Oiling the wheels of China-Africa trade

With China and Africa forging one of the most important economic relationships of the 21st century, Hong Kong may be a key facilitator and hub for their bilateral trade - a role the city has yet to embrace.

China has funded extensive infrastructure projects in Africa, including a transit route for mining built in 1975 and even the African Union's US$200 million headquarters, which opened in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa in January.

And last month President Hu Jintao , in a speech to African leaders at the Forum on China-Africa Co-operation Ministerial Conference in Beijing, pledged US$20 billion in new loans for infrastructure and agriculture to the continent over the next three years - double the amount it offered in 2009.

In response to China's growing presence in the world's second-most populous continent, which has 54 sovereign nations, foreign media have spun simplistic narratives of the new "colonisation" of Africa, and China battling the West over Africa's riches.

Beyond this sinister paradigm, little attention is paid to interpersonal relationships between Chinese and African people. The media has also overlooked the many Africans who have come to Hong Kong, where they play important roles in expanding business ties between the two countries.

"I think that most of what one reads plays up the contest between East and West and neglects the voices of the most important actors: the people at the ground level, both African and Chinese," said Columbia University journalism professor Howard French, who visited Hong Kong last month.

"Instead, the forces are distant and faceless. It's either the Chinese state with a plot to take over Africa or the Chinese state with a plot to do good things for Africa," said French, who gave talks at the University of Hong Kong and the Foreign Correspondents' Club.