Far be it for me to quash birthday fever, Mr. Mugabe.

I just find it alarming that we’re celebrating after a year of systematic destruction to your government’s infrastructure. I find it frightening that you are so jubilant this soon after knowingly passing an ‘indigenization‘ bill that would deter not only fresh investment to an already heavily-sanctioned Zimbabwe but stifle continued investment. Far worse, I find it ominous that cake this year will be served at China’s embassy.

In an act of unabashed ‘foreign policy‘, China’s Foreign Ministry stated today that its embassy in Zimbabwe had thrown a birthday party for the now 86-year old President Robert Mugabe.

I use quotations around foreign policy, because at this point in documenting China’s strategic investment in Africa, how they’re doing so is laughable if it weren’t so sad, sad although frankly economically beneficial for the rising superpower-China regularly wields a no-strings attached integration opportunity for African nations,building roads and sending concessional loans to parts of the world notorious for rampant corruption and persisting human rights abuses. Beijing and Chinese companies have pledged tens of billions of dollars to Africa in loans and investments, mostly to secure raw materials for the world’s fastest-growing major economy. This latest symbolic gesture of good faith in a leader so ostentatiously selfish is yet another cliched modus operandi for Hu Jintao’s waking giant.

Hailed as a savior by fanatical (many claimed brainwashed) supporters and praised throughout Africa for standing up to what many see as bullying by the West, Mugabe is hated in equal measure by opponents who accuse him of being a dictator. A President who was elected with 20% of the popular vote isn’t really a President, after all.

Mugabe “thanked the Chinese embassy for its painstaking preparations for the birthday celebration and … hoped to further expand friendly cooperative relations in every field between the two nations”, the foreign ministry said.

The ministry’s website (www.mfa.gov.cn) showed pictures of Mugabe cutting a birthday cake in front of a large sign wishing him “Happy 86th birthday” and addressing almost 100 guests. It quoted Zimbabwean Foreign Minister Simbarashe Mumbengegwi as saying it was the first time Mugabe had visited a foreign embassy in the country since independence in 1980.

“This proves the special friendly relations between the two countries,” the statement paraphrased the minister as saying. Special but not unique.

Mugabe of course denies charges of human rights abuses and insists the West has withheld aid mainly in protest over his controversial seizure of white-owned commercial farms for resettlement among blacks. Mugabe has tried to boost economic ties with Asian countries such as China and Malaysia.

China often counters the stigma over its newfound foreign policy regarding Africa that its pledge not to interfere in any country’s internal affairs is welcomed by African nations. But its those welcoming voices that China refers to that worry me. Because those voices are promising change and accomplishing it without lifting so much as a finger, and effortlessly pushing the thousands, perhaps millions on the continent suffering under the will of authoritarian regimes, to the wayside.