China’s trade with Africa

China’s economic links with Africa have grown exponentially in recent years

CHINA is helping Africa develop, not pile up debt, a top Chinese official said yesterday, as the government pushes back against criticism it is loading the continent with an unsustainable burden during a major summit in Beijing.

President Xi Jinping pledged €52bn to African nations at Monday’s opening of a China-Africa forum on co-operation, matching the size of funds offered at the last summit in Johannesburg in 2015. A wave of African nations seeking to restructure their debt with China has served as a reality check for Beijing’s ties with the continent, though most of its countries still see Chinese lending as the best bet to develop their economies.

“If we take a closer look at these African countries that are heavily in debt, China is not their main creditor,” said Africa special envoy Xu Jinghu.

“It’s senseless and baseless to shift the blame onto China for debt problems.”

As it pushes forward with Mr Xi’s pledge, China will use feasibility studies to select projects that help African countries achieve sustainable development and steer clear of debt or financial woes, she added.

“We need to take into account the fluctuations of the international economic situation, which has raised the cost of financing for these African countries, and most of them depend on exporting raw materials, the price

‘If we take a closer look at African nations that are heavily in debt, China is not their main creditor’

of which, on the international market, has been falling,” said Ms Xu. She added that the overall debt burden had built up over a long time.

China has denied engaging in “debt trap” diplomacy, and Ms Xi said government debt from Chinese interest-free loans due by year-end would be written off for the poorest African nations.

African countries have also been trying to export more finished goods to China, rather than simply raw materials that China then processes.

China and Africa have agreed to work hard to increase Africa’s value-added exports to China, a development welcomed by Beijing, South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa said.

“They would like to see real meaningful trade taking place between Africa and China through value-added goods,” he told reporters.

China has strongly and angrily denied its ambitions in Africa are those of an “economic predator” have anything other than the best interests of the continent at heart.

The summit, held as the United States seeks to constrain China, and vilify it as the new coloniser of Africa, shows the Asian nation will rely more on trade with the continent, former deputy commerce minister Wei Jianguo wrote yesterday for the China Going Global think tank. Ben Blanchard, Christian Shepherd Reuters