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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Serie: China Today
- Sprache: Englisch
China has gone from being a marginal to a leading power in Africa in just over two decades. Its striking ascendancy in the continent is commonly thought to have been primarily driven by economic interests, especially resources like oil. This book argues instead that politics defines the 'new era' of China-Africa relations, and examines the importance of politics across a range of areas, from foreign policy to debt, development and the Xi Jinping incarnation of the China model. Going beyond superficial depictions of China's engagement as predatory or benign, this book explores how Africa is - and isn't - integral to China's global ambitions, from the Belt and Road Initiative to strategic competition with the United States. It demonstrates how African actors constrain, shape and use China's engagement for their own purposes. As China seeks to protect its more established interests and Chinese citizens, it also shows how security has become a particularly notable new area of engagement. This innovative book provides a comprehensive and up-to-date guide to contemporary China-Africa relations. It will be essential reading for students and scholars working on global politics, development and international relations.
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Seitenzahl: 437
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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Table of Contents
Cover
Series Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Map of China
Political Map of Africa
Acknowledgements
Chronology
Abbreviations
Tables and Boxes
TABLES
BOXES
Introduction
Approach
Overview
Conclusion
Notes
1 The New Era in Context
HISTORICAL PHASES SINCE 1949
XI JINPING’S CHINA AND AFRICA RELATIONS
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)
Institutional reform and adaptation
Forum on China–Africa Cooperation
A China
–
Africa policy, China’s African politics
AFRICA’S RELATIONS WITH CHINA
African states and beyond
Regional engagements
AU–China relations
CONCLUSION
Notes
2 China and Africa in Global Politics
AFRICA IN CHINA’S FOREIGN POLICY AND GLOBAL POLITICS
Africa, China and multilateral cooperation
Africa in China’s global strategy
CHINA IN AFRICAN FOREIGN POLICIES AND GLOBAL AFFAIRS
Africa’s friend in deed?
CHINA, AFRICA AND OTHER EXTERNAL POWERS
China and Southern powers
China and Northern powers
CONCLUSION
Notes
3 New Era Economics
TRADE, AID AND INVESTMENT
Aid and investment
African markets: business opportunities
STRUCTURAL TRANSFORMATION
Infrastructure development
Manufacturing
Africa in the BRI
CHINA AS CREDITOR
Debt relief
THE MIRAGE OF ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION
CONCLUSION
Notes
4 Xi’s China Model, African Politics
CHINA MODELS IN CONTEXT
CHINA’S NEW ERA MODEL
Why is Beijing promoting the China model?
Promoting the China model in practice
THE CHINA MODEL IN AFRICAN POLITICS
Importing models
Model problems: The primacy of African politics
CONCLUSION
Notes
5 Chinese–African Relations
MOBILITY AND MIGRATION
Africans in China
Chinese migration to African countries
CHINESE AND CHINA IN AFRICAN POLITICS
CHANGING STATE RELATIONS
UNCERTAIN FUTURES
CONCLUSION
Notes
6 Security: A New ‘Pillar’
CHINA’S EXPANDING SECURITY ENGAGEMENT
New Era foreign policy
MAINSTREAMING SECURITY INTO CHINA–AFRICA RELATIONS
Djibouti naval base
Arms merchant and defence partner
Military partner
UN peacekeeping
Aspiring peacemaker and peacebuilder
Corporate and citizen security
Non-traditional security
NEW ERA SECURITY
CONCLUSION
Notes
Conclusion
CHINA: AN ESTABLISHED POWER IN AFRICA
TRADITIONAL PRINCIPLES, NEW REALITIES
THE FUTURE OF THE NEW ERA
POLITICS AND THE END OF TELEOLOGY
Notes
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Chapter 3
Table 1. China–Africa Trade, 2002–2019
Table 2. China Imports from Africa: Top 10 Countries, 2019 (US$mn unadjusted)
Table 3. China Exports to Africa: Top 10 Countries, 2019 (US$mn unadjusted)
Table 4. Chinese FDI Flows to African Countries: Top 10 Recipients in 2019 (US$mn,...
