China and Senegal signed five trade pacts on Friday as Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) pressed on with an African tour to boost commercial ties and deflect criticism that Beijing exploits the world’s poorest continent.
According to the Senegalese presidency, the two sides inked a deal to set up a joint body to deepen economic, commercial and technological cooperation.
Under another pact, China extended loans for new buses. A third agreement was a contract for China to buy peanut oil, the presidency said, but did not say how much the deals were worth.
PHOTO: AP
Neither Hu nor Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade spoke with reporters and no press conferences are planned during the visit.
Earlier on Friday, Hu spoke in Mali of the need for China to strengthen relations with Africa during this time of economic crisis.
“We are both developing countries facing the international economic crisis, we should strengthen our relationship. China will continue its aid to Mali,” he said at a foundation stone ceremony for a bridge on the River Niger in Bamako.
China is criticized in the West over its drive to secure natural resources from African states, including from regimes spurned by the West, and Hu has been anxious on his trip to push forward talk of investment and debt-relief.
China’s economy has boomed over recent years, driving oil and other commodity prices to record highs in a scramble for raw materials. The African continent has become a key focus in its efforts to secure supplies.
Beijing is often accused of giving little in return and Hu’s trip to four less resource-rich African nations — Mali, Senegal, Tanzania and Mauritius — has been seen as a move to counter such claims.
Official Chinese figures show trade between China and Africa jumped 45 percent last year, with Chinese exports to the continent up 36.3 percent and its imports, mainly oil, soaring 54 percent.
Western critics of China’s growing role in Africa accuse Beijing of acting in a colonial fashion, focusing only on its own interests, and dealing with outcast regimes such as in Sudan.
Beijing has strongly rejected such criticism, insisting that its involvement is even-handed and of mutual benefit to it and its African partners.
Although relatively small, Mali and Senegal still have significant resources.
Dakar and Beijing re-established diplomatic ties in 2005 after a 10-year hiatus over Senegal’s recognition of Taiwan. Hu’s visit is widely seen as a reward to Dakar for returning to the fold of its “one China” policy.
Hu was to meet senior Senegalese politicians yesterday morning before visiting the site of a new national theater being built with Chinese aid and going on to Tanzania. He will wrap up his tour in Mauritius.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS