China and Africa

中国和非洲

Beijing curbs its enthusiasm

中国政府抑制了投资热情

NAIROBI

内罗比（肯尼亚首都）

China’s lending to Africa is starting to mirror the West’s

中国对非洲的贷款开始效仿西方

FOR TEN days in May Uhuru Kenyatta, Kenya’s president, vanished from view. Kenyans feigned concern on Twitter, using the hashtag #FindPresidentUhuru. A missing-person poster appealed for information on the whereabouts of a five-foot-eight African male last seen in Beijing. A government spokeswoman sought to reassure the public: Mr Kenyatta had been in his office “meditating”. But others speculate that the president was in a funk after his trip to China failed to yield a new loan for the next phase of Kenya’s ambitious $10bn railway.

今年5月，肯尼亚总统乌胡鲁•肯雅塔(Uhuru Kenyatta)消失了10天。肯尼亚人在推特上用#FindPresidentUhuru这个标签假装关心此事。一张有关该失踪人员的海报呼吁提供有关一名身高5英尺8英寸的非洲男子下落的信息，这名男子最后一次出现在北京。一位政府发言人试图安抚公众:肯雅塔一直在他的办公室里“冥想”。但其他人猜测，在他的中国之行未能为肯尼亚雄心勃勃的100亿美元铁路的下一阶段提供新的贷款后，总统陷入了恐慌。

词汇

Feign/假装；装作

Whereabout/行踪；下落

Meditate/冥想；沉思

Mr Kenyatta could be forgiven for feeling piqued. Beijing’s largesse to Africa has sometimes seemed limitless (see chart). In September China promised another $60bn in aid and loans to the continent. XXX, its president, promised the money would come with “no political strings attached”. John Magufuli, Tanzania’s strongman president, was delighted. The West, he griped, made its money dependent on “strange conditions”, such as insisting that Tanzania should not lock up gay men. “China is a true friend,” he enthused. Its assistance comes “free of charge”.

肯雅塔感到不满是可以原谅的。北京对非洲的慷慨有时似乎是无限的(见图表)。今年9月，中国承诺再向非洲提供600亿美元的援助和贷款。天子承诺，这笔资金将“不附带任何政治条件”。坦桑尼亚铁腕总统约翰•马古夫里(John Magufuli)对此感到高兴。他抱怨说，西方依靠“奇怪的条件”来给予援助，比如坚持坦桑尼亚不应该关押同性恋男子。“中国是一个真正的朋友，”他热情地说。他（中国）的援助是“免费的”。

词汇

Piqued/  赌气的；不满的

Largesse/慷慨的赠与

Being chummy with China has served Tanzania well. It has received more than $2bn in loans since 2010, reckons the China-Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins University. In 2013 China agreed to finance and build a $10bn port in Bagamoyo, once a big slave- and ivory-trading entrepôt but now a sleepy fishing village.

同中国搞好关系，坦桑尼亚受益匪浅。约翰霍普金斯大学(Johns Hopkins University)中非研究项目估计，自2010年以来，坦桑尼亚已获得逾20亿美元贷款。2013年，中国同意出资100亿美元，在Bagamoyo建设一个港口。Bagamoyo曾是一个奴隶和象牙贸易的大转口港，但现在是一个沉睡的渔村。

词汇

Chummy/亲密的；合得来的

Kenya has done even better. It was an early African member of the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s global infrastructure project. It scooped up at least $9.8bn between 2006 and 2017, making it Africa’s third-largest recipient of Chinese loans.

肯尼亚做得更好。它是中国全球基础设施项目“一带一路”的早期非洲成员国。在2006年至2017年期间，中国吸收了至少98亿美元，使其成为非洲第三大接受中国贷款的国家。

 

Mr Kenyatta must have reckoned that his railway project, on which he has staked much political capital, was due another cut of Mr X’s cash. Not only has it been one of China’s highest-profile projects in Africa, but Beijing has already doled out $4.7bn to finance its first two sections. An almost 500km stretch between the port of Mombasa and the capital, Nairobi, is up and running. The second is nearly completed. Kenya had assumed that China would fork out the $3.5bn needed for the penultimate section, to Kisumu on Lake Victoria. If China’s ultimate vision was a railway network connecting resource-rich inland states to Indian Ocean ports, why stop funding the project halfway through?

