主题：中国军火船成功停靠安哥拉港口卸货 -- 大大的熊

It isn’t hard to see why Chinese immigrants would be attracted to Africa.With wages rarely exceeding $150 a month on the farms and in the factories of China’s remote provinces—and with the eastern cities becoming overrun with migrant labor—Africa looks like a promised land. According to Huang Zequan, vice chairman of the Chinese-African People’s Friendship Association, there are now 550,000 Chinese nationals in Africa, compared with 100,000 French citizens, and 70,000 Americans. Beijing sent some of them to build dams, roads, and railroads. Other Chinese simply hope to get rich in some of the poorest countries on the planet.

For many African governments, China’s interest in the continent is most welcome. African leaders have not hesitated to hand over the responsibilities of public office to China. It’s China that these leaders turn to when they want schools, housing, or hospitals—often just before elections in order to gain as much profit as possible from these projects. They rely on the efficiency and ambition of the Chinese in hopes of having their own shortcomings forgotten.

“The Chinese are incredible,” says Omar Oukil, an advisor to the Algerian Ministry of Public Works. “They work round the clock, seven days a week. It would be good for us if a little bit of their rigorous work culture rubbed off on us.” I was politely shown the door when his workday came to a close at 4 p.m. The hallways of the ministry were empty when I left. At the same time, on the Mitija plain in southern Algeria, Chinese workers from the Chinese construction firms citic and crcc were putting night crews in place. They would have a little more than 3 years to build a large portion of a 750-mile highway full of tunnels and viaducts. To do so, they had to bring 12,878 workers from China to Algeria.

But these immense projects also highlight the competing interests of Chinese-African cooperation. Take, for example, the dam being built at Imboulou in Congo. Officially, it’s a huge success: It’s expected to help double national electricity production by 2009. Ten years ago, the World Bank had deemed the country too indebted to warrant financing of the project. China, however, dedicated $280 million to it in 2002. Congo plans to pay that sum back in oil.

“The Chinese drive me crazy,” says an engineer from Fichtner, the German company that oversees the work. They are building the dam at a discount, and he worries it might not hold up very long. He claims that the quality of the cement being used is sub-standard, that the Congolese workers are so poorly paid that none of them stays longer than a few months, and, above all, that the drilling has been so poorly done that half of the dam sits on a huge pocket of water that continually floods the site and could cause it to collapse one day.

It’s difficult for Wang Wei, the Chinese engineer in charge, to respond to these accusations, and not only because he’s been knocked out by a bout of malaria. “It is my first trip to Africa,” he says, his eyes shimmering with fever. It is also the first time that his company, cmec, has built a dam. Its previous business had only involved importing and exporting construction vehicles. Wang blames the company’s problems on the sub-Saharan climate. “The rainy season is too long here,” he says. “We have gotten a little behind, but we will emerge victorious from our battle with nature.” The Chinese boss is particularly angry with the workers he pays three to four dollars a day. “They treat the site like a school. They have hardly learned something before they go somewhere else to use it.” He would like to ask the Congoles government to make some prisoners available to him so he could be sure his workers wouldn’t fl

Angola, long held up as China’s most spectacular success in Africa, is also beginning to question China’s commitment to the country. In 2002, after 27 years of civil war that brought the country to its knees, Western countries refused to organize a conference of donors, citing a lack of transparency and the disappearance of billions of dollars in oil revenues. The government turned to China, which offered between $8 billion and $12 billion of credit to rebuild the country (and to make Angola its main supplier of oil, ahead of Saudi Arabia and Iran). At least, that was the plan. But you have to expect some surprises when you attempt to rebuild a railway connecting the coastal city of Lobito with the inland border of the country formerly known as Zaire. This vital artery of colonial Angola was entirely destroyed during the war. The Chinese promised to rebuild it by September 2007. By November, however, they had abruptly dismantled their base camps along the line.

“The Chinese spent months getting their camp together and bringing in brand-new bulldozers,” says a security guard at Alto Catumbela, an old industrial center in the Angolan plateau that was devastated by the war. “Then, instead of beginning to repair the line, they dismantled it all, ate their dogs, and left.” You can still see the spot in the middle of the big field are still visible. But, except for a few antimalarial tablets on the ground, everything has vanished.

In Lobito, the assistant director of the Benguela Railway Company confirms that 16 Chinese camps were dismantled and reveals that the $2 billion contract has been canceled. “I don’t know anything else about it; the negotiations are taking place at a very high level,” he says.

This very high level, on the Chinese side, is a mysterious holding company in Hong Kong called the China International Fund (cif). Its job is to coordinate funds and projects in Angola, as well as deal with reimbursements in oil. Its Internet site boasts about 30 gigantic projects, none of which appears to have broken ground. On the Angolan where the sheds used to be. The vegetable plots where the Chinese cooks grew cabbage and other vegetables are still visible. But, except for a few antimalarial tablets on the ground, everything has vanished.

On the Angolan side, the very high level is the National Reconstruction Office, headed by Gen. Manuel Helder Vieira Dias. He is considered a possible successor to the president. Neither side agreed to respond to questions, but there are numerous signs of a major crisis brewing between the two countries: A $3 billion contract for an oil refinery in Lobito was canceled by the Angolans, and $2 billion allegedly disappeared into Chinese accounts.

It all brings a smile to the faces of the 20 or so Western diplomats in Luanda who send cryptic messages to their capitals detailing the Chinese-Angolan dispute, even as they try to make up ground in a country thought to have been lost to China.

“The Chinese promised an awful lot, [and] the Angolans demanded an awful lot,” says a Western diplomat. They were both “out of kilter with reality.” Says another: “The Chinese do not have enough experience in Africa. They did not realize that the kickbacks in Angola would be so high.” A European diplomat sticks the knife in deeper: “We say to our Angolan friends, ‘It’s great that you’re taking a little walk with the Chinese. Enjoy yourself. But when you’re ready to play in the big leagues, pay your debts and come and see us.’”