Chinese military-industrial complex arming Mugabe, profiting privately
The Times of London has done a bit more peeking into the 77-ton shipment of arms from China to Zimbabwe that was turned away at the docks recently, and finds an interesting twist on it. Apparently Mugabe was a little short of cash, and China’s a little short of food, so they had arranged a guns-for-food swap. The beneficiary on the Chinese side wasn’t the public treasury, but rather a company held by the PRC elite:
Company documents show that Poly Technologies, the manufacturer of the weapons on board the ship, is ultimately controlled by a clique from China’s preeminent military clans with close ties to the Communist party leadership and army.
Major General He Ping, the company’s chairman, is the son-in-law of Deng Xiaoping, the former Chinese leader; its president, Wang Jun, is the son of a vice-president and a Deng ally. Its upper ranks are stuffed with military veterans and their offspring, who have greatly enriched themselves with arms sales to some of Africa’s bloodiest trouble spots….
Analysts of Chinese financial affairs say, however, that Poly is actually a front for an elite within the country’s military-industrial complex and that it reports to the general staff department of the People’s Liberation Army.
“People call it the supreme headquarters of the China princeling party,” commented one analyst. “It’s a power centre beyond civilian control.”
Here’s an interesting detail:
In 1996 Poly was named by prosecutors in connection with an attempt to smuggle 2,000 AK47s into the United States.
Note that the links between Harare and Beijing go deeper than just this abortive arms shipment. Chinese troops have been spotted patrolling the streets with local troops, and a delegation armed with pistols checked into the Holiday Inn in Mutare.
I didn’t know that Mutare, Zimbabwe had a Holiday Inn. Was the Howard Johnson’s full?
Anyway, between this and the ongoing Olympics/Tibet protests, the PRC is sure getting some bad PR this year.
____________
UPDATE: MM.com readers remembered the 1996 AK-47 smuggling plan as “Operation Dragonfire”. Some familiar names pop in the investigation, including Reno, Gorelick, and Clinton–though there doesn’t seem to be a direct link.
Details on Dragonfire, courtesy of commenter John Ansell, here. Both companies involved in the Zimbabwe deal, Poly (the manufacturer) and Cosco (the shipping company), were behind the Dragonfire shipment as well–which was destined for…the collector market? No, no: Newsmax (citing that VRWC stalwart Vanity Fair) says they were full-auto rifles destined for LA’s street gangs.
All of which leads me to conclude that all the criticism directed at China this year–from the Left and the Right–may have some important political consequences. Interesting that the Obama campaign hasn’t tried hitting Hillary harder over her China connections.
____________
{Post by See-Dubya}
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Categories: Bill Clinton, Guns, Hillary Clinton, Repression
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Zimbabwe has no food to trade. With an inflation rate exceeding 100,000%, they are at the mercy of the rest of the world for food shipments for their starving population.
I wonder if the food Mugabe is trading bears US or UN relief markings?
The links between China and Robert Mugabe go back almost 40 years. It was the Chinese who supported Mugabe’s forces to launch raids and terror attacks against the government and people of Rhodesia. And it was our very own Jimmy Carter who forced the people of Rhodesia to accept Mugabe as their new leader. Carter refused to recognize (he even refused to meet with him in Washington) the freely elected President at the time (a black bishop as I recall) and threatened to continue the sanctions and embargo against Rhodesia/Zimbabwe until Mugabe was “freely” elected.
Ah yes, the worst President of my lifetime.
We can only hope the arms china is sending mugabe is as bad as the dog food and other stuff china sends to us trying to do us in. Maybe the arms will blow up in their face.
L
I’ll send em a ham for one of these..
pistol
If only the world had some kind of organization where nations could unite to come up with solutions to these kinds of situations!!!!!!
Letget #4: I understand those lead bullets may contain traces of toothpaste.
Jim M. #1: I wondered about that too. The article said “agricultural products and raw materials”, which makes me wonder as well. Zimbabwe has a food shortage because they redistributed their farms, taking them away from the effective farmers. So what does that mean, exactly? Rhinoceros horn?
One other fact should be pointed out. The PRC PLA owns one of the largest container shipping companies in the world – COSCO – no coincidence.
aj#5:
I’ll send them a whole pig for one of these.
Didn’t Mugabe just loose the election? I suppose he needs those weapons so he can “verify” and “certify” the results.
cpodug–Oh yeah, the article says COSCO (N.B. no relation to CostCo!) was the shipper for these guns.
#7, It means a forward base in Zimbabwe.
Good. Let ole China reap what it has sewn. People in the US complain about our “military-industrial complex,” well we have nothing on China. Why is it that China is building up its army to million man strength? Why is that?
Mugabe is supposedly trying to hang on to power right now in Zimbabwe. I hope that this shipment never sees the light of day. Furthermore, I wish somebody would just shoot it out of the water.
This story is just one in a series of examples of how insidious China’s influence is in Africa. They don’t put any conditions on their financial investment in Africa. As long as they get their oil and natural resources and pour cash and investment into Africa, while raping it even further of its flora and fauna, this kind of story will always be the norm.
Why doesn’t China get sanctioned for this sort of behavior? Aren’t they the #1 purveyors of GW now anyway? Why the hell isn’t Mugabe pressured by the international community to step down? He’s in the way of progress desperately needed in Zimbabwe right now. Anybody know where this ship is now? It would be such a shame if a missile were to find its way into its hull.
