China in Africa: US sounds alarm
ADDIS ABABA: The sleek, greenand-white trains glide past the congested, ragged streets of Addis Ababa along the city’s new light rail — built and financed by China. The towering silver African Union headquarters here was built by China, too. So was the new ring road system around the city. And the new railway connecting landlocked Ethiopia to Djibouti.
Across the Atlantic Ocean, America has noticed.
From Ethiopia to Djibouti, Kenya to Egypt, the US is sounding the alarm that the Chinese money flooding Africa comes with significant strings attached. The warnings carry distinct neocolonial undertones: With Beijing’s astonishing investments in ports, roads and railways, the US says, come dependency, exploitation and intrusion on nations’ basic sovereignty. “We are not in any way attempting to keep Chinese investment dollars out of Africa. They are badly needed,” US secretary of state Rex Tillerson said in the Ethiopian capital. “However, we think it’s important that African countries carefully consider the terms.”
Those terms lead to deals in which Chinese workers, not Africans, get the construction jobs, Tillerson and other US officials warn. They say Chinese firms, unlike American ones, don’t abide by anti-bribery laws, fueling Africa’s pervasive problems with corruption. And if countries run into financial trouble, they often lose control over their own infrastructure by defaulting to a lender that historically has not always been forgiving.