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China's influence spreads around world By WILLIAM FOREMAN, Associated
Press Writer 2 hours, 41 minutes ago
KARRATHA, Australia - For nearly three decades, Chinese peasants have left
their villages for crowded dormitories and sweaty assembly lines, churning out
goods for world markets. Now, China is turning the tables.
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Here in the Australian Outback, Shane Padley toils in the scorching heat,
2,000 miles from his home, to build an extension to a liquefied natural gas
plant that feeds China's ravenous hunger for energy.
At night, the 34-year-old carpenter sleeps in a tin dwelling known as a
"donga," the size of a shipping container and divided into four rooms, each
barely big enough for a bed. There are few other places for Padley to live in
this boomtown.
Duct-taped to the wall is a snapshot of the blonde girlfriend he left behind
and worries he may lose. But, he says, "I can make nearly double what I'd be
making back home in the Sydney area."
The reason: China.
For years, China's booming economy touched daily life in the West most
visibly through the "made-in-China" label on everything from clothes to
computers. But now, economic growth is giving rise to something more that can't
be measured just by widgets and gadgets a shift in China's balance of power
with the rest of the world.
China's reach now extends from the Australian desert through the Sahara to
the Amazonian jungle and it's those regions supplying goods for China, not
just the other way around. China has stepped up its political and diplomatic
presence, most notably in Africa, where it is funneling billions of dollars in
aid. And it is increasingly shaping the lifestyle of people around the world,
as the United States did before it, right down to the Mandarin-language courses
being taught in schools from Argentina to Virginia.
China, like the United States, is also learning that global power cuts both
ways. The backlash over tainted toothpaste and toxic pet food has been severe,
as has the criticism over China's support for regimes such Sudan's.
To understand why China's influence is increasingly pushing past its borders,
just do the math.
When 1.3 billion people want something, the world feels it. And when those
people in ever increasing numbers are joining a swelling middle class eager for
a richer lifestyle, the world feels it even more.
If China's growth continues, its consumer market will be the world's second
largest by 2015. The Chinese already eat 32 percent of the world's rice, build
with 47 percent of its cement and smoke one out of every three cigarettes.
China's desire for expensive hardwood to turn into top-quality floorboards
for its luxury skyscrapers has penetrated deep into the Amazon jungle. For
example, in the isolated community of Novo Progresso, or New Progress in
Portuguese, one of the biggest sawmills was started by the mayor with financing
from Chinese investors.
China accounts for 30 percent of the wood exported from logging operations in
remote towns across Brazil's rain forest, where trucks carry the finished
product hundreds of miles along muddy roads to river ports, said Luiz Carlos
Tremonte, who heads an influential wood industry association. Many Chinese
purchasers now travel to Brazil to clinch deals, and are almost always
accompanied at business meetings by friends or relatives of Chinese descent who
live there.
"Ten years ago no one knew about China in Brazil; then the demand just
exploded and they're buying a lot," Tremonte said. "This wood is great for
floors, and they love it there."
The Bovespa stock index in Brazil has climbed more than 300 percent since
2002, riding the China wave.
China is buying coal mining equipment from Poland and drilling for oil and
gas in Ethiopia and Nigeria. It has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into
Zambia's copper industry. It is the world's biggest market for mobile phones,
headed for 520 million handsets this year. The list goes on.
Along with looking to other countries for goods for its people, China is also
going far and wide in search of markets for its products.
In war-torn Liberia, where electricity is hard to come by, Chinese-made Tiger
generators keep the local economy humming. Costlier Western brands, favored by
aid agencies and diplomats, are beyond the reach of small business owners such
as Mohammed Kiawu, 30, who runs a phone stall in the capital, Monrovia.
A used Tiger generator costs around $50, he said over the steady beat of his
generator. "But even $250 is not enough to buy a used American or European
generator. They are not meant for people like myself."
The Chinese generators are more prone to break down, Kiawu said. When the
starter cable snapped on one, he replaced it with twine. But by making items
for ordinary people, he predicted, China "will take control of the heart of the
common people of Africa soon."
China is having to make up for decades of economic stagnation after the
communist takeover in 1949.
When Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping began dabbling in economic reforms in 1978,
farmers were scraping by. By 2005, income had increased sixfold after adjusting
for inflation to $400 a year for those in the countryside and $1,275 for urban
Chinese, according to China's National Bureau of Statistics.
"The Chinese don't want war the Chinese just want to trade their way to
power," said David Zweig, a professor at the Hong Kong University of Science
and Technology. "In the past, if a state wanted to expand, it had to take
territory. You don't need to grab colonies any more. You just need to have
competitive goods to trade."
