Chinese summitry

On safari
Nov 2nd 2006 | BEIJING
From The Economist print edition

Practising for the Olympics
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THE hoardings along every main street of central Beijing look like an effort to promote a new safari park: billboards are plastered with giant photographs of elephants, giraffes, lions and zebras. Images of half-naked, exotically painted tribesmen adorn the capital. It is part of China's lavish welcome for the leaders of most of the African continent, who have been gathering in Beijing this week for the biggest diplomatic jamboree in the country's history. Stereotyping has not, apparently, been a worry for the hosts.

Reuters

China goes wildThe scale of the first China-Africa summit, attended by more than 40 heads of state and government, far exceeds any diplomatic event ever held in Beijing. The gathering, from November 3rd to 5th, is being presented by China as a demonstration of its rapidly expanding ties with Africa (driven mostly by its demand for African oil and other natural resources), as well as of its organisational abilities ahead of the Beijing Olympics in August 2008. Earlier in the same week, China hosted a summit of ten leaders from the Association of South-East Asian Nations in the southern city of Nanning as well as talks with North Korean and American officials (see article). For a country still finding its feet as a global diplomatic player, these events have been an exceptional workout.

An article this week in Beijing Daily, the main propaganda organ of the city government, suggested the extent of the cultural gap between China and many other parts of the world, despite its rapidly growing economic and diplomatic engagement. As for our African friends, it said, some people still think of them as coming from underdeveloped countries, and “lack knowledge of Africa's ancient history, magnificent culture and recent development”. During the summit, no matter what colour or how few clothes African visitors might wear, citizens should not surround them or photograph them without their permission, said the newspaper.


The city authorities have been almost as crude in their efforts to ensure the smooth flow of the capital's normally gridlocked traffic during the event. For the first time in advance of a big event, the government has published regular updates of how traffic will be managed. But it has also resorted to some heavy-handed techniques: banning out-of-town vehicles from urban Beijing and removing beggars from busy areas and around summit venues. In September officials denied a report in a state-owned newspaper in the capital that 1m migrant labourers in Beijing would be expelled from the city before the 2008 Olympics and that the mentally ill would be confined to hospitals. But the denial has done little to allay suspicions that such tactics will be used.

China has been more considerate, however, of the sensitivities of the visiting African leaders. The official media have avoided dwelling on the humanitarian crisis in Sudan, whose president, Omar al-Bashir, is among Beijing's guests. The official news agency, Xinhua, published an interview with Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe making no mention of the human-rights abuses that have made him a pariah in other parts of the world. He would probably do the same for China.