Chinese President Xi Jinping, reviewsan honor guard during a welcome ceremony at Union Building Pretoria, South Africa, Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2015.
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Peng accompanied her husband President Xi Jinpeng on his state visit to Zimbabwe.
“I have full confidence in our bilateral relations”, Xi said through an interpreter.
Its investments on the continent range from Zambian power plants, Egyptian trade deals, cobalt mines in Congo, rail links in East Africa and infrastructure in Equatorial Guinea. Mr. Mugabe is also expected to attend the same summit.
“It’s very urgent for the developing countries to improve their worldwide communication capability to create a more objective, impartial and balanced global public opinion environment”, said Jiang.
Japhet Moyo, secretary general of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, dismissed Xi’s visit as merely a ‘show.’ He claims Zimbabweans have not benefitted from the economic relations between the two countries.
Although there have been mixed reactions over Xi’s visit, many people have expressed hope that the Chinese leader would pump in new investments and help the country’s ailing economy.
“There’s a number of agreements and deals that are being concluded, worth billions and billions of dollars which we believe will make a contribution towards growing the South African economy and assist us to deal with the triple challenges of poverty, unemployment and eradicating inequality”, said Monyela.
Xi will travel to South Africa on Wednesday for a China-Africa cooperation summit. In Zimbabwe, Chinese investors are active in chrome mining, construction, retailing and distribution, cement manufacturing and communications among other areas.
Some Chinese small businessmen in Harare speculate that the visit emerged because of United States president Barack Obama’s recent visit to Kenya and Ethiopia, and because President Robert Mugabe is, after all, an old ally, even if his country’s economy is not attractive to the Chinese.
“To our Chinese friends we say, ‘You don’t just come, you have to respect our rules”, the Zimbabwean leader said at a gathering of the ruling party.
China is Zimbabwe’s fourth largest trading partner, but accounts for the biggest share of the small foreign investment pie attracted to Harare since its fallout with the West after 2000. “There are not a lot of entities in the world that would fund African infrastructure the way China has”.
Chinese and South African officials called for more enhanced media cooperation between China and Africa to have a bigger voice in the world and create “win-win” development for both sides.
Chris Alden and Yu-shan Wu of the SA Institute of International Affairs noted, in an article in The Star a year ago, that the joint agreement between the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) and China’s Hebei Iron and Steel Group to open a steel mill in Phalaborwa, was an important sign of a possible shift in the nature of commerce between South Africa and China.
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But Chinese investment in Africa fell by more than 40 percent in the first half of 2015 due to its reduced demand for commodities such as oil, iron ore and copper.
