InfoAnda - Insight: In Africa's warm heart, a cold welcome for Chinese |

Pakistanis angry over detentions in Times Sq. case
Monday, May 24, 2010
ISLAMABAD – Relatives of three men detained by Pakistan for alleged links to the suspect in the attempted Times Square bombing say the men are innocent.
They

Taiwan denies boycotting Australian film festival
Thursday, August 6, 2009

AFP - Thursday, August 6TAIPEI (AFP) - - Taiwan's Beijing-friendly government on Wednesday denied boycotting an Australian film festival amid a row over the e

Merkel's support dips, regional ally resigns International
Thursday, September 3, 2009

By Sarah Marsh and Noah Barkin

BERLIN (Reuters) - Chancellor Angela Merkel suffered a double blow on Thursday as a senior party ally in east German

Minister seeks closure of anti-Berlusconi websites
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
ROME (AFP) - – The Italian government moved Tuesday to close down Internet sites encouraging further violence against Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who

Asian markets mixed after Wall Street rally
Wednesday, March 18, 2009

By ELAINE KURTENBACH,AP Business Writer AP - Wednesday, March 18SHANGHAI - Asia's stock market rally seemed to be running out of steam Wednesday, despite an

Calm returns to China city, but ethnic ire simmers | International | | 5 September 2009
Greek conservative head makes last pitch to voters | | 4 May 2012
Rowers break 114-year-old Atlantic crossing record | 1 August 2010

Paul McCartney engaged to marry Nancy Shevell | | 7 May 2011

Forum Views () Forum Replies ()

Read more with google mobile : Insight: In Africa's warm heart, a cold welcome for Chinese |

