[前言] :
中国乐意在阿富汗贸易上大撒金钱
- 这是纽约时报一系列 - 名为"Uneasy Engagement" - 对中国的攻击文章之一, 这个系列由纽约时报一组资深的流氓记者车轮战从多个角度去攻击中国, 直至2009年底为止好像是一共写了八篇, 光十二月内就发了四篇 :----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
December 10, 2009
UNEASY ENGAGEMENT; China's Growing Economic Power Is Unsettling the Neighbors
Decembeer 20, 2009
Uneasy Engagement
China’s Export of Labor Faces Scorn
December 30, 2009
Uneasy Engagement
China Willing to Spend Big on Afghan Commerce
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
在纽约时报的档案找到之前发表的几篇, 还未来得及一一细读, 先列出链接留个记录:
Jun 3, 2009
UNEASY ENGAGEMENT; Australia, Nourishing China's Economic Engine, Questions Ties
Sept 4, 2009
UNEASY ENGAGEMENT; China and India Dispute Enclave On Edge of Tibet
Sept 22, 2009
UNEASY ENGAGEMENT; China Spreads Aid in Africa, With a Catch for Recipients
Oct 19, 2009
UNEASY ENGAGEMENT; At Book Fair, a Subplot About Chinese Rights
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2010年的第一篇在今天发表:
January 7, 2010 - By SHARON LaFRANIERE
UNEASY ENGAGEMENT; Fighting Trend, China Is Luring Scientists Home
UNEASY ENGAGEMENT; Fighting Trend, China Is Luring Scientists Home
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[译文] :
中国乐意在阿富汗贸易上大撒金钱[译文] :
要点摘译:
在这个山谷, 士兵不是去打塔利班的, 枪也不拿, 他们帮中国开采铜矿, 这家中国公司出价35亿压倒各国投得这个原始未开发的铜矿, 以后25年, 提取一千一百万吨铜, 相等于中国现有已知的铜存量的1/3 之多。
美国在阿富汗打生打死, 中国则坐享其成, 这已经不是第一次的事, 在伊拉克, 中国的投资得比美资公司还要多, 在伊朗,
中国签了跟伊朗长期购买天然气的合约, 那怕联合国要制裁这个国家; 在巴基斯坦和动荡的非洲, 中国都有投资活动, 只是在阿富汗的投资最为要命,
中国冶金集团要建一座400兆瓦的发电厂来为铜矿和经常停电的喀布尔供应电力, 挖一个新的煤矿来为工厂的发电机提供需要的煤燃料,
建一所冶炼厂来完善铜矿，一道铁路运煤到发电站和返中国, 如果合约内容是可信的话, 还会为阿富汗人什至清真寺, 不费一枪一弹,
中国为自己在阿富汗定位为阿富汗政府的慷慨，热心的伙伴和投资在该国前途的长期投资者。
保护着这个矿的, 正是用美国的金钱建立和训练的阿富汗国家警察, 这1500名警察是特别招募的, 不是从主力部队调派过来, 但是结论是一样的: 就是美军提供一个安全的阿富汗给中国去投资, 但是阿富汗战争不是为了商业动机, 如果是美资公司投得艾纳克铜矿, 美国反而会被控责为掠夺该国丰富的矿藏而发动战争, 如果是中国投得, 帮阿富汗政府开发艾纳克铜矿和创造收入, 那会帮美国实现一个目标。
上月, 华盛顿邮报引述一名美国官员指责中国贿赂了阿富汗的采矿部长。
但是阿富汗方面认为中国投得是有很好的理由, 因为它提供一条龙式的配套服务, 从发电站, 到铁路, 到冶炼厂, 到煤矿,
没有任何投标商可以比得上中国, 还有, 它还许诺全部用阿富汗劳工和经理, 那怕许多都是因为这个国家没有多少采矿专长而需要从零开始训练他们,
五年后, 全部阿富汗工程师, 只有行政管理由中国人留任, 中国因为有政府的金钱和支持在背后, 所以最大的私人公司也是无法比得上的, 此外,
他们可以加一些甜头, 从铁路到清真寺, 普通采矿公司没有这个优势提供那么多附加的优惠, 中国人在阿富汗的战略是长远的,
那怕是5年到10年之长, 至少他们得到一个一个滩头堡。
但是记录显示中国冶金集团可能是许诺太多, 能兑现的太少, 中国冶金集团拒绝接受访问, 连记者在矿场拍个照也不许!
