Ma heckled on visit to Baolai Village
　

TIMING TROUBLE: The Presidential Office said that Ma Ying-jeou had waited 12 days before visiting the disaster area to avoid interfering with rescue efforts

By Mo Yan-chih and Shih Hsiu-chuan
STAFF REPORTERS
Saturday, Aug 22, 2009, Page 1
　

President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was met with complaints and heckling from typhoon victims yesterday as he visited Baolai Village (寶來), one of the hardest-hit areas in Kaohsiung County, for the first time since Typhoon Morakot wreaked havoc in southern Taiwan two weeks ago.

With the village unreachable by ground transport, Ma arrived in Liouguei Township (六龜) by helicopter. As soon as villagers spotted Ma, they began approaching him with complaints, saying “no one cares about us.”

“It has been days and our family members’ remains have still not been found,” one villager said. “There are not enough excavators, so we have to dig by hand. Please help us, Mr President!”

“Our homes were buried by the mudslide, and an excavator came and dug for a day and left,” another villager said. “Everything is gone. We might as well all be dead.”

In response to criticism from villagers that Ma’s visit came too late, Presidential Office Spokesman Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦) said the president had delayed visiting the disaster area to avoid interfering with the rescue effort.

Ma, whose popularity has plummeted amid widespread criticism of the government’s response to the disaster, began visiting affected areas in the last few days as rescue work winds down and the nation prepares for post-­disaster reconstruction, Wang said.

Ma did not visit the hardest-hit areas until 12 days after the typhoon struck. He visited Siaolin Village (小林) on Wednesday and the Sinkai Community (新開部落) on Thursday.

Ma yesterday also visited Namasiya Township (那瑪夏), where about 600 residents remain. Others have been evacuated to Cishan Township (旗山).

Roads to the village were still being repaired, and they had neither electricity nor water supplies, residents told Ma.

The president shook hands with residents and promised to speed up rescue and relief efforts.

Ma then visited Taoyuan Township (桃源) for about an hour before heading to the military command center at Cishan Township. Ma and Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) later presided over a disaster reconstruction meeting at the center and spent the night in the township.

Ma is scheduled to visit Siaolin Village again today and attend the erqi (二七), a traditional rite held on the 14th day after a person’s death.

Earlier yesterday in Taipei, while meeting with US Representative Howard Berman at the Presidential Office, Ma thanked the US for assisting rescue efforts by providing helicopters earlier this week to help lift engineering vehicles to hard-hit villages.

Meanwhile, Wang yesterday dismissed speculation that Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (台灣高鐵) chief executive officer Ou Chin-der (歐晉德), a former Ma aide, would take over as Executive Yuan secretary-general after Hsueh Hsiang-chuan (薛香川) tendered his resignation.

Hsueh had been criticized for dining with his family at a five-star hotel while Typhoon Morakot ravaged the south.

When asked by reporters if Ma would keep Liu as premier, Wang said Ma did not plan to replace Liu during the upcoming Cabinet reshuffle.

Lawmakers across party lines yesterday decided to hold a provisional session next week to ­deliberate on a special statute for post-Morakot reconstruction that would facilitate recovery efforts.

The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said it would present a draft proposal at the three-day session from Tuesday to Thursday to be discussed together with the Executive Yuan’s proposal, which capped the reconstruction budget at NT$100 billion (US$ 3.03 billion).

DPP caucus whip Wang Sing-nan (王幸男) said his party’s version would include short-term subsidies for losses in agriculture, as the subsidy earmarked by the Executive Yuan for this purpose would be inadequate to cover even farmers’ losses, not to mention medium and long-term reconstruction.

“For example, an orchid farmer who owns about a hectare of land may have lost NT$30 million in the flooding, but he or she would receive just NT$60,000 from the government’s subsidy program. Compensation should be based on farmers’ actual losses,” he said.
　

