From Richard Gustafson at the University of Denver, here is an academic analysis of “China’s Growing Influence on the African Continent.” From the abstract:

Because of their colonial histories, African nations tend to be splintered, and conflicts on the continent are frequently internal. Following the Tienanmen Square incident in 1989 and the end of Cold War, the West’s financial support to Cold War allies diminished at the same time China shifted the focus of its foreign policy toward Africa. It offered aid and low interest loans with few or no conditions regarding governance or human rights. The continuous power struggles and efforts to maintain power make China’s overtures tempting to many African leaders. Many of China’s interactions come at the expense of the citizens of African nations and create a long-term detriment to economies on the African continent.

From the Aspen Times:

“I urge the Chinese government to release Tibetan political prisoners, account for Tibetans who have, quote, ‘disappeared’ since protests in March, and engage in meaningful dialogue on genuine autonomy for Tibet,” McCain said.

Nicely put, Senator.

The piece is in english, but a french translation would be very cool…any takers?

Please watch it, and then pass it along.

The prosecutor of the world’s first permanent war crimes tribunal will seek an arrest warrant Monday charging Sudan’s president with crimes against humanity and genocide in Darfur, a move U.N. diplomats warned could bring a backlash from Sudan’s government.

U.N. officials and diplomats said the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court would seek an indictment charging Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir with orchestrating violence in Darfur that has left hundreds of thousands of people dead.

Woops, bad timing for al-Bashir and the rest of the thuggish regime in Khartoum. For years, Beijing has been the chief financial and political enabler of the mass-murder in Darfur, but with China’s role in the genocide increasingly being tied to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, and with the games only weeks away, Beijing may have to throw its partner in genocide under the bus, at least publicly. The AP piece continues:

China’s U.N. Ambassador Wang Guangya, whose nation is an ally of Sudan, expressed concern that bringing charges against al-Bashir could jeopardize peace talks and put peacekeepers and humanitarian aid workers in Darfur at greater risk.

“It’s one of the implications we have to consider,” he said.

Wow, talk about a luke-warm reaction.  Of course, the Chinese ambassador failed to mention that the need for peacekeepers and humanitarian aid workers is due to Khartoum’s mass-slaughter in Darfur in the first place…a mass-slaughter that Beijing has enabled over the years.  Nor does the ambassador actually defend al-Bashir.  Kind of sounds like the regime in Khartoum  will have to do without overt support from its fellow thugs in Beijing…at least until after the Olympics.

For background and information about China’s outrageous economic and political complicity in the genocide in Darfur, check out Regime Watch’s Darfur archive here.

The first post on regime watch was about my article “Misery: China’s Main Export,” which describes Communist China’s moral illegitimacy to host the 2008 Olympics, and which was first published in the excellent weekly Colorado newspaper, Johnstown Breeze. Here it is, re-printed in its entirety. And again, thanks to everyone who found their way to this blog…hope you come back from time to time.

In 2005, Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo introduced a resolution into the House of Representatives calling on the U.S. Olympic Committee to change the venue of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, citing among other things, the “egregious violations of human rights” by China.

And indeed, while Communist China is well qualified to host an international gathering of thugs and tyrants, the regime’s moral legitimacy as host of the Olympics is another matter entirely.

In May 2007, The Hill—a Washington, D.C. newspaper that covers Congress—reported on “a quiet lobbying campaign” in Washington by China in an attempt to “deflect threats that the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing will be boycotted because of what critics say is a Chinese failure to help end genocidal violence in Darfur.”

Actually, far from simply failing to help end the slaughter, China’s outright complicity in the genocide being perpetrated by the National Islamic Front regime in Khartoum against non-Arab tribes-people in the Darfur region of Sudan is well established

A March 2007 report from the Washington D.C.-based Heritage Foundation notes that China’s huge investment in Sudan oil in turn helps fund the genocide in Darfur, “Khartoum has doubled its defense budget in recent years, spending 60 percent to 80 percent of its estimated $500 million in annual oil revenue—half from China—on weapons. Some of these weapons find their way to the conflict in Darfur.”

Beijing has also helped subvert international arm embargoes against Khartoum. As the Heritage report continues, “Moreover, with Chinese assistance, the Sudanese government recently built three weapons factories.”

So with China’s help, the Janjaweed militias carrying out the genocide in Darfur are not only well-armed, but have also received military transportation and helicopter gunship support from Khartoum, making the slaughter all the more efficient.

In 2006, China not only abstained from a United Nations Security Council Resolution authorizing the deployment of troops and civilian police into Darfur to provide security against the genocide, but also used its veto power to force language into the resolution requiring the consent of the same Khartoum regime whose mass-murder in Darfur created the need for an international security force in the first place.

But the lobbying campaign didn’t work out as Beijing may have hoped. In May 2007, Congressman Tom Lantos (D-Ca.) released a letter to the Chinese President signed by over 100 members of Congress, including Colorado’s Tancredo stating, among other things, “…unless China does its part to ensure that the government of Sudan accepts the best and most reasonable path to peace, history will judge your government as having bank-rolled a genocide.”

