SAFARI - Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism - page 169

“What you have in Africa is an unregulated ivory market where the majority of buyers
in those markets are foreigners. They're not African,” Martin wrote. “The Chinese aren't
actually killing elephants but they're organizing it and that's even worse.”
This matters to Zambia, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique and the other African coun-
tries struggling to improve their parks and tourism.
Others have confirmed the report. Writing in Vanity Fair a few months after the Martin
study, Alex Shoumatoff described his investigation traveling around Africa—to Kenya, Ga-
bon and Zimbabwe—tracing the path of Chinese-supported poaching. In Amboseli in
southern Kenya, poaching was unheard of until Chinese contractors moved in to build a
new highway as a foreign aid project. Soon poaching returned. Conservation groups using
DNA sequencing of smuggled ivory determined where the contraband came from.
This is poaching on a global scale that threatens to put elephants on the extinction
list. Yet there is little sign that the tourism industry is actively involved in this issue even
though, from a strictly monetary perspective, tourism has a lot to lose if nothing is done.
What would happen to African safaris without elephants, or tourist brochures without an
elephant backlit by a setting sun?
For their part, the Chinese have largely denied their role in the illicit trade. Richard
Leakey told me that when he asked Chinese officials why they didn't crack down on traf-
ficking in ivory from poached elephant tusks, he was told that China wouldn't get serious
until Africa did. They told him Africa needed stronger penalties. “In China, you are ex-
ecuted if you kill a panda,” Leakey said.
Vietnam, another Asian country whose citizens trade in illicit rhino horns and elephant
tusks, has been more forthcoming. In September 2011 a group of Vietnamese officials flew
to Johannesburg, South Africa, to discuss how they can better help stop the trade in their
country. In China, it has been nongovernmental groups that actively campaigned against
the poaching of elephants and buying ivory; they have broadcast films showing the dam-
age done by the trade and the foolishness of believing that ground tusks can make an aging
man more virile.
The Chinese are the new power brokers in Africa and exert an influence both appre-
ciated and feared. China's wealth has helped fuel the continent's rebound over the last
decade, and in 2010, China became Africa's largest trading partner, accounting for $129
billion of business. Overall, the money has financed exports to China of African resources,
largely minerals and oil. At the same time, the Chinese government is spending 41 percent
of its foreign aid in Africa, building highways, hospitals, ports and sports stadiums. A South
African journalist at the conference accused the Chinese of acting like neocolonialists
when the discussion touched on indirect Chinese support of elephant poaching.
Zambia was once one of China's closest friends on the continent, with ties that go back
to the first presidency of Kenneth Kaunda. The Bank of China opened its first southern
Africa branch in Lusaka. In 1975, China built the Tazara Railway to connect Zambia's