Ma and Liu face crisis of confidence
　

POOR PERFORMANCE: In his campaign, Ma said a leader who loses the trust of the nation should step down. Professor Lo Chih-cheng said Ma reached that stage

By Loa Iok-sin
STAFF REPORTER
Saturday, Aug 22, 2009, Page 3

President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) face a crisis of confidence, academics said yesterday, citing poll results in which more than 70 percent of respondents were not satisfied with the government’s performance in dealing with the aftermath of Typhoon Morakot.

“The government, headed by Ma and Liu, is apparently facing a serious crisis of confidence — people no longer trust their ability to handle crises, and also question their credibility,” Soochow University political science professor Lo Chih-cheng (羅致政) said at a news conference that Taiwan Thinktank held to release the results of its poll on the government’s rescue and relief work.

The think tank is generally believed to sympathize with the pan-green camp.

In the poll’s 1,018 valid samples, 76.2 percent of the respondents were not satisfied with Ma’s performance in handling the aftermath of the storm, while 77.3 percent said they were not satisfied with Liu’s performance.

When asked if they agreed with Liu when he claimed that the current government’s rescue and relief efforts were faster than those order by former president Lee Teng-hui’s (李登輝) after the 921 Earthquake on Sept. 21, 1999 — which claimed nearly 2,500 lives, destroyed more than 44,000 houses and caused US$9.1 billion in damage — 70.7 percent of the respondents said they disagreed.

Meanwhile, 71.4 percent of the respondents said they did not believe the Presidential Office’s claim that Ma knew nothing beforehand about the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ rejection of foreign aid.

“The results show that the public thinks the government is both incapable and lying,” Lo said. “Ma said during his presidential campaign last year that a government that has lost the trust of the people should not to stay in power — well, apparently his government has reached that stage [based on his own standards].”

Seventy-two percent of the respondents said they had either donated items or money, volunteered or done both to help typhoon victims.

The survey also showed that 78.9 percent of the respondents thought that the public — individuals and non-governmental organizations alike — were doing a better job than the government in rescue and relief efforts.

Soochow University political science professor Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明) said that Ma and Liu were the two officials with the highest disapproval rating among all officials in the survey.

“It doesn’t make sense that it will be these two men who will decide who the replacement ministers will be,” Hsu said.

DPP urges MAC to bar Chin’s Chinese aid
　

AGAINST THE LAW: A DPP legislator said that the Aboriginal lawmaker’s acceptance of money from China for relief efforts contravened regulations on cross-strait dealings
　

By Jenny W. Hsu
STAFF REPORTER
Saturday, Aug 22, 2009, Page 3
　

The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) must stop Non-Partisan Solidarity Union Legislator May Chin (高金素梅) from accepting a 20 million yuan (US$3 million) flood relief donation from China, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday.

DPP spokesman Cheng Wen-tsang (鄭文燦) said the money violated the Act Governing Relations between the Peoples of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (台灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例).

Cheng said that, according to the Act, the Straits Exchange Foundation was the sole contact window between the governments on either side of the Strait.

“This means that any donations from China must be handled by the SEF and not an individual. China is clearly using Chin as a poster child for their unification strategy,” he said, criticizing China for using Chin’s background — she is half Atayal — to promote unification.

Chin is known for her outspoken disdain for Japan for its cruel treatment of Taiwanese and Aborigines during World War II. She has led several groups to Japan to protest at the Yasukuni Shrine, dedicated to Japan’s 2.5 million war dead, which includes the names of 28,000 Taiwanese and 21,000 Korean soldiers, most of whom were forced to serve in the Japanese army.

Many bloggers and netizens joined the chorus castigating Chin for “sleeping with the enemy,” with one Plurker panning Chin for disgracing her Atayal heritage.

The DPP also repeated its request that President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) immediately reshuffle his Cabinet and remove Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄), who has been a target of blame over the government’s slow flood response and relief operation in the aftermath of Typhoon Morakot.

