June 9, 2008
China’s love of museums
China’s hunger for African raw materials is well-known. Less well-known, but utterly fascinating, are the stratagems which China uses to satisfy its hunger.
A few months ago, some officials from Beijing were being shown around Belgium’s Royal Museum for Central Africa, which is located in Tervuren on the outskirts of Brussels. Known for short as the Africa Museum, this is one of the world’s great anthropological, zoological and geological institutes, with wonderful collections of ethnographic objects, insects and tropical wood as well as an active scientific research centre.
The Africa Museum houses the archives of Sir Henry Morton Stanley, the Victorian explorer who played a part in the annexation of what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) by King Leopold II of Belgium. In addition, the museum has all sorts of detailed maps and geological data about central Africa in its possession.
Given the DRC’s large reserves of diamonds, gold, copper, cobalt, coltan (used in mobile phones and laptop computers), zinc and manganese, this makes the museum a place of more than passing interest to mining executives, financial investors - and guests from booming economies in Asia.
So after a routine tour of the stuffed animals, the Chinese visitors suggested to the museum staff that it would be a honour, a privilege, an unforgettable gesture of friendship, if they could be allowed to take a quick look at the maps and other specialised documentation not generally on public view. Of course, of course, came the reply. Why ever not?
So in they trooped into the vaults. Then the Chinese put in another request. Sorry to be a nuisance and all that, but would it be possible to take some copies of these materials?
What happened next is difficult to pin down. According to one version of events, the offer of a €20 banknote was enough for the Chinese to get their way. If so, it was - from a Chinese point of view - a brilliant and almost unbelievably, ridiculously cheap coup.
No need to send out geologists and surveyors to central Africa - it’s all been done for you a century ago! And no need to dip too deeply into China’s $1,682bn foreign exchange reserves! Inflation may be preying on everyone’s minds these days but, hey, €20 can get you a long way.
I am wondering how you found out this gaffe of such incredible scale. Would anyone ever want to admit this? It is too good to be true (from the Chinese point of view!!). At the same time the naivity of my compatriots does not fully surprise me.
Posted by: Stefan Hendrickx | June 11th, 2008 at 3:21 pm | Report this commentAmazingly sad! the DRC needs a visit of the EU to set the investment records straight, this may be a justification for the EU to really get to know the DRC ,its Legacy and all its natural wonders, let’s hope the Belgian TV and EU will push for a little documentary: Exploring the Chinese Trail…
at the same time,the DRC got the visit of some diamond traders that really did some cleaning a while back, will these diamond traders like to have their spoils aired?
Posted by: blogger | June 11th, 2008 at 9:43 pm | Report this commentAs director of the Royal Museum for Central Africa, I consider this story as another ’se non è vera, è ben trovata’ fantasy that so often surrounds museum operations. This story is simply not true. We are not aware of any visit of chinese officials, and the events as presented here would be impossible to occur even physically. Our geology archives are stored in a building 400 m away from the museum building, and consist of nearly 500 metres of documents and files. These geology archives have indeed a worldwide reputation and they are securely stored. Only the head of department and a few specialized scientists have access to these archives. We are aware of security concerns and dangers of inappropriate use of these archives. Access to the information is subject to well defined regulations and policies. We would gladly invite the writer of this article to visit our geology department and answer any questions he may have.
And of course, if he has evidence to the contrary about the facts described in this article, we would be interested to receive this information.
Kind regards
Posted by: Guido Gryseels | June 13th, 2008 at 12:09 pm | Report this commentGuido Gryseels
Director, Royal Museum for Central Africa