern both because of China's secrecy and because of the inherent difficulty of tracking the flow of small arms, which are below most international reporting thresholds. The UN Panel of Experts reported spotting Chinese-made military trucks in the Port of Sudan that appeared similar to those used on Sudanese Army bases in Darfur. Non-governmental organizations have reported that small arms used by rebels, janjaweed, and government forces in Darfur are of Chinese origin. There are also reports that Khartoum supplied Chinese-made automatic grenade launchers to the United Front for Democratic Change, a Chadian rebel group that also operates out of bases in Darfur. Russia and France are also suppliers of arms and military equipment to Sudan. In the last six years, Russia reported to the United Nations deliveries of 33 attack helicopters to Khartoum, eight combat aircraft, and 30 armored combat. (Between 2001 and 2004, France exported over $1 million of mostly small arms, spare parts, and ammunition.)

Beijing defends its sales to Khartoum as legal, and says that it requires all of its buyers not to transfer arms to other parties, including guerilla groups, a claim which is difficult to confirm independently. Zhai Jun, China's Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs, said in March 2007, "With Sudan, we have cooperation in many aspects, including military cooperation. In this, we have nothing to hide."

In early April, China received Sudan's Joint Chief of Staff. The Chinese Minister of Defense told his Sudanese counterpart that China was "willing to further develop cooperation between the two militaries in every sphere."

Feinstein isn't offering up anything new or salacious in this short piece, but it's a decent outline of the economic, political and military relationship between Sudan and China.

For more on China and Sudan, see the tireless and laudable Eric Reeves.

Al Jazeera gives us a good example of how China may be doing more harm than good in Africa with its value-neutral investment in the continent:

China has agreed to give Zimbabwe $25m worth of farm equipment to help revive the country's ailing tobacco industry.

But Beijing wants something in return – large quantities of Zimbabwe's tobacco.

Jia Qinglin, a senior Chinese Communist party official, presented the equipment, including 424 tractors and 50 trucks, to Robert Mugabe, the country's president, on Saturday in a deal to replace equipment damaged when Mugabe's government seized white-owned farms to resettle landless blacks.

But China wants all the tractors to go to tobacco farmers and expects Zimbabwe to deliver 30 million kilograms by the end of the year, Haru Mutasa, Al Jazeera's correspondent, said in Harare.

While the West is trying to pressure Mugabe into lessening his brutal crackdown on the government's opposition parties, China is offering aid. And the only strings attached are financial ones: the equipment given by China has to be used for cash crops. This in a country experiencing widespread hunger and poverty.

So at the end of the day, Beijing is showing Mugabe that even if he flagrantly violates human rights and the pitiful charade that passes for democracy in Zimbabwe, the Chinese will be there to offer assistance. So long as the price is right, of course.

So are we really surprised that Beijing is financially and diplomatically underwriting Khartoum's genocide in Darfur?

Following the problems that a Chinese boat has had trying to unload 77 tons of weapons in Durban, South Africa destined for the regime in Zimbabwe, it seems like it might be going back home after the South African High Court banned the transport of the weapons and ammo and after the remarks of Zambian president and head of the Southern African Development Community:

The impromptu coalition of trade unions, church leaders and organizations trying to stop the delivery gained an important ally on Monday when Levy Mwanawasa, the president of Zambia, who heads a bloc of 14 southern African nations, called on other countries in the region not to let the ship dock in their ports.

“He actually said that it would be good for China to play a more useful role in the Zimbabwe crisis than supplying arms,” said a spokesman for the Zambian government, who asked not to be identified. “We don’t want a situation which will escalate the situation in Zimbabwe more than what it is.”

This photo from the NY Times of the Chinese embassy in Pretoria shows that the Chinese may no longer be getting a free pass from the media and other countries for their involvement in developing nations:

Here's another example of how China is helping out Africa:

A Chinese ship loaded with armaments for Zimbabwe steamed into the port of Durban this week and set off a political firefight, putting newfound pressure on South Africa — and now China — to reduce support for Zimbabwe’s government as it cracks down on its rivals after a disputed election.

The arms shipment was ordered from China before the elections, but its arrival amid Zimbabwe’s political crisis illuminated deep fissures within South Africa over how to respond, and brought new scrutiny on China at a time when its human rights record is already under fire for suppressing protesters in Tibet and supplying arms to the government of Sudan.

Both China and South Africa have some accounting to do as far as Zimbabwe is concerned. Kudos, though, go to the South African dock workers who refused to unload the shipment. And despite her misuse of the term "genocide," Helen Zille, leader of South Africa's opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, does well to remind us that, as the Guardian puts it, "a consignment of Chinese machetes had prefaced the genocide in Rwanda. After all, 77 tons of weapons can be used to kill a lot of people.

The London Review has a summary piece about China's new love affair with Africa. If you've been keeping up with Chinese affairs on the continent, there probably won't be much new information in this piece, but it's a nice summary, and it's helpful to have it all in one piece. It's a subscription only article, but the main gist is summed up here:

In all likelihood China will be neither a saviour nor a destroyer. Some African opinion leaders have realised that it does not really stand for a different model. ‘Non-interference’ is not a value so much as a thin shield for old-fashioned realpolitik. China, like any other major power, generally puts its own strategic interests first. If its clients prove too embarrassing, it will restrain them, just as the United States once dumped Mobutu Sese Seko, when his taste for champagne, diamonds and bloodshed proved too embarrassing. Yet if China’s interests are better served by protecting rogues, it will protect them. If Chinese companies can get away with destroying Africa’s environment and paying little attention to its workers, they probably will. If they cannot – because local activists or consumers call them on it, or because it affects their sales in Africa and the West – perhaps they won’t.

Like the Western powers, China seems set to traffic in whatever images of Africa suit it: before the 2006 China-Africa summit in Beijing, Chinese officials plastered the city with posters of tribal warriors and lions that might have been taken from the National Geographic fifty years ago. Like the colonial powers, China will buy Africa’s resources and sell it manufactured products, regardless of whether Africa manages to produce anything that China wants to buy or succeeds in using China’s largesse to upgrade its own industries. ‘The key must be mutual benefit,’ Trevor Manuel, South Africa’s finance minister, told a group of Chinese officials. ‘Otherwise we might end up with a few holes in the ground where the resources have been extracted, and all the added value will be in China.’

Last summer, when the main opposition leader in Zambia, infuriated by the deaths in the explosives factory, made Chinese investment an issue in the presidential election, the Chinese Embassy threatened to break off relations with Zambia if he was elected. Hardly a model of non-interference.