“Unless we have a new team heading up the relief and reconstruction operation, the same problems of slowness and disorganization will reoccur. The victims will continue to suffer at the hands of this incompetent government,” he said, responding to media reports that Ma was leaning toward keeping the Cabinet intact.

He said various public opinion polls have shown the approval rating for the Ma administration has plummeted to less than 20 percent and more than 67 percent of respondents to one poll said Liu should step down. The president’s refusal to reshuffle the Cabinet would be blatant disrespect of public opinion, Cheng said.

Meanwhile, in her own defense, Chin yesterday said accepting a disaster relief donation from China was not illegal and that anyone who wanted to could monitor her distribution of the funds. Chin promised the funds would be used transparently and that proper records would be kept. The records would be made available to the donor, to the Straits Exchange Foundation and to anyone else who wished to see them, she said.

“The MAC is also welcome to help disburse the funds, if it has the time,” she said, adding that there was no law to prevent her from accepting the donation on behalf of Aboriginal typhoon victims.

In adherence to the donor’s wishes, the money would be used to help rehabilitate families in minor Aboriginal tribes who lost their homes in the massive flooding and landslides triggered by the storm, she said.

She also said she would hold a presentation today in Sandimen Township (三地門), Pingtung County, to inform residents about the donation and solicit the opinions of typhoon victims there on how the money should be used.

A bribe by any other name

Saturday, Aug 22, 2009, Page 8

One of the benefits of being a big-spending world power is that much of the world — especially its autocratic and venal parts — is a briber’s market.

Unlike democratic governments, which are subject to at least a semblance of accountability among civic groups and watchdogs, China, the most aggressive of emerging world powers, offers no substantial space for civilian organizations to criticize diplomatic activities.

Instead, for some time, the international media have been focusing on the growing presence of Chinese investment in Asia and Africa in particular, and some analysts and reporters have asked whether the fiscal benefits for local economies and raw material benefits for the Chinese government will not be undone in the longer term as Beijing’s neo-colonial behavior triggers resentment in those locations.

In other regions, however, China is learning that cash doesn’t always deliver the goods. Despite threats of reprisal, in recent weeks Australia and Japan have issued exiled Uighur activist Rebiya Kadeer a visa — allowing her to speak freely of Chinese atrocities in Xinjiang.

The failure of Chinese state-controlled Chinalco to take greater control over Australian mining firm Rio Tinto was, in Chinese eyes, just as great a provocation, but with more practical consequences. Some of the firm’s employees are now in custody in China and preparing for a farcical corporate show trial, while the Australian media are finally waking up to the nature of the beast they have admired for so long.

After weeks of rising tensions, it is pleasing to see the Australian government respond to China’s hypocrisy and infantilism with something approaching self-respect. Perhaps Canberra realized that the average Australian has far less tolerance for Chinese insults to Australian values — be they commercial, cultural or moral.

In so doing, Australia helps to teach the Chinese a lesson: There are limits to what you can do or say to self-respecting foreigners; ignoring this forces a choice between moderation and the kind of extremist rhetoric and vengefulness characteristic of China in the late 1960s. Indeed, reporting on the Rio Tinto case and tensions with Australia in general, the Chinese media in the last few weeks have displayed a passion for exactly this kind of mad language.

In Taiwan, the latest — and most spectacular so far — example of gunboat fiscal diplomacy ironically arrives in the aftermath of Typhoon Morakot. Non-Partisan Solidarity Union Legislator May Chin (高金素梅) this week personally received a check worth US$2.9 million from the Chinese government, ostensibly to assist Aboriginal communities suffering from the typhoon’s devastating impact on remote areas in Taiwan’s south.

May Chin has been running a China-friendly line of no relevance to Aborigines for some time, along with some other Aboriginal politicians and activists who have connections and a ready audience among unificationists in China. But she also has no shortage of enemies in the Aboriginal community. For the Chinese to donate such a large amount of money to her and a group of fellow travelers instead of genuinely non-partisan groups or the government, therefore, is a corrupt act intended to strengthen one segment of Aboriginal politics at the cost of others and seed pro-China propaganda.

