Moving closer
Ni Yanshuo

Beijing was the best place to find African leaders in early November. Nearly 50 top officials from the continent assembled for the Beijing Summit and Third Ministerial Conference of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), which promoted Sino-African relations.
During the two-day summit on November 4-5, highlighting “friendship, peace, cooperation and development,” most African leaders expressed their wishes to achieve more pragmatic results through Sino-African cooperation. Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said she hopes her country can obtain technology from the Chinese and make bamboo furniture for export. Gabon’s President Omar Bongo said he hopes more Chinese investors will create job opportunities in his country. And after China National Machinery and Equipment Import and Export Co. introduced its plan to cooperate with African countries on infrastructure construction, Guinea-Bissau’s President Joao Bernardo Vieira immediately asked for detailed plans.
“A total of 48 African delegations came to the summit and ministerial conference from distant places, which indicates not only their deep friendship with China, but also the urgent needs of deepening cooperation on both sides,” said Qu Fujun, former Chinese Ambassador to the Democratic Republic of Congo. He added that both sides hope to fully utilize FOCAC, an effective dialogue platform and cooperative mechanism, to further promote Sino-African ties. “The greatest political achievement of the Beijing summit of FOCAC is boosting the relationship between China and Africa to a new type of strategic partnership,” he said.
Establishing and developing a Sino-African strategic partnership was the core of the summit. Chinese President Hu Jintao described the partnership as deepening political relations, broadening economic cooperation, expanding cultural exchanges, promoting balanced and harmonious global development and strengthening cooperation and mutual support in international affairs. At the same time, at the opening ceremony, he also put forward eight specific measures the Chinese Government will take to develop the strategic partnership, including financial aid, preferential loans, setting up a China-Africa development fund, debt cancellation, duty exemption and personnel training.
In order to implement these measures, the Beijing summit approved an action plan for 2007-09. Notably, China committed itself to doubling its 2006 assistance to Africa by 2009 and trying to increase the bilateral trade volume to $100 billion by 2010. The summit issued the Declaration of the Beijing Summit of FOCAC, setting out the establishment of the strategic partnership in the form of a political document. Thus, a roadmap for the partnership emerged. “China-Africa cooperation brings real benefits to the two peoples, and enjoys bright prospects,” said Hu in summarizing the two-session roundtable of Chinese and African leaders.
“It is very interesting to hear how greatly China can help Africa. We think that it is a totally new opportunity, especially for the private sector, to which I belong,” Luwis K. Tiengoue, Director of International Projects at Group Eoulee in Cote d’Ivoire told Beijing Review. His company has several partners in China, including Tianjin Machinery Import and Export Corp., whose annual trade exceeds $100 million. He noted that his main task in Beijing is to find new partners in other parts of China and noted that he had contacted some Chinese enterprises.
“China is the best market we can have in the world,” he said. Liang Yan is the manager of the Beijing office of Afriland First Bank in Cameroon. After the opening ceremony, she immediately phoned the bank’s General Manager, Alamine Ousmane, describing in detail the eight measures Hu had put forward.
“You know, it was noon Beijing time when the ceremony ended. But in Cameroon, it was about 4 or 5 o’clock in the morning. After the general manager was woken up by my call and informed of the eight measures, he was so excited that he decided to gather all the top officials of the bank immediately to study China’s new policy toward Africa,” she said. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan welcomed the Chinese Government’s announ-cement that it would double its aid to Africa by 2009. “This summit is an historic opportunity for China and Africa to build on these shared ideals, and to advance South-South cooperation,” he said in a statement released by his spokesman.
“Viewing President Hu’s speech, especially the measures to train African professionals, send agricultural experts to Africa and increase the number of Chinese Government scholarships to African students, we can see that China is changing its mode of aid to Africa from material aid to supplying the foundation for them to develop independently. This can promote the sustainable development of African countries,” said Shen Jiru, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Trade and investment were new highlights of the summit. After two days of dialogue among more than 1,500 entrepreneurs from both sides, a total of 14 cooperative agreements were signed with a contractual value reaching $1.9 billion. Meanwhile, the China-Africa Joint Chamber of Commerce and Industry was established on November 5.