I used to subscribe to Le Monde Diplomatique. It would come at the end of each month, and I'd open it up and give it a read. Some of the articles were really, really interesting, others not at all. After a while, I started realizing that the name was sort of a misnomer, because fully a third of each issue's content was about the US and how terrible it was. I began thinking to myself that it should be called Les Etats-Unis Diplomatique instead.

Then I read a couple of articles in succession. One was about Scorsese's film "The Gangs of New York," and spent several pages explaining how violence was an American characteristic and how even since the beginning of the country that violence had been a part of the American landscape. All of this based not on violent crime rates or the second amendment or gun ownership, but rather on "The Gangs of New York," a film that was so loosely based on Herbert Asbury's book (which itself was sexed up and shows many "journalistic liberties" --  a better book is Sante's Low Life) that it was nominated for "best original screenplay" rather than screenplay adapted from another work. Oh, and the author noted that Thomas Jefferson was the first president of the Republic. This was what was passing for intelligent criticism of the US in Le Monde Diplo?

That article really, really annoyed me, but the straw that broke the camel's back was an article on China. It was a super-long article that went into a lot of otherwise interesting aspects of the Chinese economy and the country's place in the world today. A lot of noise was made, over and over again, about how China was a counterweight for the US and how that was a good thing considering American behavior in Iraq and human rights violations and whatnot. How much of this article was devoted to China's record on human rights? None. Don't get me wrong, anyone who reads this blog knows that I'm very hard on the US, and in particular American foreign policy in the Middle East and eroding domestic civil rights. But to talk about Guantanamo Bay and Iraq but not mention Tibet, Inner Mongolia or the Uighurs in Xinjiang (or for that matter, Sudan) when talking about how the US and China behave in the world is absurd. It's the same kind of attitude that discredited so many European leftists when they refused to condemn Stalin while he was committing genocide in the Ukraine and occupying Eastern Europe with an iron first. It's intellectually dishonest.

So in the end, I stopped reading Le Monde Diplo, because I found much of it to be trite and couldn't get past its enormous blind spots, especially concerning France herself. So that's why I was wary to start checking out the magazine's blogs. I thought maybe I'd be pleasantly surprised, but this Letter from Lebanon and its subtle finger pointing (in the form of a quote, to be sure, but without any explanation or caveat) and not-so subtle comment section where the ramblings of Franklin Lamb are taken as the gospel truth so long as the US is guilty, has made me realize that I was better off (as was my blood pressure) not reading Le Monde Diplo at all.

Note: I do, however, still enjoy reading some of Alain Gresh's stuff, because he's much more nuanced and actually knows the region very well.

Lee Feinstein has a piece in TPM's America Abroad outlining the relationship between China and Sudan. To answer a charge from comments that my evidence (also in comments) that China is still supplying Sudan with weapons was "google-y and anecdotal," here is what Feinstein has to say about Chinese arms in Sudan. (Incidentally, I'm not sure I even understand how coming across an article in the Sudan Times and a report from Amnesty International by using google is supposed to make those sources any less valid. Furthermore, I'm not sure how a report by Amnesty International is "anecdotal.")

China maintains a defense relationship with Sudan, despite the UN arms embargo that has been in place for Darfur since 2005. The Security Council imposed an embargo on all nongovernmental forces operating in Darfur in July 2004, and expanded it to include government forces as well in 2005. Sales to Khartoum are still permitted, although a UN panel, which visited Sudan in August 2005 to investigate violations of the embargo, recommended in April 2006 that the Security Council expand the embargo to the entire country.

Information about recent Chinese arms sales to Sudan is difficult to discern both because of China's secrecy and because of the inherent difficulty of tracking the flow of small arms, which are below most international reporting thresholds. The UN Panel of Experts reported spotting Chinese-made military trucks in the Port of Sudan that appeared similar to those used on Sudanese Army bases in Darfur. Non-governmental organizations have reported that small arms used by rebels, janjaweed, and government forces in Darfur are of Chinese origin. There are also reports that Khartoum supplied Chinese-made automatic grenade launchers to the United Front for Democratic Change, a Chadian rebel group that also operates out of bases in Darfur. Russia and France are also suppliers of arms and military equipment to Sudan. In the last six years, Russia reported to the United Nations deliveries of 33 attack helicopters to Khartoum, eight combat aircraft, and 30 armored combat. (Between 2001 and 2004, France exported over $1 million of mostly small arms, spare parts, and ammunition.)

Beijing defends its sales to Khartoum as legal, and says that it requires all of its buyers not to transfer arms to other parties, including guerilla groups, a claim which is difficult to confirm independently. Zhai Jun, China's Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs, said in March 2007, "With Sudan, we have cooperation in many aspects, including military cooperation. In this, we have nothing to hide."

In early April, China received Sudan's Joint Chief of Staff. The Chinese Minister of Defense told his Sudanese counterpart that China was "willing to further develop cooperation between the two militaries in every sphere."

Feinstein isn't offering up anything new or salacious in this short piece, but it's a decent outline of the economic, political and military relationship between Sudan and China.

For more on China and Sudan, see the tireless and laudable Eric Reeves.

Al Jazeera gives us a good example of how China may be doing more harm than good in Africa with its value-neutral investment in the continent:

China has agreed to give Zimbabwe $25m worth of farm equipment to help revive the country's ailing tobacco industry.

But Beijing wants something in return – large quantities of Zimbabwe's tobacco.

Jia Qinglin, a senior Chinese Communist party official, presented the equipment, including 424 tractors and 50 trucks, to Robert Mugabe, the country's president, on Saturday in a deal to replace equipment damaged when Mugabe's government seized white-owned farms to resettle landless blacks.

But China wants all the tractors to go to tobacco farmers and expects Zimbabwe to deliver 30 million kilograms by the end of the year, Haru Mutasa, Al Jazeera's correspondent, said in Harare.

While the West is trying to pressure Mugabe into lessening his brutal crackdown on the government's opposition parties, China is offering aid. And the only strings attached are financial ones: the equipment given by China has to be used for cash crops. This in a country experiencing widespread hunger and poverty.

So at the end of the day, Beijing is showing Mugabe that even if he flagrantly violates human rights and the pitiful charade that passes for democracy in Zimbabwe, the Chinese will be there to offer assistance. So long as the price is right, of course.

So are we really surprised that Beijing is financially and diplomatically underwriting Khartoum's genocide in Darfur?

Following the problems that a Chinese boat has had trying to unload 77 tons of weapons in Durban, South Africa destined for the regime in Zimbabwe, it seems like it might be going back home after the South African High Court banned the transport of the weapons and ammo and after the remarks of Zambian president and head of the Southern African Development Community:

The impromptu coalition of trade unions, church leaders and organizations trying to stop the delivery gained an important ally on Monday when Levy Mwanawasa, the president of Zambia, who heads a bloc of 14 southern African nations, called on other countries in the region not to let the ship dock in their ports.

