At the Chinese-owned Chambishi Copper Mine in this Copperbelt town, mine operator Hedges Mwaba, received two different paychecks: one for his usual salary of 2.9 million kwacha ($600 US) and another 4.8 million (about $1000) ….

“What is weird is that I got two pay slips,” Mwaba tells the Monitor. “It looks like the Chinese had prepared for any outcome of the election by printing two pay slips for us for the month of September. If the incumbent Movement for Multi party Democracy MMD [incumbent President Rupiah Banda] had won the presidential election, we would have been paid old meager salaries. But we got almost double the money because the opposition Patriotic Front led by Michael Sata won the election.”

The Chambishi mine has seen clashes between Zambian workers and Chinese managers in the past: in 2006, five workers were shot and wounded during riots over a pay dispute, while in 2008 a group of 500 workers attacked managers during talks over working conditions. The mine was also the site of a 2005 explosion which killed 50.

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The victory of Mr. Sata, who ran unsuccessfully for president in three previous elections, comes after his campaign seized on Zambians’ frustration with Chinese investment in their country.

Mr. Banda, the 74-year-old incumbent, has welcomed capital from China and other countries as a way to create jobs and bolster the country’s currency. Chinese companies have invested heavily in mining and have set up two special investment zones in Zambia.

But Mr. Sata railed at what he said were abusive Chinese labor practices in the mining sector. There have been at least two incidents of managers at Chinese mines shooting protesting Zambian workers.

Mr. Sata’s party also argued that the country’s economic growth has passed over most Zambians, and that the majority lack the income to buy a balanced diet for their family. He has said he wants to review ways to raise tax revenue from Zambia’s mines and reduce government reliance on foreign aid.

While Sata has dropped threats to deport Chinese investors, his victory has created an atmosphere of uncertainty amid fears that he may now revert to a harder line. From Reuters, who reported a modest slide in the Zambian kwacha in response to the news:

“Right now there’s a bit of uncertainty about what changes in policy we’re going to see with Sata,” said Coura Fall, an Africa analyst at Citi in Johannesburg.

“The kwacha will continue to be vulnerable, at least until there’s clarity about what’s going to happen. Everybody is trying to see what Sata is really about.”

France 24′s Eric Olander tweeted soothingly:

Sata is a smart guy & will likely not do anything to jeopardize Chinese investment, [but that] doesn’t mean he won’t freak out investors.

Despite allegations of vote-rigging and some impatient violence, EU observers reported that it was a “free, fair and transparent” election, which others have suggested could stand as an example to other African nations. From The Wall Street Journal:

“Banda’s smooth handover of power shows good and mature leadership,” said Alex Ngoma, president of the Foundation for Democratic Process, a civil society group in Zambia. “We hope other African leaders can emulate his magnanimousness.”

Indeed, some analysts say the small landlocked nation in southern African has set an encouraging example ahead of what are likely to be tumultuous votes in the Democratic Republic of Congo in November and, possibly next year, Zimbabwe, where political parties are locked in a fractious coalition resulting from a bloody 2008 election.

“This is extremely positive sign for the region and the Zambian political experience,” said Piers Pigou, southern Africa project director in Johannesburg for the International Crisis Group.

Source:

Zambia Challenger Wins – WSJ.com
Zambia’s kwacha slides after election upset – Reuters Africa
Zambia Peacefully Elects New President – WSJ.com

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Shanxi Huang Jia Po is a village on the edge. For centuries, 500 farmers have lived here, carving stepped fields into the side of their mountain and planting corn, marrows and aubergines in the fertile yellow soil that covers Shanxi province.

But the children of the farmers will have to live somewhere else, because it is only a matter of time before the village falls into the honeycomb of mining tunnels below. Standing in his courtyard, Lu Linhu points to a 30ft deep hole that has opened up in the cement outside his front door. Behind him, wide cracks have appeared in the walls and ceiling of his bedroom. The 38-year-old Mr Lu, like many other villagers, has used gaudy posters to cover the holes and ease his state of mind.

“We cannot really sleep properly any more,” he said. “At night, we can feel the shaking of the ground when they use dynamite in the mine. And when it rains, the water comes flooding in through the cracks.

