[Mb-civic] China and Sudan, Blood and OilBy NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

[Michael Butler]

The New York Times
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April 23, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
China and Sudan, Blood and Oil
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Americans make a habit of bashing China for all the wrong reasons.

It's hypocritical of us to scream at President Hu Jintao, as we did during
his visit last week, about China's undervalued currency. Sure, that's a
problem for the world economy ‹ but not nearly as much as our own budget
deficits, caused by tax cuts we couldn't afford.

We're now addicted to capital from China and other foreign countries, and
that should be a concern. But our deficits aren't China's fault, and junkies
like us don't have any basis to complain about the moral turpitude of those
who supply cheap capital or other narcotics.

But there are two good reasons to complain to President Hu. First, he has
presided over a broad clampdown on freedom of expression in China, including
the imprisonment for 19 months of my colleague Zhao Yan, an employee of The
New York Times.

Second, China is now underwriting its second genocide in three decades. The
first was in Pol Pot's Cambodia, and the second is in Darfur, Sudan. Chinese
oil purchases have financed Sudan's pillage of Darfur, Chinese-made AK-47's
have been the main weapons used to slaughter several hundred thousand people
in Darfur so far, and China has protected Sudan in the U.N. Security
Council.

Indeed, it's because of China's support that Sudan felt it could get away
this month with sending a proxy army to invade neighboring Chad.

For more than two years now, I've been holding President Bush's feet to the
fire over his refusal to make the Darfur genocide a priority for his
administration. But Mr. Bush has taken half-steps in the right direction ‹
including pushing President Hu to cooperate on Darfur ‹ and that's more than
can be said of the leaders of most other countries. Europe has snored
through this genocide. Then there's the Arab League, which met last month in
Sudan, in effect legitimizing the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of
Muslims (almost all the victims in Darfur are Muslim).

As Fatema Abdul Rasul wrote in The Daily Star of Lebanon this month: "For
the entire Muslim and Arab world to remain silent when thousands of people
in Darfur continue to be killed is shameful and hypocritical." Do you hear
that, Hosni?

And where's the Arab press? Isn't the murder of 300,000 or more Muslims
almost as offensive as a Danish cartoon?

The biggest obstacle to forceful action is China. The latest outrage came a
few days ago when the U.S. and Britain tried to impose the most feeble
possible sanctions ‹ targeting just four people, including a midlevel
Sudanese official. China and Russia blocked even that pathetic action.

Why is China soft on genocide?

The essential reason is oil. China traditionally was self-sufficient in oil,
but since 1993 it has been a net oil importer and it is increasingly worried
about this vulnerability.

So China has been bustling around the globe trying to ensure oil supplies
from as many sources as possible. And partly because most of the major oil
fields are already taken, China has ended up with the world's thugs: Sudan,
Iran and Myanmar. China has been particularly active in Africa.

About 60 percent of Sudan's oil flows to China, and Beijing has a close
economic and even military relationship with Khartoum. A recent Council on
Foreign Relations report on Africa notes that China has supplied Sudan with
small arms, anti-personnel mines, howitzers, tanks, helicopters and
ammunition. China has even established three arms factories in Sudan, and
you see Chinese-made AK-47's, rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns all
over Darfur.

Last month in a village on the Chad-Sudan border, I interviewed a man who
told how a Sudanese militia had grabbed his baby boy, Ahmed Haroun, thrown
Ahmed to the ground and shot him in the chest. The odds are overwhelming
that that gun and those bullets came from China.

Likewise, the women and children I've seen torn apart by bullets in Darfur
and Chad ‹ that lead and steel was molded in Chinese factories. When women
are raped and mutilated in Darfur, the gun barrels pointed at their heads
are Made in China.

Let's hope China's 13 million bloggers take up this issue, for this has
received very little attention in China but it is not so sensitive that
discussion of it will get anyone arrested.

One of the central questions for the 21st century will be whether China's
rise will be accompanied by increasingly responsible behavior in its
international relations. Darfur is a test, and for now China is failing.