肯雅塔肯定认为，他押了大量政治资本的铁路项目，应该从X的现金中再分一杯羹。该项目不仅是中国在非洲最引人注目的项目之一，而且中国政府已拨出47亿美元，为其前两个项目提供融资。蒙巴萨港和肯尼亚首都内罗毕之间近500公里的铁路已经开通运行。第二个项目已接近完成。肯尼亚曾以为，中国将为倒数第二段、位于维多利亚湖(Lake Victoria)的基苏木(Kisumu)提供35亿美元。如果中国的最终愿景是建设一条连接资源丰富的内陆各州和印度洋港口的铁路网，为什么要中途停止资助该项目?

词汇

dole out/少量发放

penultimate/倒数第二的

Some Africans suspect that China deliberately lends countries more than they can repay in order to seize strategic assets when they default. They point to the Chinese-financed port at Hambantota in Sri Lanka. After the project flopped commercially, a Chinese state-owned firm took control. Hambantota would be a handy place to park Chinese naval vessels seeking to patrol the Indian Ocean. “The situation that Sri Lanka got itself into may not turn out to be unusual,” says Mutula Kilonzo, a prominent Kenyan senator. “It is going to happen to African countries, too. The conditions of many loans are...a debt trap.”

一些非洲人怀疑，中国故意向一些国家提供超出其偿还能力的贷款，以便在这些国家违约时没收它们的战略资产。他们指的是斯里兰卡汉班托塔的中国投资港口。该项目在商业上失败后，一家中国国有企业取得了控制权。汉班托塔将是停泊在印度洋巡逻的中国海军舰艇的便利地点。一位著名的肯尼亚参议员Mutula Kilonzo说:“斯里兰卡陷入的这种情况可能并不罕见。”“这也将发生在非洲国家。许多贷款的条件是……债务陷阱。”

 

Deborah Brautigam at Johns Hopkins argues that Hambantota is an exception. She looked at more than 3,000 projects overseas financed by China, and found that it was the only example of such an asset being seized to cover a debt.

约翰霍普金斯大学的Deborah Brautigam认为汉班托塔是个例外。她研究了3000多个由中国融资的海外项目，发现这是唯一一个此类资产被没收以偿还债务的例子。

Nonetheless, African leaders are spooked. Dialogue with the Chinese is becoming edgier. On June 7th Mr Magufuli indefinitely suspended construction at Bagamoyo, balking at demands from the project’s Chinese partner for a 99-year lease and a ban on port development elsewhere in Tanzania. Moving smoothly from cheerleader to critic, he accused the firm of setting “tough conditions that can only be accepted by mad people”. Last year Sierra Leone scrapped a Chinese-funded project to build a new international airport for fear that it would involve too much debt.

尽管如此，非洲领导人还是被吓坏了。与中国的对话越来越紧张。6月7日，Magufuli先生无限期地暂停了巴加莫约港的建设，因为该项目的中国合作伙伴要求获得99年的租期，并禁止在坦桑尼亚其他地方进行港口开发。他顺利地从支持者变成了批评者，指责该公司设置了“只有疯子才能接受的苛刻条件”。去年，塞拉利昂取消了一个由中国资助的新建国际机场的项目，担心该项目涉及太多债务。

词汇

Spook/惊吓

ehgy/不安的

The perception of a plot to turn the Indian Ocean into a Chinese lake endangers the political capital China has amassed in Africa. Since Mr Kenyatta came to power in 2013, public debt has nearly tripled. Last year the IMF raised the country’s risk of debt distress from low to moderate. If Kenya defaults, China risks being blamed.

