This past weekend, China hosted possibly its biggest diplomatic event ever. Leaders of 48 of Africa’s 53 countries, including around 40 heads of state, arrived at the China-Africa summit to, officially (in the words of the International Herald Tribune), “expand trade, allow China to secure the oil and ore it needs for its booming economy, and help African nations improve roads, railroads and schools.” Unofficially, they are seeking to “redraw the world’s strategic map,” with China hoping to bring Africa into its sphere of influence (November 2).

As China’s Assistant Foreign Minister Zhai Jun said, “The main objective of this summit is to establish a new type of partnership between China and African countries against changing circumstances” (Wall Street Journal, October 24; emphasis ours throughout).

For both China and Africa, this summit is of extreme economic importance.

Over the past two years, the prices of many commodities have gone through the ceiling. For example, gold and silver—the store of money and wealth for millennia—are again reaching price heights not seen since the late 1970s. Prices for copper, zinc, lead, tin, chromium, platinum, molybdenum, coal, oil and uranium also set multi-year or all-time highs this year. Prices of zinc are so lofty that it now costs the U.S. government more than a penny to make a penny.

Why? The reason, analysts say, is booming demand from China.

China houses 1.3 billion people, and they are rapidly moving from Third World and Second World living conditions into First. Through industrialization and growing exports, China has changed itself from an economically isolated, vast geographical expanse into the world’s second-largest exporter and one of its fastest-growing economies. Over the past six years, China’s economy has grown 85 percent. Up and down China’s extensive Pacific coastline, brand new modern cities are springing into existence. China now has 34 cities with more than a million inhabitants.

As China has modernized, its thirst for Western-style living has grown too. Consequently China has become one of the world’s most voracious devourers of commodities. China now drinks up an estimated 8.2 percent of the world’s oil demand, up from only 4.7 percent a decade ago.

Similarly, China’s share of world demand for many industrial metals has roughly doubled over just the last six years. China eats up 30 percent of total global consumption of zinc and 25 percent of its lead. Chinese consumption of refined copper has jumped from less than 10 percent of world demand a decade ago to 22 percent today. In 2003, China eclipsed the U.S. to become the world’s largest copper consumer, and by 2004 consumed 46 percent more than the U.S.

Hence, it’s no surprise that China wants to dramatically boost its influence in Africa, the world’s most underexploited mineral-rich region.

Western nations beware. “Chinese leaders see Africa, in a strategic sense, as up for grabs,” warns Wenran Jiang a political scientist at the University of Alberta. “From China’s perspective the Western powers and Western companies have had their chance in Africa and really nothing has happened” (International Herald Tribune, op. cit.).

One expert in Chinese-African trade, says this development is good for the African continent. Investec strategist Michael Power says Africa should “take advantage of Asia’s insatiable appetite for resources to propel the continent out of economic stagnation and end Eurocentricism” (Financial Times, July 10). “The new scramble for Africa by the Chinese is going to benefit Africa more than it did during Europe’s scramble for Africa,” said Power, a South African who studied at Oxford, Canada and South Africa. Power describes the new scramble for Africa’s resource wealth as “the great game of the 21st century” and points to Asia as the rising dominant player on African grounds (ibid.).

However, China should not expect to move in on these resources unimpeded. Another global power has a long history of colonialism on the African continent, and it too is looking to expand and secure its pool of sources for the raw materials it needs to expand its role in the modern world.

That power is Europe.

On November 16 and 17, within two weeks of the China-Africa forum, the European Union will hold its first ever EU-Africa business forum in Brussels.

The forum will help Africa attract more investment from European countries, says European Commission President José Manuel Barroso, who also indicated that officials from the European Commission and African Union “have agreed to encourage the creation of [a] full-fledged regional market” (Africa News, October 5).

China may be the world’s fourth-largest economy and second-biggest exporter, but Germany is still the world’s third-largest economy and its greatest exporter. Like China, German industry and manufacturing are critically reliant on African resources. Include resource demand from the rest of the European Union and it becomes clear how important Africa is as a source of inexpensive—and abundant—natural resources.

The European Commission is also said to be drafting a paper criticizing the way China secures its energy supplies in Africa. The report, to be released for approval in December, will supposedly urge China to commit to “more democratic reform and a transparent approach to its aid and investment policies, particularly in Africa” (Financial Times, October 24).

But perhaps the loudest indication that Europe is feeling the effects of Chinese competition in Africa is the chorus of concern rising from Germany’s politicians. German Development Minister Heidemarie Weiczorek-Zeul recently told journalists that “Berlin would ‘criticize China very clearly’ when it took over the G8 and EU presidencies next year” (ibid.).

“There will have to be significant changes,” said Weiczorek-Zeul, who accused China of pressuring poor African nations to borrow money from China, even though their debts had been forgiven by the West—so that China could exert more influence over African energy supplies.

The struggle to secure African resources will only continue to intensify as the world’s powers seek to satisfy their domestic industries. Will there be a dispute between China and the European Union, the world’s two greatest exporting nations?