China's Deep Ties To Zimbabwe Could Grow After Mugabe Era

Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe the way during a welcome ceremony outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China. Under Robert Mugabe’s decades-long rule over Zimbabwe, China grew into one of its biggest investors, trading partners and diplomatic allies. Now, as the African nation appears on the verge of its first transition of power since independence, Beijing is poised to be among the biggest winners.

HONG KONG (AP) — Under Robert Mugabe's decades-long rule over Zimbabwe, China grew into one of the African nation's biggest investors, trading partners and diplomatic allies. Now, as Zimbabwe appears on the verge of its first transition of power since independence, Beijing is poised to be among the biggest winners.

A look at the increasingly close relationship between the two countries:

THE BACK STORY

Mugabe began drawing closer to China's communist leaders under a "Look East" policy when Western countries imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe in 2001 over land seizures and human rights concerns. "We have turned East, where the sun rises, and given our backs to the West, where the sun sets," he famously said.

Mugabe has made frequent visits to Beijing, and sent his daughter Bona to university in Hong Kong. China, meanwhile, has vetoed U.N. Security Council sanctions on Zimbabwe.

Both sides portray the relationship as one between "all-weather friends." But "behind the scenes, things are a little bit different," said Derek Matyszak, a Harare-based senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies.

"Relations between China and Mugabe have been quite fractious over the past year and a half, and the current situation is going to make things worse," he said.

China is unhappy about Mugabe's mismanagement of Zimbabwe's economy and is believed to favor as his successor, Emmerson Mnangagwa, who's seen as more of an "economic pragmatist," Matyszak said.

Mnangagwa was elected Sunday as the new leader of Zimbabwe's ruling party and is positioned to take over as the country's leader.

MILITARY LINKS
Zimbabwe's army commander, Gen. Constantino Chiwenga, visited Beijing in early November, around the same time Mnangagwa disappeared. The Chinese Foreign Ministry called it a "normal military exchange," but the timing raised suspicions that it was anything but.

The countries' military links date back to the 1960s, when China helped train and supply guerrilla fighters from the Zanu's military wing in the fight for liberation. Mnangagwa, 75, was part of that effort — he received military training in China in 1963, soon after he joined the fight against white minority rule in then-Rhodesia.

These days, China is a key supplier of military hardware to Zimbabwe. Major sales in recent years include a radar system, jet trainers and fighters, military vehicles and AK-47 assault rifles.

A Chinese company built the National Defense College in Harare, which opened in 2014 and was financed with an interest-free $98 million loan from China. The college, the biggest of its kind in the country, trains soldiers, intelligence operatives and police from Zimbabwe and other Southern African countries.

"China, of course, wants Zimbabwe to maintain a peaceful and stable political environment," said Wang Xinsong, a longtime observer of China-Zimbabwe relations at Beijing Normal University. "China's best interest lies in ensuring a peaceful and smooth transfer of power without major turmoil."

ECONOMIC WOES

Once known as the "breadbasket of Africa," Zimbabwe's decline accelerated with the seizure of white-owned farms, sending the economy into a tailspin with skyrocketing inflation and widespread unemployment and poverty.

The lack of a clear succession plan for the 93-year-old Mugabe as well as an industrial nationalization plan have contributed to political uncertainty and spooked overseas investors. Zimbabwe's foreign direct investment fell for a second straight year in 2016, slumping by a quarter to $319 million, according to the latest U.N. World Investment Report.

Analysts believe one major reason Mnangagwa is popular with China is that he is seen as more investor-friendly than Mugabe.

"Of course, we must know that the investment can only go where it gets a return," Mnangagwa said in an interview with state-run China Central Television during a visit to Beijing in 2015. "So we must make sure we create an environment where investors are happy to put their money because they will have a return."

Chinese investors are likely holding off while they wait for a resolution, experts said.

"Chinese businessmen will become more prudent," said Zhang Chun, an expert in African studies at the Shanghai Institute of Foreign Studies. "For those that are prepared to make an investment there, they will delay their projects."

DIAMOND DEALS

A big source of tension between Beijing and Harare was Mugabe's abrupt move to nationalize Zimbabwe's diamond mines.

Two Chinese companies, Anjin Investments and Jinan Mining, had partnered with the military and become big players in the Marange diamond field in Zimbabwe's east.

Mugabe, however, moved last year to revoke licenses from the Chinese and other foreign mining companies and consolidate all operations into a single company half-owned by Zimbabwe's government. He had apparently become alarmed that the government was missing out on revenue, blaming private companies after only $2 billion of an anticipated $15 billion had flown into government coffers since the field was discovered in 2006.