[ 评 ] :
这篇文章, 我没能力翻译全文, 但是我还是把重点翻译出来, 这样文章的主旨和中心思想就全部都归纳在一起了,
因为整篇文章是为迫中国出兵造势的宣传文章, 文章虽然长但是目的只有一个, 就是说中国不参战但是拿走比美国更加大的经济利益,
保护中国在阿富汗的经济利益的阿富汗警察也是用美国的钱训练出来的, 中国这样太说不过去了,
套这种说法上中国的脖子为的是使中国在阿富汗问题上面对欧美联军有愧,
这种观点也帮了国内汉奸传媒和何亮亮那种专为传播美国意旨当炮手的狗头在民间宣传中国应该加入战团时更加振振有词, 但是中国在阿富汗和伊拉克
不费一枪一弹, 取得的能源和矿藏比美国更高, 那怪得谁? 如果美国打人不是为能源的话, 那你管得伊拉克和阿富汗跟谁交易? 如果你是明抢的,
出了枪炮死了人也抢不到比人家不出兵的多, 那你收兵吧!
还记得2003年4月伊战还未结束, 以色列这个滴油不见的“贫油国”已经要求重开输油管, 从伊拉克北部的摩苏尔直接运抢来的石油到以色列的海法市, "早在二十世纪上半叶英国委任统治时期，当时的巴勒斯坦地区(包括今天的巴勒斯坦和以色列)就主要依靠输油管道从伊拉克输入石油。据悉，当时的英国委任政府 共建立了两条输油管道，其中一条从伊拉克通向黎巴嫩的的黎波里，另一条经过约旦进入当时巴勒斯坦地区的海法港，即现在的以色列北部城市海法。其中，从伊拉 克到海法的输油管道总长600公里。1948年以色列宣布建国，第一次中东战争爆发，阿以对抗由此开始，输油管道也随之关闭。此后，以色列曾几次试图恢复 这条石油输送线，但均未能实现。这些年中，以色列通过不同渠道获取石油。1967年，以色列在第三次中东战争中占领了埃及的西奈半岛，随后在半岛上打出了 几口油井。1979年，埃以签署和平协议后，以色列不得不将西奈半岛连同油井一起还给了埃及。以色列的另一个石油来源是伊朗，但双方的这一合作随着 1979年伊朗伊斯兰革命而宣告结束。伊拉克北部是富油区，因此，如果能够启用伊拉克——海法这条现成的输油管道，滚滚的石油就能从伊拉克北部的摩苏尔源源 不断地直接输送到以色列的北部。这样，不仅能够解决以色列的石油来源问题，而且还可以通过地中海将石油运往世界各地，海法港也会成为中东的鹿特丹。这一计 划对以色列来说不仅经济实惠，同时更蕴藏着巨大的商业利润。重新启用摩苏尔——海法石油管道可以 为以色列节省大量进口石油所花费的资金，以色列的燃料费用也会在目前的基础上降低25%。" (来源)
美国不是一样心甘命抵地为以色列能够不费一枪一弹享受比美国更为便宜的石油而送自己的孩子上战场 ? 与此同时, 美国孩 子赔上了, 美国人在伊战之后石油价格翻了一倍半到两倍之高, NYT屁也没响一个, 总是双重标准的老是咬着中国来狂吼, 现在中国拿了你美国什么? 没有! 在阿富汗的矿也是投标投回来的, 不要跟我说中国的标是贿赂贿回来的, 中国的配套服务举世无双, 开矿不只建铁路, 学校, 道路, 连建清真寺也考虑到, 你西方那一家公司可以做得到? 中国中标, 当之无愧!