According to a recent report from the World Bank, China’s investment in Africa is exerting a positive influence on the continent’s economic growth and that influence will continue to increase in the future. “The forum supplies an excellent platform to bring entrepreneurs from China and Africa together and can give us access to the great market in Africa,” said Fu Dongxing, Manager of the Africa Sector of the Overseas Market Department of Zhenzhou Yutong Group, one of China’s vehicle makers. At the Second Conference of Chinese and African Entrepreneurs held on November 5, Fu was one of the busiest persons there. Within an hour he had spoken to nearly 10 African enterprises from Togo, Namibia, Mozambique, Zambia, Tanzania and Egypt, discussing opening vehicle factories in Africa.
“We have done business in Egypt for two years and our next step is to set up assembly plants in Africa,” he said. “It is really outside of my expectation that so many African enterprises have shown an interest in cooperating with us.” Yutong recently established a facility in Egypt to increase its after-sales service in Africa. Trade between China and Africa continues to increase dramatically. Currently, China is Africa’s third-largest trading partner after the United States and France. In 2005, the bilateral trade volume reached $39.74 billion, up 35 percent year on year. The number is 10 times that of 1995. According to Zhou Yabin, head of the West Asia and Africa Affairs Department of the Chinese Ministry of Commerce, the Sino-African trade volume in 2006 is expected to exceed $50 billion.
Cairo will host the next FOCAC meeting, and economic relations between China and Egypt also made a breakthrough at the summit. On November 6, the two countries signed a memorandum of understanding under which Egypt acknowledges China’s full market economy status and promises fair treatment for Chinese companies in international trade.
Egypt, the first African country to establish diplomatic relations with China, currently is China’s sixth-largest trading partner on the continent with last year’s bilateral trade hitting $2.15 billion. The figure totaled $1.96 billion in the first eight months of this year, up 47.6 percent over the same period of 2005. According to Bo Xilai, China’s Minister of Commerce, Sino-Egyptian trade may reach $5 billion in the next five years.
Currently, China has several billion dollars of investment in Egypt and the figure is expected to exceed $5 billion in the coming seven to eight years. Algeria, Sudan, the Central African Republic and Sierra Leone also signed memorandums of understanding with China on November 5 to acknowledge its full market economy status. To date, more than 60 countries have granted China the full market economy status, including 14 African countries. At the summit, Hu promised to build 30 hospitals in Africa and provide 300 million yuan in grants to provide the drug artemisinin and build 30 malaria prevention and treatment centers in Africa. Artemisinin is one of the new medicines researched and developed by China and registered worldwide. The World Health Organization (WHO) has assessed the drug to be the one of the most effective medicines to treat the disease. China has almost 80 percent of the world’s supply of raw materials needed to produce artemisinin, since 90 percent of the world supply of artemisia, the major herb used in the drug, grows in the Wuling Mountain areas in Hunan, Hubei, Sichuan and Guizhou provinces.
Sino-African cooperation in fighting malaria has been going on for three decades. Up to now, China has supplied anti-malaria medicines at no cost to more than 10 African countries, including Nigeria, Republic of the Congo, Somalia, Niger, Togo, the Central African Republic and Cameroon. “We are ready now. We can produce artemisinin immediately after we receive orders from the Chinese Government. We can guarantee the timely supply of high-quality artemisinin medicine to African countries,” the head of an artemisinin production factory said at the Sino-African Anti-Malaria Exhibition on November 5.
WHO data indicate that a total of 2.5 billion people live in malaria zones, especially in Africa. Of the 300 to 500 million malaria sufferers that emerge each year, Africans account for 90 percent. Malaria has become one of the greatest obstacles to development for African countries. “We are preparing to establish two pharmaceutical factories in East Africa and West Africa. We expect to locally produce medicines in 2007,” said Lu Chunming, General Manager of Beijing Holley-Cotec Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd.

