China’s Xi arrives in Zimbabwe, expected to sign major deals

Jinping leaves for Johannesburg, South Africa, on Wednesday for a State visit followed by the two-day sixth Forum on China-Africa Co-operation.

Improved railway, highway and aviation networks are key to Africa’s competitiveness in the global market, something that can be achieved through strengthened cooperation with China, said Gabon President Ali Ben Bongo in an interview with People’s Daily.

Security was tight at the airport outside Harare and the Chinese plane was escorted in by military jets and helicopters.

Despite the collaboration, Mugabe has expressed concern in the past, telling the Chinese in 2012 to respect Zimbabwe’s investment and labor laws.

Chinese grants to Zimbabwe over the past three years totaled 100 million US dollars.

But analysts cautioned that “as China’s economy slows, and rebalances from investment-driven growth to consumption, so too will its demand for resources” and added that this could harm political regimes in Africa that now largely depended on Chinese resource-extraction centred deals. “We are exploring new models for financing”, he said. The second largest economy in the world coming into your country and you think this man can just come for the show of it?

About 90 children and Grace Mugabe sang and spoke in Mandarin to the glamorous wife of the Chinese leader who said she was touched to be in Zimbabwe and to meet the children. Over the past 15 years, china’s trade with Africa has grown from around $10 billion, to a staggering $220 billion.

It will be the first state visit by a Chinese president to Zimbabwe in nearly 20 years.

I am told there are several bid deals, spanning manufacturing, agriculture and mining, waiting to be signed.

SinoHydro is also now working on the $500 million Kariba South expansion project, which is expected to bring an extra 300MW to the national grid by 2018.

The Zimbabwe Energy Regulatory Authority has licensed 21 independent power projects, but the majority of them are yet to take off because of the huge capital outlay involved. China has also, for the first time, contributed a full battalion of troops to a United Nations peacekeeping mission, sending 700 soldiers to join the UNMISS operation in South Sudan. Information Communication Technology, Postal and Courier Services Minister Supa Mandiwanzira said China played a major role in enhancing ICT development in Zimbabwe.

Zimbabweans wave flags while welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping in Harare, Zimbabwe, Tuesday, Dec. 1, 2015. It has also prompted some criticism that China’s economic relations with Africa were exploitative and neo-colonial – in fact even more so than Africa’s relations with its former colonial masters, which now often include a greater proportion of value-added exports compared to Africa’s exports to China.

In an article written by Xi and published in the same paper, the Chinese leader said he was looking forward to “in-depth exchanges of views with Mugabe and friends from all sectors of Zimbabwe during my visit with the aim of enhancing friendship between our two countries, exploring new opportunities for cooperation in all areas and delivering more benefits to our two peoples”.