==============================
美国不是一样心甘命抵地为以色列能够不费一枪一弹享受比美国更为便宜的石油而送自己的孩子上战场 ? 与此同时, 美国孩 子赔上了, 美国人在伊战之后石油价格翻了一倍半到两倍之高, NYT屁也没响一个, 总是双重标准的老是咬着中国来狂吼, 现在中国拿了你美国什么? 没有! 在阿富汗的矿也是投标投回来的, 不要跟我说中国的标是贿赂贿回来的, 中国的配套服务举世无双, 开矿不只建铁路, 学校, 道路, 连建清真寺也考虑到, 你西方那一家公司可以做得到? 中国中标, 当之无愧!
==============================
[原文]
Uneasy Engagement
China Willing to Spend Big on Afghan Commerce
KABUL, Afghanistan — Behind an
electrified fence, blast-resistant sandbags and 53 National Police
outposts, the Afghan surge is well under way.
But the foot soldiers in a bowl-shaped valley about 20 miles southeast of Kabul are not fighting the Taliban, or even carrying guns. They are preparing to extract copper from one of the richest untapped deposits on earth. And they are Chinese, undertaking by far the largest foreign investment project in war-torn Afghanistan.
Two years ago, the China Metallurgical Group Corporation, a Chinese state-owned conglomerate, bid $3.4 billion — $1 billion more than any of its competitors from Canada, Europe, Russia, the United States and Kazakhstan — for the rights to mine deposits near the village of Aynak. Over the next 25 years, it plans to extract about 11 million tons of copper — an amount equal to one-third of all the known copper reserves in China.
While the United States spends hundreds of billions of dollars fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda here, China is securing raw material for its voracious economy. The world’s superpower is focused on security. Its fastest rising competitor concentrates on commerce.
S. Frederick Starr, the chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, an independent research organization in Washington, said that skeptics might wonder whether Washington and NATO had conducted “an unacknowledged preparatory phase for the Chinese economic penetration of Afghanistan.”
“We do the heavy lifting,” he said. “And they pick the fruit.”
The reality is more complicated than that. The Chinese bid far more for the mining rights to the Aynak project and promised to invest hundreds of millions more in associated infrastructure projects than other bidders. It is a risky venture that has not yet proved to be economical, and it has already been dogged by allegations of bribery.
But the Aynak investment underscores how China’s leaders, flush with money and in control of both the government and major industries, meld strategy, business and statecraft into a seamless whole. In a single move, Beijing strengthened its hold on a vital resource, engineered the single largest investment in Afghan history, promised to create thousands of new Afghan jobs and established itself as the Afghan government’s pre-eminent business partner and single largest source of tax payments.
An Odd Global Pairing
Afghanistan is not the only place where the United States and China find themselves so oddly juxtaposed in the post-9/11 world. China is investing more in extracting Iraqi oil than American companies are. It has reached long-term arrangements to buy gas from Iran, even as the government there comes under the threat of Western sanctions for its nuclear program. China has also become a dominant investor in Pakistan and volatile parts of Africa.
But even if elements of the agreement fall through, the Chinese have already positioned themselves as generous, eager partners of the Afghan government and long-term players in the country’s future. All without firing a shot.
Nurzaman Stanikzai was a mujahedeen in the 1980s, using American-supplied arms to help drive the Red Army from his homeland. Today he is a contractor for M.C.C., building the Aynak mine’s electric fence, blast wall, workers’ dormitories and a road to Kabul.
“The Chinese are much wiser. When we went to talk to the local people, they wore civilian clothing, and they were very friendly,” he said recently during a long chat in his Kabul apartment. “The Americans — not as good. When they come there, they have their uniforms, their rifles and such, and they are not as friendly.”