As always, China can’t help itself. But now, in the unfortunate context of Typhoon Morakot, the corrosive influence of Chinese “aid” is taking on a new and more conspicuous form as Beijing openly seeks to manipulate legislative and ethnic politics.

The Morakot Excuse Hall of Shame
　

By Johnny Neihu 強尼內湖
Saturday, Aug 22, 2009, Page 8

The fallout from the mishandling of Typhoon Morakot has caused many people, particularly those overseas, to see our dear leader Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) in a new light.

For practically the first time since he positioned his privileged posterior in the Presidential Office more than a year ago, the darling of the international media has been getting some bad press from those who previously made a living out of fawning over every move of the “Harvard-educated,” “handsome” “leader” of the “China-friendly” Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).

First off, The Associated Press threw a few jabs, hurting the boy-faced wonder with accusations of an “arrogant and aloof” demeanor before detailing his “string of blunders.”

Then the Financial Times landed a rabbit punch, describing our man’s “struggle to contain political damage.”

But the knockout blow came from the New York Times, with Andrew Jacobs providing by far the best summary of the failings of our Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) wannabe, with this classic description: “Prone to wonkish utterances, Ma is not known as a good communicator. His wooden qualities have been thrown into stark relief in recent days as he has tried to console storm victims.”

Time to throw in the towel.

These are the kind of gems that can be mined on the few occasions when international journalists can be bothered to grace our shores.

You can tell how bad things have gotten for Marky Mark Ma when even the rabidly pro-KMT press corps starts getting on his case, as did the China Times with its Tuesday editorial character assassination.

“[Ma] cannot identify with the feelings of others, and he cannot hide this flaw … he doesn’t have the backbone to make quick and firm decisions ... Being meticulous about procedural details is an appropriate approach for other officials, but not for a head of state. After the disaster, Ma had 72 hours to show his leadership, but he squandered that time and there is no way to recover it now.”

Ouch!

Stung by this unprecedented international and domestic criticism and with his popularity plunging faster than Yao Yao’s (瑤瑤) neckline, Ma did what he does best: He called two press conferences in an attempt to allay fears that he is a bumbling buffoon.

Bad move. Because despite what many people think, Ma’s much-feted English skills are really not that great and usually consist of lots of umming and ahhing before waffling in a roundabout way that doesn’t really answer the question.

Ma would have been better off trying to rebuild his battered image by taking a leaf out of Russian Presi-minister Vlad the Impaler’s book and staging a Putinesque picture shoot, stripping to the waist for a spot of bear-wrestling and horseback posing in a remote mountain retreat.

Trouble is, with all the roads to Alishan (阿里山) cut off for months to come and Taiwan’s native black bears about as rare as an intact bridge in Kaohsiung County, Ma would probably have to cancel that in favor of a semi-naked romp with Tuan-Tuan and Yuan-Yuan at Taipei Zoo.

That assumes the Muzha MRT line is working, of course.

Speaking of battered reputations, I’d have to say that the nation’s cable TV news channels have gone some way to improving their collective image as public service providers following the sterling work they did in covering rescue operations after Morakot.

It if hadn’t been for their prompt reporting of bits of information concerning trapped villagers and footage from intrepid reporters, there would surely have been even more death and destruction, with some still stuck in the mountains for Matsu knows how long.

Now, fast forward a few years.



CCTV Taiwan Evening News
Bulletin for Jan. 21, 2017

Newsreader: “Taiwan Province Regional Administrator in Perpetuity Ma Ying-jeou today expressed surprise at news that employees of Yunnan Province’s Chuandian Pharmaceutical Company (Bear Bile Division) discovered what appeared to be a new Aboriginal tribe deep in the mountains of Kaohsiung County while hunting for Taiwan black pandas.