Table 5. Chinese Loan Commitments to Africa, 2000–2018
Table 6. Chinese Loan Commitments to Africa by Lender, 2000–2018
Chapter 6
Table 7. Top Arms-Supplying Countries to African Countries, 2014–2019
Table 8. China’s Contribution to UN Peacekeeping by Mission in Africa, 2020
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
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Series Title
China Today series
Richard P. Appelbaum, Cong Cao, Xueying Han, Rachel Parker and Denis Simon,
Innovation in China
Greg Austin,
Cyber Policy in China
Yanjie Bian,
Guanxi: How China Works
Jeroen de Kloet and Anthony Y. H. Fung,
Youth Cultures in China
Steven M. Goldstein,
China and Taiwan
David S. G. Goodman,
Class in Contemporary China
Stuart Harris,
China’s Foreign Policy
William R. Jankowiak and Robert L. Moore,
Family Life in China
Elaine Jeffreys with Haiqing Yu,
Sex in China
Michael Keane,
Creative Industries in China
Daniel Large,
China and Africa
Joe C. B. Leung and Yuebin Xu,
China’s Social Welfare
Hongmei Li,
Advertising and Consumer Culture in China
Orna Naftali,
Children in China
Eva Pils,
Human Rights in China
Pitman B. Potter,
China’s Legal System
Pun Ngai,
Migrant Labor in China
Xuefei Ren,
Urban China
Nancy E. Riley,
Population in China
Janette Ryan,
Education in China
Judith Shapiro,
China’s Environmental Challenges 2nd edition
Alvin Y. So and Yin-wah Chu,
The Global Rise of China
Teresa Wright,
Party and State in Post-Mao China
Teresa Wright,
Popular Protest in China
Jie Yang,
Mental Health in China
You Ji,
China’s Military Transformation
LiAnne Yu,
Consumption in China
Xiaowei Zang,
Ethnicity in China
CHINA AND AFRICA
THE NEW ERA
Daniel Large
polity
Copyright Page
Copyright © Daniel Large 2021
The right of Daniel Large to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2021 by Polity Press
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All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-3632-0 (hardback)
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-3633-7 (paperback)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Large, Daniel, author.
Title: China and Africa : the new era / Daniel Large.
Description: Cambridge, UK ; Medford, MA : Polity Press, 2021. | Series: China today series | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: "A concise and up-to-date guide to one of the most crucial modern geopolitical relationships"-- Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021006334 (print) | LCCN 2021006335 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509536320 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509536337 (paperback) | ISBN 9781509536344 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Geopolitics--China. | China--Foreign relations--Africa. | Africa--Foreign relations--China. | China--Politics and government--2002- | Africa--Politics and government--1960-
Classification: LCC DS740.5.A34 L37 2021 (print) | LCC DS740.5.A34 (ebook) | DDC 327.5106--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021006334
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021006335
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Dedication
To Judith and Martin
Map of China
Political Map of Africa
Acknowledgements
I have been intrigued by this subject since 1994–5, when I worked as an English teacher in Lishui, Zhejiang and met Ethiopian students in Nanjing, and especially since undertaking research in Kenya and Sudan from 2004, where among others I met entrepreneurs from Lishui and Zhejiang. This book relies on research in many places conducted since then; I acknowledge with great appreciation all whom I have met and learned from in the process. These include Philip Winter and John Ryle for asking ‘why China?’ in Athi River, near Nairobi, in April 2004. They also include Adekeye Adebajo, Seifudein Adem, Ana Alves, Kweku Ampiah, Ross Anthony, Tatiana Carayannis, Stephen Chan, Lucy Corkin, Richard Dowden, Neuma Grobbelaar, He Wenping, Jok Madut Jok, Mohaned Kaddam, Thomas Kellogg, Li Anshan, Liu Haifang, Roland Marchal, Emma Mawdsley, Angus McKee, Giles Mohan, Jamie Monson, Leben Moro, Sanusha Naidu, Shu Zhan, Elizabeth Sidiropoulos, Cobus van Staden, Julia Strauss, Jonathan Sullivan, Sun Xiaomeng, Thiik Giir Thiik, Tang Xiaoyang, Gai Thurbil, George T. Yu, Yu Ruichuan, Alex Vines, Wang Suolao, Zhang Chun, Zheng Yixiao, CEU colleagues and students who have taken my Politics of South–South Development in Africa course. I am indebted to Deborah Brautigam for her example and support since 2006, and the China–Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins for granting me a Research Fellowship in 2019, when I was fortunate to work with Lina Benabdallah, and use of their graphs, in which Marie Foster kindly helped.