Edition: U.S. Africa Arabic Argentina Brazil Canada China France Germany India Italy Japan Latin America Mexico Russia Spain United Kingdom Home Business Business Home Economy Technology Media Small Business Legal Deals Earnings Social Pulse Business Video The Freeland File Aerospace & Defense Markets Markets Home U.S. Markets European Markets Asian Markets Global Market Data Indices M&A Stocks Bonds Currencies Commodities Futures Funds peHUB World World Home U.S. Brazil China Euro Zone Japan Mexico Russia India Insight World Video Reuters Investigates Decoder Politics Politics Home Election 2012 Campaign Polling Political Punchlines Supreme Court Politics Video Tech Technology Home MediaFile Science Tech Video Tech Tonic Social Pulse Opinion Opinion Home Chrystia Freeland John Lloyd Felix Salmon Jack Shafer David Rohde Bernd Debusmann Nader Mousavizadeh Lucy P. Marcus David Cay Johnston Bethany McLean Anatole Kaletsky Edward Hadas Hugo Dixon Ian Bremmer Lawrence Summers Susan Glasser The Great Debate Steven Brill Jack & Suzy Welch Frederick Kempe Christopher Papagianis Mark Leonard Reihan Salam Breakingviews Equities Credit Private Equity M&A Macro & Markets Politics Breakingviews Video Money Money Home Tax Break Lipper Awards 2012 Global Investing MuniLand Unstructured Finance Linda Stern Mark Miller John Wasik James Saft Analyst Research Alerts Watchlist Portfolio Stock Screener Fund Screener Personal Finance Video Money Clip Investing 201 Life Health Sports Arts Faithworld Business Traveler Entertainment Oddly Enough Lifestyle Video Pictures Pictures Home Reuters Photographers Full Focus Video Reuters TV Reuters News Article Comments (0) Slideshow Full Focus Editor's choice Our best photos from the last 24 hours. Full Article Images of August Follow Reuters Facebook Twitter RSS YouTube Read Fanning furor, Justice Scalia says appeals court judge lied | 17 Sep 2012 Anti-Japan protests reignite across China on invasion anniversary | 4:19am EDT "Sexting" again linked to risky sex among teens 17 Sep 2012 Special Report: China's car makers cut corners to success | 1:09am EDT Romney derides Obama supporters in hidden camera speech 17 Sep 2012 Discussed 288 U.S. ambassador to Libya, three staff killed in rocket attack 163 Egyptians angry at film scale U.S. embassy walls 124 U.S. embassies attacked in Yemen, Egypt after Libya envoy killed Sponsored Links Pictures Reuters Photojournalism Our day's top images, in-depth photo essays and offbeat slices of life. See the best of Reuters photography. See more | Photo caption Disputed islands Protests break out over disputed islands in the East China Sea. Slideshow Will & Kate's Asia tour The royal couple are on a nine-day tour of Southeast Asia and the South Pacific. Slideshow Insight: In Africa's warm heart, a cold welcome for Chinese Tweet Share this Email Print Related News U.S. launches auto case against China, Beijing fires back Mon, Sep 17 2012 Japan brandname firms shut China plants after protest violence Mon, Sep 17 2012 WRAPUP 3-Japanese firms shut China plants, US urges calm in islands row Mon, Sep 17 2012 China struggles to curb anger as protesters denounce Japan Sun, Sep 16 2012 Anti-Japan protests erupt in China over islands row Sat, Sep 15 2012 Analysis & Opinion Fedâ€™s approach to monetary policy looks Chinese Related Topics World » 1 of 3. A Malawian hawker sells food outside a Chinese owned shop in Salima, a dusty town of 40,000 people near the shores of Lake Malawi, August 21, 2012. Credit: Reuters/Ed Cropley By Ed Cropley and Michael Martina SALIMA/BEIJING | Tue Sep 18, 2012 4:31am EDT SALIMA/BEIJING (Reuters) - Malawians bill their country as the "Warm Heart of Africa" and pride themselves on a reputation for friendliness. But Jaffa Shaibu, a burly 32-year-old merchant in a clothes market in Salima, a dusty town near the shores of Lake Malawi, feels less than welcoming to the Chinese traders who have moved in over the past four years. "The way it looks, one day there will be a big fight with them," Shaibu said. "One day there will be blood." Echoing a grievance heard across Africa, Shaibu and his colleagues in this town of 40,000 complain of Chinese businessmen with better access to cheap imports of clothes, shoes and electronics, and deeper pockets that allow them to reduce their margins. That sentiment is part of a grass-roots backlash against Beijing's increasing diplomatic and commercial clout in Africa. In many ways, the relationship between the two has never been stronger. Bilateral trade has almost doubled over the past three years, to $166 billion in 2011 from $91 billion in 2009. In July, Chinese President Hu Jintao offered Africa $20 billion in cheap loans over the next three years. China, he said, would forever be a "good friend, a good partner and a good brother" to Africa. But a growing number of Africa's billion people are less enthusiastic. Last November, four Chinese in rural South Africa were burnt alive in an arson attack on their home. In Zambia last month, miners in a dispute over pay crushed a Chinese supervisor to death with a coal truck. In Ghana, armed Chinese informal miners have clashed with gangs of local youths, triggering a government crackdown. In Angola a few weeks ago, 37 Chinese men were deported on suspicion of running a criminal gang that burnt its victims with gasoline before burying them alive, according to China's Xinhua state news agency. And from Senegal in the west to Kenya in the east, traders are up in arms