“Upon torturing the unkempt natives to discover the whereabouts of the remaining creatures — known as Formosan black bears until the glorious mission of reunification was completed last year — it turned out that the emaciated, dark-skinned barbarians were survivors of Typhoon Morakot. They had been living off the land since all road access to the outside world was washed away when the typhoon struck the island eight years ago.

“It was the chaos and devastation caused by Morakot in 2009 that finally convinced the then-renegade administration of Taiwan to realize the futility of maintaining its faux independent status and enter into negotiations with former chairman Comrade Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) soon after.

“Commenting on the matter, Regional Administrator Ma said, ‘Oh, I remember Morakot. It was my finest hour. We rescued thousands of stranded people. Except for the hundreds that died. Those poor folks must not have wanted to be rescued.’”



As for me, I used to view Ma as an anal retentive in the wrong line of work.

Following his awkward, emotionless attempts to console victims last week and this week, however, whenever I see him my mind conjures up a cross between Homer Simpson and a sexually repressed product of the British public school system.

When is someone going to tell Ma that it doesn’t matter whether you wear a “Taiwan” cap or not — it’s what’s underneath it that counts.

Staying on the schoolboy theme, some of the lame excuses being bandied about by officials for their dereliction of duty were so incredibly unbelievable that fifth graders would have been proud of them.

Just in case you missed them, I have compiled a Morakot Excuse Hall of Shame.

First, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ justification for refusing foreign aid. Former deputy minister of foreign affairs Andrew Hsia (夏立言): “Teacher, I forgot to include the word ‘temporarily.’”

Next, Ma’s excuse for not starting the rescue effort earlier. Ma: “Teacher, it was raining and we didn’t want to get wet.”

The premier’s excuse for taking time out on Tuesday, Aug. 11, to have a haircut and dye? Ma again: “But Teacher, it was a regular appointment.”

Soon-to-be-former Cabinet Secretary-General Hsueh Hsiang-chuan’s (薛香川) excuse for going out for an expensive meal on Aug. 8 while people were being buried under landslides and washed away? Hsueh: “Teacher, it was Father’s Day.”

Compare these with the most credible excuse of the week. Florida resident Keith Griffin, when asked in court if he was guilty of downloading kiddie porn, said: “My cat did it.”



Got something to tell Johnny? Get it off your chest: Write to dearjohnny@taipeitimes.com, but put “Dear Johnny” in the subject line or he’ll mark your bouquets and brickbats as spam.

Dear Johnny,

I am astounded that the president and all the staff he is supposed to command can’t for the life of them do a better job.

The KMT, with Ma and Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) at the helm, has proven how ridiculous its approach to the Taiwanese people has been.

Some people do indeed have their minds on China and not the folk who sadly died for nothing.

If Ma cared about Taiwan and its people, then he’d step down and let other more responsible and competent people run the show.

With a heavy heart, I wish all the survivors the best of luck, because they really need it.

TEACHER HARRY



Johnny replies: No need for me to edit Old King Cole, I’m afraid: The version submitted here cannot be improved on.

Teacher Harry might want the president to step down, but I’ll tell you something: the Democratic Progressive Party doesn’t. It wants Ma to keep on like this for the rest of his term.

Morakot’s first scalp was a true scapegoat
　

By J. Michael Cole 寇謐將
Saturday, Aug 22, 2009, Page 8

During separate press conferences with local and foreign media on Tuesday, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) announced that Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrew Hsia (夏立言) — who came under fire over a leaked memo ordering overseas missions to decline offers of aid in the wake of Typhoon Morakot — had tendered his resignation.

That Ma would make this information public implies that Hsia’s resignation has, for all intents and purposes, been accepted.

Heads are starting to roll following the government’s amateurish handling of the emergency, and this is a welcome development, but it is also evident that Hsia is a scapegoat. Admittedly, Minister of Foreign Affairs Francisco Ou (歐鴻鍊) was not in the country when the decision to refuse aid was made, but it is hard to believe that he was not aware of the matter.