“He actually said that it would be good for China to play a more useful role in the Zimbabwe crisis than supplying arms,” said a spokesman for the Zambian government, who asked not to be identified. “We don’t want a situation which will escalate the situation in Zimbabwe more than what it is.”

This photo from the NY Times of the Chinese embassy in Pretoria shows that the Chinese may no longer be getting a free pass from the media and other countries for their involvement in developing nations:

Here's another example of how China is helping out Africa:

A Chinese ship loaded with armaments for Zimbabwe steamed into the port of Durban this week and set off a political firefight, putting newfound pressure on South Africa — and now China — to reduce support for Zimbabwe’s government as it cracks down on its rivals after a disputed election.

The arms shipment was ordered from China before the elections, but its arrival amid Zimbabwe’s political crisis illuminated deep fissures within South Africa over how to respond, and brought new scrutiny on China at a time when its human rights record is already under fire for suppressing protesters in Tibet and supplying arms to the government of Sudan.

Both China and South Africa have some accounting to do as far as Zimbabwe is concerned. Kudos, though, go to the South African dock workers who refused to unload the shipment. And despite her misuse of the term "genocide," Helen Zille, leader of South Africa's opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, does well to remind us that, as the Guardian puts it, "a consignment of Chinese machetes had prefaced the genocide in Rwanda. After all, 77 tons of weapons can be used to kill a lot of people.

The London Review has a summary piece about China's new love affair with Africa. If you've been keeping up with Chinese affairs on the continent, there probably won't be much new information in this piece, but it's a nice summary, and it's helpful to have it all in one piece. It's a subscription only article, but the main gist is summed up here:

In all likelihood China will be neither a saviour nor a destroyer. Some African opinion leaders have realised that it does not really stand for a different model. ‘Non-interference’ is not a value so much as a thin shield for old-fashioned realpolitik. China, like any other major power, generally puts its own strategic interests first. If its clients prove too embarrassing, it will restrain them, just as the United States once dumped Mobutu Sese Seko, when his taste for champagne, diamonds and bloodshed proved too embarrassing. Yet if China’s interests are better served by protecting rogues, it will protect them. If Chinese companies can get away with destroying Africa’s environment and paying little attention to its workers, they probably will. If they cannot – because local activists or consumers call them on it, or because it affects their sales in Africa and the West – perhaps they won’t.

Like the Western powers, China seems set to traffic in whatever images of Africa suit it: before the 2006 China-Africa summit in Beijing, Chinese officials plastered the city with posters of tribal warriors and lions that might have been taken from the National Geographic fifty years ago. Like the colonial powers, China will buy Africa’s resources and sell it manufactured products, regardless of whether Africa manages to produce anything that China wants to buy or succeeds in using China’s largesse to upgrade its own industries. ‘The key must be mutual benefit,’ Trevor Manuel, South Africa’s finance minister, told a group of Chinese officials. ‘Otherwise we might end up with a few holes in the ground where the resources have been extracted, and all the added value will be in China.’

Last summer, when the main opposition leader in Zambia, infuriated by the deaths in the explosives factory, made Chinese investment an issue in the presidential election, the Chinese Embassy threatened to break off relations with Zambia if he was elected. Hardly a model of non-interference.

I used to subscribe to Le Monde Diplomatique. It would come at the end of each month, and I'd open it up and give it a read. Some of the articles were really, really interesting, others not at all. After a while, I started realizing that the name was sort of a misnomer, because fully a third of each issue's content was about the US and how terrible it was. I began thinking to myself that it should be called Les Etats-Unis Diplomatique instead.

Then I read a couple of articles in succession. One was about Scorsese's film "The Gangs of New York," and spent several pages explaining how violence was an American characteristic and how even since the beginning of the country that violence had been a part of the American landscape. All of this based not on violent crime rates or the second amendment or gun ownership, but rather on "The Gangs of New York," a film that was so loosely based on Herbert Asbury's book (which itself was sexed up and shows many "journalistic liberties" --  a better book is Sante's Low Life) that it was nominated for "best original screenplay" rather than screenplay adapted from another work. Oh, and the author noted that Thomas Jefferson was the first president of the Republic. This was what was passing for intelligent criticism of the US in Le Monde Diplo?

That article really, really annoyed me, but the straw that broke the camel's back was an article on China. It was a super-long article that went into a lot of otherwise interesting aspects of the Chinese economy and the country's place in the world today. A lot of noise was made, over and over again, about how China was a counterweight for the US and how that was a good thing considering American behavior in Iraq and human rights violations and whatnot. How much of this article was devoted to China's record on human rights? None. Don't get me wrong, anyone who reads this blog knows that I'm very hard on the US, and in particular American foreign policy in the Middle East and eroding domestic civil rights. But to talk about Guantanamo Bay and Iraq but not mention Tibet, Inner Mongolia or the Uighurs in Xinjiang (or for that matter, Sudan) when talking about how the US and China behave in the world is absurd. It's the same kind of attitude that discredited so many European leftists when they refused to condemn Stalin while he was committing genocide in the Ukraine and occupying Eastern Europe with an iron first. It's intellectually dishonest.

So in the end, I stopped reading Le Monde Diplo, because I found much of it to be trite and couldn't get past its enormous blind spots, especially concerning France herself. So that's why I was wary to start checking out the magazine's blogs. I thought maybe I'd be pleasantly surprised, but this Letter from Lebanon and its subtle finger pointing (in the form of a quote, to be sure, but without any explanation or caveat) and not-so subtle comment section where the ramblings of Franklin Lamb are taken as the gospel truth so long as the US is guilty, has made me realize that I was better off (as was my blood pressure) not reading Le Monde Diplo at all.

Note: I do, however, still enjoy reading some of Alain Gresh's stuff, because he's much more nuanced and actually knows the region very well.

Lee Feinstein has a piece in TPM's America Abroad outlining the relationship between China and Sudan. To answer a charge from comments that my evidence (also in comments) that China is still supplying Sudan with weapons was "google-y and anecdotal," here is what Feinstein has to say about Chinese arms in Sudan. (Incidentally, I'm not sure I even understand how coming across an article in the Sudan Times and a report from Amnesty International by using google is supposed to make those sources any less valid. Furthermore, I'm not sure how a report by Amnesty International is "anecdotal.")

China maintains a defense relationship with Sudan, despite the UN arms embargo that has been in place for Darfur since 2005. The Security Council imposed an embargo on all nongovernmental forces operating in Darfur in July 2004, and expanded it to include government forces as well in 2005. Sales to Khartoum are still permitted, although a UN panel, which visited Sudan in August 2005 to investigate violations of the embargo, recommended in April 2006 that the Security Council expand the embargo to the entire country.

