China on track to win friends in oil-rich Angola
A mural in the Art Deco headquarters of Angola's Benguela Railway shows Africa's colonial rail network in fading tones of sepia and black. During Portuguese rule the line led 1,304km east from the coast to the mines of the interior, today Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Completed by British engineers in 1929, Benguela Railway was bombed and dynamited beyond use during Angola's civil war. Today its longest working stretch ends 150km east of the coast, in the town of Cubal.
Passengers ride in or on the roofs of open boxcars on a four-times-daily shuttle between Benguela and Lobito, a coastal city nearby.
Now the railway is due for an overhaul costing $300m to $500m, financed by a new foreign partner: China.
Three tidy fenced tent camps housing Chinese workers have already sprung up in the muddy fields alongside the line.
Ground is due to be broken on the railway's "expedited rehabilitation" this month, with completion planned for August 2007.
"We hope to move 30m tonnes of goods and 4m passengers every year," says Daniel Quipaxe, the railway's director.
With world markets bidding up prices for commodities, Mr Quipaxe has held talks with his counterparts in neighbouring countries on hauling their mineral ores.
The project is just one example of China's expanding influence in Africa, which has rich reserves of many of the raw materials China's booming economy needs. In Angola alone Chinese engineers are refurbishing two other rail lines, government buildings, and a new airport in Luanda, with the help of a $2bn credit for infrastructure from China's Eximbank approved in 2004.
President José Eduardo dos Santos, who last stood for election in 1992, said recently that his government needed to rebuild Angola's road and rail networks before holding elections. Originally expected this year, the polls - which Mr dos Santos's MPLA party looks set to win - are now unlikely before 2007.
While some government critics claim this is a delaying tactic, his government's record is also at issue, as are the challenges of registering voters in a large country with few decent roads or railways. "In order to win the resounding victory they're hoping for, they need to show they've won the peace as well as won the war," says a foreign diplomat.
Angola never held a donors' conference to gather pledges for aid to rebuild infrastructure ruined in the war, which lasted with interruptions from 1975 until 2002. In an interview with the FT last November, José Pedro de Morais, the finance minister, admitted that it was probably now "too late" to hold one.
Angola lacks a financing agreement with the International Monetary Fund, in part because of IMF misgivings about how it accounts for the massive revenues it receives from oil. China has proved a more supportive and less critical partner, providing financing and skills to a country that lost many educated people to post-colonial emigration and war.
For China, Angola's chief attraction is its oil, of which it rivals the US as the largest importer. Sinopec, the state-owned petroleum company, picked up a share in offshore Block 3 last year when Angola declined to renew a concession held by France's Total. While no reason for the non-renewal was given, some analysts linked it to a criminal case in France that has aired corruption allegations against Angolan officials.
A few Angolan commentators have complained about China's reliance on its own experts and imports for its infrastructure projects. "Os chineses", as Angolans call the Chinese bosses, ply the road between Benguela and Lobito in black four-wheel-drive vehicles, and a tanker truck with Chinese characters stands parked at one of the construction camps.
Refurbishing the railway will require replacing its rails and substituting concrete sleepers for the colonial-era wooden ones, along with rebuilding 37 bridges and new stations.
在安哥拉奔忙的中国人
安
哥拉的本格拉铁路(Benguela railway)总部极富装饰派艺术风格，那里有一幅褪色的棕褐色和黑色色调的壁画，展示了非洲殖民时代的铁路网络。在葡萄牙殖民时期，这条长达1304公里的铁路从海岸向东延伸至内陆地区的矿井，而如今这些内陆地区已是津巴布韦和刚果民主共和国。
本格拉铁路1929年由英国工程师修建完成，在安哥拉内战期间被炸毁停用。今天这条铁路最长的通车线路仅150公里，从沿海海岸向东至库巴尔(Cubal)。
火车在本格拉和附近的沿海城市洛比托之间一天来回4次，乘客则乘坐敞蓬货车车厢或坐在车厢顶上。
现在这条铁路即将进行全面翻修，耗资3亿至5亿美元，资金由一个新的外国伙伴提供，这个伙伴就是中国。
三个整齐的帐篷已沿着铁路在泥泞的田野里竖起来，营地用篱笆围起，里面驻扎着中国工人。
铁路的“加速复原”工程将于本月破土动工，计划于2007年8月竣工。
“我们希望每年能运送3000万吨货物，400万乘客，”铁路负责人丹尼尔?基帕克斯(Daniel Quipaxe)表示。
随着世界市场上的大宗商品价格不断走高，基帕克斯先生已就矿石运输事宜与邻国的对等官员举行了会谈。
中国在非洲的影响力正日益扩大，该工程只是一个例子。非洲拥有丰富的原料储藏，而其中许多都是中国蓬勃增长的经济所需的。光是在安哥拉，中国工程师就在整修其它两条铁路和一些政府建筑，并正在罗安达修建一个新机场，这些都是中国进出口银行(Eximbank)2004年批准的20亿美元基础设施贷款的部分项目。
上次于1992年参加竞选的若泽?爱德华多?多斯?桑托斯(José Eduardo dos Santos)总统近期表示，举行大选前，他的政府需要重建安哥拉的公路和铁路网。投票原来预计于今年举行，现在看来在2007年之前都不太可能。多斯?桑托斯的安人运党(MPLA)看来肯定会胜选。
一些政府批评人士声称这是拖延策略，而他这届政府的政绩也是争论的焦点，正如登记选民所遇到的挑战一样：这么大一个国家却没几条像样的公路和铁路。“为赢得他们所希望的彻底胜利，他们必须表明，他们赢得了和平，也赢得了战争，”一位外国外交官员表示。
安哥拉从未举行过捐赠国会议以获得援助承诺，用于重建在战争中被毁的基础设施。从1975年到2002年，安哥拉的战争一直时断时续。在去年11月接受《金融时报》采访时，财政部长若泽?佩德罗?德?莫耐斯(José Pedro de Morais)先生承认，现在举行这样一个会议也许“太迟了”。
安哥拉未与国际货币基金组织(IMF)签署过融资协议，部分原因在于，安哥拉拥有巨额的石油收入，但它对这笔收入的说明令该组织感到怀疑。安哥拉在后殖民时代的移民和战争中失去了许多受教育者，而中国向它提供了融资和技术，事实证明中国是一个支持更多、批评更少的合作伙伴。
对中国来说，安哥拉最大的吸引力是石油，在进口安哥拉石油方面，中国和美国是最大的竞争对手。中国国有石油企业中石化(Sinopec)3年前获得了安哥拉近海3号油田(Block 3)的股份，当时安哥拉拒绝延长法国道达尔(Total)的油田开采特许权。虽然安哥拉没有给出不延长开采权的理由，但一些分析人士还是将此事与法国的一起刑事案件相联系，该案曝光了对安哥拉官员腐败行为的指控。
一些安哥拉评论人士抱怨中国在基础设施项目上只依赖自己的专家和进口产品。“Os chineses，”安哥拉人称呼这些中国老板道，这些中国老板坐着黑色四轮驱动汽车往返于本格拉和洛比托之间，而一辆标有中国字的油罐车常常停在建筑营地。
铁路翻新需要替换铁轨，并用混凝土枕木替代殖民时代的木枕木，同时还要重建37座桥梁和数座新车站。