The letter continues, “If China fails to do its part, it risks being forever known as the host of the ‘Genocide Olympics.’ ”

Besides enabling genocide in Darfur, China is also well into its fiftieth year of a military occupation of Tibet. Many thousands of Tibetans—including Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama—are forced to live in exile around the world

Last year, Beijing showed its hyper-sensitivity to having its thuggish occupation of Tibet tied to the Olympics by detaining and then deporting Colorado resident Kirsten Westby and four other Americans for peacefully displaying a banner saying “One World, One Dream, Free Tibet 2008” on the Tibetan side of Mount Everest.

The slogan was a clever play on Beijing’s own cynical slogan for the 2008 Olympics, “One World, One Dream.”

In addition, Beijing is again threatening violence against the peaceful and democratic island nation of Taiwan, over which China claims sovereignty—even though it is plainly obvious that Taiwan function as an independent state—and that only Beijing may represent Taiwan’s 23 million citizens in international organizations.

In 2005, Beijing enacted an “Anti-Secession Law” which codified China’s already long-standing threats against Taiwan. Article eight of the law mandates the use of “Non-peaceful” means against Taiwan if, among other things, “a major event occurs which would lead to Taiwan’s separation from China.”

After more than a decade of being turned down for United Nations membership under its traditional name “Republic of China,” Taiwan is planning a national referendum this year over whether to formally apply for UN membership under the name “Taiwan.”

Beijing recently stated that Taiwan’s referendum represents the kind of “major event” that would allow the regime to invoke article eight against Taiwan.

So Communist China is desperately trying to put on a friendly face for the Olympics while at the same time threatening one of Asia’s most dynamic representative democracies.

The eyes of the world will be on Beijing for the summer games, making the 2008 Olympics a unique opportunity to shine an international spotlight on the misery China exports around the globe.

It’s from last year, but is just as relevant today. If you want a primer on the relationship between the regime in Beijing and the regime in Khartoum, and how China has not only helped fund the ongoing genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan, but has also armed and given political cover to its perpetrators, give it a listen (MP3 compatible).

The term “Genocide Olympics” refers to the fact that China, the host nation of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, is complicit in the genocide in Darfur, and therefore lacks the moral legitimacy to host the Olympics.

Through its growing oil revenues, the government of Sudan has also been able to expand its purchasing of arms, which are being used to sustain the violence in Darfur. For decades China has sold Sudan arms, but its small arms exports to Sudan have increased significantly in the last several years. From 1999 to 2005, a period that includes the start of the Darfur crisis, Sudan’s imports of small arms increased by 680 percent, and from 2004 to 2006, China made up an average of 90 percent of those small arms sales to Sudan. From 2003 to 2006, China sold over $55 million worth of small arms to Khartoum.

In order to protect its client regime, Beijing uses its clout on the UN Security Council to give Khartoum political cover. The report continues:

China has also provided robust political support for the government of Sudan in spite of the violence in Darfur. This is clearly demonstrated in the way China has repeatedly obstructed United Nation Security Council efforts to take action to stop the violence in Darfur by threatening to veto resolutions addressing the conflict. Between 2004 and 2007, the Security Council debated 14 substantive resolutions about Darfur, and China used its power to weaken nine of them. On most occasions, China forced the removal of tough language, including the threat or imposition of targeted economic sanctions.

Beijing and Khartoum, a match made in…well, it sure isn’t heaven.

Human Rights First also has an online petition to stop arms sales to Sudan.

If you are Christopher Hitchens, you do it something like this:

Those who care or purport to care about human rights must start to discuss this problem in plain words. Is there an initiative to save the un-massacred remains of the people of Darfur? It will be met by a Chinese veto. Does anyone care about Robert Mugabe treating his desperate population as if it belonged to him personally? China is always ready to help him out. Are the North Koreans starved and isolated so that a demented playboy can posture with nuclear weapons? Beijing will give the demented playboy a guarantee. How long can Southeast Asia bear the shame and misery of the Burmese junta? As long as the embrace of China persists. The identity of Tibet is being obliterated by the deliberate importation of Chinese settlers. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a man who claims even to know and determine the sex lives of his serfs (by the way, the very essence of totalitarianism), is armed and financed by China. It was this way when President Bill Clinton wanted the United Nations to take on Slobodan Milosevic and was stymied (by China, among others), and it was this way when President Bush asked the United Nations to live up to its resolutions on Saddam Hussein. And now I hear human rights activists bleating about Burma and our inaction and simultaneously complaining about the only time that any U.S. president had the nerve to break the hold of China (and Russia, and sometimes France) on the possibility of any international rescue.

China also maintains territorial claims against India and Vietnam (and, of course, Taiwan) and is building a vast army, as well as a huge oceangoing navy, to back up these ambitions.

There’s more.

Hitchens actually started out talking about Beijing’s cozy relationship with the vicious military dictatorship in Burma. With the recent news that swaths of Burma have been devastated by Cyclone Nargis, the ineptitude of dictatorships in dealing with natural disasters (as opposed to their specialty of creating man-made disasters) will sadly be on display to the world, and in fact may have already begun.

From yesterday’s USA Today:

U.S. and international aid groups scrambled Monday to send help to victims of what could be Asia’s worst natural disaster since the 2004 tsunami, but roads were closed in the low-lying delta region that was hardest hit.

First lady Laura Bush said the U.S. government had rushed $250,000 to aid organizations operating in Burma. However, she said further aid could be delayed because Burma’s government, one of the world’s most isolationist military regimes, has not yet agreed to allow a U.S. disaster response team into the country.

Maybe the junta in Burma is waiting for marching orders from Beijing first.