American troops do not, in a narrow sense, protect the Chinese. The United States Army stations about 2,000 troops in Logar Province, where Aynak is located. But an Army spokesman said they generally patrolled well south of the mine area and had not provided direct security for Chinese investors or mine workers.
China Stays Out of War Effort
Afghanistan, which borders both Iran and Pakistan, drew scant attention from China until the middle of this decade.
Aynak’s riches had been known since Alexander the Great’s armies forged copper there 2,300 years ago. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, its geologists took core samples and mapped the Aynak deposit, but were never able to begin mining.
The Soviets were succeeded by Osama bin Laden, who used Aynak as a training camp while planning the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. After the American-led invasion of Afghanistan, Afghan geologists rescued the Soviet surveys of Aynak and hid them until exploration could resume.
That exploration — a detailed overflight of much of the country by American surveyors in middecade — showed Afghanistan to be far richer in oil, natural gas, iron, copper and coal than anyone had imagined. Aynak, in particular, was judged a world-class copper deposit, not just huge but of unusually rich quality, and the government chose it as the first major mineral concession to be auctioned to developers.
To minimize corruption, the Afghan government decided, on the advice of American advisers, to ask the World Bank and a Colorado geological consulting firm to help oversee the bidding. A report last month in The Washington Post quoted an American official as charging that the Chinese swayed the bid with $20 million or more in bribes to the mining minister, Muhammad Ibrahim Adel, who was recently dismissed from the Afghan government in part because of the allegations. Mr. Adel has denied the charge.
Foreign experts say that the possibility of bribery in Afghanistan, one of the world’s most corrupt nations, can hardly be ruled out. But they also say that the Chinese bid was so clearly superior to others that any bribe money may have been incidental to the outcome.
China won the bid, he said, for good reason: it offered a package deal, from power plants to railroads to smelters to coal mines, that no other bidder could match. And it promised to staff the entire venture with Afghan laborers and managers — many of whom must be trained from scratch in a country with little mining expertise.
“After five years, it’s only Afghan engineers,” he said. “Only in administration do the Chinese stay.”
Indeed, outside experts here say, the striking aspect of China’s Aynak venture is the degree to which it left competitors in the dust. Increasingly, the world’s richest remaining mineral deposits are in hostile territory — malarial jungles, combat zones, unstable nations that possess mineral riches but no realistic way to get them to market.
With government money and backing behind them, China’s state-run giants take risks in places that even the largest private behemoths will not tolerate, and they can add sweeteners — from railroads to mosques — that ordinary mining firms are ill equipped to provide.
“The Chinese have sort of raised the bar. They’ve taken it beyond the scope of just an extractive operation,” the Western official said. “The Chinese are willing to step up and take a long-term strategic approach. If it takes 5 or 10 years, at least they have a beachhead.”
The wild card, of course, is that no outsiders can know how much of China’s Aynak venture is in fact brilliant strategy, and how much is merely a potentially ruinous business deal by an overzealous corporation. Beijing’s corporate strategy is as opaque as it is overwhelming.
China Metallurgical, a Fortune Global 500 company that has so many subsidiaries that they are mostly identified by numbers, is a signal example. The corporation reports to the top level of the Chinese government. Big foreign investments like the one at Aynak require blessing at an equally high level. M.C.C. has huge and productive investments around the world.
Yet hardly all those ventures are successes. An M.C.C. copper mine in Pakistan is widely said to have serious environmental problems. A Pakistan lead mine has been dogged by conflict, including a suicide bombing that killed 29; residents accuse the company’s Chinese work force of stealing local jobs. In Papua New Guinea, 14 Chinese workers at an M.C.C. nickel mine were injured in May in a pitched battle with local people who rioted over what they called intolerable working conditions.
That bid in 2006 for the iron mine in Gabon? Four years after C.M.E.C. struck its deal, the bargain appears to be unwinding over hints of corruption and global objections to a dam that would destroy Kongou Falls, one of central Africa’s most treasured waterfalls.
