[Vision2020] China's Complicity With Darfur Atrocities

[Ted Moffett]

All-

I previously posted an article about China's involvement in Sudan and
China's complicity, if not direct responsibility, for the "genocide" there
in the Darfur region.  Why does it seem that China is getting a pass by our
government and our media for their involvement in horrendous human rights
abuses in Sudan?  A car bomb blows up in the United Kingdom and our media is
obsessed with the connection to Islamic terrorism, and Al Queda.  Yet
hundreds of thousands are slaughtered and tortured in Darfur,
and China's complicity seems off the radar.

Do I have this wrong when I suggest there is some sort of bias in the media
and/or from our government when comparing how the terrorist bombings, by
Islamic terrorists, in the United Kingdom, and the "terrorist" attacks
towards Africans in Sudan, with China's involvement, are being handled?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21143-2004Dec22.html

*China Invests Heavily In Sudan's Oil Industry*
Beijing Supplies Arms Used on Villagers

By Peter S. Goodman
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, December 23, 2004; Page A01

LEAL, Sudan -- On this parched and dusty African plain, China's largest
energy company is pumping crude oil, sending it 1,000 miles upcountry
through a Chinese-made pipeline to the Red Sea, where tankers wait to ferry
it to China's industrial cities. Chinese laborers based in a camp of
prefabricated sheds work the wells and lay highways across the flats to make
way for heavy machinery.

Only seven miles south, the rebel army that controls much of southern Sudan
marches troops through this sun-baked town of mud huts. For years, the
rebels have attacked oil installations, seeking to deprive the Sudan
government of the wherewithal to pursue a civil war that has killed more
than 2 million people and displaced 4 million from their homes over the past
two decades. But the Chinese laborers are protected: They work under the
vigilant gaze of Sudanese government troops armed largely with Chinese-made
weapons -- a partnership of the world's fastest-growing oil consumer with a
pariah state accused of fostering genocide in its western Darfur region.

China's transformation from an insular, agrarian society into a key force in
the global economy has spawned a voracious appetite for raw materials,
sending its companies to distant points of the globe in pursuit -- sometimes
to lands shunned by the rest of the world as rogue states. China's
relationship with Sudan has become particularly deep, demonstrating that
China's commercial relations are intensifying human rights concerns outside
its borders while beginning to clash with U.S. policies and interests.

Sudan is China's largest overseas oil project. China is Sudan's largest
supplier of arms, according to a former Sudan government minister.
Chinese-made tanks, fighter planes, bombers, helicopters, machine guns and
rocket-propelled grenades have intensified Sudan's two-decade-old
north-south civil war. A cease-fire is in effect and a peace agreement is
expected to be signed by year-end. But the fighting in Sudan's Darfur region
rages on, as government-backed Arab militias push African tribes off their
land.

China in October signed a $70 billion oil deal with Iran, and the evolving
ties between those two countries could complicate U.S. efforts to isolate
Iran diplomatically or pressure it to give up its ambitions for nuclear
weapons. China is also pursuing oil in Angola.

In the case of Sudan, Africa's largest country, China is in a lucrative
partnership that delivers billions of dollars in investment, oil revenue and
weapons -- as well as diplomatic protection -- to a government accused by
the United States of genocide in Darfur and cited by human rights groups for
systematically massacring civilians and chasing them off ancestral lands to
clear oil-producing areas. The country once gave safe haven to Osama bin
Laden and is listed by Washington as a state supporter of terrorism. U.S.
companies are prohibited from investing there.

Part of a broader push by China to expand trade and influence across the
African continent, its relationship with Sudan also demonstrates the
intensity of China's quest for energy security and its willingness to do
business wherever it must to lock up oil.

>From Kazakhstan to the Middle East, past pursuits have ended in failure as
Chinese firms have been aced out by the multinational titans that dominate
the energy business. Japan appears set to claim Siberian stocks that China
once thought were in hand. The U.S.-led war in Iraq has thrown Chinese oil
concessions in that country into doubt.

The pressure to find new sources of oil has grown as China has swelled into
the world's second-largest consumer and as production at the largest of its
domestic fields is declining. According to government statistics, China's
imports have grown from about 6 percent of its oil needs a decade ago to
roughly one-third today and are forecast to rise to rise to 60 percent by
2020.

"China confronts foreign competition," said Chen Fengying, an expert at the
China Contemporary International Relations Institute, which is based in
Beijing and affiliated with the state security system. "Chinese companies
must go places for oil where American [and] European companies are not
present. Sudan represents this strategy put into practice."

China National Petroleum Corp. owns 40 percent -- the largest single share
-- of the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Co., a consortium that dominates
Sudan's oil fields in partnership with the national energy company and firms
from Malaysia and India.

>From its seat on the United Nations Security Council, China has been Sudan's
chief diplomatic ally. In recent months, the council has neared votes on a
series of resolutions aimed at pressuring Sudan's predominantly Arab
government to protect the African tribes under attack in Darfur and stop
support for militias by threatening to sanction its oil sales. China has
threatened to veto such actions while watering down the threat of oil
sanctions.

"China has a long tradition of friendly relations with Sudan," Wang Guangya,
China's ambassador to the U.N., said in a recent interview in New York. He
confirmed China's veto threats, though he dismissed as "categorically wrong"
suggestions that oil interests were a factor, asserting that the resolutions
would have eliminated the Sudan government's incentive to cooperate. China
-- itself often criticized on human rights issues -- has a philosophical
predisposition against outside pressure.

But Chinese diplomatic experts say oil interests clearly played a role in
Beijing's actions at the United Nations.

"Oil from Sudan makes up one-tenth of all of China's imported oil," said Zhu
Weilie, director of Middle East and North African Studies at Shanghai
International Studies University, who has links with the Foreign Affairs
Ministry. "If we lose this source, how can we find another market to replace
it? China has to balance its interests."

Sudan is not a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries,
but it was granted observer status in August 2001, a sign it is being
recognized as a significant oil producer. Its proven reserves are currently
563 million barrels, double what they were three years ago.

In an interview in Sudan's capital, Khartoum, Energy and Mining Minister
Awad Ahmed Jaz praised his Chinese partners for sticking to trade issues.

"The Chinese are very nice," he said. "They don't have anything to do with
any politics or problems. Things move smoothly, successfully. They are very
hard workers looking for business, not politics."

Human rights advocates and opponents of the Sudanese government portray
China's role in different terms: Just as colonial powers once supplied
African chieftains the military means to maintain control as they extracted
natural resources, China is propping up a rogue regime to get what it needs.

"The Chinese calculation is to consolidate and expand while Sudan is still a
pariah state," said John Ryle, chairman of the Rift Valley Institute, a
Nairobi-based research group that focuses on East Africa.

One of the poorest countries in the world, Sudan has long aimed to extract
oil riches but lacked the necessary capital. It needed the help of
deep-pocketed outsiders. In the 1960s and 1970s, Chevron Corp. took the
lead. But as the civil war flared in the south in the 1980s, Chevron
abandoned its concessions. During the early 1990s, the Canadian firm Arakis
Energy Corp. took up the task, later selling out to a larger Canadian
company, Talisman Energy Inc.

China National Petroleum Corp., still owned by the Communist Party
government, bought into the Sudan consortium in 1996. It joined with Sudan's
Energy Ministry to build the country's largest refinery, then last year
invested in a $300 million expansion that nearly doubled production,
according to a report in the Shenzhen Business Post.

The consortium's Heglig and Unity oil fields now produce 350,000 barrels per
day, according to the U.S. Energy Department. Separately, CNPC owns most of
a field in southern Darfur, which began trial production this year, and 41
percent of a field in the Melut Basin, which is expected to produce as much
as 300,000 barrels per day by the end of 2006. Another Chinese firm, Sinopec
Corp., is erecting a pipeline from that complex to Port Sudan on the Red
Sea, where China's Petroleum Engineering Construction Group is building a
tanker terminal.

Sudan's bloody north-south conflict began long before China arrived, but oil
has dramatically increased the stakes as well as the government's ability to
pursue the battle. The war is a struggle over the resources of the south,
pitting the mostly Muslim, Arab elite that runs the government in Khartoum
against the largely Christian and animist African tribes who live in the
lower half of the country.

For years, the government lacked the arms to vanquish the Sudan People's
Liberation Army, the rebel group that controls much of the south. With the
dawn of oil production in 1999, Sudan's government began collecting $500
million a year in revenue. About 80 percent went to buy weapons, said Lam
Akol, who was Sudan's transportation minister from 1998 to 2002 and is now a
rebel commander. Over the same period, Sudan's military budget has doubled,
according to the International Monetary Fund. A study by PFC Strategic
Studies concluded that the Sudan government could collect as much as $30
billion in total oil revenue by 2012, with the potential for much more if
exploration succeeds.

As the oil began to flow, Sudan relied on Chinese assistance to set up three
weapons factories near Khartoum, Ryle said. Human rights groups say oil
receipts have helped pay for a government-led scorched-earth campaign to
remove mostly ethnic Nuer and Dinka tribes from around the oil
installations. The goal is to deprive the rebels of a base of support in
their bid to attack the industry and undermine the government's oil revenue.