(The Daily Mail-Beijing Review Articles Exchange Item)


Peace weapons of Pakistan
Saifullah Khan

Pakistan and India won independence from Britain in 1947. Since then they have harboured suspicions against each other mainly due to the disputed region of Kashmir. India continues to disregard all UN resolutions on Kashmir adopted since 1948. Consequently, both countries have gone to war thrice since independence.
In 1971, India exploited power disparity for aggression and military intervention to the detriment of Pakistan’s integrity dismembering half of the country. Neither alliances proved reliable nor the Security Council acted to fulfil the pledge in the UN Charter of collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to peace. Pakistan was compelled to undertake a painful reappraisal of the earlier policy of nuclear abstinence. The conclusion was unavoidable: Pakistan had to develop the capacity to deter another Indian adventure.
In 1974 India exploded the so called ‘peaceful nuclear device’ which greatly altered the dynamics of Indo-Pak security. In the absence of alternatives, acquisition of the nuclear option was conceived as a means of deterrence of aggression and prevention of war. Safeguarding peace and security of the country became the sole objective.
India’s nuclear tests on 11 May 1998 baffled Pakistan. The tests came within less than two months in office of Atal Bihari Vajpayee as Prime Minister. He was leader of a Hindu nationalist party that advocated India’s need for nuclear weapons as a step toward great-power status. Speaking on the occasion, Brajesh Mishra, the Indian Prime Minister’s Principal Secretary said, “India has a proven capability for a weaponized nuclear program. The tests would help scientists design nuclear weapons of different yields for different applications and for different delivery systems.”
Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Gohar Ayub Khan blamed the West for the Indian tests, mainly the United States, for not moving after Pakistan raised an alarm in Washington in April 1998 about the nuclear plans of the Vajpayee government. “We are surprised at the naivety of the western world, and also of the United States, that they did not take the cautionary signals that we were flashing to them,” the Pakistani foreign minister said in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation.
Following the Indian tests, Indian leaders started issuing threatening statements against Pakistan. This is obvious from Mr. Harkins address to the U.S. Congress on 19 May 1988. He said, “We now see that a key Indian official, according to the news this morning, a key Indian official is warning Pakistan and making very threatening, provocative statements, about the area that we know as Jammu-Kashmir. Indian Home Minister Advani, there is a picture of him here clenching his fist, saying they were, basically, not going to have a peaceful resolution at all of the situation in Kashmir. Advani further said, Nuclear weapons tests have brought about a qualitatively new stage in Indo-Pakistan relations and signifies, even while adhering to the principle of no first strike that India is resolved to deal firmly with Pakistan’s hostile activities in Kashmir. According to the PTI news agency, Parliamentary and Tourism Minister and BJP member Madan Lal Khurana said, “If Pakistan wants to fight another war with us; they should tell us the time and place.”
In the wake of the threatening statements from India, the mood in Islamabad was bound to change. There was an atmosphere of despair and hopelessness. Pakistan had no option but to respond by carrying out nuclear tests of her own on 28 May 1998.
Time has proven that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons have prevented India from embarking upon any misadventure. Both countries possessed nuclear weapons long before 1998. India first tested a nuclear bomb in 1974. Pakistan had first built a workable nuclear device in 1982 and by the end of the 1980s it was widely accepted by the international community that Islamabad had become a de facto nuclear power. But Islamabad desisted from carrying out a nuclear test till the Indian tests of May 1998.
The last full-scale war between the two countries was in 1971. While it is impossible to prove that the risk of a nuclear conflict has been the overriding factor preventing another all-out conflict, there is good reason to believe that it has been a significant constraint on policy makers in both countries. In 1987 India conducted a huge military exercise, “Operation Brass-tacks”, near its border with Pakistan. Fearing attack, Islamabad mobilised large numbers of troops and there were genuine fears that war could begin. Rajiv Gandhi was considering launching a conventional strike, when an adviser from his Ministry of Defence urged caution.