As to the Olympics, while I appreciate and admire our American athletes, there is no way in hell I will give the Chinese or NBC my viewership. Forget about it.
I’ll send them a whole herd of cattle for this:
http://www.stolaf.edu/people/thao/instyle-dec2005-zhang-ziyi-1.jpg
The Brits are paying for this with relief money.
Well this isn’t a surprise is it?
When I worked in Osaka as a legal adviser for a large Japanese manufacturer, it was in our dealings with the Chinese that I first learned the phrase, “Any business is good business, as long as it generates a profit.”
Putting automatic weapons into the hands of street thugs is Capitalism, Commie-style. And as I recall, they’re not too picky where they sell their toys. In this sense, their “foreign policy” is little different from Russia’s: “We can still make trouble, so we matter.”
You know it has our marks all over it. Who do you think the UN gets it food from… ok i say Nuke China… Where is that Madame Vice-President Ann LOL…
That’s one big pistola, wow!
looks like a great collecter item.
OT-
C-Dub,
I sent this to writemichellemalkin.com and was wondering if you are getting my mail. I thought it would be a great tuesday laugh, well if you dont live here. Alot of folks here are not happy about this mess.
Obama drop
*collector* sheesh.
and
I’ll take you both on with this
And to Tre #14
ROFL!
If this is the incident I remember, we’re talking about full-auto AK-47s here. They came over in a COSCO container and were destined for LA’s criminal gangs.
tre(#14) -thanks – I now have some new wallpaper for my computer here at work!
I thought I read a link on that linking Bill Clinton to the deal. Going to lunch and will search for it when I get back.
Here it Is. Operation Dragon Fire.
You’re welcome Epodug. Anytime.
I heard China is going to use a converted AK-47 as the torch in the big Opening Ceremony. With all the World Press in attendence, even a Communist Goverment knows the value of product placement.
see-dubya,
“Redistribution of farms” is an understatement.
In the early 1980’s, Zimbabwe was known as the breadbasket of Africa. They were a net exporter of food and those exports contributed to their GNP. There were rougly 4000 to 5000 commercial farms in Zimbabwe producing this bounty.
The problem was that those commercial farms were owned and run by citizens of Zimbabwe who happened to be white. That did not sit well with Mugabe’s promise to “redistribute” lands to its black citizens. What began as redistribution quickly morphed into confiscation. White farmers were forced off their lands, some of whose families had been farming there for over 100 years. The land was given to Mugabe cronies, who let it go fallow.
Today, there are less than 400 white-owned farms in Zimbabwe, and that number drops daily. Mugabe has since moved on to other businesses in his zeal to drive whites out of black Africa, which has dried up any prospect of foreign investment. His price caps enacted to try to control inflation have caused businesses to close (they could not process or manufacture products at a cost even close to their expenses).
Zim has already had over 25% of its total population flee the country. It has an 80% unemployment rate and the lowest life expectancy in Africa, as well as one of the highest rates of HIV in the world.
The Chinese have a keen interest in Zim’s minerals and ore. Zim just happens to have the world’s largest deposits of chromium, platinum, lithium and and other elements that happen to be particularly useful and absolutely necessary in the manufacture of nuclear weapons (including the neutron bomb). The Chinese have perfected their nuclear program by leaps and bounds, thanks in large part to the Clinton Administration’s approval of the sale of Cray supercomputers (for weather research) and Sun supercomputers in the 1980’s. These supercomputers enable a user to conduct atomic “tests” without the necessity of actually detonating a bomb. Add the intelligence provided by Chinese spies like Wen Ho Lee into our nuclear weapons technology, and you get a thriving nuclear weapons program overnight. And a country like Zimbabwe with its mineral wealth is like a nuclear Wal Mart for the Chinese.
As Sun Tsu would say, “Clinton is the fifth column.”
Rhodesia has been a mess since Smith stepped down. My relatives in South Africa tell me it is the biggest shame for a country. It was country full of cattle, citrus and other fruit orchards, horse farms, tobacco, coffee & tea. Now the people are literally dying to get out. South Africa cannot take much more from that border as well as those who steal across the Kruger Park from Mozambique. Mugabe is a thug with store-bought medals on his uniform. But hey, at least he subscribes to the same AIDS theories as Jeremiah Wright. This is what some of us fear will happen right here.
The more bad PR for China the better. They are as big a threat (if not bigger in some respects) than the Jihadis. I hope our government wakes up to this. They are NOT just interested in making $$.
Rhodesia was once a thriving robust multicultural nation. Now it is a rat hole. But they did get rid of the white devils. Marxists are bad. Stupid ones are worse.
Hello. Communists.
His campaign is busy playing dodge ball with the Rev. “Damn” Write team. They should be focused on stories related to the war in Los Angeles. It make me wonder how many shipments made it to the destination.
As our French comrades would say.. Quelle Suprise.
Is this one of those African countries that Jesus Obama and Jeremiah Wright long for?? Ah yes, the Afro-Centric church of God and it’s Pope John Mugabe!
I can see this headline coming soon:
“Lead Poisoning In Zimbabwe From Chinese Imports”
Hot lead.