With its GDP growing at a phenomenal rate of 10.7 percent last year, China is in the market for oil, natural gas, aluminum, copper, nickel, cobalt, platinum, precious stones and iron ore. Where is it shopping? Increasingly, the answer is Africa.

China's trade with Africa last year was up a whopping 40 percent over 2005, reaching $55.5 billion (all monetary amounts in U.S. dollars). Trade grew 700 percent in the 1990s, doubled from 2002 to 2003 and nearly doubled again in the first 10 months of 2005. As China rapidly increases its African ties, Africa is releasing some of its ties to the United States, Europe and Japan.

Africa, rich in the natural resources China needs, but poor in infrastructure, is hungry for investments. China has the money to spend on Africa's resources (more than $1.3 trillion, mostly in U.S. dollars). Beijing also has the technology and the skilled personnel to build bridges, roads, dams, stadiums, hospitals, schools, railroads and government office buildings. Beijing's presence is felt in all but a few African nations, for the Chinese are into everything from mining to farming—even launching satellites for Nigeria! The Chinese do quality and low-cost work, and they do it in a fraction of the time that African firms would take.

A Sino-African relationship seems mutually beneficial, but there is more to the story.

Just minding business

In the 1960s and '70s, China's foreign policy toward Africa was heavily ideological, as Beijing sought to shore up its support in the Cold War. The stadiums, roads and hospitals it built then were to buy favor with the African nations. The Chinese largely withdrew from the continent in the 1980s, concentrating on matters at home. But the 1990s saw a different China return with a more sophisticated foreign policy. No longer did the Chinese seek to promote socialism; rather, they said they just wanted to do business.

In contrast, the Group of Eight (G8)—Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States and Russia—link aid and trade for African nations to requirements that they improve human rights and lessen government corruption. Many Africans resent this, seeing it as political interference. China, on the other hand, says what Africa does is Africa's business. The Chinese are willing to do business with even the most dictatorial governments.

At a recent meeting of G8 finance ministers, German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck renewed the group's pledges of African aid. But he repeated the G8's expectation that African leaders would manage the aid responsibly. In advance of the meeting, Germany publicly criticized China for lending money without accountability.

What corrupt official would choose funds from the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund (tied to expectations of reform) over low-interest loans, grants or outright bribes from the Chinese? G8 nations fear that the Chinese approach is undoing reforms that took decades to accomplish. Angola, for example, received a $2 billion aid package from Beijing with no strings attached and no encouragement to better the country's citizens. The majority of Angolans live in poverty, while a few elite skim income from petroleum product sales for themselves.

Western companies shy away from investing in parts of Africa that promise low or little return, but Chinese firms—supported by the state—are willing to invest and build nearly everywhere. The Chinese do not mind losing money on some ventures in order to make their collective relationship with Africa profitable. Moreover, Americans and Europeans aren't as prone to using bribes and under-the-table payments to get things done, an approach that does not bother Chinese businesses.

A different 9/11 wake-up call

Sept. 11, 2001, was a wake-up call for Beijing, not about terrorist attacks, but about securing its oil supply. Seeing the United States move into Afghanistan and Iraq, China doesn't want to be tied to supplies that the United States could shut off. Last year, it overtook Japan as the world's second-largest importer of oil.

It doesn't want to depend on the politically unstable Middle East for its supply, so Beijing now buys 30 percent of its oil from Africa. China has oil interests in Algeria, Angola, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Nigeria, Sudan and the Republic of Congo. Few people realize that the southern portion of Darfur, that tragic Sudanese region beset with war, might be rich in oil reserves.

Beijing purchases between 65 and 80 percent of Sudan's oil production. In January, China announced it would buy 45 percent interest in a giant off-shore Nigerian oil field for $2.27 billion.

In addition to buying African natural resources, China is willing to lend prodigious amounts of money at little interest and over long terms. Many loans turn into grants. The Chinese recently wrote off $50 billion in African debt! In 2006, China dropped tariffs on 190 commodities from 25 African nations.

In May, Beijing announced approximately $20 billion in infrastructure and trade financing for Africa over the next three years. Some of the earmarked projects include rebuilding Angolan and Nigerian railroads, as well as a hydroelectric dam in Ethiopia.

More taking than giving?

But is China taking more from Africa than it is giving? Donald Kaberuka, president of the African Development Bank Group, warned of a never-ending "disease" in African economics, a reliance on exporting natural resources for income, rather than developing those resources locally into products that could be sold.