In 2002 India deployed hundreds of thousands of troops in forward positions on its border with Pakistan. India’s eventual decision to withdraw those troops can be explained by India’s fear of provoking a retaliatory nuclear strike. It is widely accepted that the nuclearisation of South Asia has restrained military and political leaders. “Nobody dares launch a conventional conflict of any consequence for fear it will escalate to nuclear levels”, according to Professor Stephen Cohen of the Brookings Institution in Washington.
The U.S. and the Soviet Union had adopted the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) during the cold war period. The doctrine assumes that each side has enough weaponry to destroy the other side and that either side, if attacked for any reason by the other, would retaliate with equal or greater force. The expected result is an immediate escalation resulting in both combatants’ total and assured destruction. This MAD scenario is also referred in the context of “nuclear deterrence”. Nuclear nations either have first strike or second strike capability. A nation with first strike capability would be able to destroy the entire nuclear arsenal of another nation and thus prevent any nuclear retaliation. Second strike capability indicates that a nation could promise to respond to a nuclear attack with enough force to make such a first attack highly undesirable. This doctrine thus prevents nuclear nations from using nuclear weapons.
The MAD doctrine is applicable to Pakistan and India as well. Following India’s nuclear tests on 11 May 1998 and threatening statements from Indian leaders, Pakistan had no other option but to respond to the Indian tests.


Pak–Afghan ties essential for regional stability
Kashmala Khan

Transforming Pakistan-Afghanistan relations for the better has long been an uphill task. However, due to improvement of law and order situation in Afghanistan the bilateral trade relation between Islamabad and Kabul has increased. During his visit to Afghanistan on September 13, 2006 Prime Minster Shaukat Aziz inaugurated the 75km long dual lane Torkham – Jalalabad road reconstructed at a cost of Rs.2 billion linking Pakistan with the Central Asian Republics, through Afghanistan. Pakistan would also help Afghanistan to complete the project of extending railway line from Chaman to Spin Boldak.
The Jalalabad -Torkham road with traffic of around 14,000 vehicles a day would be linked with the existing Grand Trunk road and the Motorway through a four lane, 45km long Peshawar - Torkham expressway. The road was refurbished in 13 months, against a target of 15 months by the Frontier Works Organization (FWO) and in including de-mining of round 5km section that is 12 meters wide and has been built according to international specifications.
It is expected that development of communication infrastructure would bring greater economic prosperity in both countries. Pakistan is funding various projects worth US 250 million including a kidney centre in Jalalabad, a university in Nangarhar, Jinnah hospital in Kabul and several other projects to help people of Afghanistan to live a better life. Afghan President Karzai acknowledged Pakistan’s sincere support during the last two decades and stated “Pakistan played host to large number of Afghan refugees during the long war that is never forgetting for Afghan people”. Moreover, he expressed his heartfelt gratitude for Pakistan’s help in reconstruction in Afghanistan and hoped it will help the country strengthen its economy and help it to move ahead at a rapid pace.
Governor Nangarhar Gul Agha Sherzai also appreciated Pakistan’s role in the reconstruction of the war ravaged country, saying the refurbished road will boost trade and economic ties between the two countries and help them brining further close. The inauguration of the road would emerge as a symbol of long lasting ties between the two countries and hoped their multifaceted relationship in defence, trade, history and culture will grow in the days to come. Pakistan always believed that a stronger, stable and vibrant Afghanistan would be good for peace in the world and for both neighbours.
While appreciating the ongoing reconstruction process in Afghanistan, Prime Minister Aziz said, “Your success in Afghanistan is our success, your progress is ours, we have common objectives and we should work in an atmosphere of trust and brotherhood to move forward”. Furthermore he stated “Pakistan is a growing economy and is willing to share its progress with its neighbours”. Afghan President Karzai expressed his heartfelt gratitude for Pakistan’s help in reconstruction in Afghanistan and hoped it will help the country strengthen its economy and enable it to move ahead at a rapid pace.