The Institute for Security Studies' Matyszak speculated that Mnangagwa could reverse that move, winning favor with both the military and China in the process.

Chinese tobacco company Tianze, meanwhile, has given interest-free loans and training to farmers, many of whom work on land seized from white farmers, to help beef up production and help fill cigarette demand back home.

The Beijing Automotive Group teamed up this year with two local partners in a joint venture, Beiqi Zimbabwe, selling Grand Tiger pickup trucks assembled from kits to compete with pricier imports.

HARD ASSETS

China has helped build and pay for some big-budget infrastructure projects in Zimbabwe, including $46 million to fund the construction of the country's new parliament building in Harare last year.

Chinese state-owned Sinohydro is building $2 billion worth of expansion projects at Zimbabwe's two main, aging power stations to help deal with chronic electricity shortages. Chinese companies have also built a $150 million expansion of Victoria Falls International Airport and upgraded Zimbabwe's busiest highway.

Other deals announced during a visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2015 included building a pharmaceutical warehouse, expanding the national fiber optic broadband network and supply wildlife  monitoring gear.

SOFT POWER

China and Zimbabwe have been growing closer in other ways too, although results have been uneven.

In 2015, Zimbabwe sold China 35 elephants that were moved to wildlife parks in Shanghai, Beijing and Hanghzhou. But animal conservation groups raised concerns about the plan over fears that the animals would be split up from their herds and end up living under poor conditions.

China also has an image problem among many ordinary Zimbabweans, who see it mainly as a supplier of cheap but shoddy products like shoes and kettles that have been labeled with derogatory names for their famously short-lived lifespans.

The Mugabe family has been involved in a legal dispute over a multimillion-dollar Hong Kong property, and made headlines there in 2009 when Robert Mugabe's wife, Grace, allegedly assaulted a photographer during a shopping trip. She left the specially administered Chinese city without being charged.

Associated Press writer Yi-ling Liu in Hong Kong and researcher Yu Bing in Beijing contributed to this report.

Mugabe's Grip On Zimbabwe Still Tight

Despite economic chaos, the authoritarian president looks likely to be reelected. A challenger from his party has gained some traction.

By Robyn Dixon, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

March 25, 2008


HARARE, ZIMBABWE -- It takes 55 million Zimbabwean dollars to buy a single American one. Schools have no teachers. Hospitals have become mortuaries. And inflation has topped 100,000%.

As President Robert Mugabe, 84, seeks a sixth term in elections Saturday, Zimbabwe's financial catastrophe takes the words "It's the economy, stupid," to a new level.

Yet even with a crisis so intractable it would finish off any leader in a genuine democracy, Mugabe is expected to maintain his grip on power.

His tools are the same ones that have worked before: gerrymandered electorates; an electoral roll full of ghost voters; tight control of state television and radio; preelection gifts of tractors, plows and cattle to the rural chiefs who will get in the ruling party vote; pay raises for public servants and the military. And, above all, fear.

The major streets of this capital city are lined with posters bearing an old photograph of Mugabe, fist raised, and the slogan "Behind the Fist." To most, it conveys little beyond the fear associated with his rule, from Operation Gukurahundi in the early 1980s, when as many as 20,000 political enemies were slaughtered, to Operation Murambatsvina in 2005, when at least 700,000 people were driven from urban opposition strongholds into the countryside. Many have not recovered.

A party divided

But even when elections are not real elections, they raise hopes. And one thing has changed this time around: A charismatic presidential challenger from within the ruling ZANU-PF has divided the party and thrown Mugabe's campaign off balance. Former Finance Minister Simba Makoni, whose first name means "power" or "strength" in Zimbabwe's Shona language, announced his bid last month and was promptly ejected from the party.

Mugabe, whose grip on power has never weakened since independence from Britain in 1980, needs 51% of the vote to avoid a runoff against Makoni and the other main challenger, Morgan Tsvangirai, who was savagely beaten by police last year and whose opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, or MDC, has split into two main squabbling factions.

There are signs Mugabe is rattled by the challengers. In the weeks before the election, he signed a law forcing foreign- and white-owned companies to sell black Zimbabweans a 51% interest, a move that will send investors fleeing and further undermine the economy, but enable him to dole out plum favors to loyalists.

The Information Ministry warned that white foreign journalists would be barred from covering the election. And in case anyone was in doubt about the regime's determination to cling to power, the police and army chiefs announced that they would never work under the opposition.

