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China rejects German official’s criticism of its Africa farm investments
by Chuin-Wei Yap
When it comes to famine in Africa, China seems an easy target for critics of its rising outbound investments. It’s not much of a secret that the Chinese have been swiftly stepping up their investment profile on the continent, including enough forays into Africa’s agricultural sector that a senior Chinese envoy in June took pains to reassure reporters that the government has not been encouraging Chinese farmers to move to the continent.
It’s one thing to invest overseas in search of energy or metals, the more usual remit of resource-hungry growing nations. Agriculture is far more sensitive ground, as it’s tightly bound up with a basic human need, land ownership and deep-seated suspicions of foreign control.
And so it was that a senior Beijing spokesman found himself responding, in scolding terms, to an apparent accusation by a German diplomat that Chinese land acquisitions have at least partly been responsible for famine in Africa. Shen Danyang, spokesman for the Ministry of Commerce, described the comments by Germany’s Africa policy coordinator as “nonsense,” and asserted that China’s investments in the continent were meant to help Africa raise its agricultural production capacity. “I can say that almost not a single grain of rice has been sent from Africa back to China,” he declared.
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