This article from top journalist Gabriel Rozenberg is significant:
Unlike those wussies at the IMF and the World Bank, China doesn’t make aid conditional on respect for human rights. Privately, its leaders think that the West’s claim to the moral high ground is self-serving cant. Nor does China push a model of economic development - although its new friends are welcome to learn from Beijing. That’s a worry, too, as countries on a path to democracy may think again. After decades of following one faddish Western policy after another with little to show for it, whom would you trust on reform - China with its red-hot growth rate or creaky old Europe?
Bono et al are back at base camp. From now on they’ll need to pressurise China to pressurise African leaders to allow themselves to be voted out of office. It’s a tough sell in a country where charity rock concerts are pretty thin on the ground and no one’s heard of Bob Geldof.
Too late the US is realising what is slipping through its fingers. A recent report by the Council on Foreign Relations called for treating Africa strategically: “The United States should engage China on ‘rules of the road’ in Africa, to end support for egregious violators of human rights, reduce incentives for corruption, protect the environment, improve the long-term prospects for stability, and reduce unfair business practices.”
Sorry, but it is just not going to happen. Africa is not a road for foreign powers to drive on. For good or ill, its leaders can choose whose rules to follow. We can engage with China or try to pick a fight. But a world in which the West can single-handedly lay down democracy and good governance? That’s just hippy talk.