A report by the U.S.-funded Civilian Protection Monitoring Team, which
investigates attacks in southern Sudan, asserted that government troops have
"sought to clear the way for oil exploration and to create a *cordon
sanitaire *around the oil fields."

"This government has always waged war against civilians," said Jemera Rone,
Sudan researcher for Human Rights Watch in Washington. Aided by an influx of
newly purchased helicopters, a government attack in Ruweng county in October
2001 displaced 80,000 people, according to a Human Rights Watch report. The
next year, government troops again used helicopters, killing 24 people
during an attack on an emergency food distribution center.

The Nuer people who now live in Leal were at the center of this contested
area. Their former town, Nhialdiu, was wiped off the map on Feb. 26, 2002,
in an attack confirmed by survivors and rebel commanders.

Mortar shells landed at dawn. Then came helicopter gunships, directing fire
at the huts. Antonov airplanes dropped heavy bombs. Roughly 7,000 government
troops, mixed with pro-government militias, then swept through with rifles
and more than 20 tanks.

"Any human being who could not get away was killed, even children," said the
chief of Leal, Tunguar Kuiyguong, who lost three of his 10 children that
day. About 3,000 of the town's 10,000 inhabitants died, he said, and every
house was burned to the ground. The soldiers made off with 10,000 head of
cattle, which are the fundamental currency of Nuer life -- the payment for
brides and the source of meat, milk and pride.

"The Chinese want to drill for oil, that is why we were pushed out," said
Rusthal Yackok, who was blinded, his wife and six children killed. "Now, I
have no family, no cows," he said. "I have nothing. My life is totally
destroyed."

Even as people fled, walking more than seven miles to settle on a treeless
plain, the bombs continued to rain down and the helicopter gunships buzzed
in pursuit. "We would see the helicopters and try to hide in the grasses,"
said David Majang. People stripped off their colorful robes to try to blend
in with the scrub.

Today, people in Leal try to coax crops from unproductive soil. They line up
at wells drilled by an aid organization and await the next shipment of food
aid. "Oil has brought devastation to our lives," said Stephen Mayang, a
father of three whose legs were badly hurt during the attack.

China National Petroleum Corp. refused repeated requests over the past 10
months for an in-person interview to discuss its operations in Sudan.

Last week, in a telephone call, a spokesman said the company bears no
responsibility for the war. "We do our own business," he said. "Nothing
else."

But field reports produced by human rights groups describe a connection
between the people extracting the oil and those waging the war. Some of the
helicopter gunships used in the attacks on civilians are Chinese-made,
according to Akol, the former Khartoum transportation minister. The
helicopters, he said, have frequently been based at airstrips maintained by
the oil companies -- a statement consistent with the findings of
Canada-based World Vision when it interviewed survivors of attacks and
defecting government soldiers in 2001.

"The Chinese have every reason not to lose these oil fields, and that is why
they are committed to fighting the war by supplying the Sudan government the
wherewithal," Akol said.

A recent report in the state-controlled China Business News quotes a Chinese
foreign affairs official as saying that Beijing has asked Khartoum to "send
troops" to areas in which Chinese companies operate.

The exit of Canada's Talisman company from Sudan was largely a reaction to
public pressure. China National Petroleum has felt similar pressures. In
April 1999, the company announced plans to sell shares on the New York Stock
Exchange -- the first Chinese state-owned firm to land on the Big Board. It
was to be the largest initial public offering in the exchange's history,
valued at $10 billion. But human rights groups said the deal would be the
effective use of U.S. financing to aid the killing of innocents in Sudan.
Eventually, CNPC restructured the transaction. It sold $2.9 billion in a
newly created subsidiary, PetroChina, asserting that none of the money would
be used in Sudan.

Ultimately, it may be peace that presents the Chinese firm with its greatest
challenge. Under the terms of an agreement still being negotiated, oil
contracts are supposed to remain secure. But three commanders of the
southern Sudan rebel group said in interviews that the SPLA will seek to
punish China once the rebels gain a formal decision-making role in the
government.

The stakes could be considerable: Peace would allow the world's major energy
companies to enter Sudan's oil patch. Moreover, roughly two-fifths of all
known reserves -- oil worth more than $16 billion -- are now in
rebel-controlled territory, according to the study by PFC, the strategic
analysis group.

"The suffering of the people is on the hands of the Chinese," said commander
Deng Awou. "The agreements for the Chinese company may be terminated."

*Correspondents Emily Wax in Khartoum, Colum Lynch in New York and special
correspondent Jason Cai in Shanghai contributed to this report.*

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Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
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