In her article ‘A curse with no cure?’ (The Broker 11), Bertine Kamphuis concludes that when looking for cures for the so-called resource curse, the following aspects are crucial to determining their likely success:

• Avoid single-dimensional approaches to addressing the resource curse.
• Counter the trend in which the responsibility for preventing the curse is mainly placed in the hands of governments and is portrayed as ‘simply’ a technical capacity problem.
• Engage all agents involved in the resource extraction networks and follow a regional, if not a global, approach rather than a country approach.
• Involve China in defining and resolving the problem.

Although I do not disagree with Kamphuis’ analysis, I do have three comments to make. The first relates to and confirms Kamphuis’ observation that economists have been particularly persistent in separating their cures from ‘messy’ politics, such as corruption, lack of democratization and instances of violent conflict. Very recent support for this claim can be found in the World Bank report, Global Economic Prospects 2009: Commodities at the Crossroads. This annual publication elaborates extensively on commodity dependence and growth, as well as on managing primary commodity booms. However, it hardly mentions such relevant subjects as governance, transparency and the role of China in Africa.

My second observation is that Kamphuis does not mention one author who to a very large extent succeeds in incorporating in his analysis and recommendations all four aspects mentioned above. Paul Collier does so in his 2007 book, The Bottom Billion¹ . Admittedly, Collier only briefly discusses involving China in defining and resolving the problem. This brings me to my last comment. China’s role in the context of the resource curse is analyzed in greater detail by the Netherlands Advisory Council on International Affairs (AIV) in its report Met het oog op China: op weg naar een volwassen relatie (China in the balance: towards a mature relationship)² .

In this report the AIV refers to the future EU-China-Africa dialogue that was agreed on at the EU-China summit in September 2006. At this summit, the role of China and the EU in Africa in the context of global supply and demand of oil and other raw materials was an important agenda item. The AIV warns that not much should be expected from such a trilateral cooperation, because China considers itself as a developing rather than donor country. In addition, the rise of China has fundamentally altered African countries’ dependency – on the US and the EU – while strengthening China’s own position on the world stage. For this reason the AIV proposes a pragmatic businesslike approach where cooperation should for the time being focus not so much on programmes founded upon generally accepted principles as on specific projects that take account of the different countries’ wishes and needs.

The AIV takes the view that in the long term, as China’s vested interests – investments, exploitation of resources, logistic links, loans and so on – in that and similar parts of the world increase, it will have a growing interest in stability and security there.

Remarkably, as an observer interested in history will note, in this respect the AIV’s recommendations are very much in line with the policies of Lord Palmerston, arguably Britains’s most renowned Foreign Secretary, who held office for a total of 15 years during the second quarter of the 19th century. It was Palmerston’s view that a country such Britain then – and China now – had no permanent allies, only permanent interests.

Dr L.B.M. Mennes is emeritus professor of International Economics, Erasmus University, Rotterdam. He is the former managing director of the Netherlands Development-Finance Company (FMO).