主题：中国军火船成功停靠安哥拉港口卸货 -- 大大的熊

For all the tensions between Africa’s need for development and democracy and China’s need for resources and riches, however, there is one sector where the interests of both Africa and China seem to be in sync: oil. It’s the most important commodity that China wants from Africa, and the oil-producing countries in Africa also happen to be the ones that receive the most Chinese investment. So, many experts consider oil to be the principal indicator of whether China will have succeeded or failed on the continent. And it’s not the African oil that China buys at market price, which makes up around 20 percent of its imports, that’s so important, but the oil that it manages to produce there. Oil-producing African countries have lured most of the Chinese investment, which was supposed to create “goodwill.”

So far, the harvest has been thin. It has been a major handicap for Chinese companies that they lack almost any expertise in deep offshore oil production. It has prevented them from participating in bidding on the most attractive fields in the Gulf of Guinea. These companies have used Africa’s east coast as a fallback location, though deposits there have turned out to be much less abundant than those in the west. Because four of cnooc’s six oil blocks proved too difficult to explore, the company returned them to the Kenyan government, which graciously took them back last July.

As a result, the only real success that the Chinese have had with oil in Africa has come in Sudan. International companies had to leave Sudan in the 1980s because of civil war and U.S. sanctions. China took advantage of the situation and invested massively, building oil wells, a refinery, and a huge pipeline to Port Sudan. Thanks to China, Sudan has been able to export oil, and Khartoum is experiencing an economic boom that makes it seem like an African Dubai. Of course, this situation captures perfectly the problems inherent in China’s approach in Africa. On one hand, China has an interest in convincing Khartoum to put a definitive end to the massacres occurring in Darfur, so as not to sully its reputation as a peaceful power. On the other hand, China wants to keep political risks high enough to ensure that Chevron, Total, and Shell—companies that once had operations in Sudan—do not jump back in. All this is not quite a failure, but it’s hardly a “miracle,” either. It’s proof that what’s good for China may not be good for Africa, and what’s good for Africa may be something no foreign power, even one as ambitious as China, is able to deliver.