Eager to Settle Into China’s Embrace
A Chinese manager, Wang Jinyan, center, oversees the construction of a bridge in Niamey, Niger, that is being paid for by China. The Chinese are investing heavily in Niger, which is attractive for its oil and uranium deposits. A recent coup in Niger had little effect on China＇s business deals there.
Just a few months ago, China was widely derided here as the financial backbone propping up an autocratic president, Mamadou Tandja, giving him the confidence to ignore international condemnation as he chopped away at Niger’s democratic institutions.
But now that Mr. Tandja has been overthrown, China appears to be settling into a new role: business partner to the good-government-preaching military officers who ousted Mr. Tandja under the banner of restoring democracy.
“Our diplomatic relations with China were not affected by the coup d’état,” said Mahaman Laouali Dan Dah, a spokesman for the military junta now running the country.
That was plain to see from the front page of the government newspaper this month. China’s ambassador to Niger, Xia Huang, was prominently shown inspecting the bridge that his country is building here in the capital. About 10 days before, Mr. Xia had proclaimed on state television that China’s extensive oil and uranium interests in Niger had not been “disrupted by the events” — the coup — in February, news agencies reported.
There may still be some small perturbations. The junta has said broadly that it may adjust any deals made by Mr. Tandja to ensure that they sufficiently benefit Niger, a nation rich in uranium and, potentially, oil.
But the junta does not seem eager to upset the Chinese — “checking doesn’t mean calling into question,” said Col. Abdoulkarim Goukoye, a junta member — and for now China appears to be proceeding confidently, sealing its reputation here as the continent’s behind-the-scenes force, ready to do business regardless of who is in power or whatever outrage exists about it.
“They couldn’t care less” who leads the country, Mohamed Bazoum, a former opposition leader recently appointed by the junta to a civilian council, said of China’s investments in Niger. “The Chinese, they were about to destroy democracy. They were playing a very negative role.”
But even Mr. Bazoum did not suggest breaking with China now. In a sign of how desperately Niger needs investment — the nation ranks at the very bottom of the United Nations human development index — Mr. Bazoum said he hoped the old deals would be respected, suggesting how quickly the looming backlash against China here has become an embrace.
“When the international community turns its back on you, you’ve got to find money somewhere,” said Sanoussi Tambari Jackou, the senior member of Niger’s Parliament. After all, he said, “it’s the West that threw Tandja into the arms of the Chinese.”
France, the former colonial power here, has also been criticized by opposition leaders for not speaking out forcefully enough against Mr. Tandja, and the largely state-owned French nuclear engineering giant, Areva, has two uranium mines here, with plans for a third.
But last year, as Mr. Tandja dissolved Parliament and the nation’s highest court, France adhered to the European Union’s suspension of aid to Niger, a penalty enforced by the United States as well. The suspension has hurt the junta, too, because it remains in effect until new elections are scheduled.
China, by contrast, has stayed the course. Cash flowed from a substantial fund established by the Chinese, allowing Mr. Tandja to continue paying salaries as Western support ebbed. Now that he is gone, work has continued on a giant Chinese-built oil refinery in the nation’s east.
China has multimillion-dollar deals all over West Africa, in countries with every shade of authoritarian leaning, according to a 2009 atlas of Africa by Stephen Smith, an Africa specialist. But its interests here are among the most significant, putting Niger easily in the top 10 African countries in terms of Chinese investment, said Deborah Brautigam of American University in Washington, a specialist in China-Africa relations.
As Mr. Tandja consolidated his grip on power, ultimately pushing through a new Constitution that seemed tailor-made to keep him in office indefinitely, the streets rumbled with protests. Yet Mr. Tandja evidently felt buffered by his powerful ally. Chinese cash, Chinese investments, big Chinese projects in oil, uranium and hydroelectric power — potentially worth billions of dollars — had been multiplying in Mr. Tandja’s final years in power in this arid, landlocked country.
“He was counting blindly on the Chinese,” declared a former top official in the Tandja government.
In particular, a crucial “signing bonus” of $300 million, part of a secretive oil deal he reached with China in 2008, has been instrumental in keeping public finances afloat, first for Mr. Tandja and now for the junta that deposed him, Western diplomats.
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