Information about recent Chinese arms sales to Sudan is difficult to discern both because of China's secrecy and because of the inherent difficulty of tracking the flow of small arms, which are below most international reporting thresholds. The UN Panel of Experts reported spotting Chinese-made military trucks in the Port of Sudan that appeared similar to those used on Sudanese Army bases in Darfur. Non-governmental organizations have reported that small arms used by rebels, janjaweed, and government forces in Darfur are of Chinese origin. There are also reports that Khartoum supplied Chinese-made automatic grenade launchers to the United Front for Democratic Change, a Chadian rebel group that also operates out of bases in Darfur. Russia and France are also suppliers of arms and military equipment to Sudan. In the last six years, Russia reported to the United Nations deliveries of 33 attack helicopters to Khartoum, eight combat aircraft, and 30 armored combat. (Between 2001 and 2004, France exported over $1 million of mostly small arms, spare parts, and ammunition.)

Beijing defends its sales to Khartoum as legal, and says that it requires all of its buyers not to transfer arms to other parties, including guerilla groups, a claim which is difficult to confirm independently. Zhai Jun, China's Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs, said in March 2007, "With Sudan, we have cooperation in many aspects, including military cooperation. In this, we have nothing to hide."

In early April, China received Sudan's Joint Chief of Staff. The Chinese Minister of Defense told his Sudanese counterpart that China was "willing to further develop cooperation between the two militaries in every sphere."

Feinstein isn't offering up anything new or salacious in this short piece, but it's a decent outline of the economic, political and military relationship between Sudan and China.

For more on China and Sudan, see the tireless and laudable Eric Reeves.

Al Jazeera gives us a good example of how China may be doing more harm than good in Africa with its value-neutral investment in the continent:

China has agreed to give Zimbabwe $25m worth of farm equipment to help revive the country's ailing tobacco industry.

But Beijing wants something in return – large quantities of Zimbabwe's tobacco.

Jia Qinglin, a senior Chinese Communist party official, presented the equipment, including 424 tractors and 50 trucks, to Robert Mugabe, the country's president, on Saturday in a deal to replace equipment damaged when Mugabe's government seized white-owned farms to resettle landless blacks.

But China wants all the tractors to go to tobacco farmers and expects Zimbabwe to deliver 30 million kilograms by the end of the year, Haru Mutasa, Al Jazeera's correspondent, said in Harare.

While the West is trying to pressure Mugabe into lessening his brutal crackdown on the government's opposition parties, China is offering aid. And the only strings attached are financial ones: the equipment given by China has to be used for cash crops. This in a country experiencing widespread hunger and poverty.

So at the end of the day, Beijing is showing Mugabe that even if he flagrantly violates human rights and the pitiful charade that passes for democracy in Zimbabwe, the Chinese will be there to offer assistance. So long as the price is right, of course.

So are we really surprised that Beijing is financially and diplomatically underwriting Khartoum's genocide in Darfur?

Following the problems that a Chinese boat has had trying to unload 77 tons of weapons in Durban, South Africa destined for the regime in Zimbabwe, it seems like it might be going back home after the South African High Court banned the transport of the weapons and ammo and after the remarks of Zambian president and head of the Southern African Development Community:

The impromptu coalition of trade unions, church leaders and organizations trying to stop the delivery gained an important ally on Monday when Levy Mwanawasa, the president of Zambia, who heads a bloc of 14 southern African nations, called on other countries in the region not to let the ship dock in their ports.

“He actually said that it would be good for China to play a more useful role in the Zimbabwe crisis than supplying arms,” said a spokesman for the Zambian government, who asked not to be identified. “We don’t want a situation which will escalate the situation in Zimbabwe more than what it is.”

This photo from the NY Times of the Chinese embassy in Pretoria shows that the Chinese may no longer be getting a free pass from the media and other countries for their involvement in developing nations:

Here's another example of how China is helping out Africa:

A Chinese ship loaded with armaments for Zimbabwe steamed into the port of Durban this week and set off a political firefight, putting newfound pressure on South Africa — and now China — to reduce support for Zimbabwe’s government as it cracks down on its rivals after a disputed election.

The arms shipment was ordered from China before the elections, but its arrival amid Zimbabwe’s political crisis illuminated deep fissures within South Africa over how to respond, and brought new scrutiny on China at a time when its human rights record is already under fire for suppressing protesters in Tibet and supplying arms to the government of Sudan.

Both China and South Africa have some accounting to do as far as Zimbabwe is concerned. Kudos, though, go to the South African dock workers who refused to unload the shipment. And despite her misuse of the term "genocide," Helen Zille, leader of South Africa's opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, does well to remind us that, as the Guardian puts it, "a consignment of Chinese machetes had prefaced the genocide in Rwanda. After all, 77 tons of weapons can be used to kill a lot of people.

The London Review has a summary piece about China's new love affair with Africa. If you've been keeping up with Chinese affairs on the continent, there probably won't be much new information in this piece, but it's a nice summary, and it's helpful to have it all in one piece. It's a subscription only article, but the main gist is summed up here:

In all likelihood China will be neither a saviour nor a destroyer. Some African opinion leaders have realised that it does not really stand for a different model. ‘Non-interference’ is not a value so much as a thin shield for old-fashioned realpolitik. China, like any other major power, generally puts its own strategic interests first. If its clients prove too embarrassing, it will restrain them, just as the United States once dumped Mobutu Sese Seko, when his taste for champagne, diamonds and bloodshed proved too embarrassing. Yet if China’s interests are better served by protecting rogues, it will protect them. If Chinese companies can get away with destroying Africa’s environment and paying little attention to its workers, they probably will. If they cannot – because local activists or consumers call them on it, or because it affects their sales in Africa and the West – perhaps they won’t.

Like the Western powers, China seems set to traffic in whatever images of Africa suit it: before the 2006 China-Africa summit in Beijing, Chinese officials plastered the city with posters of tribal warriors and lions that might have been taken from the National Geographic fifty years ago. Like the colonial powers, China will buy Africa’s resources and sell it manufactured products, regardless of whether Africa manages to produce anything that China wants to buy or succeeds in using China’s largesse to upgrade its own industries. ‘The key must be mutual benefit,’ Trevor Manuel, South Africa’s finance minister, told a group of Chinese officials. ‘Otherwise we might end up with a few holes in the ground where the resources have been extracted, and all the added value will be in China.’

Last summer, when the main opposition leader in Zambia, infuriated by the deaths in the explosives factory, made Chinese investment an issue in the presidential election, the Chinese Embassy threatened to break off relations with Zambia if he was elected. Hardly a model of non-interference.