about what they see as unfair competition from private Chinese merchants surfing into Africa on the back of a wave of big investments. SLOW-SLOW The backlash has reached parts of Malawi, a nation of 13 million people, where anti-Chinese protests in the northern town of Karonga in late June prompted the government to dust off a decades-old law that confines foreign retailers to big cities. So far, the government has not forced the issue. Salima's high street is a tatty strip of tarmac flanked by dusty sidewalks and 200 meters of shop-houses, including nine owned by Chinese traders. There, the end of July deadline to move on came and went without a flicker. Fuxing Trading, Peng Heng Shop and the other Chinese outlets continue to offer their wares as before, feeding a belief the government will not act against anything even vaguely connected to Beijing. Chinese construction firms have just completed a huge hotel and conference centre in the capital Lilongwe and are busy building schools and upgrading the main road to Tanzania. "The government is slow-slow," said Noel Zenengeya, a portly 48-year-old Salima merchant in a dazzling Hawaiian shirt. "If they don't do anything, we will have to fight for it." The authorities acknowledge the bad blood and insist Chinese merchants - an estimated 140 businesses across the country - will be moved to the three biggest cities as stipulated by law. The Chinese embassy says it does not oppose the move. Ambassador Pan Hejun has appealed to Chinese businesses to move to designated areas "to respect principles guiding the development of China-Malawi relations." At the same time, Malawian officials sense they can only go so far before annoying their giant benefactor. "It's a very big issue and politically sensitive because the Chinese have been very helpful to Malawi. It's becoming tricky how we treat their nationals," Salima District Commissioner Ali Phiri told Reuters. "But we anticipate a lot of conflict if they don't move." TRADE IMBALANCE As trade has soared almost 20-fold in the last decade, the basic nature of the exchange has not changed: raw African materials - oil, ore, timber - flow east, while manufactured goods flow west. Malawi's case is typical. It sent $46 million of tobacco, coffee, spices and other agricultural goods to China last year, and in return bought $112 million of textiles, machinery and high-tech goods. Even South Africa, far and away the continent's biggest and most industrialized economy, as well as a major coal and iron ore producer, faces an imbalance. In Beijing in July, President Jacob Zuma said the trade relationship was "unsustainable in the long term". Faced with an official unemployment rate of 25 percent, South Africa's ruling ANC talks incessantly about the need to boost domestic industry. In particular it would like to see its minerals processed at home. But the problem runs deeper: parts of South Africa's manufacturing sector, nearly 20 percent of the economy, are in direct competition with China, and in many cases are losing the battle against a much cheaper producer. According to a recent study by economists at Britain's University of East Anglia, South Africa lost 78,000 manufacturing jobs to Chinese imports between 2001 and 2010. Goods of Chinese origin accounted for about 18 percent of South Africa's imports of manufactured goods in 2010, up from 2 percent in 1995, the study said. Labor-intensive industries such as textiles, clothing, footwear and furniture, have been the hardest hit, with more than 40 percent of footwear and knitted fabrics purchased in South Africa coming from China. Chinese imports have also cut into South African exports to other African countries. "The economy hasn't been able to absorb the labor force, and of course the manufacturing sector, far from absorbing labor, is expelling labor," said Rhys Jenkins, one of the authors of the British study. ONE CIGARETTE AT A TIME Like consumers around the globe, Africans have an insatiable appetite for cheap goods, and China supplies them like no other. Africa has enjoyed average economic growth of 5 percent in the last five years, and this year contains five of the 10 fastest-growing economies according to the International Monetary Fund: Sierra Leone, Niger, Angola, Liberia and Ghana. But disposable income levels remain very low, defining the way many Africans buy things. Hawkers selling individual cigarettes are a common sight at bus-stops throughout the continent; many people can only afford to buy one at a time. It's a similar story with clothes or shoes: where the cheap Chinese option beats out locally-produced goods irrespective of the quality. "In the past, I used to buy from the local market, but now with the prices in the Chinese shops, I buy from them," said Enifa Mbeleko, a 35-year-old Malawian mother of six who took a 50 km (31 mile) bus ride to shop for a blouse. "I've never had a problem with the quality." SHIFTING TO AFRICA Africa's growing power as a consumer market has registered 11,000 km away at the other end of the supply chain, where there's new recognition that the continent is one of the few bright spots in a gloomy world. In the eastern Chinese province of Henan, Shao Yali sits in her office at Kaifeng Tianyi Garments sketching out various commercial strategies on her computers. The euro zone crisis has hammered exports to Europe, the clothing factory's biggest market until last year, and she is worried about generating enough sales to keep the 