[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 41 (Thursday, March 8, 2018)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E279-E280]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 CHINA IN AFRICA: THE NEW COLONIALISM?

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH

                             of new jersey

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, March 8, 2018

  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, yesterday we held a hearing on 
China in Africa. The hearing analyzed China's activity and engagement 
in sub-Saharan Africa. In particular, we looked into what motivates 
China and how Chinese involvement has affected African countries.
   While a number of African nations have welcomed Chinese engagement 
and investment, it often comes at a cost: a focus on extractive 
industries, entanglement with a neo-mercantilist trade policy and a 
tendency to adopt ``worst practices'' that prop up kleptocrats and 
autocrats--such as the DR Congo's Joseph Kabila--while fueling 
corruption in an effort to win contracts.
   China's engagement in Africa once was driven by revolutionary 
ideology, motivated by competition with the Soviet Union as much as it 
was directed at ``capitalist roaders'' aligned with the United States. 
In Angola, for example, in 1975, Soviet-backed Communists bested 
Chinese-backed revolutionary rivals, including Jonas Savimbi, who was a 
Maoist before he was reborn in the 1980s as an anti-Communist freedom 
fighter.
   Today, China's one-time Marxist-Leninist-Maoist impulse has been 
softened to the point of almost--but not quite--disappearing, with 
revolution replaced by infrastructure projects, trade missions, soft 
loans and scholarships for promising African students.
   While on the one hand Africa needs investment and it needs 
infrastructure, we see a worrisome trend of African countries sliding 
into indebtedness to China, accumulating burdens that may be beyond 
their capacity to meet.
   All too often, the roads China builds are meant to allow it access 
to mineral resources that it can extract and ship to China, or are part 
of its ``One-Belt, One-Road'' initiative which is designed to benefit 
China, ultimately, and help it project power. Further, as anyone who 
has been to Africa has observed, these grand construction projects 
often utilize Chinese engineers and workers, not Africans.
   As we heard yesterday from the witnesses, nowhere in Africa is the 
problem of indebtedness more pronounced than in Djibouti--a 
strategically important country in the Horn of Africa which sits 
astride the Mandeb Strait, and one of only five African countries which 
Secretary of State Tillerson is visiting on his trip to Africa this 
week.
   A former French colony, Djibouti hosts a French military base, and 
an American one at Camp Lemonnier. And, since last summer, Djibouti 
also hosts China's only permanent military base outside of China. Query 
whether that concession, fraught with geopolitical implications, is 
linked to leverage China is able to exert due to Djibouti's 
vulnerability on indebtedness.
   China's overall foreign aid and financial leverage on the continent 
has been difficult to quantify, as has demonstrating how that 
translates into influence. Yeoman work in this regard has been done by 
AidData at the College of William & Mary which, in written testimony 
that was submitted as part of the record today, demonstrates a 
correlation with how an African country votes at the United Nations 
General Assembly with how much aid it receives from China.
   Another strategically important country with high indebtedness to 
China that the Secretary will visit is Ethiopia. It is also a country 
where China has most clearly aligned itself with repressive forces. In 
addition to assisting the government in controlling information flows, 
such as via signal jamming of Voice of American and BBC broadcasts, the 
Chinese Communist Party has engaged with Ethiopia's ruling party on 
``training and exchanges.''
   As the Brookings Institution has documented, cadres from the ruling 
Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front ``were taught 
comprehensively how to manage their own organizational structure, 
ideological work, propaganda system, [and] cadre education.''
   Thus, it seems ideology still matters with regard to how China 
engages Africa. It is no coincidence that Ethiopia has become one of 
the most repressive regimes on the continent, and the subject of a 
House resolution focused on Ethiopia's abusive practices that Ms. Bass 
and I have sponsored, H. Res. 128. Whereas the U.S. emphasizes good 
governance, it suits China's interest to train its partners in old-
style Leninism.
   We also heard from one of our witnesses on how China projects power 
in the form of Confucius Institutes located in close to forty African 
nations. This subcommittee has held hearings on how China in our own 
country and elsewhere uses these Institutes to push a Sinocentric 
narrative which aligns with Communist Party propaganda and curtails 
academic freedom.
   In addition to utilizing Confucius Institutes to train Mandarin 
speakers and indoctrinate students with a pro-China world view, China 
is expanding its media presence in Africa. Kenya is the country with 
the largest penetration of Chinese media and the highest level of brand 
recognition, according to our Broadcasting Board of Governors, which 
oversees the Voice of America and which recently conducted a survey of 
China's media presence in Africa. It should be noted that of five major 
international networks in Kenya, China's news broadcasts were the least 
trusted.
   Here also is a thought for Voice of America and the Broadcasting 
Board of Governors to consider--add Mandarin programming to the 
repertoire of languages in which you broadcast in Africa. By 
broadcasting objective news stories in Mandarin, you will expose not 
only African students learning Mandarin to more truthful media, but you 
will be able to reach the estimated million or so Chinese living or 
working in Africa with news that they are otherwise unable to access.
   China is also Kenya's largest bilateral lender, and one of the three 
highest debtor nations to China in Africa, along with Djibouti and 
Ethiopia. It is also a country where Secretary Tillerson will be 
visiting. On his trip, he may want to highlight the following anecdote, 
which I believe aptly contrasts China's Africa engagement with that of 
the United States.
   Health commodities supplied by USAID, including life-saving anti-
retrovirals distributed as part of our PEPFAR program and anti-malarial 
commodities, used to be shipped to and stored in a warehouse near 
Nairobi for distribution not only throughout Kenya, but also in 
neighboring East African countries as well.
   Then in July 2013, Kenya's parliament imposed a 1.5 per cent levy on 
all imports to Kenya to help pay for a nearly $4 billion railroad from 
the port of Mombasa to Nairobi built by the state-owned China Road and 
Bridge Corporation. Donated goods--including anti-retrovirals for 
Kenyans living with HIV/AIDS--were subject to this levy to help pay 
Kenya's debt to China.
   As a result of this, the flow of life-saving commodities into Kenya 
and neighboring countries was burdened and slowed. Kenya's Ministry of 
Health offered to step in and pay the levy, but their payments were 
often delayed by some two months. Meanwhile, demurrage charges 
attributable to clearance delays continued to accrue, and had to be 
paid by the U.S. taxpayer.
   Ultimately, over a year later, Kenya's parliament amended the 
legislation to exclude donated goods from the Chinese railway-payment 
levy, but the damage had been done. Today, due to this experience and 
other factors related to logistics and a new USAID implementing 
partner, USAID no longer uses a warehouse in Kenya. Storage and 
distribution has been moved offshore, to a location less-

[[Page E280]]

centrally located but one hopes less prone to disruption.
   How did this warehouse episode, borne out of Kenya's need to repay 
debt to China, benefit Kenyans suffering from HIV/AIDS? How did it 
affect the ability of Kenya to serve as a regional distribution hub for 
East Africa, with all the collateral economic benefits that accrue from 
this purely humanitarian initiative paid for by U.S. taxpayers? More 
broadly, where is China's PEPFAR, or the equivalent of the President's 
Malaria Initiative?
   These are questions which Africa's leaders, and the African people, 
need to consider.

                          ____________________