I used to subscribe to Le Monde Diplomatique. It would come at the end of each month, and I'd open it up and give it a read. Some of the articles were really, really interesting, others not at all. After a while, I started realizing that the name was sort of a misnomer, because fully a third of each issue's content was about the US and how terrible it was. I began thinking to myself that it should be called Les Etats-Unis Diplomatique instead.

Then I read a couple of articles in succession. One was about Scorsese's film "The Gangs of New York," and spent several pages explaining how violence was an American characteristic and how even since the beginning of the country that violence had been a part of the American landscape. All of this based not on violent crime rates or the second amendment or gun ownership, but rather on "The Gangs of New York," a film that was so loosely based on Herbert Asbury's book (which itself was sexed up and shows many "journalistic liberties" --  a better book is Sante's Low Life) that it was nominated for "best original screenplay" rather than screenplay adapted from another work. Oh, and the author noted that Thomas Jefferson was the first president of the Republic. This was what was passing for intelligent criticism of the US in Le Monde Diplo?

That article really, really annoyed me, but the straw that broke the camel's back was an article on China. It was a super-long article that went into a lot of otherwise interesting aspects of the Chinese economy and the country's place in the world today. A lot of noise was made, over and over again, about how China was a counterweight for the US and how that was a good thing considering American behavior in Iraq and human rights violations and whatnot. How much of this article was devoted to China's record on human rights? None. Don't get me wrong, anyone who reads this blog knows that I'm very hard on the US, and in particular American foreign policy in the Middle East and eroding domestic civil rights. But to talk about Guantanamo Bay and Iraq but not mention Tibet, Inner Mongolia or the Uighurs in Xinjiang (or for that matter, Sudan) when talking about how the US and China behave in the world is absurd. It's the same kind of attitude that discredited so many European leftists when they refused to condemn Stalin while he was committing genocide in the Ukraine and occupying Eastern Europe with an iron first. It's intellectually dishonest.

So in the end, I stopped reading Le Monde Diplo, because I found much of it to be trite and couldn't get past its enormous blind spots, especially concerning France herself. So that's why I was wary to start checking out the magazine's blogs. I thought maybe I'd be pleasantly surprised, but this Letter from Lebanon and its subtle finger pointing (in the form of a quote, to be sure, but without any explanation or caveat) and not-so subtle comment section where the ramblings of Franklin Lamb are taken as the gospel truth so long as the US is guilty, has made me realize that I was better off (as was my blood pressure) not reading Le Monde Diplo at all.

Note: I do, however, still enjoy reading some of Alain Gresh's stuff, because he's much more nuanced and actually knows the region very well.

Lee Feinstein has a piece in TPM's America Abroad outlining the relationship between China and Sudan. To answer a charge from comments that my evidence (also in comments) that China is still supplying Sudan with weapons was "google-y and anecdotal," here is what Feinstein has to say about Chinese arms in Sudan. (Incidentally, I'm not sure I even understand how coming across an article in the Sudan Times and a report from Amnesty International by using google is supposed to make those sources any less valid. Furthermore, I'm not sure how a report by Amnesty International is "anecdotal.")

China maintains a defense relationship with Sudan, despite the UN arms embargo that has been in place for Darfur since 2005. The Security Council imposed an embargo on all nongovernmental forces operating in Darfur in July 2004, and expanded it to include government forces as well in 2005. Sales to Khartoum are still permitted, although a UN panel, which visited Sudan in August 2005 to investigate violations of the embargo, recommended in April 2006 that the Security Council expand the embargo to the entire country.

Information about recent Chinese arms sales to Sudan is difficult to discern both because of China's secrecy and because of the inherent difficulty of tracking the flow of small arms, which are below most international reporting thresholds. The UN Panel of Experts reported spotting Chinese-made military trucks in the Port of Sudan that appeared similar to those used on Sudanese Army bases in Darfur. Non-governmental organizations have reported that small arms used by rebels, janjaweed, and government forces in Darfur are of Chinese origin. There are also reports that Khartoum supplied Chinese-made automatic grenade launchers to the United Front for Democratic Change, a Chadian rebel group that also operates out of bases in Darfur. Russia and France are also suppliers of arms and military equipment to Sudan. In the last six years, Russia reported to the United Nations deliveries of 33 attack helicopters to Khartoum, eight combat aircraft, and 30 armored combat. (Between 2001 and 2004, France exported over $1 million of mostly small arms, spare parts, and ammunition.)

Beijing defends its sales to Khartoum as legal, and says that it requires all of its buyers not to transfer arms to other parties, including guerilla groups, a claim which is difficult to confirm independently. Zhai Jun, China's Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs, said in March 2007, "With Sudan, we have cooperation in many aspects, including military cooperation. In this, we have nothing to hide."

In early April, China received Sudan's Joint Chief of Staff. The Chinese Minister of Defense told his Sudanese counterpart that China was "willing to further develop cooperation between the two militaries in every sphere."

Feinstein isn't offering up anything new or salacious in this short piece, but it's a decent outline of the economic, political and military relationship between Sudan and China.

For more on China and Sudan, see the tireless and laudable Eric Reeves.

Al Jazeera gives us a good example of how China may be doing more harm than good in Africa with its value-neutral investment in the continent:

China has agreed to give Zimbabwe $25m worth of farm equipment to help revive the country's ailing tobacco industry.

But Beijing wants something in return – large quantities of Zimbabwe's tobacco.

Jia Qinglin, a senior Chinese Communist party official, presented the equipment, including 424 tractors and 50 trucks, to Robert Mugabe, the country's president, on Saturday in a deal to replace equipment damaged when Mugabe's government seized white-owned farms to resettle landless blacks.

But China wants all the tractors to go to tobacco farmers and expects Zimbabwe to deliver 30 million kilograms by the end of the year, Haru Mutasa, Al Jazeera's correspondent, said in Harare.

While the West is trying to pressure Mugabe into lessening his brutal crackdown on the government's opposition parties, China is offering aid. And the only strings attached are financial ones: the equipment given by China has to be used for cash crops. This in a country experiencing widespread hunger and poverty.

So at the end of the day, Beijing is showing Mugabe that even if he flagrantly violates human rights and the pitiful charade that passes for democracy in Zimbabwe, the Chinese will be there to offer assistance. So long as the price is right, of course.

So are we really surprised that Beijing is financially and diplomatically underwriting Khartoum's genocide in Darfur?

