China’s love of museums

(2008-06-10 09:45:14 GMT+1)

China’s hunger for African raw materials is well-known. Less well-known, but utterly fascinating, are the stratagems which China uses to satisfy its hunger.

Two monkeys few months ago, some officials from Beijing were being shown around Belgium’s Royal Museum for Central Africa, which is located in Tervuren on the outskirts of Brussels. Known for short as the Africa Museum, this is one of the world’s great anthropological, zoological and geological institutes, with wonderful collections of ethnographic objects, insects and tropical wood as well as an active scientific research centre.

The Africa Museum houses the archives of Sir Henry Morton Stanley, the Victorian explorer who played a part in the annexation of what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) by King Leopold II of Belgium. In addition, the museum has all sorts of detailed maps and geological data about central Africa in its possession.

Given the DRC’s large reserves of diamonds, gold, copper, cobalt, coltan (used in mobile phones and laptop computers), zinc and manganese, this makes the museum a place of more than passing interest to mining executives, financial investors - and guests from booming economies in Asia.  

So after a routine tour of the stuffed animals, the Chinese visitors suggested to the museum staff that it would be a honour, a privilege, an unforgettable gesture of friendship, if they could be allowed to take a quick look at the maps and other specialised documentation not generally on public view. Of course, of course, came the reply. Why ever not?

So in they trooped into the vaults. Then the Chinese put in another request. Sorry to be a nuisance and all that, but would it be possible to take some copies of these materials?

What happened next is difficult to pin down. According to one version of events, the offer of a €20 banknote was enough for the Chinese to get their way. If so, it was - from a Chinese point of view - a brilliant and almost unbelievably, ridiculously cheap coup.

No need to send out geologists and surveyors to central Africa - it’s all been done for you a century ago! And no need to dip too deeply into China’s $1,682bn foreign exchange reserves! Inflation may be preying on everyone’s minds these days but, hey, €20 can get you a long way.