A summit between Chinese and African leaders will be held this week, 15 years after the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation was created to improve ties between the two lands craving development.

It will not be surprising if banal claims of Chinese "neo-colonialism" surface again before the historic event. To some extent, the politically-charged term, coined by Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah to attack Western powers but ironically used by Hillary Clinton in her thinly-veiled criticism of China's role in Africa, is being used to alleviate Western countries' pain at their vanishing interests in a continent they once colonized.

With its growing presence in Africa, China has become a mover and shaker in the once-ignored land. It brings better infrastructure and aid without political strings to the continent with the largest number of the developing countries. If this defines a neo-colonialist, China is a more than qualified one.

A closer look at the definition of neo-colonialism will give a better clue of who is the real neo-colonialist in Africa.

The phrase refers to the continuing application of existing and past international economic arrangements with the former colony countries and so maintaining colonial control after the de-colonization some 70 years ago.

Since its "Scramble for Africa" in the late 1880s, the West has never stopped colonizing the over-exploited territory, though it has gone about it in a more covert way.

Europe and the US have been exerting economic control in lieu of direct military and political control over Africa.

Western conglomerates monopolize raw material demand and industrial product supplies and are extending the colonial-era world order when they rake in money from a manipulated global market.

Twisted market relations have put Africa in an unfair position. Today, the power to set the price of western Africa's cocoa, central and southern Africa's copper and gold is in the hands of the Western bourse. Resource-rich Africa has failed to shake off poverty under a Western-dominated pricing system.

The West's unreasonable investment structure in Africa has deprived the continent of real economic independence. From the oil fields in Nigeria and Angola to the vast land in Sudan and Ethiopia, thousands of Western multinational corporations in Africa have seized the majority of natural resources with a massive investment much bigger than their Chinese counterparts.

Nigeria, Africa's largest oil producer, where Western companies such as Royal Dutch Shell have been drilling for decades, still has no oil production and processing system. Nigerians have to face the awkward situation of exporting oil and importing petroleum.

On the contrary, Sudan, where China has helped build oil pipelines and refineries, boasts its own complete oil industrial system.

The Western ex-colonizers' loans and aid with political strings have served as their tools to intervene in the domestic affairs of African nations besides their military interventions in Libya, Mali, Cote d'Ivoire Coast and the Republic of Central Africa.

It is through West-dominated global financial institutes such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund that the West has been forcing African nations into accepting its own development model, regardless of African traditions and idiosyncrasy.

The failed donor-imposed Structural Adjustment led to the rapid liberalization of trade in Africa, leaving a severe contraction of industry and a stagnant African economy in the 1980s.

Accusing China of being a neo-colonialist in Africa puts the biased West in an absurd scenario where the robber acts like the cop.

The author is a writer with the Xinhua News Agency. The article first appeared on Xinhua. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn