31.12.69

, 2006.  Amid the diplomatic pomp and handshakes of an official visit Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao opened the Luanda General Hospital and had his picture taken peering into a microscope surrounded by officials in suits and medics in white smocks. The capital’s General Hospital, a sprawling eighty-thousand square meter complex, was constructed with Chinese funds and meant to symbolize the growing partnership between Beijing and Angola, a symbol replicated across the African continent in countless roads, bridges, and other infrastructure projects funded by Chinese investments.  Premier Wen stayed only 24 hours but the hospital remained; a physical reminder of Sino-African trust and cooperation.  Four years later the hospital was in imminent danger of collapse.  Deep cracks ran through its walls, bricks crumbled under the structure’s weight.  Personnel and 150 patients were evacuated with some forced to live in tents on the hospital grounds.  Beijing dispatched an investigatory team and their findings concluded that faulty Angolan surveys resulted in flawed Chinese designs, a diagnosis that has come to symbolize the greater Sino-African relationship: great ambitions built on uncertain ground.

Source: Foreign Policy Journal