Was Too Much Promised?
Not surprisingly, that record leads skeptics to suggest that in Afghanistan, M.C.C. may have overpromised and, later, will underdeliver.
But the foot soldiers in a bowl-shaped valley about 20 miles southeast of Kabul are not fighting the Taliban, or even carrying guns. They are preparing to extract copper from one of the richest untapped deposits on earth. And they are Chinese, undertaking by far the largest foreign investment project in war-torn Afghanistan.
Two years ago, the China Metallurgical Group Corporation, a Chinese state-owned conglomerate, bid $3.4 billion — $1 billion more than any of its competitors from Canada, Europe, Russia, the United States and Kazakhstan — for the rights to mine deposits near the village of Aynak. Over the next 25 years, it plans to extract about 11 million tons of copper — an amount equal to one-third of all the known copper reserves in China.
While the United States spends hundreds of billions of dollars fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda here, China is securing raw material for its voracious economy. The world’s superpower is focused on security. Its fastest rising competitor concentrates on commerce.
S. Frederick Starr, the chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, an independent research organization in Washington, said that skeptics might wonder whether Washington and NATO had conducted “an unacknowledged preparatory phase for the Chinese economic penetration of Afghanistan.”
“We do the heavy lifting,” he said. “And they pick the fruit.”
The reality is more complicated than that. The Chinese bid far more for the mining rights to the Aynak project and promised to invest hundreds of millions more in associated infrastructure projects than other bidders. It is a risky venture that has not yet proved to be economical, and it has already been dogged by allegations of bribery.
But the Aynak investment underscores how China’s leaders, flush with money and in control of both the government and major industries, meld strategy, business and statecraft into a seamless whole. In a single move, Beijing strengthened its hold on a vital resource, engineered the single largest investment in Afghan history, promised to create thousands of new Afghan jobs and established itself as the Afghan government’s pre-eminent business partner and single largest source of tax payments.
An Odd Global Pairing
Afghanistan is not the only place where the United States and China find themselves so oddly juxtaposed in the post-9/11 world. China is investing more in extracting Iraqi oil than American companies are. It has reached long-term arrangements to buy gas from Iran, even as the government there comes under the threat of Western sanctions for its nuclear program. China has also become a dominant investor in Pakistan and volatile parts of Africa.
But it is in Afghanistan where China’s willingness to take risks for commercial and diplomatic gain are most striking.
China Metallurgical Group, often
called M.C.C., will build a 400-megawatt generating plant to power both
the copper mine and blackout-prone Kabul. M.C.C. will dig a new coal
mine to feed the plant’s generators. It will build a smelter to refine
copper ore, and a railroad to carry coal to the power plant and copper
back to China. If the terms of its contract are to be believed, M.C.C.
will also build schools, roads, even mosques for the Afghans.
The sweeping agreement has some
experts rubbing their eyes in disbelief. “It’s almost as if the Chinese
promised too much,” said one international expert who, like some others
interviewed, refused to be identified for fear of alienating the
Afghans or the Chinese.But even if elements of the agreement fall through, the Chinese have already positioned themselves as generous, eager partners of the Afghan government and long-term players in the country’s future. All without firing a shot.
Nurzaman Stanikzai was a mujahedeen in the 1980s, using American-supplied arms to help drive the Red Army from his homeland. Today he is a contractor for M.C.C., building the Aynak mine’s electric fence, blast wall, workers’ dormitories and a road to Kabul.
“The Chinese are much wiser. When we went to talk to the local people, they wore civilian clothing, and they were very friendly,” he said recently during a long chat in his Kabul apartment. “The Americans — not as good. When they come there, they have their uniforms, their rifles and such, and they are not as friendly.”
American troops do not, in a narrow sense, protect the Chinese. The United States Army stations about 2,000 troops in Logar Province, where Aynak is located. But an Army spokesman said they generally patrolled well south of the mine area and had not provided direct security for Chinese investors or mine workers.