100-employee operation running. Africa now accounts for 70 percent of revenue. "The Africa market is extremely important to us," Shao said. "When orders for Europe dropped, we had to look for ways to push down prices and ship items to Africa." "We are doing all we can to boost orders from South Africa." She's not the only one. Services firms such as Asia Inspection, which runs supply chain audits and quality checks on Chinese manufacturers, are also busy cashing in on strong demand. Chief executive Sebastien Breteau said European business has declined but a new office in Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation, will help take up the slack. "Europe is flat to declining. We see Africa growing big time," Breteau said. "It's all over Africa, but especially in Nigeria. We believe in the growth there, and the Chinese are very close to the Nigerian market." "STEMMING THE TIDE" Africa's growth means Chinese officials are unlikely to stop their people heading to the continent to make their fortune. At the official level, Beijing and its foreign envoys insist that Chinese nationals and businesses should comply with domestic laws in each African country. "If Chinese traders engage in activities that violate your laws, we would not seek to shield them. We would not protect Chinese citizens' illegal behavior," said Zhong Jianhua, China's Special Representative on African Affairs. "We just hope the relevant parties can handle the situation justly." But the small private Chinese merchants flocking to Africa from areas such as Fujian, a traditional source of migrant labor, are not high on Beijing's list of priorities. "There's a disconnect between the official Chinese, who are frequently from Beijing, and the likes of the Fujianese," said Yoon Jung Park, a China-Africa researcher affiliated to Australia's Monash University. "Quite frankly they are embarrassed by them, but there's nothing they can do to stem the tide when the word gets out that there are opportunities and money to be made." That means there are likely to be more demonstrations like the one in Nairobi last month, when 500 Kenyan traders blew whistles and plastic trumpets, waved placards and chanted "Chinese must go." Many Kenyan traders resent the thousands of Chinese who arrive on tourist visas and hawk everything from milk to clothes to electronics. "The issue is to expel these Chinese from Kenya, the ones that are disturbing our customers. They are involved with every bit of our trading," said James Thamo, a textile trader and hotel owner leading the demonstration. In Salima, the Chinese shops are now staffed exclusively by Malawians. The Chinese bosses turn up only once a week to restock and collect the takings. "Since last month, the Chinese have been staying in Lilongwe," said Richard Banda, a 21-year-old sales assistant in Fuxing Trading. "Whenever there are rumors, they immediately go back to Lilongwe. They are always fearful." Lilly Lin, a young Fujianese who opened a clothing store in Nkhota Kota two years ago, said she hopes the Chinese embassy will protect her. Her parents emigrated to Africa last year to help her in her business. She speaks a smattering of English, her parents none. "I'm really not sure where in Malawi we are. I know almost nothing about this country," she said. "But we've invested so much here. We own a car. We really don't want to leave." (Edited by Simon Robinson and Sara Ledwith) World Tweet this Link this Share this Digg this Email Reprints We welcome comments that advance the story through relevant opinion, anecdotes, links and data. If you see a comment that you believe is irrelevant or inappropriate, you can flag it to our editors by using the report abuse links. Views expressed in the comments do not represent those of Reuters. For more information on our comment policy, see http://blogs.reuters.com/fulldisclosure/2010/09/27/toward-a-more-thoughtful-conversation-on-stories/ Comments (0) Be the first to comment on reuters.com. Add yours using the box above. Edition: U.S. Africa Arabic Argentina Brazil Canada China France Germany India Italy Japan Latin America Mexico Russia Spain United Kingdom Back to top Reuters.com Business Markets World Politics Technology Opinion Money Pictures Videos Site Index Legal Bankruptcy Law California Legal New York Legal Securities Law Support & Contact Support Corrections Connect with Reuters Twitter Facebook LinkedIn RSS Podcast Newsletters Mobile About Privacy Policy Terms of Use AdChoices Copyright Our Flagship financial information platform incorporating Reuters Insider An ultra-low latency infrastructure for electronic trading and data distribution A connected approach to governance, risk and compliance Our next generation legal research platform Our global tax workstation Thomsonreuters.com About Thomson Reuters Investor Relations Careers Contact Us Thomson Reuters is the world's largest international multimedia news agency, providing investing news, world news, business news, technology news, headline news, small business news, news alerts, personal finance, stock market, and mutual funds information available on Reuters.com, video, mobile, and interactive television platforms. Thomson Reuters journalists are subject to an Editorial Handbook which requires fair presentation and disclosure of relevant interests. NYSE and AMEX quotes delayed by at least 20 minutes. Nasdaq delayed by at least 15 minutes. For a complete list of exchanges and delays, please click here.

