China-Guinea deal highlights Africa business ties

The deal announced last week by the West African country's military junta offers the company, China International Fund, access to Guinea's bauxite and other minerals and could provide major revenues to a government facing international isolation. Guinea's soldiers opened fire on demonstrators late last month, killing up to 157, and raped women in public.

Human rights groups decried the pact. China's government has declined to confirm it or answer related questions, and the company also refused to comment.

In many ways, the Guinea deal reflects established Chinese business practices in Africa, characterized by huge investments in a still-poor continent but also secrecy and often scant regard for labor and human rights.

China's defenders point out that other investors from the West, Japan, India and elsewhere are also major economic partners with less-than-democratic African governments. In Guinea, Alcoa of the United States and Anglo-Australian Rio Tinto PLC are already major players in the bauxite business. Also, China has given aid, loans or investment to more than 17 African nations, some of which do have democratic governments.

But China's practices have raised questions about whether the huge sums will hamper the progress of human rights and good governance in Africa, even as they raise the standards of living and line the pockets of some. China has given large chunks of money to corrupt and abusive regimes such as those in oil-rich Nigeria and Sudan, much criticized over abuses in the Darfur region. For example, China has a controversial $9 billion agreement with violence-plagued Congo.

"There's obviously mixed emotions with regard to China-Africa relations," said Kellie Jane Whitlock, of the South African magazine Corporate Africa.

Unlike companies from the recession-struck West, there are "Chinese companies that are still growing and looking into investing further into Africa," Whitlock said. The Chinese are "quite inclined to look after their investment and build their investment. They are serious about investing in Africa."

Scrutiny and mixed emotions are rising in Africa as the volume of China's dealings soar. Trade has soared 10 times since 2001, passing the $100 billion-mark last year. Estimates of Chinese investment in Africa range upward from $6 billion as China tries to lock up oil, gas, and other key resources for its resource-hungry economy. Estimates for total loans, investment and aid donations - often difficult to distinguish from each other - run closer to $50 billion.

Hong Kong-registered China International Fund has done big deals with another undemocratic African government: Angola. The company, known as CIF, is building housing, highways and the capital's airport in Angola, which is one of China's leading suppliers of oil.

CIF is a private company, though its ultimate ownership is unclear.

But in embarking on these deals, it can count on high-level access to leading Angolan officials and a web of contacts to China's state-backed industries and companies, especially the Export-Import Bank of China, which funds many of the country's major overseas investments. CIF's directors are also believed to have ties to China's military and security forces, boosting their relationships with the country's communist leadership.

In the case of China International Fund and Guinea, it isn't known whether the company was working on the deal before December's coup that brought Capt. Moussa "Dadis" Camara to power. The British think-tank Chatham House recently reported that CIF had been working on a $1.6 billion investment plan for the country spanning infrastructure, housing, mining, transport, tourism, and food production.

In exchange, the company would theoretically gain access to Guinea's plentiful deposits of bauxite, the raw material used to make aluminum, along with diamonds and gold. Mines Minister Mahmoud Thiam said the Chinese company "will be a strategic partner in all mining projects."

Thiam also said that new power-generating plants, railway links, and planes for both international and local air transportation are part of the deal.

Founded in 2003, CIF appears to be among the boldest - and best connected - of the Chinese investors in Africa. The company's Hong Kong business registration lists it as 99 percent owned by Dayuan International Development Limited, identified by Chatham House analysts as the parent company of China Angola Oil Stock Holding Ltd., which exports Angolan oil to China.

The remaining 1 percent is owned by CIF's chairwoman, Lo Fong Hung, who is also one of Dayuan's four directors and whose husband, according to Chatham House, has been a director of the Chinese government's two biggest investment arms.

CIF has become a broker for huge infrastructure projects in Angola, tapping financing from China's Exim Bank and secured by the African nation's oil revenues. Among the company's projects: 215,500 housing units totaling more than 333 million square feet (31 million square meters); the restoration of 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) of highway and 1,665 miles (2,680 kilometers) of railway; and the construction of the capital's new airport.

Many of those remain in the planning stages, however, and some have run aground. Chinese media reports say other Chinese subcontractors have complained that CIF was failing to pay for work and materials supplied for some other African construction projects.

"Some projects have been slow to get off the ground, and there are bottlenecks," said Chatham House's Weimer. "They are not delivering on their timelines."

A receptionist who answered the phone at its Beijing office said she had no information about the Guinea mining deal and there was no one available to comment. A woman who answered the phone at the fund's Hong Kong office declined to comment and there was no response to questions faxed to the office.

Despite CIF's deep connections to the government, Africa expert Stephen Morrisson said the company likely hatched the deal on its own, without excessive Chinese government involvement.

"Often these decisions are taken quite independently and often there is little internal policy coordination or deliberation," said Morrisson, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

He also questioned reports characterizing the deal as a "lifeline" to the Guinean regime, saying the leadership likely lacked the wherewithal to fully see it through.

"Overall, I don't think this will rescue the current miserable crowd attempting to rule Guinea," Morrisson said.

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Associated Press reporters Carley Petesch and Donna Bryson in Johannesburg contributed to this report.