Special thanks are due to Julia Davies, Susan Beer and especially George Owers at Polity for their exceptional assistance, including during the COVID-19 pandemic. Posthumous thanks are due to the late Ian Taylor and his original recommendation, without which this book would never have happened. I am thankful to Thorsten Benner for his feedback on the initial proposal. I am grateful to this book’s anonymous external reviewers for providing considered and very helpful feedback on the complete draft. Others read chapters and offered useful advice, including William Mangimela, Yu-Shan Wu, Lina Benabdallah and especially Yoon Jung Park. I am particularly grateful to Chris Alden, for his invaluable guidance and support; Luke Patey for his generous help and quality feedback; Ricardo Soares de Oliveira, for unfailingly exceptional assistance; and Sarah Brockmeier-Large for feedback during challenging 2020 lockdown conditions. Any remaining errors, naturally, are my responsibility. This book owes considerably to my family’s support, and my biggest thanks go to Carlotta, Leo and Sarah.
Chronology
1949
Mao Zedong founds the People’s Republic of China (October)
1955
Asian–African Conference is held in Bandung, Indonesia (April)
1956
Egypt becomes the first country in Africa to establish diplomatic relations with China (May)
1963–4
Zhou Enlai visits ten African countries (December–February); in Ghana, he outlines China’s Eight Principles for Economic Aid and Technical Assistance to Other Countries (January)
1970–6
Construction of China’s iconic TAZARA (Tanzania Zambia Railway Authority) or Freedom Railway, from Dar es Salaam on the Tanzanian coast to Zambia’s Copperbelt region following an agreement signed in 1967
1971
26 African country votes help the PRC join the UN and replace Taiwan on the UN Security Council (October)
1978
Deng Xiaoping consolidates power as the top CCP leader, and ‘reform and opening’ is initiated
1982–3
Zhao Ziyang tours eleven African countries (December/January)
1989
Chinese military uses force to end the Tiananmen Square movement (3–4 June); Jiang Zemin becomes General Secretary of the CCP (June)
1990
Start of annual spring visit to African countries by China’s Foreign Minister
1993
Jiang Zemin is elected President by China’s National People’s Congress; China becomes a net oil importer
1996
Jiang Zemin tours Kenya, Egypt, Ethiopia, Mali, Namibia and Zimbabwe
1999
China’s National People’s Congress approves Jiang Zemin as President for a second term (March); China’s ‘going global’ strategy emerges
2000
Founding of the Forum on China–Africa Cooperation (October)
2001
China enters the World Trade Organization
2002
The African Union is founded in Durban, South Africa (July); Hu Jintao replaces Jiang Zemin as General Secretary of the CCP
2003
Hu Jintao replaces Jiang Zemin as President of the PRC; FOCAC II is held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (December)
2005
US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick urges China to become a ‘responsible stakeholder’ in global affairs, including in Africa (September); the first Confucius Institute in Africa opens at the University of Nairobi, Kenya (December)
2006
China issues its first African Policy (January); Hu Jintao visits Morocco, Nigeria and Kenya (April); the third ministerial and first heads of state FOCAC summit is held in Beijing (November)
2008
Olympic Games held in Beijing following a ‘Genocide Olympics’ campaign linking conflict in Darfur, Sudan with China (August); Chinese FDI to Africa peaks at $5.5bn after the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China buys 20% of the shares in Standard Bank of South Africa; 5 Chinese oil workers are killed in Sudan (October)
2009
Hu Jintao visits Mali, Senegal, Tanzania and Mauritius (February); FOCAC IV is held in Sharm el Sheik, Egypt (November); China surpasses the US to become Africa’s largest trading partner
2011
China officially becomes the world’s second largest economy (February); China evacuates some 36,000 Chinese nationals from Libya by land, air and sea (February–March)
2012