The Chinese level of involvement alarms some Africans, who resent what they perceive to be imperial overtones reminiscent of European domination. Some Africans wonder if China is actually exploiting them. Africans need jobs, but the Chinese are bringing laborers along with their engineers to build the roads, the bridges and the highways. Over 80,000 migrant workers from China have moved to Africa to work on Chinese projects there.

Chinese firms are underbidding African companies for projects, causing further resentment. China exports manufactured products to Africa, selling them for less than the Africans could make these items, undercutting the local economy in another way. There are also fears that the Chinese workers are likely to send money back to their families in China, rather than spend it in Africa.

Not free of political motives

In spite of China's official policy, its motivations aren't free from politics, for it lobbies for African support of the one-China policy, denying diplomatic support for Taiwan. Currently, only five African nations are still Taiwan's diplomatic allies—São Tomé and Príncipe (a tiny island nation in Gulf of Guinea), Swaziland, Burkina Faso, the Gambia and Malawi.

Preoccupied with the war on terror, the United States focuses its attention on north and eastern Africa, seeking cooperation on counterterrorism. The United States has allowed its interests in other parts of the continent to flag, leaving a wide-open opportunity for Beijing to extend its influence.

Cleverly, the Chinese have established manufacturing plants in Africa, from which they can ship products to the United States, thereby circumventing U.S. tariffs on products from China.

China wants to counter U.S. influence wherever possible. When the Americans withdrew their oil companies from Sudan, China stepped in with its companies to fill the void. China repeatedly thwarted UN Security Council attempts to sanction Sudan for its government-sponsored purge of its Darfur province. (The helicopter gunships used to shoot Darfurians were provided to the Sudanese by China.)

Similarly, when the Americans and Europeans withdrew from Zimbabwe over its land reform policy and human rights record, China stepped in. During the recent election, China provided President Robert Mugabe with a radio-jamming device to block radio signals from stations supporting the opposition parties. When no Western power would recognize the legitimacy of the election, Beijing did. China also provided Zimbabwe with 12 fighter jets and 100 military trucks. The Chinese even designed Mugabe's 25-room mansion (complete with helipad) and donated their unique cobalt-blue tiles for the roof.

Not surprisingly, Mugabe calls China his "number one friend."

Why would China bolster Mugabe? Zimbabwe has the second-largest deposits of platinum in the world, as well as ferrochrome, uranium, gold, silver and copper—more than 40 minerals in all. Zimbabwe used to sell its vast tobacco crop at an international auction, but now, the tobacco goes directly to China as payment for loans and investments.

When François Bozizé violently seized the government of the Central African Republic (CAR) in 2003, the African Union (AU) immediately revoked CAR's membership from the AU. China responded by extending a $2.5 million interest-free loan, and then, welcoming Bozizé as an official visitor to Beijing in 2004. Mollifying this affront, last month China signed a $150 million agreement to expand the AU's headquarters in Addis Ababa.

China also sells arms to the Africans, to almost anyone who will buy them. While much of the world was concerned about a potential war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, Beijing was selling arms to both countries! During a UN embargo from 1998-2000, China sold them over $1 billion in weapons to use to fight each other.

The future

Currently, it appears that China will continue to be a powerful influence on the African continent. Moreover, it is likely that some African governments will increasingly shift their allegiances from the West to the Orient. Two sets of biblical prophecies help us anticipate what will happen: (1) Those that say modern-day Israel would shrink from its dominance of world affairs and (2) those that foretell an alliance of nations south of Jerusalem will provoke a major war with another alliance located north of Jerusalem.

In the first set of prophecies, modern Israel includes the United States, Great Britain and members of its commonwealth, as well as the state of Israel. As shocking as it seems today, American military, political and economic power will indeed cease to lead the world.

The second set of prophecies springs from Daniel and Revelation; they are summarized in Daniel 11:40-45. These verses tell of a "king of the South" doing something so provocative to a "king of the North" that he reacts by taking over the region of Palestine. On the basis of what we can observe today, we anticipate that the king of the South will be an alliance of Muslim nations from northern Africa through the Middle East and that the king of the North will be a core of European nations, smaller than the present EU configuration.

We'd like to tell you more about these important matters through our booklets The United States and Britain in Bible Prophecy, You Can Understand Bible Prophecy and The Middle East in Bible Prophecy. WNP