In the Angolan capital Luanda, Chinese construction workers are a conspicuous part of daily life. An estimated number of between 30,000 and 50,000 currently work in the country. Angolans are impressed with their efficiency, hard work and the rapid development of their city’s skyline and infrastructure. But critical voices are becoming louder.

As logistics manager Julia (31) walks towards her apartment block, she points to the left. “Look,” she says in an indifferent voice. “Two weeks ago, there was a house there. Now there’s this huge, big hole.” That’s the work of the Chinese, she tells me. In another few weeks, a new building will have mushroomed.

Every day on Radio Luanda, Julia listens to reports on the bad quality of Chinese buildings and roads. “And why are our many unemployed not doing the work themselves?”

Driver Eduardo (37), like Julia, frowns upon the Chinese presence in Luanda. “Who are all these nice, modern buildings for?” he says. “Not for the poor. I wonder why this money isn’t spent on schools and hospitals, instead.”

Crucial support
But most Angolans are still immensely thankful for the fact that after end of the war in 2002, China stepped in when the Angolan government tried in vain to secure IMF funding for much-needed reconstruction.

Lucy Corkin (29) is a research associate at the Africa-Asia Centre of the University of London. She says China’s efforts in transportation, water supply, and electrical grid improvements have also significantly advanced the living standards of poor Angolans.

Guard Paulo (47) and dressmaker Pinto (46) live the slums. They can’t think of anything to criticize the Chinese for. “They are doing up the entire city, and Chinese products in stores are cheap,” says Pinto.

Paulo, full of admiration: “They’re such hard workers. They took the neighbours’ house down and are rebuilding it, all within a few weeks. They even sleep there.”

Oil
In 2004, the Chinese state-owned Exim Bank released a credit line worth 4,5 billion US dollars. This unexpected cash flow came with no conditions and offered more favourable terms than the larger loans granted by Western countries.

Negotiations for a new, 6 billion credit line from Exim Bank were concluded last year. Lucy Corkin says that was probably “important for kick-starting the process of credit lines from Spain, Portugal, Canada, and the US”.

The Exim Bank credit lines are, of course, not pure charity on the part of China. China wants something in return: oil supply contracts – of which Angola, now Africa’s number one oil producer has plenty. This fits into the ‘win-win co-operation’ that Beijing employs in Africa.

China’s ‘soft loans’ to Africa usually fall into a blurred area between official development assistance and commercial loans. Their interest rate at around 1.5% is much lower than standard commercial loan rates of around 10%.

Cracks
China’s reconstruction efforts in Luanda include the biggest hospital in the country, Luanda General Hospital. It had to be evacuated three weeks ago, after large cracks appeared in its walls. “The Chinese can build good-quality projects, but in some cases there is a lack of supervision and management,” Corkin says.

Researcher Cristina Alves from the South African Institute of International Affairs explains in her dissertation that Angola is a highly centralized state with a lack of executive constraints.

She warns that criticism towards China might grow louder. “This poses a real risk, as in Angola political perceptions at the highest level can overshadow the brightest business prospects”.

“This is about the ‘survival of the fittest,” says Nick Green of the China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC). He believes the “some small, private Chinese companies without an adequate quality control system will vanish as a result of market forces, like other foreign companies with similar shortcomings”.

Mr Green: “Most of the Chinese construction companies in Angola are state-owned, trustworthy, internationally operating enterprises. The market will normalize; the quality of construction will improve.”