Deal, or no deal?

China's investment in Africa has been widely criticised but at least it's willing to do business, unlike western nations.

As negotiators tried to hold together the fragile Darfur peace talks, Gordon Brown decided to show some muscle. Sanctions, he declared, should be imposed on the Sudanese government if the talks failed. The problem was that the Sudanese government were at the talks. This time, it was the rebel groups who decided not to turn up at the negotiating table and Brown was effectively saying their enemies in the Sudanese government would be punished for their absence.

The Sudanese government cannot often claim the moral high ground, but this time it argued that Brown's threats encouraged the rebels to stay.

Meanwhile China, which is notoriously silent on the issue of human rights, had quietly persuaded Sudan's hoary old president Omar Hassan El-Bashir to change his stance and allow 26,000 UN and African Union peacekeeping troops inside Darfur.

China's influence in Sudan flows from the fact that Chinese oil companies are Sudan's biggest foreign investor. Neither country is overly concerned about human rights, but international calls to boycott the Beijing Olympics unless China helped end the conflict in Darfur has yielded some results.

China has been quite rightly criticised for exploiting Africa, buying up mining concessions and primary goods in opaque deals that benefit African leaders but not necessarily their people.

While investing in Africa, Chinese companies do also ignore environmental concerns. In Gabon, the Chinese oil company Sinopec has been prospecting for oil in virgin rainforests. Chinese timber firms source wood illegally from acres of forests in Cameroon, Congo and Liberia

Elsewhere, Chinese self-interest is genuinely helping African economies. This week, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China bought a 20% stake in the Standard Bank group, Africa's largest bank. The deal helps China diversify its financial services and sends a signal that Africa's nascent investment banking and insurance industries are worth investing in. The deal also treats Standard Bank as an equal, not an institution that needs to be lectured by a more powerful group. In Nigeria too the China Development Bank has signed a partnership with Nigeria's United Bank for Africa to fund African infrastructure projects. Chinese universities are also offering scholarships and Mandarin lessons to African students to promote cultural and corporate understanding between the two regions.

Africa's exports to China rose more than 40% a year between 2001 and 2006, China-Africa trade hit a record $55bn last year, and is projected to hit $100bn by 2010. Africa is still being lectured to by western institutions that offer aid with one hand and put up trade barriers with the other. China on the other hand, sweeps in offering to do business. Guess which side Africa would rather deal with?