“We have sent our children away to live near their school, but when they come to visit I feel extra nervous, in case the roof collapses.” […]

At the top of the mountain, miners said they were pulling 900,000 tons of coal a year from the ground. “Why would we stop? There is still coal underneath,” one shrugged.

Residents do receive some compensation but, as in the case of dam relocations elsewhere, it does not cover the full cost of the move.

The Wall Street Journal reported last month on the relocation of a mining town in the Swedish Arctic to allow the extraction of iron ore, much of it bound for China. In contrast with resettlements in China, however, development plans even take into account the migratory habits of local reindeer.

“We knew we didn’t really have a choice,” says Ann Catrin Fredriksson, municipal director of urban planning and environment. “And this is a company town, so there was no opposition.” […]

Kiruna is a remarkable place. Temperatures are 40 degrees below zero in the winter. A favorite snack is smoked reindeer wrapped in a sort of pita bread. “Not a great place to find a nice suit, but if you’re shopping for a drill that can operate 300 feet underground, you’re in luck,” says Anders Holstenson, an LKAB employee and mine tour guide ….

“We don’t really know where the church is going yet,” says Pastor Lise-Lott Wikolm, “but it shouldn’t be too difficult. It’s made of wood, you can just pick apart the pieces and put them together again.”

Relocation is not an option for the 5th Century Buddhist monastery in Afghanistan which faces destruction to make way for a Chinese-run copper mine. Archaeologists are working against an unknown deadline to salvage as many of the site’s relics as possible before the miners move in.

Sources:

China’s coal rush leaves three million living on the edge – Telegraph
Cold Calculus of Arctic Mining Sends a Swedish Town Packing – Wall Street Journal

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“As an archaeologist, of course I’m worried about this,” said Khair Muhammad Khairzada, a researcher at the Afghan Institute of Archaeology, which is overseeing the dig. “I want all of the archaeological sites to be saved. But at the same time, Afghanistan’s economy is also important. It needs to grow.”

And so, a dozen archaeologists and 100 Afghan laborers are working like army ants to finish the dig. Many valuable relics were looted long ago, and the archaeologists won’t be able to save the ancient edifices from the mining company. But they can remove the statues, pottery and gold and silver coins still buried within the buildings.

“We don’t know exactly how much time we have to excavate the site. Sometimes the deadline is 14 months and sometimes it’s two years. It will depend on the Chinese,” said Nicolas Engel, a young French archaeologist with James Joyce spectacles.

At The Atlantic, Joshua Foust compares the destruction with the Taliban’s demolition of colossal Buddha statues in Bamiyan and elsewhere:

While the Taliban’s relentless quest to erase Afghanistan’s Buddhist past for the sake of Islamic purity drew condemnation (however decreasing as time goes on), the Chinese quest to erase Afghanistan’s Buddhist past for the sake of some copper ore is drawing silence. There are many reasons for this: people can understand the desperate need for income and exports for the Afghan economy, the Chinese are not making a grandiose display of specifically targetting cultural heritage in the development of their mine, and, again, probably some measure of outrage fatigue.

Then again, the Chinese government didn’t seem particularly concerned when it flooded thousands of years of its own past in building the enormous Three Gorges Dam. It’s not like China is behaving out of character in Afghanistan.

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The mine is the centerpiece of China’s drive to invest in Afghanistan, a country trying to get its economy off the ground while still mired in war. Beijing’s $3.5 billion stake in the mine – the largest foreign investment in Afghanistan by far – gets its foot in the door for future deals to exploit Afghanistan’s largely untapped mineral wealth, including iron, gold and cobalt. The Afghan government stands to reap a potential $1.2 billion a year in revenues from the mine, as well as the creation of much-needed jobs.

But Mes Aynak is caught between Afghanistan’s hopes for the future and its history. Archaeologists are rushing to salvage what they can from a major seventh century B.C. religious site along the famed Silk Road connecting Asia and the Middle East. The ruins, including the monastery and domed shrines known as “stupas,” will likely be largely destroyed once work at the mine begins.

Hanging over the situation is the memory of the Buddhas of Bamiyan – statues towering up to 180 feet high in central Afghanistan that were dynamited to the ground in 2001 by the country’s then-rulers, the Taliban, who considered them symbols of paganism.