Following the problems that a Chinese boat has had trying to unload 77 tons of weapons in Durban, South Africa destined for the regime in Zimbabwe, it seems like it might be going back home after the South African High Court banned the transport of the weapons and ammo and after the remarks of Zambian president and head of the Southern African Development Community:

The impromptu coalition of trade unions, church leaders and organizations trying to stop the delivery gained an important ally on Monday when Levy Mwanawasa, the president of Zambia, who heads a bloc of 14 southern African nations, called on other countries in the region not to let the ship dock in their ports.

“He actually said that it would be good for China to play a more useful role in the Zimbabwe crisis than supplying arms,” said a spokesman for the Zambian government, who asked not to be identified. “We don’t want a situation which will escalate the situation in Zimbabwe more than what it is.”

This photo from the NY Times of the Chinese embassy in Pretoria shows that the Chinese may no longer be getting a free pass from the media and other countries for their involvement in developing nations:

Here's another example of how China is helping out Africa:

A Chinese ship loaded with armaments for Zimbabwe steamed into the port of Durban this week and set off a political firefight, putting newfound pressure on South Africa — and now China — to reduce support for Zimbabwe’s government as it cracks down on its rivals after a disputed election.

The arms shipment was ordered from China before the elections, but its arrival amid Zimbabwe’s political crisis illuminated deep fissures within South Africa over how to respond, and brought new scrutiny on China at a time when its human rights record is already under fire for suppressing protesters in Tibet and supplying arms to the government of Sudan.

Both China and South Africa have some accounting to do as far as Zimbabwe is concerned. Kudos, though, go to the South African dock workers who refused to unload the shipment. And despite her misuse of the term "genocide," Helen Zille, leader of South Africa's opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, does well to remind us that, as the Guardian puts it, "a consignment of Chinese machetes had prefaced the genocide in Rwanda. After all, 77 tons of weapons can be used to kill a lot of people.

The London Review has a summary piece about China's new love affair with Africa. If you've been keeping up with Chinese affairs on the continent, there probably won't be much new information in this piece, but it's a nice summary, and it's helpful to have it all in one piece. It's a subscription only article, but the main gist is summed up here:

In all likelihood China will be neither a saviour nor a destroyer. Some African opinion leaders have realised that it does not really stand for a different model. ‘Non-interference’ is not a value so much as a thin shield for old-fashioned realpolitik. China, like any other major power, generally puts its own strategic interests first. If its clients prove too embarrassing, it will restrain them, just as the United States once dumped Mobutu Sese Seko, when his taste for champagne, diamonds and bloodshed proved too embarrassing. Yet if China’s interests are better served by protecting rogues, it will protect them. If Chinese companies can get away with destroying Africa’s environment and paying little attention to its workers, they probably will. If they cannot – because local activists or consumers call them on it, or because it affects their sales in Africa and the West – perhaps they won’t.

Like the Western powers, China seems set to traffic in whatever images of Africa suit it: before the 2006 China-Africa summit in Beijing, Chinese officials plastered the city with posters of tribal warriors and lions that might have been taken from the National Geographic fifty years ago. Like the colonial powers, China will buy Africa’s resources and sell it manufactured products, regardless of whether Africa manages to produce anything that China wants to buy or succeeds in using China’s largesse to upgrade its own industries. ‘The key must be mutual benefit,’ Trevor Manuel, South Africa’s finance minister, told a group of Chinese officials. ‘Otherwise we might end up with a few holes in the ground where the resources have been extracted, and all the added value will be in China.’

Last summer, when the main opposition leader in Zambia, infuriated by the deaths in the explosives factory, made Chinese investment an issue in the presidential election, the Chinese Embassy threatened to break off relations with Zambia if he was elected. Hardly a model of non-interference.

I used to subscribe to Le Monde Diplomatique. It would come at the end of each month, and I'd open it up and give it a read. Some of the articles were really, really interesting, others not at all. After a while, I started realizing that the name was sort of a misnomer, because fully a third of each issue's content was about the US and how terrible it was. I began thinking to myself that it should be called Les Etats-Unis Diplomatique instead.

Then I read a couple of articles in succession. One was about Scorsese's film "The Gangs of New York," and spent several pages explaining how violence was an American characteristic and how even since the beginning of the country that violence had been a part of the American landscape. All of this based not on violent crime rates or the second amendment or gun ownership, but rather on "The Gangs of New York," a film that was so loosely based on Herbert Asbury's book (which itself was sexed up and shows many "journalistic liberties" --  a better book is Sante's Low Life) that it was nominated for "best original screenplay" rather than screenplay adapted from another work. Oh, and the author noted that Thomas Jefferson was the first president of the Republic. This was what was passing for intelligent criticism of the US in Le Monde Diplo?

That article really, really annoyed me, but the straw that broke the camel's back was an article on China. It was a super-long article that went into a lot of otherwise interesting aspects of the Chinese economy and the country's place in the world today. A lot of noise was made, over and over again, about how China was a counterweight for the US and how that was a good thing considering American behavior in Iraq and human rights violations and whatnot. How much of this article was devoted to China's record on human rights? None. Don't get me wrong, anyone who reads this blog knows that I'm very hard on the US, and in particular American foreign policy in the Middle East and eroding domestic civil rights. But to talk about Guantanamo Bay and Iraq but not mention Tibet, Inner Mongolia or the Uighurs in Xinjiang (or for that matter, Sudan) when talking about how the US and China behave in the world is absurd. It's the same kind of attitude that discredited so many European leftists when they refused to condemn Stalin while he was committing genocide in the Ukraine and occupying Eastern Europe with an iron first. It's intellectually dishonest.

So in the end, I stopped reading Le Monde Diplo, because I found much of it to be trite and couldn't get past its enormous blind spots, especially concerning France herself. So that's why I was wary to start checking out the magazine's blogs. I thought maybe I'd be pleasantly surprised, but this Letter from Lebanon and its subtle finger pointing (in the form of a quote, to be sure, but without any explanation or caveat) and not-so subtle comment section where the ramblings of Franklin Lamb are taken as the gospel truth so long as the US is guilty, has made me realize that I was better off (as was my blood pressure) not reading Le Monde Diplo at all.

Note: I do, however, still enjoy reading some of Alain Gresh's stuff, because he's much more nuanced and actually knows the region very well.

Lee Feinstein has a piece in TPM's America Abroad outlining the relationship between China and Sudan. To answer a charge from comments that my evidence (also in comments) that China is still supplying Sudan with weapons was "google-y and anecdotal," here is what Feinstein has to say about Chinese arms in Sudan. (Incidentally, I'm not sure I even understand how coming across an article in the Sudan Times and a report from Amnesty International by using google is supposed to make those sources any less valid. Furthermore, I'm not sure how a report by Amnesty International is "anecdotal.")

China maintains a defense relationship with Sudan, despite the UN arms embargo that has been in place for Darfur since 2005. The Security Council imposed an embargo on all nongovernmental forces operating in Darfur in July 2004, and expanded it to include government forces as well in 2005. Sales to Khartoum are still permitted, although a UN panel, which visited Sudan in August 2005 to investigate violations of the embargo, recommended in April 2006 that the Security Council expand the embargo to the entire country.

Information about recent Chinese arms sales to Sudan is difficult to discern both because of China's secrecy and because of the inherent difficulty of tracking the flow of small arms, which are below most international reporting thresholds. The UN Panel of Experts reported spotting Chinese-made military trucks in the Port of Sudan that appeared similar to those used on Sudanese Army bases in Darfur. Non-governmental organizations have reported that small arms used by rebels, janjaweed, and government forces in Darfur are of Chinese origin. There are also reports that Khartoum supplied Chinese-made automatic grenade launchers to the United Front for Democratic Change, a Chadian rebel group that also operates out of bases in Darfur. Russia and France are also suppliers of arms and military equipment to Sudan. In the last six years, Russia reported to the United Nations deliveries of 33 attack helicopters to Khartoum, eight combat aircraft, and 30 armored combat. (Between 2001 and 2004, France exported over $1 million of mostly small arms, spare parts, and ammunition.)

Beijing defends its sales to Khartoum as legal, and says that it requires all of its buyers not to transfer arms to other parties, including guerilla groups, a claim which is difficult to confirm independently. Zhai Jun, China's Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs, said in March 2007, "With Sudan, we have cooperation in many aspects, including military cooperation. In this, we have nothing to hide."

In early April, China received Sudan's Joint Chief of Staff. The Chinese Minister of Defense told his Sudanese counterpart that China was "willing to further develop cooperation between the two militaries in every sphere."

Feinstein isn't offering up anything new or salacious in this short piece, but it's a decent outline of the economic, political and military relationship between Sudan and China.

For more on China and Sudan, see the tireless and laudable Eric Reeves.

Al Jazeera gives us a good example of how China may be doing more harm than good in Africa with its value-neutral investment in the continent:

China has agreed to give Zimbabwe $25m worth of farm equipment to help revive the country's ailing tobacco industry.

But Beijing wants something in return – large quantities of Zimbabwe's tobacco.

Jia Qinglin, a senior Chinese Communist party official, presented the equipment, including 424 tractors and 50 trucks, to Robert Mugabe, the country's president, on Saturday in a deal to replace equipment damaged when Mugabe's government seized white-owned farms to resettle landless blacks.

But China wants all the tractors to go to tobacco farmers and expects Zimbabwe to deliver 30 million kilograms by the end of the year, Haru Mutasa, Al Jazeera's correspondent, said in Harare.

While the West is trying to pressure Mugabe into lessening his brutal crackdown on the government's opposition parties, China is offering aid. And the only strings attached are financial ones: the equipment given by China has to be used for cash crops. This in a country experiencing widespread hunger and poverty.

So at the end of the day, Beijing is showing Mugabe that even if he flagrantly violates human rights and the pitiful charade that passes for democracy in Zimbabwe, the Chinese will be there to offer assistance. So long as the price is right, of course.

So are we really surprised that Beijing is financially and diplomatically underwriting Khartoum's genocide in Darfur?

Following the problems that a Chinese boat has had trying to unload 77 tons of weapons in Durban, South Africa destined for the regime in Zimbabwe, it seems like it might be going back home after the South African High Court banned the transport of the weapons and ammo and after the remarks of Zambian president and head of the Southern African Development Community:

The impromptu coalition of trade unions, church leaders and organizations trying to stop the delivery gained an important ally on Monday when Levy Mwanawasa, the president of Zambia, who heads a bloc of 14 southern African nations, called on other countries in the region not to let the ship dock in their ports.

“He actually said that it would be good for China to play a more useful role in the Zimbabwe crisis than supplying arms,” said a spokesman for the Zambian government, who asked not to be identified. “We don’t want a situation which will escalate the situation in Zimbabwe more than what it is.”

This photo from the NY Times of the Chinese embassy in Pretoria shows that the Chinese may no longer be getting a free pass from the media and other countries for their involvement in developing nations:

Here's another example of how China is helping out Africa:

A Chinese ship loaded with armaments for Zimbabwe steamed into the port of Durban this week and set off a political firefight, putting newfound pressure on South Africa — and now China — to reduce support for Zimbabwe’s government as it cracks down on its rivals after a disputed election.

The arms shipment was ordered from China before the elections, but its arrival amid Zimbabwe’s political crisis illuminated deep fissures within South Africa over how to respond, and brought new scrutiny on China at a time when its human rights record is already under fire for suppressing protesters in Tibet and supplying arms to the government of Sudan.

Both China and South Africa have some accounting to do as far as Zimbabwe is concerned. Kudos, though, go to the South African dock workers who refused to unload the shipment. And despite her misuse of the term "genocide," Helen Zille, leader of South Africa's opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, does well to remind us that, as the Guardian puts it, "a consignment of Chinese machetes had prefaced the genocide in Rwanda. After all, 77 tons of weapons can be used to kill a lot of people.

The London Review has a summary piece about China's new love affair with Africa. If you've been keeping up with Chinese affairs on the continent, there probably won't be much new information in this piece, but it's a nice summary, and it's helpful to have it all in one piece. It's a subscription only article, but the main gist is summed up here:

In all likelihood China will be neither a saviour nor a destroyer. Some African opinion leaders have realised that it does not really stand for a different model. ‘Non-interference’ is not a value so much as a thin shield for old-fashioned realpolitik. China, like any other major power, generally puts its own strategic interests first. If its clients prove too embarrassing, it will restrain them, just as the United States once dumped Mobutu Sese Seko, when his taste for champagne, diamonds and bloodshed proved too embarrassing. Yet if China’s interests are better served by protecting rogues, it will protect them. If Chinese companies can get away with destroying Africa’s environment and paying little attention to its workers, they probably will. If they cannot – because local activists or consumers call them on it, or because it affects their sales in Africa and the West – perhaps they won’t.

Like the Western powers, China seems set to traffic in whatever images of Africa suit it: before the 2006 China-Africa summit in Beijing, Chinese officials plastered the city with posters of tribal warriors and lions that might have been taken from the National Geographic fifty years ago. Like the colonial powers, China will buy Africa’s resources and sell it manufactured products, regardless of whether Africa manages to produce anything that China wants to buy or succeeds in using China’s largesse to upgrade its own industries. ‘The key must be mutual benefit,’ Trevor Manuel, South Africa’s finance minister, told a group of Chinese officials. ‘Otherwise we might end up with a few holes in the ground where the resources have been extracted, and all the added value will be in China.’