将印度洋变成中国湖泊的阴谋，危及中国在非洲积聚的政治资本。自肯雅塔2013年上台以来，公共债务几乎增加了两倍。去年，国际货币基金组织将该国的债务危机风险从低提升到中等。如果肯尼亚违约，中国将面临被指责的风险。

 

China’s hesitation also reflects the uneven performance of past projects. A railway between Djibouti and Addis Ababa, completed in 2017, cost China’s state-owned insurer Sinosure $1bn in losses, its chief economist said last year. Corruption and mismanagement drive up costs. Sometimes plans smack of unreasonable optimism. Bagamoyo’s port was expected to handle more containers than Rotterdam, Europe’s biggest freight terminal.

中国的犹豫也反映了过去项目的不平衡表现。吉布提至亚的斯亚贝巴之间的一条铁路于2017年完工。中国国有保险公司中国保险(Sinosure)首席经济学家去年表示，这条铁路给该公司造成了10亿美元的亏损。腐败和管理不善抬高了成本。有时计划带有不合理的乐观主义色彩。巴加莫约港预计将比欧洲最大的货运码头鹿特丹处理更多的集装箱。

词汇

Smack/滋味；少量

Kenya’s railway has had its critics from the outset. Corruption made it a ludicrously expensive venture, costing twice the international average per kilometre of track. The railway’s freight-carrying capacity was miscalculated and has proved to be only 40% of what was predicted. It was meant to be cheaper to ship goods up the line than send them by road. Even though the opposite has proved true, Mr Kenyatta’s government has forced all containers coming out of the port onto the railway. Hapless traders in Mombasa have to pay for goods arriving by sea to be sent to Nairobi and back again as a result. China seems to have belatedly realised that throwing good money after bad would be an error.

肯尼亚铁路从一开始就遭到了批评。腐败使其成为一项极其昂贵的冒险，每公里轨道的成本是国际平均水平的两倍。这条铁路的货运能力计算有误，结果仅为预测的40%。这意味着用船运货物要比用公路运输便宜。尽管事实证明情况正好相反，肯雅塔政府还是强迫所有集装箱离开港口，进入铁路。不幸的蒙巴萨商人不得不为海运到内罗毕再运回的货物买单。中国似乎姗姗来迟地意识到，把好钱花在坏钱上将是一个错误。

词汇

Ludicrously/  滑稽地；荒唐地

Belatedly/  延迟地；延续地

 

So it is embracing caution instead. When Mr Kenyatta and his delegation arrived in Beijing in May, they were treated to an unfamiliar experience, according to a presidential adviser. The Kenyans were questioned not only about their sums, but about corruption. Mr Kenyatta was asked how he would afford a census and a referendum on constitutional change. The Chinese even wanted to know if he planned to stand for office again (he is obliged to stand down in 2022). “It was like talking to the World Bank,” grumbled another aide.

因此，它转而采取谨慎态度。一位总统顾问表示，肯雅塔及其代表团今年5月抵达北京时，他们遭遇了一种不熟悉的经历。肯尼亚人不仅被问到钱的问题，还被问到腐败问题。肯雅塔被问及如何负担人口普查和修宪公投的费用。中国人甚至想知道他是否打算再次参选(他不得不在2022年退出)。“这就像在和世界银行对话，”另一位助手抱怨道。

词汇

Census/人口普查

Referendum/公民投票权

Obliged/必须的

stand down/退出（竞选）

Mr Kenyatta did not return from Beijing empty-handed. He agreed to export avocados to China and won funds for a data centre and a road connecting Nairobi’s suburbs to its airport. Such laudably modest deals should be celebrated. Mr X might not be about to champion human rights, but China’s shift closer to Western lending standards is a step in the right direction.

肯雅塔并没有空手而归。他同意向中国出口鳄梨，并为一个数据中心和一条连接内罗毕郊区和机场的公路赢得了资金。这种值得称赞的温和交易应该得到庆祝。X可能不会拥护人权，但中国向西方贷款标准靠拢是朝着正确方向迈出的一步。

词汇

Laudably/值得赞赏地；可嘉地；可佩地