OPINION> Commentary
Fostering good feelings
(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-02-13 07:41

As Chinese leaders embark on their first overseas trips in the lunar New year - President Hu Jintao is visiting Saudi Arabia and Africa, and Vice President Xi Jinping's to Malta and Latin America - international media are rife with talk about Chinese ambitions.

For the Chinese, visits like these are but some of many meant to cement ties or reassure good feelings. Which may not necessarily fit in with immediate pragmatic concerns. Some have found President Hu's itinerary unusual, because several of his host countries are not known for resources to quench the well-hyped Chinese thirst.

That is a lamentable misrepresentation of the nature of the Sino-African relationship. The People's Republic of China has been on good terms with African countries for decades. Till this day, "African cousins" remain a popular reference to African countries and people among ordinary Chinese citizens. That is a legacy of the Mao Zedong era, when the nation was full of revolutionary passion for the ultimate liberation of mankind. The Chinese people's good feelings towards Africa extended from sympathy for their struggles for independence to gratitude for their support for the People's Republic's return to the United Nations. Similarly, the shared third-world complex has brewed a sentimental attachment between China and Latin America.

Mao once exhorted his comrades to forever be grateful to African cousins. Different sessions of government and generations of leadership have faithfully followed that instruction.

Even while preoccupied itself with feeding and clothing its own people, this country has offered considerable assistance to its African cousins. Over the decades, we have witnessed railways and other public infrastructure built and numerous medical teams dispatched as part of aid programs, with no political strings attached. Who else can talk about "brotherly ties" without a guilty conscience?

The firmly entrenched moral ingredients in the country's Africa policies have cultivated a different kind of partnership, which transcends practical needs.

China and Africa need each other more than ever. And China is more capable than ever to lend a hand, even though it is still a developing country.

Mutual trust accumulated through the decades is a fine base for collaboration, especially when crisis strikes.

Yet the real challenge for China and Africa, as is evident in the Democratic Republic of Congo, could be uncomfortable third parties.

(China Daily 02/13/2009 page8)