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given skepticism about China from Africa’s own increasingly vibrant civil society, which is demanding to know what China’s billions of dollars in infrastructure building, mineral extraction and land acquisition mean for the daily lives and political rights of ordinary Africans.

at the start of a four-country African trip, Prime Minister Li Keqiang acknowledged “growing pains” in the relationship, and the need to “assure our African friends in all seriousness that China will never pursue a colonialist path like some countries did, or allow colonialism, which belongs to the past, to reappear in Africa.”

China takes our primary goods and sells us manufactured ones. This was also the essence of colonialism.”

tate-owned news outlets reported this month that the government would ban the use of coal in Beijing and other urban areas by 2020 in an effort to reduce the noxious air pollution that chokes many cities. In July, a Chinese academic who is also a senior lawmaker said the government was considering a national cap on coal use as soon as 2016.

But he and other officials have provided few details — and, indeed, have sent conflicting, even disturbing, signals about their plans. Some measures China is considering could actually exacerbate climate change. One particularly misguided plan, for instance, would involve building 50 large industrial facilities in western China to convert coal into synthetic natural gas.

Nearly 54 percent of the country’s 1.35 billion people now live in cities, up from less than 18 percent in 1978.

more work to do to make sure its ideas are designed and carried out in ways that benefit its people.

pollution contributed to 1.2 million premature deaths in 2010, according to the Global Burden of Disease study, published in The Lancet, a British medical journal.

Faustian bargain

China’s environmental degradation is a consequence of the blind pursuit of growth at any cost. But for the expanding middle class food contamination and air pollution are sources of great anxiety that could ignite serious social unrest.

We’ve seen them now in the squares of Tunis, Cairo, Istanbul, New Delhi, Damascus, Tripoli, Beirut, Sana, Tehran, Moscow, Rio, Tel Aviv and Kiev, as well as in the virtual squares of Saudi Arabia, China and Vietnam.The latter three countries all have unusually large numbers of Facebook, Twitter or YouTube users, or their Chinese equivalents, which together constitute a virtual square where they connect, promote change and challenge authority. The most popular Vietnamese blogger, Nguyen Quang Lap, has more followers than any government newspaper here. In Saudi Arabia, one of the most popular Twitter hash tags is #If I met the King I would tell him.”

Square People one way or another “are demanding a new social contract” with the old guards who’ve dominated politics. “The people want their voice to be heard in every major debate,” not to mention better schools, roads and rule of law.