Reuters reports that Beijing is being its usual helpful self on Darfur.
Sudan must first agree before any United Nations peacekeeping force enters its war-wracked Darfur region, China said on Thursday, as its President Hu Jintao met the president of the African state. Beijing is hosting dozens of African leaders for a summit opening Friday and intended to show China as a benign force for development on the largely poor continent. But among them is Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, accused by critics of abetting a vicious civil conflict in Darfur. China has lucrative business interests in Sudan, which sells it large amounts of oil, and is a major arms supplier to the country. Beijing has resisted calls to authorise U.N. peacekeepers in Darfur without the nod of the Sudanese government."
Last February, Fortune magazine published a piece, "China's African Safari," on Beijing's "benign" activities on the continent.
...African governments view China as a more cooperative partner than the West. China has refused to back regular Western rebukes of African corruption and human-rights abuses and last year used its permanent seat on the UN Security Council to block genocide charges against Sudan--source of about 7% of China's oil--for the massacres in Darfur. "The U.S. will talk to you about governance, about efficiency, about security, about the environment," says Mustafa Bello, head of the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission, who has visited China seven times. "The Chinese just ask, 'How do we procure this license?'" China has become the biggest foreign investor in Zimbabwe, where President Robert Mugabe's policies have beggared the country and left millions homeless. Zimbabwe doesn't have oil, but it is the world's second-largest exporter of platinum, a key import for China's auto industry. Chinese radio-jamming devices block Zimbabwe's dissident broadcasts, and Chinese workers built Mugabe's new $9 million home, featuring a blue-tiled roof donated by the Chinese government. While Western politicians railed against Mugabe last year for flattening entire shantytowns, China was supplying him with fighter jets and troop carriers worth about $240 million, in exchange for imports of gold and tobacco.
And so it goes.