Hu Jintao Starts Africa Tour With Loans Promise

The Chinese president, Hu Jintao, begins a tour of Africa today to further encourage Beijing's burgeoning trade with the continent while reassuring leaders China will do more than buy up its oil and minerals.

Mr Hu offered a sweetener immediately before leaving for Cameroon, the first of eight countries on his 11-day tour, by announcing $3bn (£1.5bn) in credit to African countries along with additional aid and interest-free loans. China emphasised that the new money comes with none of the "political conditions" attached to aid from western governments.

But that has prompted concern in some countries that Chinese money encourages corruption and misrule and helps to prop up pariah regimes such as that of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe.

Among the most closely watched stops on the tour will be Mr Hu's visit to Sudan, which has become a major oil supplier to China. Beijing continues to sell weapons to the Khartoum government despite international condemnation of the bloodshed in Darfur, where the UN estimates 200,000 people have been killed in a conflict blamed on the Sudanese leadership.

Some foreign governments and human rights groups are watching to see if Mr Hu will use China's influence to press Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, to accept UN peacekeepers and to end government attacks on Darfur.

Still, the focus of the Chinese leader's visit remains trade. China's trade with Africa last year rose by 30% on 2005 to $55bn, according to Beijing. That is a fivefold increase since 2001 and represents more trade than Africa does with the EU.

Africa's attraction to China is natural resources, particularly oil. A third of the oil fuelling China's economic boom comes from Africa. The single largest supplier to Beijing is Angola.

But the World Bank president, Paul Wolfowitz, has criticised Chinese lending to poor countries, warning that it could get them back into unmanageable debt.