Cables Reveal Resentment at Chinese Influence in Africa

[Heraclitus]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...733870,00.html

China has strengthened its economic and political ties in Africa in recent years in an effort to open up new markets and secure much-needed raw materials. The leaked US diplomatic cables reveal that Africans are growing increasingly resentful of China's aims and methods.

The young worker had had enough. He was fed up with all the accidents, all the broken promises, the anger of the supervisors and, lastly, the pay raises that were pledged but which never came. So, in mid-October, Vincent Chengele, 20, and some of his fellow coal miners gathered in front of the Collum Coal Mine in southern Zambia. Before long, there were a number of miners protesting against their bosses -- Chinese investors who had bought the mine in 2003.

All of a sudden, shots rang out as Chinese overseers began firing wildly into the crowd. Chengele and 10 other miners fell to the ground injured.

A wave of outrage went through Zambia. Even President Rupiah Banda, who usually supported Chinese investment in his country, condemned the violent response. Elijah Muchima, a minister in Southern Province where the mine is located, complained that Zambians were "being treated like animals." He criticized how the workers were paid as day laborers rather than being given contracts, and condemned their "slave salaries."

It wasn't the first time there had been conflict with the Chinese. The mine had already been closed on several occasions due to dangerous conditions. In 2006, some brusque Chinese foremen simply refused to allow the Zambian minister responsible for mining to enter the complex.

And allowing the Chinese in Zambia to have weapons would also appear to be a bad idea: According to the Tanzanian English-language daily The Citizen, a Chinese foreman fired upon striking workers at a copper mine in Zambia a few months ago. The paper reported that some people were even comparing the Chinese to "Africa's former colonial masters."

Hungry for Markets and Materials

China is currently more active in Africa than any other foreign power. Chinese President Hu Jintao has already visited 20 African countries, and the Chinese premier and foreign minister have also made regular visits to the continent. Likewise, ministerial-level meetings between African and Chinese officials are frequently held -- and are popular with the Africans because they often return home with new contracts in their pockets. In 2009 alone, Chinese companies invested roughly $56.5 billion (€41.3 billion) in Africa.

In recent years, the Chinese government and private Chinese companies have signed hundreds of contracts with African partners. China has extended loans worth billions and sent thousands of workers to Africa, which is now home to almost a million Chinese. They have built hundreds of hospitals and thousands of kilometers of roads, as well as government buildings, railway lines and football stadiums.

If it weren't for this aid, many African countries would be significantly worse off than they currently are. China, the manufacturing giant, needs Africa as a market for its goods. But, even more importantly, it needs Africa in order to satisfy its need for raw materials. And the Chinese have a thirst for all kinds of natural resources, including gold, wood, copper, coal, oil and coltan.

Growing Resentment

American diplomats posted in Africa keep a very close eye on the activities of the world's only other major power. Indeed, they send very detailed reports to Washington from almost all of the countries in Africa. But the leaked dispatches don't only include information about the skyrocketing growth in trade. They also discuss the growing resentment among Africans toward the Chinese. Naturally the whole discussion revolves around issues such as power on the continent, security interests and spheres of influence. And often billions of dollars are at stake.

For example, international observers were astonished at the end of 2007 when the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo reached a comprehensive deal worth over $9.2 billion with Beijing. The agreement guaranteed China mining rights that will help it secure 10 million tons of copper and 620,000 tons of cobalt.

"The Sino-Congolese agreement immediately raised concerns among both multilateral and bilateral donors regarding the loan-agreements on the Democratic Republic of Congo's debt sustainability," is how one dispatch from American diplomats later described it. Congo already owed billions of dollars to the World Bank and other Western creditors, so a new contract with China would make it more difficult for them to secure payments on either the interest or the principal of their loans.

At a later point, William Garvelink, America's ambassador to Congo, wrote: "Throughout 2008 and the first half of 2009, neither the Chinese nor the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo indicated any real willingness to revise the agreement to ensure compatibility with debt sustainability."

The dispatches coming out of the US Embassy in the Congolese capital Kinshasa provide rare insights into the worlds of international finance and development policy. For example, in May 2009, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), came to Kinshasa. "While the visit was ostensibly to discuss the impact of the global financial crisis on a number of African countries, in reality, however, it was used to push the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo to take the necessary political steps to engage the Chinese on renegotiating the Sino-Congolese agreement," reads one cable.

Eventually, Western pressure had an effect, and Congolese President Joseph Kabila caved in. The agreement was trimmed down by about a third.

...

[DaShi]

Wonderful insight Hera.

[DaShi]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/21/arts/design/21velazquez.html?_r=1&hpw=&pagewanted=print

December 20, 2010
Reconsidered, a Met Velázquez Is Vindicated
By CAROL VOGEL
For nearly 60 years the portrait of a baby-faced Philip IV by Velázquez hung in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s European paintings galleries, a stunning example of the only 110 or so known canvases by that 17th-century Spanish master. Majestic in size, it was rare in its depiction of a young, uncertain monarch and was the earliest known portrait of Philip by Velázquez, who, as the king’s court painter, went on to record his image for decades.

So it was quite a shock when, in 1973, the Met, reconsidering 300 of its most treasured works, declared that the painting was not a Velázquez and was probably executed in his studio by an assistant or follower.

But in the museum world, 37 years is several lifetimes, especially considering how extraordinarily technology and scholarship have advanced. Now, after a year of examination and restoration, curators, conservators and scholars have changed their minds. They are convinced that this full-length portrait of the 18-year-old king is indeed by Velázquez. The painting, which has been undergoing restoration since August 2009, will be back on display Tuesday.

“It is the restitution to Velázquez of a very important work,” said Keith Christiansen, the Met’s chairman of European paintings. “For the museum, how could it not be important? One of the greatest painters of Western tradition — and a royal portrait to boot — is vindicated.”

