Barry Sautman and Yan Hairong

Regular readers of Pambazuka News will remember a debate held a year or so ago in its pages between the US-based NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) and ourselves about a lengthy report that HRW had issued on labour rights violations of copper mining firms in Zambia owned by the Chinese state-owned ente

The Human Rights Watch (HRW) response to our critique of their report on copper mining in Zambia by subsidiaries of state-owned China Non-Ferrous Metal Mining Corp.

A November 2011 Human Rights Watch (HRW) report on labour abuses in four mining firms in Zambia parented by state-owned enterprise (SOE) China Non-ferrous Metal Mining Co. (CNMC) is predictably a media sensation.

An international discourse of China-in-Africa has emerged, particularly in Western countries with dense links to Africa: the US, UK and France.