SUN
Before she traveled to Conakry in Guinea to work as a first-aid nurse, Ding
Ying pictured Africa as a place of scorching sun, malaria and poverty.
"But in fact it was no wasteland," said Ding, 44. "Basic medical equipment
was available. Most local people were conscious of disease prevention."
During her two years at the emergency center, Ding even grew watermelons and
cucumbers with seeds she had brought from China.
She attributes her relaxed working conditions to others' hard work, quoting
the old Chinese saying "qian ren zai shu, hou ren cheng liang": one generation
plants trees under whose shade another generation rests.
A steady trickle of medical teams have been coming to the continent since
1963, when the newly independent Algeria asked for international aid to relieve
the former colony's scant medical service.
Helping African nations build railroads and hospitals has long been a part of
China's diplomatic policy towards Africa. Evolving in the late 1950s and early
1960s, China-Africa relations have been cemented through pragmatic economic and
political means.
Late Premier Zhou Enlai ordered China's first team to Algeria, thus launching
more than 40 years of medical cooperation during which nearly 20,000 medical
workers have traveled to 47 African countries and regions, treating more than
200 million patients, according to the Chinese Ministry of Health.
Forty-five Chinese medical workers have lost their lives helping African
health, according to Ministry of Health statistics.
Even during the chaos of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), China offered a
helping hand from the principle of internationalism, says Cheng Yuanmeng, 65, a
Swahili translator for the fifth medical team to aid Zanzibar, Tanzania during
the 1970s.
The wiry old man still smiles as he recalls the 13-day journey by dhow across
the Indian Ocean bringing penicillin, vitamin and foodstuffs to people in
Zanzibar.
The 400,000 people of Zanzibar had one hospital, he said. While Indian
doctors earned 4,000 shillings a month, Chinese doctors accepted their 200
shillings from the government in the spirit of friendship.
"The medical team project has been a key part of China's comprehensive
diplomacy," says Professor He Wenping of the Institute of West-Asian and African
Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
"The non-utilitarian motive, humanitarian solicitude and the continuity of
aid cemented China-African relations and made the two support each other in
international affairs."
Prof. He asserts that unlike western nations, China honored African nations'
sovereignty, delivering aid with no strings attached.