Shadow falls across China’s African expansion

BEIJING — Ms Chang Mengjie spent her 23rd birthday with her mother, Mdm Wang Jing, grieving for the man who meant everything to them, and whose death at the hands of terrorists has altered perspectives of China’s commercial ties to northern Africa.

Chang Xuhui, 47, was one of three Chinese railway executives killed in a Nov 20 terrorist attack in Bamako, Mali. The men had arrived for meetings with Mali transportation officials one day before a group of gunmen stormed the Radisson Blu Hotel, took 170 guests and others hostage and eventually killed 20.

Chang’s wife, Mdm Wang, recalls the fateful phone call from a company official informing her of the death. “I cried out loud,” she said in an interview at the family home in Beijing. “I dropped my phone.”

Chang worked as the general manager for the western Africa subsidiary of China’s state-owned railway builder China Railway Construction Corp (CRC). The other Chinese victims — Zhou Tianxiang, 49, and Wang Xuanshang, 50 — were executives working for the CRC subsidiary, China Railway International Group.

Chang had been travelling to Africa since the early 1990s, when he served on a Chinese government-organised medical aid team in the east African country of Djibouti. He spent later years working in other African countries for the government, state companies and the railway builder.

Mdm Wang said her husband yearned to spend more time with his family in China but was drawn away by a fascination with Africa. “Africa was his whole world,” she said.

Africa also means the world to Chinese business interests. The Ministry of Commerce said Chinese companies in 2014 invested US$4 billion (S$5.7 billion) in Africa, or about 3.4 per cent of the US$116 billion these companies invested around the world that year.

China-Africa trade has vastly expanded in recent years, with China ranking as Africa’s largest trade partner in monetary terms for the past six years. Total bilateral trade was worth US$222 billion in 2014, according to the Ministry of Commerce, or about 21 times the 2000 level.

CRC said Mr Chang and his companions, along with company translator Mr Wu Zhiqi, were scheduled to meet Mali’s Ministry of Equipment and Transport officials to negotiate several construction projects. One project on the table called for renovating the nation’s only railway line, which links Bamako and the capital of Senegal, Dakar.

The attack did not stop the rail deal. Late last month, CRC announced that Mali and Senegal had signed a US$2.7 billion contract for the Chinese to upgrade the Bamako-Dakar line.

But loved ones of the dead executives have changed perspectives of China-Africa relations.

Mdm Wang said her husband had reassured family members that Chinese people were always safe in Africa.

Mali, listed by the International Monetary Fund as one of the world’s poorest countries, has been a hotspot for violence since members of the Tuareg minority launched a separatist movement in 2012. An African jihadist group affiliated to Al Qaeda claims responsibility for the Bamako hotel attack.

After the attack, CRC beefed up security at its offices and construction sites across Africa. The company also said its Africa-based employees could no longer leave their living compounds without a companion.

China President Xi Jinping ordered Chinese state companies in Africa to adopt extra measures aimed at protecting their workers after the Bamako tragedy.

China’s modern connections to Africa date to 1963, the year Chinese humanitarian teams arrived in Algeria to offer free medical care. Since then, medical teams have helped people in 66 countries.

Chang volunteered to join a Djibouti team due to his “deep desire to go to Africa”, said his father-in-law, Mr Wang Dengyun, a former Shanxi Province government health official.

After returning from Djibouti in 1992, Chang started working for a livestock trading company owned by the Shanxi government that was doing business with companies in the West African nation of Cote d’Ivoire. Later, he worked on health care cooperation projects involving Shanxi hospitals and counterparts in Cameroon.

Having studied French at Xi’an International Studies University and worked as a Chinese-French translator at the city of Taiyuan government’s Foreign Affairs Department, he was well-equipped for doing business in northern Africa’s many French-speaking countries.

Chang hit a bump on his career path in 2000, however, when his livestock trading company started faltering in the face of Chinese government economic reforms. He quit that position and took a job as a tour guide and French teacher in China. One of Chang’s friends in the African country of Gabon, Mr Yan Shi, said he fully expected him to return to Africa. “He thought Africa had great potential for Chinese investment,” said Mr Yan.

The opportunity to return came in 2002, when the Ministry of Commerce’s business department recruited Chang for a commercial services post at the Chinese Embassy in Gabon. That coincided with a Chinese government decision to step up investments in Africa. Underscoring this new thrust was the 2004 decision by state oil giant China Petroleum & Chemical Corp to buy 1 million tonnes of crude oil from Gabon in exchange for the rights to develop three offshore oil blocks.

Chang went from the Embassy to a job with state-owned China Machinery Engineering Corp, serving as the company’s representative in Gabon. In May 2013, he was hired as deputy general manager of China Railway International Group’s subsidiary in Algeria. The following year, CRC put him in charge of all operations in western Africa.

Mr Wu, the translator who survived the Bamako attack, told the Beijing-based newspaper Worker’s Daily that he was in the hotel lobby and saw the gunmen arrive. He ran to his room and tried to contact Chang. No one answered the phone. CAIXIN ONLINE