Furthermore, Ou was on a diplomatic mission that sources claim included Jordan and the Czech Republic. In other words, he should have been in the decision-making chain — and should be reprimanded for his ministry’s inappropriate policy and the likely deadly consequences.

A well-placed source claims that the aid memo came from above Hsia (who would not have had the authority to decide on the matter) and probably even higher than Ou, which means that it was either the National Security Council, the premier or the president who was responsible. Why they would have ordered this remains a mystery.

The top officials who were behind this decision, therefore, are likely to remain unaccountable, while Hsia is being sacrificed to an angry Taiwanese public.

One possible reason for the decision to delay the approval of foreign aid, another source said, was that the top leadership did not know what kind of material assistance was required and therefore did not want other governments to start sending planeloads of unnecessary material. What allegedly followed was an internal screw-up and a departure from the internal chain of approval for the memo, which may have bypassed both a section director-general for review of the draft and Hsia altogether. If this is true, then Hsia is being forced out for something he did not do.

It is unlikely that Beijing would have ordered Taipei to reject foreign aid, or to have threatened retaliation if it did. After all, Beijing does not stand to gain anything by Ma coming under criticism or his administration being undermined. What China needs is a strong, popular Ma who can forge ahead with his cross-strait policies and bring Taiwan closer to unification.

It is possible, however, that Taiwan’s policymakers decided to wait for a green light from Beijing for fear of “angering” it by opening the doors to foreign aid, especially from the US and Japan, whose presence on Taiwanese soil has sensitive implications. In other words, a misreading by Taipei of the importance that Beijing attaches to the symbolism of foreign help in Taiwan, rather than actual Chinese interference, could help explain the decision to reject or delay approval of aid.

Hsia is the first fall guy for a development that, in the end, was far less consequential than the more pressing question of why it took so long for the military to deploy in the south to launch rescue operations. Ma can claim all he wants that heavy rain over three days prevented the deployment of helicopters, but the fact remains: Rain or no rain, there should have been boots on the ground — and there weren’t.

Whose head will roll for that one?

J. Michael Cole is a writer based in Taipei.

Expansive China faces foreign resentment
　

While many see big benefits from Chinese cash, some countries are growing suspicious

By Christian Lowe
REUTERS , ALGIERS
Saturday, Aug 22, 2009, Page 9

Algerian shopkeeper Abdelkrim Salouda has witnessed China’s global economic expansion first-hand and he does not like it, especially since he was in a mass brawl this month with Chinese migrant workers.

“They have offended us with their bad behavior,” said Salouda, a devout Muslim who lives in a suburb of the Algerian capital. “In the evening ... they drink beer, and play cards and they wear shorts in front of the residents.”

From Africa to Europe, the Middle East and the US, China’s drive to project its economic might abroad can sometimes breed fear and resentment.

The risks are likely to grow as Beijing channels more of its foreign exchange reserves, which stood at US$2.13 trillion at the end of June, into foreign investments.

From having a handful of tiny investments abroad less than two decades ago, China has grown to the world’s sixth-biggest foreign investor and overtook the US as Africa’s top trading partner last year.

That breathtaking rise has brought problems: allegations from emerging countries that China is stripping them of resources and suspicions in the developed world that obscure state interests lurk behind Chinese investments.

Where governments welcome Chinese investments for the boost they bring to their economies, a widely perceived Chinese tendency for Chinese firms to import their own workers has created tensions with job-seekers.

“It’s very new, it’s very big, it’s full of potential hazards, it’s also full of potential benefits,” said Kerry Brown, senior fellow at Britain’s Chatham House think tank.

The challenge of how to deal with such tensions will only be magnified as the global slowdown prompts Beijing to pump even more of its foreign exchange reserves overseas.

China used to be content to keep its surplus dollars in the bank or in US government debt. But the financial crisis and subsequent downturn have, in some quarters, shaken faith in the strength of the dollar and US Treasuries. With China still needing to secure access to global resources, some Chinese policy-makers are talking about redirecting billions of dollars into overseas investment instead.