If China stays on the same economic track, it would become the world's
largest economy in 2027, surpassing the United States, according to projections
by Goldman, Sachs & Co., a Wall Street investment bank. And unlike Japan, which
rose in the 1980s only to fade again, China still has a huge pool of workers to
tap and an emerging middle class that is just starting to reach critical mass.
Many development economists believe China still has 20 years of fairly high
growth ahead.
But the transition to a larger presence on the global stage comes with
growing pains, for China and the rest of the world.
As Beijing plays an ever bigger role in the developing world, some Western
countries fear it could undermine efforts to promote democracy. In its attempt
to secure markets and win allies, China is stepping up development aid to
Africa and Asia. Chinese President Hu Jintao pledged last year to double
Chinese aid to Africa between 2006 and 2009, promising $3 billion in loans, $2
billion in export credits and a $5 billion fund to encourage Chinese investment
in Africa. China has also promised Cambodia a $600 million aid package and
agreed to loan $500 million to the Philippines for a rail project.
But China also extends aid to states such as Myanmar, Zimbabwe and Sudan
whose human rights records have lost them the support of the West. Actress Mia
Farrow has labeled next year's Beijing Olympics a point of pride for China
the "genocide Olympics" because of China's support for Sudan, at a time when
the West seeks to punish it for its military actions in Darfur. China buys
two-thirds of Sudan's oil output.
"In some ways, it will be integrating us into a new international order in
which democracy as we've known it or the right to open organized political
activity is no longer considered the norm," said James Mann, author of "The
China Fantasy," a book about China and the West.
China is also facing some of the unease that powers before it have
encountered. In Africa and Asia, some complain that massive China-funded
infrastructure projects involve mostly Chinese workers and companies, rather
than create jobs and wealth for the local population. And Moeletsi Mbeki, a
political commentator and brother of South African President Thabo Mbeki,
likens the trade of African resources for Chinese manufactured goods to former
colonial arrangements.
"This equation is not sustainable," Mbeki said at a recent meeting of the
African Development Bank in Shanghai. "Africa needs to preserve its natural
resources to use in the future for its own industrialization."
The backlash is also coming on the consumer front, with Chinese goods earning
a dubious reputation for quality. In the United States, there is a furor over
the standard of Chinese imports. In Bolivia, vendors peel off or paint over any
indication that their wares were "Hecho en China," Spanish for "Made in China."
A woman selling bicycles in El Alto, a poor city outside the capital, La Paz,
insisted they were made in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan or even India. With some
prodding, she acknowledged the truth. "They're all Chinese," she said,
declining to give her name lest it hurt her business. "But if I say they're
Chinese, they don't sell."
Even those who benefit from China's growth express some wariness. Aerospace
giant Boeing expects China to be the largest market for commercial air travel
outside the United States in the next 20 years, buying more than $100 billion
worth of commercial aircraft, U.S. trade envoy Karan Bhatia said in a recent
speech.
"Right now, we're hiring every week," noted Connie Kelliher, a union leader.
"Things couldn't be better."
Yet Boeing workers remain wary of China's ambitions to build its own planes.
next year China plans to test-fly a locally made midsize jet seating 78 to 85
passengers. It also has announced plans to roll out a 150-seat plane by 2020.
"It's kind of a double-edged sword," Kelliher said. "You want the business
and we want to get the airplane sales to them, but there's the real concern of
giving away so much technology that they start building their own."
That's what happened to Western and Japanese automakers, which made inroads
in the Chinese market only to see their designs copied and technologies stolen.
Already, China's vehicle manufacturers are venturing overseas, exporting
325,000 units last year mostly low-priced trucks and buses to Asia, Africa
and Latin America.
"We're taking a bigger piece of the pie," said Yamilet Guevara, a sales
manager for Cinascar Automotriz, which has opened 20 showrooms in Venezuela in
the past 18 months, offering cars from six Chinese makers. "They ask by name
now. It's no longer just the Chinese car. It's the Tiggo, the QQ."
China's biggest car company, Chery Automobile Co., just announced a deal with
the Chrysler Group to jointly produce and export cars to Western Europe and the
United States within 2 1/2 years.
Given the speed of China's ascent, it's perhaps not surprising that China
itself is trying to calm some of the fears. Its slogan for the Beijing
Olympics: "Peacefully Rising China."
___
AP correspondents Jonathan Paye-Layleh in Monrovia, Liberia; Alan Clendenning
in Sao Paulo, Brazil; Dan Keane in La Paz, Bolivia; and Ian James in Caracas,
Venezuela, contributed to this report.
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