At rallies, Mugabe rails bitterly against people such as Makoni, calling them enemies and traitors. Yet Makoni, 58, has much in common with Mugabe. He comes from a similar traditional rural African background, rose through education (both got degrees in Britain) and was politicized in the liberation struggle and in ZANU-PF. Even now, Makoni does not directly attack either Mugabe or the party.

But there is a heady exhilaration about his campaign. Part of it is the sheer novelty of hearing a ZANU-PF stalwart proclaiming what everyone thinks but most are afraid to say: "We got corrupted by power. We started serving ourselves. . . . We've destroyed our own country," he said at his launch rally in Harare early this month.

'Power to the People'

Makoni's slogan, "Simba Kuvanhu," or "Power to the People," is a famous old refrain from the liberation struggle, a Mugabe favorite that the president has not quite gotten out of the habit of using at campaign rallies.

Even some opposition figures see a reform ZANU-PF candidate as the best and only hope of change. Arthur Mutambara, leader of one faction in the opposition MDC, recently declared that no one in the opposition could beat Mugabe.

"Makoni is the only person who can defeat Mugabe. Not Tsvangirai, not Mutambara," he said at a recent rally, campaigning for Makoni instead of running for president himself.

But Makoni waited until late in the game to enter the race, convinced that popular discontent with Mugabe was so deep that it needed only one credible candidate to sweep away both the president and the disappointing opposition.

He claims to have many heavyweight ruling-party backers, but few ZANU-PF bigwigs have defected to his camp, making it difficult for him to muster enough ruling-party support to sweep Mugabe aside.

Makoni, boyish-looking and articulate, is from a large and powerful clan and has dozens of cousins and hundreds of close relatives. In his childhood village, nearly every shop and business was owned by a Makoni.

He faced the first real test of his support on a recent balmy Sunday at the Zimbabwe Grounds in Harare, the sports fields where big political rallies are held.

The crowd of a few thousand consisted mainly of educated men, including bureaucrats and professionals.

Many of those in attendance were former opposition supporters, disillusioned over Tsvangirai's letting his party split and failure to capitalize on popular anger after previous elections.

"People are impatient. They now want Makoni to be president," said university lecturer Simba Matsika, 36.

"People will support anyone and any program that opposes the incumbent party and president. People need change at any cost."

Makoni impressed the sports-facility crowd; the problem was the modest turnout. Even the riot police were halfhearted: One small police van made a desultory sweep and retreated to wait by the gate.

'Getting a crowd'

"If you are going to launch an attack against Mugabe, you really have to find a way of getting a crowd by hook or by crook," said Lovemore Madukhu, director of the National Constitutional Assembly, a nongovernmental organization lobbying for reform.

"You don't go to the Zimbabwe Grounds and get a crowd of three to four thousand. It was a crowd smaller than Mugabe addressed and smaller than Tsvangirai addressed. I think that blunder will eat into perceptions of his capacity to divide Mugabe's support."

Makoni's daily meet-the-people walks in towns across Zimbabwe connect him with hundreds of voters, but not the thousands he needs. Tsvangirai may be discredited, but he still has a broader reach, with a strong urban support base that Makoni lacks.

Building a profile and swinging the electoral tide in a few short weeks is a tall order for Makoni, especially with no access to television and radio.

Many analysts believe Makoni will poll third after Mugabe and Tsvangirai. A recent opinion poll put Mugabe's support well behind Tsvangirai's, but the electoral boundaries have been redrawn to give rural voters (among whom Mugabe's support is highest) a much greater weight than residents of pro-opposition urban areas.

As finance minister from 2000 to 2002, Makoni stood up to Mugabe and called for the devaluation of the ailing Zimbabwean dollar as the economy went into free fall after the president's seizures of white-owned farmland. He was removed as finance minister but stayed in the powerful politburo, and some opposition supporters see Makoni as just an ambitious member of the party that has destroyed the country.

"I was part of the system. I was in the leadership of this country for quite a long time and in public office for quite a long time. But collective responsibility does not mean that everyone agrees with every decision all of the time," Makoni said in an interview in Harare after returning late from a day's campaigning. "I strove for change from within. Throughout the time I was in the leadership, I kept trying to show my colleagues that there were better ways than we were doing."

If Makoni fails, he and his supporters could be isolated and made examples of by the ruling elite, a move that might discourage others in the ruling party from defying Mugabe.

But Makoni argues that his presidential bid is having the opposite effect, saying, "Many Zimbabweans are feeling emboldened and encouraged that you can actually speak your mind and Armageddon will not befall you."