ＣＨＩＮＡ ＡＮＤ ＡＦＲＩＣＡ：ＴＨＥ ＤＡＷＮ ＯＦ ＡＮ ＥＸＣＩＴＩＮＧ ＥＲＡ

Ａｄａｍａ　Ｇａｙｅ　（Ｓｅｎｅｇａｌ）

As the worlds oldest-centralised nation-state, and now hosting more than 1.3 billion people, China is definitely not an ordinary nation. The powerful dragon, it has come to symbolise, is drawing attention, raising eyebrows, and generating mixed reactions.

Chinas first contacts with Africa date back to the 2nd century BC. But what has been considered as the first significant encounter occurred in the year 1405. It was the year when, leading a fleet of 300 boats, the renowned admiral Zheng He came to the Eastern Coast of the continent. Souvenirs of Chinese porcelain and other gadgets left behind, in exchange of African animals taken away to China, are the main facts still remembered of that naval odyssey. As if they predicted what would happen few centuries later, those first visiting Chinese managed also to leave behind the image of a peaceful people not coming to Africa to grab her territories and resources.

The second time China embraced Africa was in the mid-1950s. It was a time when, coming out of a protracted civil war, China had no other choice but to break the diplomatic isolation she was experienced, immediately after the proclamation, in October 1949, of the Peoples Republic of China.

The third China African Safari is now underway. This time around, the dragon has shown how nimble it can be. All started after the launch of Chinas economic reforms which led to the withdrawal of the State from many economic entities, freed the dynamism of its people and forced to exile thousands of retrenched workers sacked from downsized State Owned Enterprises (SOEs).

For its part, China continued discreetly to advance its positions by sending its Foreign Affairs Minister to Africa, at the start of every year, from 1992.

None of its Western competitors, even those with long colonial years of presence in Africa, has done as much as China to engage politically, at the highest level, the continent.

Its current President and Secretary General of the Communist Party, Hu Jintao, and his predecessor, Jiang Zemin, have visited the continent at various times.

The Safari was intensified from 1993 when China realised that it could no longer satisfy its energetic needs with her own local production.

Chinas Africa efforts started paying off at the beginning of the 21st century. This forced her competitors, mainly from Western nations, to adjust to the new Pax-China, economically-driven, now emerging in Africa.

When the China-Africa meeting, originally a Ministerial one, was raised to a strategic level of Head of States and Government for the November 2006 Summit, the rest of the world was only left to wonder how China did it.

The model, now emulated by Africas traditional, bilateral and multilateral partners, has benefited Africa. All Africas external interlocutors are eager to be seen, at long last, as taking her as seriously as the Chinese have done.

China has the financial muscles to play a dominant role in Africa compared with her cash-trapped Western competitors. It has accumulated $1.5 trillion of foreign reserves, as a result of an effective export strategy.

With now more than 800,000 Chinese living, working and running small shops in Africa, with over 800 small and medium businesses, involved in manufacturing and bidding for construction of ports, railways, hospitals, administrative buildings and other facilities, usually at a very competitive price, using comparatively advantageous labour and other factors of production, there is no doubt that all the foreign actors, eager to be relevant in Africa, should pay notice—and yes start getting worried.

Without being caught in any China promotion, one can only observe that it is a country standing today in sharp contrast with the West.

With the World Bank and the IMF in disarray, China has been able to move her African agenda with money but also mastery of public relations.

A key component of Chinas Africa policy, soft-power is likely to reach its culminating point when the Beijing Olympics starts from August 8, 2008.

In rolling out her soft-power strategy, China uses words that make business easy to conduct. Talking about win-win relationship, friendship, cooperation, equality, respect of sovereignty, good-will, it gives a boost to her partners in Africa by rehabilitating their States after so many years of slashing of their attributes under the Western-inspired political and economic structural adjustment policies.

China brings a home-grown model of economic recovery that worked without the involvement of any foreign advisor, institution or bilateral tutor. Discipline, hard work, enlightened and nationalist leadership have made the difference.

China is in Africa primarily because she needs Africa for her own development and diplomatic standing in the world.

To achieve this, Africa should quickly become a better student of China, meaning that it should introduce the study of China, its language, its business practices, its psychological determinants, in the curriculum of the continents schools and universities.

The author is senior Senegalese journalist. He has written the book The Dragon and the Ostrich on the development of China-Africa relations. This article is excerpts of his speech at the African Union.