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China the Main Topic at G8 Finance Meeting
It was announced at the two-day meeting of G8 finance ministers that the main topic at the 33rd G8 summit, scheduled for June 6-8 in Heiligendamm, Germany, will be aid to Africa and, in particular, China's multibillion-dollar loans to oil-rich “problem” regimes there. The finance ministers' concerns were underlined by the fact that the African Development Bank held a forum in Shanghai last week.
After a year's preparation, Germany had only general topics for discussion at the next G8 summit. “Growth and responsibility” was one, and “Africa: Good Management, Steady Investment, Peace and Security” was the other. It became clear in the course of the finance ministers' meeting that the topic of Africa be given a different emphasis and the G8 would criticize Chinese policy there and try to counteract China's expansion.
China has broken through the monopoly that the United States, Great Britain and Japan held in Africa by means of its credit policy. Africa supplies China with a third of its oil, as well as other raw materials and Chinese state companies hold the licenses for many oil deposits in Africa, including that for Darfur, Sudan. There are suspicions that the cheap credit China is providing is a payoff for loyalty.
Premier of the Chinese State Council Wen Jibao greeted representatives of the 43 countries of Africa personally in Shanghai last week and promised them that Beijing would continue to help the countries, many of which have only recently had billions of dollars of debt forgiven, receive more cheap credit and write off bad debt.
The British company Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative prepared much of the G8 action plan for the next summit. It proposes requiring African governments to publish the amounts f taxes and duties they receive from foreign companies that produce mineral wealth in their countries. The same foreign companies would be required to reveal information on the amounts of duties and taxes they pay. This proposal would create greater transparency, especially with Chinese giants CNPC, CNOOC and Sinopec.
It became clear during the course of the meeting in Germany that there is practically unanimity on the topic of China. Only Russian Finance Minister Alexey Kudrin did not share his colleagues' concerns.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of May 21, 2007
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