The world economy is ReOrientating towards Asia. The Jan 2006 issue of the British literary magazine Granta is focussed on Africa. In an article We Love China the British journalist Lindsey Hilsum writes about what Chinese investment may mean to Africa (and China).

I arrived in Sierra Leone in June 2005, at the height of the rainy season. Mud washed down the pot-holed streets of the capital, Freetown, and knots of beggars, some without arms or legs, huddled under trees and against battered shop-fronts. It was a fortnight before the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, where Bob Geldof and Bono were to celebrate a huge increase in aid to Africa, but in the Bintumani Hotel no-one spoke of this. Gusts of rain-filled wind blew through the hotel’s porch to set the large red lanterns swinging. Cardboard cut-outs of Chinese children in traditional dress had been stuck on the windows. The management had just celebrated Chinese New Year

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Most European companies abandoned Sierra Leone long ago, but where Africa’s traditional business partners see only difficulty, the Chinese see opportunity. They are the new pioneers in Africa, and—seemingly unnoticed by aid planners and foreign ministries in Europe—they are changing the face of the continent. Forty years ago, Chinese interests in Africa were ideological. They built the TanZam railway as a way of linking Tanzania to Zambia while bypassing apartheid South Africa. Black and white footage shows Chinese workers in wide-brimmed straw hats laying sleepers, and a youthful President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia waving his white handkerchief as he mounted the first train. As an emblem of solidarity, China built stadiums for football matches and political rallies in most African countries which declared themselves socialist. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Middle Kingdom withdrew to concentrate on its own development, but in 2000 the first China–Africa Forum, held in Beijing, signalled renewed interest in Africa. Now, the Chinese are the most voracious capitalists on the continent and trade between China and Africa is doubling every year.

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Africa looks to China and sees success: according to the World Bank, the Chinese have lifted 400 million of their own people out of poverty in the past two decades. All the while, no one forced the Chinese government to have elections or allow its opponents to start newspapers. Many African leaders would love to do to their oppositions what the Chinese did to theirs in Tiananmen Square, but if they want Western aid money, they must abide by Western conditions.

Like most Western journalists and aid workers who have spent time in Africa, I frequently despair at the continent’s problems, veering between blaming the aid donors, the African governments, and even at times the people. Western aid hasn’t worked, so why was everyone demonstrating near Gleneagles so convinced that sending more would make things better? It cannot be good that African governments persist with human rights abuse, or perpetuate their rule against the desires of their peoples, but poverty remains Africa’s greatest problem, and liberal concerns have not helped Africa’s poor.

The Chinese come to Africa as equals, with no colonial hangover, no complex relationship of resentment. China wants to buy; Africa has something to sell. If African governments could respond in a way which spread the new wealth—a large if, of course—then China might provide an opportunity for Africa which Europe and America have failed to deliver.