Other News on Tuesday, 18 September 2012
Video shows Libyans helping rescue U.S. ambassador after attack |
Turkey must reach mutual truce to end Kurdish conflict: party |
West African body gearing up for tough fight in Mali |
Iran says saboteurs cut power to nuclear plant |
Election will not threaten Lithuania's austerity plans: PM |
Hollande, Ayrault plunge in French popularity polls |
AMD loses respected CFO, shares plunge |
Zynga to acquire A Bit Lucky to roll out more complex games |
Lawsuit between Google, authors in U.S. suspended pending appeal |
Google buys Instagram rival Nik Software |
Google rejects White House request to pull Mohammad film clip |
Metallics, florals and futuristic edge rock London fashion |
Christopher Kane puts nuts and bolts on the runway |
Rainbow metallics reign supreme at Burberry show |
Silver Linings Playbook wins top prize at Toronto fest |
Anti-Japan protests reignite across China on invasion anniversary |
Afghan militants say deadly blast was revenge for film |
Insight: In Africa's warm heart, a cold welcome for Chinese |
China ex-police chief does not contest Bo scandal charges |
Qaeda in North Africa urges killing of more U.S. envoys |
NATO halts work with Afghan allies to stem insider attacks |
Panetta urges China to increase military contacts to avoid missteps |
Russia says wrote off 90 percent of North Korea's debt |
Striking South Africa miners cut wage demands |
Pakistan Supreme Court gives PM breathing space in graft case |
Apple sells 2 million new phones, shares touch $700 |
LG unveils new premium phone with voice-activated power camera |
Microsoft warns on Internet Explorer security flaw |
Elpida's bondholders open new front in fight over Micron deal |
Usher, Shakira shake up judging panel on The Voice |
General Hospital star John Ingle dies at 84 |
Country newcomer Kip Moore revels in long-sought success |
Syrian rebels battle Assad forces near Turkish border |
South Africa Lonmin strikers accept pay rise offer |
Myanmar democracy icon Suu Kyi begins key U.S. tour |
German minister condemns far-right plan to show anti-Islam film |
Ex-police chief admits to defection in China political scandal |
IAEA renews pressure on Iran after terrorists charge |
Key ally pulls out of India government over reforms |
China's Alibaba buys back half of Yahoo's stake |
Motorola launches Intel-powered smartphone |
UK royal couple win French injunction on Kate topless photos |
Tweet, blog, stream and flog fashion on social media catwalk |
Mulberry delivers sweet and sassy London collection |
Greece at new risk of being pushed off euro
Bodies of missing Tenn. mom, Jo Ann Bain, and daughter found
Female Breasts Are Bigger Than Ever
AMD Trinity Accelerated Processing Units Now in Volume Production
The Avengers (2012 film), made the second biggest opening- and single-day gross of all-time
AMD to Start Production of piledriver
Ivy Bridge Quad-Core, Four-Thread Desktop CPUs
Islamists Protest Lady Gaga's Concert in Indonesia
Japan Successfully Broadcasts an 8K Signal Over the Air
ECB boosts loans to 1 trillion Euro to stop credit crunch
Egypt : Mohammed Morsi won with 52 percent
What do you call 100,000 Frenchmen with their hands up
AMD Launches AMD Embedded R-Series APU Platform
Fed Should not Ignore Emerging Market Crisis
Fed casts shadow over India, emerging markets
Why are Chinese tourists so rude? A few insights

USD EUR - 1 year graph	VPN on MacOSX	BlogMeter 1.01