The Afghan National Police, which
does protect the mine, was largely built and trained with American
money. The 1,500 guards the police have posted in and around Aynak are
special recruits not drawn from the main force, according to Maj. Gen.
Sayed Kamal, who heads the National Police.
But the conclusion is inescapable:
American troops have helped make Afghanistan safe for Chinese
investment. And there is no sense that either government objects to
that reality. As diplomats and soldiers alike stress, the war in
Afghanistan was never motivated by commercial prospects. Had an
American company won Aynak, some Afghans noted wryly, critics
inevitably would have accused the United States of waging war to seize
the country’s mineral wealth. Moreover, if China succeeds in developing
Aynak and generating revenue for the Kabul government, that helps
achieve an American goal.
“To the extent that the Chinese
bring Afghanistan up to speed and start paying a billion dollars a year
in royalties,” a Western government official who has followed the Aynak
project said, “that would mean that Afghanistan is on a firmer ground
to start paying for its own security.”China Stays Out of War Effort
The Chinese, meanwhile, have
rebuffed requests to join the Afghan war effort, saying that national
policy forbids military action abroad except as part of a peacekeeping
force. Instead, China’s foreign policy is based on commerce. Its
state-owned companies have been snapping up energy and mineral
resources worldwide for years now, often by overwhelming competitors
with lavish offers.
In 2006, for example, another state-owned goliath known as C.M.E.C. swept bidding for one of the world’s largest known iron ore deposits, in Gabon, by offering to build a 360-mile railroad to the nearly inaccessible mine site, two hydroelectric dams to power the mine and a deepwater ocean port to export the mined ore.
Such splurges are both national
strategy — China’s goal is to control long-term access to critical
commodities — and a matter of necessity if Beijing is to keep its
industrial empire running. With 700 to 1,000 steel mills to feed, China
is the world’s largest importer of iron ore. Similarly, China already
imports 40 percent of the world’s copper.
If the Aynak venture differs from
those in the past, both international and Afghan experts say, it is
because it appears to be as much a strategic coup as a commercial one.
Opportunity in Southwest Asia
The United States views Southwest
Asia mostly as a security threat. China sees it as an opportunity.
Decades of military cooperation with Pakistan, which shares India as a
rival, have flowered into an economic alliance. A Chinese-built
deepwater port in Gwadar, Pakistan, on the Gulf of Oman, is expected
eventually to carry Middle Eastern oil and gas over the western
Himalayas into China.Afghanistan, which borders both Iran and Pakistan, drew scant attention from China until the middle of this decade.
Aynak’s riches had been known since Alexander the Great’s armies forged copper there 2,300 years ago. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, its geologists took core samples and mapped the Aynak deposit, but were never able to begin mining.
The Soviets were succeeded by Osama bin Laden, who used Aynak as a training camp while planning the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. After the American-led invasion of Afghanistan, Afghan geologists rescued the Soviet surveys of Aynak and hid them until exploration could resume.
That exploration — a detailed overflight of much of the country by American surveyors in middecade — showed Afghanistan to be far richer in oil, natural gas, iron, copper and coal than anyone had imagined. Aynak, in particular, was judged a world-class copper deposit, not just huge but of unusually rich quality, and the government chose it as the first major mineral concession to be auctioned to developers.
To minimize corruption, the Afghan government decided, on the advice of American advisers, to ask the World Bank and a Colorado geological consulting firm to help oversee the bidding. A report last month in The Washington Post quoted an American official as charging that the Chinese swayed the bid with $20 million or more in bribes to the mining minister, Muhammad Ibrahim Adel, who was recently dismissed from the Afghan government in part because of the allegations. Mr. Adel has denied the charge.
Foreign experts say that the possibility of bribery in Afghanistan, one of the world’s most corrupt nations, can hardly be ruled out. But they also say that the Chinese bid was so clearly superior to others that any bribe money may have been incidental to the outcome.