The resentment felt by the Algerian shopkeeper toward his new Chinese neighbors is not universal: people in many places welcome the benefits from Chinese investment.

Those can include aid with few strings attached, capital for infrastructure that Western donors will not fund and competition that drives down prices.

Despite the clashes in Algeria’s capital this month, its government welcomes Chinese investment.

A US$9 billion minerals-for-infrastructure deal is presented by Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) President Joseph Kabila as a cornerstone of his plan to rebuild the DR Congo after years of war. China will build roads, schools and hospitals in exchange for mining rights. In Guinea’s capital, Conakry, the Chinese government is building a 50,000-seat sports stadium as a gift.

“We are very satisfied with our cooperation with China,” Republic of the Congo President Denis Sassou-Nguesso said on a visit to a hydro-electric dam being built by Chinese contractors.

“Contrary to certain assertions, it’s not just Chinese on the various construction sites, there are also numerous Congolese workers,” he said.

But in some countries, it is the sheer size of the Chinese presence that causes tension.

Russian officials estimated that last year there were 350,000 Chinese migrants living in the country’s far eastern regions, many illegally. The native population, in an area almost 10 times the size of France, is just more than 7 million.

Asked if the numbers of Chinese migrants jeopardized Moscow’s control there, a senior Russian migration official said: “There is a threat. It should not be overstated but there is a threat.”

The official did not want to be identified because of the sensitivity of the subject.

Elsewhere, the fact that the lion’s share of Chinese investments are from the state itself or state-controlled companies is the source of friction.

One of the best-known cases of thwarted Chinese expansion was when US lawmakers blocked the sale of oil company UNOCAL to China’s CNOOC Ltd in 2005.

One senator said the deal would effectively give the Chinese Communist Party control over a strategic US resource.

In Sudan, rebels accuse Beijing of supporting Khartoum in the six-year-old conflict in Darfur — and they see Chinese companies as the embodiment of that policy.

“Their only interest in Sudan is their own economic benefit,” said Al-Tahir al-Feki, a spokesman for Sudan’s rebel Justice and Equality Movement. “As soon as that benefit is gone they will disappear, leaving so many things destroyed behind them.”

Another accusation leveled at Chinese investors is that they cut corners.

Five Zambians were shot and wounded in 2005 in a riot over pay and safety standards at a Chinese-owned mine, and a year later 52 Zambians were killed in an explosion at a Chinese firm manufacturing explosives for mining.

In January, Chinese traders in Guinea closed their shops for several days for fear of reprisals after the authorities found Chinese-made fake medicines.

“A part of the population attacked the Chinese expatriates, whom they associated with the offenders. We ... had to intervene to calm the situation,” said a military source who was speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

China says its investors are forced to go into “frontier markets” because developed countries lock them out of more stable economies. As a result, they say, the risks they face are higher.

There is some truth in that argument, said Brown, a former British diplomat in Beijing and the author of The Rise of the Dragon, a book on Chinese investment.

“The underlying pattern we find is that in countries where governance is decent like Botswana or South Africa, where there’s reasonable rule of law and some kinds of infrastructure to control ... Chinese investment, then it’s not too problematic,” he said. “However, in countries where there are problems of governance, problems of environmental impact, problems of labor rights, unfortunately Chinese investment performs very poorly indeed.”

China has started to address the damage to its reputation as an overseas investor. Big firms have hired Western consultancy firms to give advice. Many are now seeking local partners, or favoring less high-profile indirect investments.

There are signs too that the Chinese government is doing more to win over the trust of local communities.

In Algeria, the Chinese embassy said it had advised its nationals to respect the country’s traditions. In Zambia, poor communities have received Chinese donations that include footballs and boreholes for drinking water.

But much of the responsibility will still rest with investment recipients to set out clear rules on how they manage the growing flows of cash.

“My hunch is that foreign governments have got to make decisions about where they want the money to go and where they say no,” Kerry said.