No one wants to be blamed for similarly razing history at Mes Aynak, in the eastern province of Logar. The Chinese government-backed China Metallurgical Group Corp., or MCC, wanted to start building the mine by the end of 2011. But under an informal understanding with the Kabul government, it has given archaeologists three years for a salvage excavation.

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Two years ago, the China Metallurgical Group Corporation, a Chinese state-owned conglomerate, bid $3.4 billion — $1 billion more than any of its competitors from Canada, Europe, Russia, the United States and Kazakhstan — for the rights to mine deposits near the village of Aynak. Over the next 25 years, it plans to extract about 11 million tons of copper — an amount equal to one-third of all the known copper reserves in China.

While the United States spends hundreds of billions of dollars fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda here, China is securing raw material for its voracious economy. The world’s superpower is focused on security. Its fastest rising competitor concentrates on commerce.

S. Frederick Starr, the chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, an independent research organization in Washington, said that skeptics might wonder whether Washington and NATO had conducted “an unacknowledged preparatory phase for the Chinese economic penetration of Afghanistan.”

“We do the heavy lifting,” he said. “And they pick the fruit.”

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About 15 to 20 armed people invaded the mining camp on Sunday and fired at its security guards, Wu said. Peru’s interior minister said several people were missing and that one was killed.

The attack may have been an act of revenge. In 2005, one protester was killed and two dozen others were tortured when townspeople mobilized to stop construction of the mine, which they said would cause pollution and hurt water supplies.

The mining development is run by Monterrico Metals of Britain, which was bought by Zijin Mining Group (2899.HK: Quote) (601899.SS: Quote) in 2007. Other Chinese miners have been investing in Peru, despite periodic conflicts over who controls natural resources.

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At a former al-Qaida stronghold southeast of the Afghan capital, a state-owned Chinese company is at work on a $3 billion mine project to tap one of the world’s largest unexploited copper reserves, a potential financial boon for an impoverished country mired in war.

The promise of a bright future at Aynak, however, cannot conceal the troubling reality of how business is often done in Afghanistan, according to critics of the Kabul government’s decision to reject bids from competitors in the U.S., Canada and other countries.

The bidding process unfairly favored China, they allege, and epitomized the back-room deals and abuse of power that has turned Afghans against their government and undercut the U.S. military effort there.

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The open-pit mine is expected to produce a quarter of a million tons of copper a year and is one of five major Chinese mining projects planned for Peru that appear to be advancing despite the darkening economic climate. The reason? The Asian giant’s insatiable need for raw materials.

Erica S. Downs, a China expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said Chinese mining companies are aggressively expanding worldwide, often through mergers and acquisitions that target companies that have been laid low by the crisis. An example is Chinalco’s bid to acquire control of Rio Tinto, a giant Australian-British mining company.

“When the economy was booming, there were fewer attractive assets for sale, and often stiff competition for those that were available,” Downs said. “Today, Chinese firms are finding the opportunities for international mergers and acquisitions to be much more plentiful.”

Meanwhile, Reuters reports that a Peruvian investigation has found police officers guilty of torturing opponents of a mining project run by a British-Chinese company.

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U.S. troops set up bases last month along a dirt track that a Chinese firm is paving as part of a $3 billion project to gain access to the Aynak copper reserves. Some troops made camp outside a compound built for the Chinese road crews, who are about to return from winter break. American forces also have expanded their presence in neighboring Logar province, where the Aynak deposit is.

The U.S. deployment wasn’t intended to protect the Chinese investment — the largest in Afghanistan’s history — but to strangle Taliban infiltration into the capital of Kabul. But if the mission provides the security that a project to revive Afghanistan’s economy needs, the synergy will be welcome.

[...] Beijing faces enormous challenges in completing the project and gaining access to the estimated 240 million tons of copper ore that are accessible through surface mining. Taliban-led insurgents operate in large parts of Logar and Wardak; the area is sown with mines; and China must complete an ambitious set of infrastructure projects, including Afghanistan’s first national railway, as part of the deal.

China’s willingness to gamble so much in one of the world’s poorest and riskiest nations testifies to its determination to acquire the commodities it needs to maintain its economic growth and social stability.

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