“This was not a backroom deal. This
was not Adel, sitting in Beijing, cooking this up,” said one of several
international experts interviewed for this article. “This was
thoroughly vetted by the governments of the day.”
A. Rahman Ashraf is a veteran geologist and senior adviser on mining to Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai. Mr. Ashraf intervened in 2002 to stop Aynak’s mining rights from being sold under the table to a Korean bidder.
“Our wish was that this process must
be very transparent,” he said of Aynak, “because this is the first
time. If it is not transparent, then nobody comes to the others.” China won the bid, he said, for good reason: it offered a package deal, from power plants to railroads to smelters to coal mines, that no other bidder could match. And it promised to staff the entire venture with Afghan laborers and managers — many of whom must be trained from scratch in a country with little mining expertise.
“After five years, it’s only Afghan engineers,” he said. “Only in administration do the Chinese stay.”
Indeed, outside experts here say, the striking aspect of China’s Aynak venture is the degree to which it left competitors in the dust. Increasingly, the world’s richest remaining mineral deposits are in hostile territory — malarial jungles, combat zones, unstable nations that possess mineral riches but no realistic way to get them to market.
With government money and backing behind them, China’s state-run giants take risks in places that even the largest private behemoths will not tolerate, and they can add sweeteners — from railroads to mosques — that ordinary mining firms are ill equipped to provide.
“The Chinese have sort of raised the bar. They’ve taken it beyond the scope of just an extractive operation,” the Western official said. “The Chinese are willing to step up and take a long-term strategic approach. If it takes 5 or 10 years, at least they have a beachhead.”
The wild card, of course, is that no outsiders can know how much of China’s Aynak venture is in fact brilliant strategy, and how much is merely a potentially ruinous business deal by an overzealous corporation. Beijing’s corporate strategy is as opaque as it is overwhelming.
China Metallurgical, a Fortune Global 500 company that has so many subsidiaries that they are mostly identified by numbers, is a signal example. The corporation reports to the top level of the Chinese government. Big foreign investments like the one at Aynak require blessing at an equally high level. M.C.C. has huge and productive investments around the world.
Yet hardly all those ventures are successes. An M.C.C. copper mine in Pakistan is widely said to have serious environmental problems. A Pakistan lead mine has been dogged by conflict, including a suicide bombing that killed 29; residents accuse the company’s Chinese work force of stealing local jobs. In Papua New Guinea, 14 Chinese workers at an M.C.C. nickel mine were injured in May in a pitched battle with local people who rioted over what they called intolerable working conditions.
That bid in 2006 for the iron mine in Gabon? Four years after C.M.E.C. struck its deal, the bargain appears to be unwinding over hints of corruption and global objections to a dam that would destroy Kongou Falls, one of central Africa’s most treasured waterfalls.
Was Too Much Promised?
Not surprisingly, that record leads skeptics to suggest that in Afghanistan, M.C.C. may have overpromised and, later, will underdeliver.
In interviews here, some experts
said that M.C.C.’s Aynak bid was so munificent that the company might
be forced to renegotiate lavish payments of copper royalties to the
Afghan government. Others predicted that the company would be forced to
shift parts of the vast project, like the yet-to-be-built railroad, to
international donors.
Still others said the company’s
initial environmental efforts already badly lagged behind the promise
in its winning bid to strictly adhere to the Equator Principles and World Bank benchmarks — the gold standards for environmentally sensitive projects.
China Metallurgical is not talking.
Its officials not only refused to be interviewed for this article, but
also sought to prohibit a journalist even from photographing the mine
site from afar.
But the company clearly is
undeterred. The Afghan government is seeking bids for its second great
mineral project, a behemoth called Hajigak
that is said to contain 60 billion tons of iron ore. There are seven
finalists — all companies from India and China. M.C.C. is one of them.
Li Bibo contributed research from Beijing.
