Oil, arms and a marriage of convenience

China’s involvement in Sudan stretches back more than a decade and has snowballed to the extent that it now supplies nearly a quarter of the African country’s imports and accounts for about 70% of its exports, mostly oil.

But despite growing global criticism of Chinese blank cheques written to the regime in Khartoum, Beijing has shifted its policy in the past 18 months. Though President Hu Jintao announced a $13m interest-free loan for a new palace for his Sudanese counterpart, Omar al-Bashir, and cancelled debt worth $70m during a visit to Sudan in February last year, his government publicly called for a ceasefire and a negotiated settlement in Darfur.


A special envoy, Liu Guijin, was later appointed to help find a political solution in Darfur, and a team of 300 engineers was committed to support the peace effort.

Most significantly, analysts say, China backed security resolution 1769, which nearly tripled the size of the peacekeeping force in Darfur to 20,000 and brought in the UN alongside the African Union, which had led the mission. After successfully lobbying Bashir to accept the new force, China announced a $10m contribution to humanitarian aid in the country.

But many experts question how much pressure China is really exerting. Although the Chinese delegation at last month’s African Union summit warned that the world was “running out of patience on Darfur”, Sudan’s government continues to hamper the new peacekeeping mission’s deployment, and last week launched the heaviest aerial attacks on villages in Darfur for more than a year.

Guardian