Jonathan Brown, the leading Velázquez scholar in the United States, who for years thought the painting was by the artist’s workshop, has been making regular visits to the Met, observing the painting during each step of the restoration process. Now he agrees with Mr. Christiansen.

“I was surprised,” he said in a telephone interview. “Although it has suffered losses, what remains is by Velázquez.”

One recent afternoon Mr. Christiansen stood in the museum’s conservation studio, a north-facing space overlooking Central Park, and explained that the “workshop” attribution had bothered him for years. The 1973 reconsideration had downgraded a full 15 percent of what was then the museum’s European paintings collection, including works that had been attributed to El Greco, Rembrandt and Vermeer. But in this case the museum had the receipt signed by Velázquez and dated Dec. 4, 1624 — the same year the work was painted — that was proof of payment for this portrait of Philip.

It was only after Michael Gallagher, the Met’s chief paintings conservator, cleaned a later Velázquez portrait of King Philip from the Frick Collection that Mr. Christiansen asked him to take a look at the Met’s painting.

The men knew they were pushing their luck. This is the second reattribution the museum has made of a painting by Velázquez. Last year, after considerable study and conservation, Mr. Christensen and Mr. Gallagher concluded that “Portrait of a Man,” a bust-length portrait of a mustached man in his mid-30s, was also by Velázquez and not by his workshop.

But the portrait of Philip was a far more daunting conservation project. First, it is large, nearly seven feet tall, depicting Philip standing full-length wearing a black suit, a black woolen cape and a wide, flat ruff with only the simplest of pleating. And unlike “Portrait of a Man,” which was always in good condition, this canvas has been in poor shape for a long time. So poor, in fact, that Mr. Gallagher was at first terrified to touch it.

“I thought I was opening a potential can of worms,” he recalled.

The painting had last been cleaned and restored around 1911, when it was in the possession of Joseph Duveen, the legendary dealer who encouraged restorers to tone down paintings to make them look more serious (hence more salable) and to repaint any areas that were worn or damaged. As a result, this painting had decades of yellowed varnish and considerable repainting.

In fact, so much painting had been done over the original that it was impossible to tell what the initial image had been.

“X-rays gave us some clues,” Mr. Gallagher said. “But its true condition was obfuscated by the decades of varnish and the liberal repainting.” There was another big problem: Philip’s left eye was missing, possibly because of natural flaking or vandalism.

Still, once they began to study the canvas in depth, Mr. Christiansen said he felt the painting “was so altered in its appearance that it was a falsification,” an image so far from its original conception that “if Michael hadn’t proceeded with the restoration, I was going to put it in storage.”

So Mr. Gallagher began to restore the canvas, with extreme caution. The results of the first cleaning test were alarming.

“X-rays showed numerous losses, particularly in the upper part of the composition,” he said. “And a cleaning test on the right-hand side of the canvas, where the table, hat and hand are, revealed that portions of the black had literally been scrubbed away. As a color, black tends to be more vulnerable to the caustic cleaning materials that were not infrequently used earlier in the 20th century.”

Still, it wasn’t all bad. When the varnish and over-painting were removed for the first time, details in the composition emerged — the delicate hands, the strongly characterized head, the simple white collar, the elaborate gold chain, the draping of the clothes — that had the unmistakable characteristics of the artist.

“The way the light played on the collar: those few deft brushstrokes were identifying traits of Velázquez,” Mr. Christiansen said.

With more discoveries came more questions. X-rays showed that the same composition as the Met’s painting is buried beneath a slightly later full-length portrait of Philip in the Prado in Madrid.

“What happened we don’t know,” Mr. Gallagher said. “It’s peculiar.”

He and Mr. Christiansen said they believed that the image buried in the Prado portrait is likely to have been the official portrait of the king, which was later repainted by Velázquez. The Met’s painting, they believe, is a signed replica of the original Prado picture.

“It was probably an official portrait done for someone associated with the court, since ministers and courtiers were expected to own official portraits of the king,” Mr. Christensen said, explaining that painters like Velázquez would often keep a template or a tracing of a composition like this so they could recycle it.

There is, for instance, a more sophisticated, full-length portrait in the Prado. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, has a version that scholars all agree is by the artist’s workshop. And in the Meadows Museum in Dallas there is a bust-length portrait of Philip done around the same time as the Met’s painting that proved invaluable to Mr. Gallagher.

By obtaining an acetate tracing of it, he discovered that it matched up perfectly with the Met’s painting — so perfectly that Mr. Gallagher was able to lay the tracing over the Met’s canvas to position and repaint the missing eye correctly, right down to its slight droopiness.

It was the closeness of these two canvases that led both him and Mr. Christiansen to wonder about the Prado’s portrait as well as about the extensive use of tracing in Velázquez’s practice. So in January 2009 the men went off to Madrid, taking with them a full-length acetate tracing of their painting. It was there that they learned that their portrait must have been copied from the painting that is visible only through X-rays underneath the Prado’s portrait. Once again the two matched up.

It also helped Mr. Gallagher better understand Velázquez’s intentions as he retouched as gingerly as possible. “It was really a careful knitting together,” he said, “suppressing damage in order to give the artist’s original work precedence.”

“I like to think of the damage as white noise,” Mr. Gallagher added. “And the retouching tunes that out.”

[Hauldren Collider]

I'm shocked that the US feels competitive about global influence.

[pchang]

Not US feelings

They are just reporting on African feelings. Chinese people can be very racist. This is not surprising to me at all.

[Hauldren Collider]

People can be racist?

[Kitschum]

In other news I heard Nigeria and Sudan preferred the Chinese to moralistic Westerners. I think this is just American wishful thinking.