Last summer, when the main opposition leader in Zambia, infuriated by the deaths in the explosives factory, made Chinese investment an issue in the presidential election, the Chinese Embassy threatened to break off relations with Zambia if he was elected. Hardly a model of non-interference.

I used to subscribe to Le Monde Diplomatique. It would come at the end of each month, and I'd open it up and give it a read. Some of the articles were really, really interesting, others not at all. After a while, I started realizing that the name was sort of a misnomer, because fully a third of each issue's content was about the US and how terrible it was. I began thinking to myself that it should be called Les Etats-Unis Diplomatique instead.

Then I read a couple of articles in succession. One was about Scorsese's film "The Gangs of New York," and spent several pages explaining how violence was an American characteristic and how even since the beginning of the country that violence had been a part of the American landscape. All of this based not on violent crime rates or the second amendment or gun ownership, but rather on "The Gangs of New York," a film that was so loosely based on Herbert Asbury's book (which itself was sexed up and shows many "journalistic liberties" --  a better book is Sante's Low Life) that it was nominated for "best original screenplay" rather than screenplay adapted from another work. Oh, and the author noted that Thomas Jefferson was the first president of the Republic. This was what was passing for intelligent criticism of the US in Le Monde Diplo?

That article really, really annoyed me, but the straw that broke the camel's back was an article on China. It was a super-long article that went into a lot of otherwise interesting aspects of the Chinese economy and the country's place in the world today. A lot of noise was made, over and over again, about how China was a counterweight for the US and how that was a good thing considering American behavior in Iraq and human rights violations and whatnot. How much of this article was devoted to China's record on human rights? None. Don't get me wrong, anyone who reads this blog knows that I'm very hard on the US, and in particular American foreign policy in the Middle East and eroding domestic civil rights. But to talk about Guantanamo Bay and Iraq but not mention Tibet, Inner Mongolia or the Uighurs in Xinjiang (or for that matter, Sudan) when talking about how the US and China behave in the world is absurd. It's the same kind of attitude that discredited so many European leftists when they refused to condemn Stalin while he was committing genocide in the Ukraine and occupying Eastern Europe with an iron first. It's intellectually dishonest.

So in the end, I stopped reading Le Monde Diplo, because I found much of it to be trite and couldn't get past its enormous blind spots, especially concerning France herself. So that's why I was wary to start checking out the magazine's blogs. I thought maybe I'd be pleasantly surprised, but this Letter from Lebanon and its subtle finger pointing (in the form of a quote, to be sure, but without any explanation or caveat) and not-so subtle comment section where the ramblings of Franklin Lamb are taken as the gospel truth so long as the US is guilty, has made me realize that I was better off (as was my blood pressure) not reading Le Monde Diplo at all.

Note: I do, however, still enjoy reading some of Alain Gresh's stuff, because he's much more nuanced and actually knows the region very well.

Lee Feinstein has a piece in TPM's America Abroad outlining the relationship between China and Sudan. To answer a charge from comments that my evidence (also in comments) that China is still supplying Sudan with weapons was "google-y and anecdotal," here is what Feinstein has to say about Chinese arms in Sudan. (Incidentally, I'm not sure I even understand how coming across an article in the Sudan Times and a report from Amnesty International by using google is supposed to make those sources any less valid. Furthermore, I'm not sure how a report by Amnesty International is "anecdotal.")

China maintains a defense relationship with Sudan, despite the UN arms embargo that has been in place for Darfur since 2005. The Security Council imposed an embargo on all nongovernmental forces operating in Darfur in July 2004, and expanded it to include government forces as well in 2005. Sales to Khartoum are still permitted, although a UN panel, which visited Sudan in August 2005 to investigate violations of the embargo, recommended in April 2006 that the Security Council expand the embargo to the entire country.

Information about recent Chinese arms sales to Sudan is difficult to discern both because of China's secrecy and because of the inherent difficulty of tracking the flow of small arms, which are below most international reporting thresholds. The UN Panel of Experts reported spotting Chinese-made military trucks in the Port of Sudan that appeared similar to those used on Sudanese Army bases in Darfur. Non-governmental organizations have reported that small arms used by rebels, janjaweed, and government forces in Darfur are of Chinese origin. There are also reports that Khartoum supplied Chinese-made automatic grenade launchers to the United Front for Democratic Change, a Chadian rebel group that also operates out of bases in Darfur. Russia and France are also suppliers of arms and military equipment to Sudan. In the last six years, Russia reported to the United Nations deliveries of 33 attack helicopters to Khartoum, eight combat aircraft, and 30 armored combat. (Between 2001 and 2004, France exported over $1 million of mostly small arms, spare parts, and ammunition.)

Beijing defends its sales to Khartoum as legal, and says that it requires all of its buyers not to transfer arms to other parties, including guerilla groups, a claim which is difficult to confirm independently. Zhai Jun, China's Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs, said in March 2007, "With Sudan, we have cooperation in many aspects, including military cooperation. In this, we have nothing to hide."

In early April, China received Sudan's Joint Chief of Staff. The Chinese Minister of Defense told his Sudanese counterpart that China was "willing to further develop cooperation between the two militaries in every sphere."

Feinstein isn't offering up anything new or salacious in this short piece, but it's a decent outline of the economic, political and military relationship between Sudan and China.

For more on China and Sudan, see the tireless and laudable Eric Reeves.

Al Jazeera gives us a good example of how China may be doing more harm than good in Africa with its value-neutral investment in the continent:

China has agreed to give Zimbabwe $25m worth of farm equipment to help revive the country's ailing tobacco industry.

But Beijing wants something in return – large quantities of Zimbabwe's tobacco.

Jia Qinglin, a senior Chinese Communist party official, presented the equipment, including 424 tractors and 50 trucks, to Robert Mugabe, the country's president, on Saturday in a deal to replace equipment damaged when Mugabe's government seized white-owned farms to resettle landless blacks.

But China wants all the tractors to go to tobacco farmers and expects Zimbabwe to deliver 30 million kilograms by the end of the year, Haru Mutasa, Al Jazeera's correspondent, said in Harare.

While the West is trying to pressure Mugabe into lessening his brutal crackdown on the government's opposition parties, China is offering aid. And the only strings attached are financial ones: the equipment given by China has to be used for cash crops. This in a country experiencing widespread hunger and poverty.

So at the end of the day, Beijing is showing Mugabe that even if he flagrantly violates human rights and the pitiful charade that passes for democracy in Zimbabwe, the Chinese will be there to offer assistance. So long as the price is right, of course.

So are we really surprised that Beijing is financially and diplomatically underwriting Khartoum's genocide in Darfur?