I am currently writing my Masters Thesis about Sino-Sudanese relations with focus on China's rush to secure natural resources, and whether these have led to a propagation of Sudan's internal conflicts.
I have also come across this quote of 4000 Chinese troops in Sudan on a few occassions. However I was at a lecture last week with Mohamed Salih, a Sudanese academic, who completey refuted these claims. The claims does seem to be somewhat threadbare, with little evidence to back it up. Although at the same time many of the ares when the Chinese are operating are quite remote, and there is little transparency as to their dealings and actions.
Anyways here is the background of Mohamed Salih, if there is any doubts to his credibility. By the way, the lecture was at the University of Copenhagen's Centre for Africa Studies.
Professor Mohamed Salih, Institute of Social Studies, The Hague
Mohamed Salih is Professor of Politics of Development at the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague and the Department of Political Science, University of Leiden. Mohamed Salih has worked on a wide range of topics within Development Studies and African Politics.
He has especially pioneered the study of the relations between environment, people and society in Africa (in 2000 he edited the volume Local Environmental Change and Society in Africa, Kluwer Academic Publ.). He has also worked on poverty and famine in relation to African pastoralism (see his volume African Pastoralism, publ. by Pluto Press in 2001). Lately his major field of interest has been democracy and political parties and civil society, see: African Democracies and African Politics (Pluto Press 2001) and African political parties evolution, institutionalisation and governance (Pluto Press 2003). In May 2005 CAS published his influential Occasional Paper: Understanding the Conflict in Darfur.
The current development in the Sino-African relations have become a major debating point within Africa, the West and the new African emerging economies. Africans see this debate from the vantage point that the debate and its consequences are indicatives of the configuration of a new global power structure. Africans are aware that the global powers are not naïve to make any continent a subject of debate without questioning whether, at the final analysis. they are gainers or losers form how the debate is steered and its consequences impact on them. In this debate, Africans are divided between those who applaud the Sino-African relations and those critical of its implications for the continent’s future development. The lecture examines the discourses and counter-discourse which inform this debate.