New Chinese built and funded AU HQ opens in Addis Ababa (January); FOCAC V is held in Beijing (July); 18th National Party Congress approves Xi Jinping as General Secretary of the CCP and chair of the Central Military Commission (November)
2013
12th National People’s Congress approves Xi Jinping as President and Li Keqiang Premier of China; Xi Jinping visits Tanzania, South Africa, and Republic of Congo (March); announcement of the BRI
2014
Collapse of global commodity prices begins; China announces it will deploy its first infantry battalion to a UN peacekeeping mission, in South Sudan (September)
2015
The AU adopts Agenda 2063 (January); Xi Jinping tells the UNGA that China will create a UN peacekeeping standby force (September); the India–Africa Forum Summit is held in New Delhi (October); China releases its second Africa policy; the second FOCAC summit and VI ministerial conference is held in Johannesburg, South Africa (December); China’s counterterrorism law paves the way for future overseas security operations
2016
China officially launches the AIIB; economic growth in China falls to lowest rate in 25 years (6.9%) (January); two Chinese UN peacekeepers are killed and others injured after fighting breaks out in Juba, capital of South Sudan (July); China hosts the G20 summit in Hangzhou (September)
2017
First BRI summit is held in Beijing (May); Kenya’s Standard Gauge Railway opens (May); China’s Djibouti naval base officially opens (August); China becomes the world’s top importer of crude oil; the 19th CCP Congress is held; Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era and the BRI are incorporated into revised CCP constitution (October)
2018
The Addis Ababa–Djibouti railway, built by two Chinese companies, opens (January); the African Continental Free Trade Area is founded (March); the China International Development Cooperation Agency is created (March); National People’s Congress votes to remove two-term limit on China’s presidency from the constitution (March); Xi Jinping visits Senegal, Rwanda, South Africa and Mauritius (July); FOCAC VII held in Beijing (September); China and three African members of the UNSC establish a ‘1+3’ UNSC coordination mechanism; the Trump administration announces a new US Africa strategy (December)
2019
Second BRI summit is held in Beijing (April); anti-government and pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong (June); Xinjiang becomes an international issue; the 7th Tokyo International Conference on African Development is held in Yokohama (August); celebrations mark 70th anniversary of the founding of the PRC (1 October)
2020
Outbreak of COVID-19 coronavirus in Hubei spreads globally (January); the mistreatment of Africans in Guangzhou amid the pandemic generates wide attention (April); a China–Africa Summit on Solidarity Against COVID-19 is held (June); Hong Kong’s national security law is passed (June); Zambia becomes the first African country to default on part of its debt amid looming recession (November); China marks thirty years of participation in UN peacekeeping operations
Abbreviations
ADB – African Development Bank
AfCFTA – African Continental Free Trade Area
Africa CDC – Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention
AIIB – Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank
ANC – African National Congress
APSA – African Peace and Security Architecture
ASEAN – Association of Southeast Asian Nations
AU – African Union
BRI – Belt and Road Initiative
BRICS – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa
CARI – China–Africa Research Initiative (Johns Hopkins)
CCM – Chama Cha Mapinduzi party
CCP – Chinese Communist Party
CCTV – China Central Television
CDB – China Development Bank
CGTN – China Global Television Network
China EXIM – Export–Import Bank of China
CI – Confucius Institute
CIDCA – China International Development Cooperation Agency
CNPC – China National Petroleum Corporation
DFID – Department for International Development (UK)
DRC – Democratic Republic of Congo
EAC – East African Community
EU – European Union
FDI – Foreign Direct Investment
FOCAC – Forum on China–Africa Cooperation
FRELIMO – Frente para a Libertação de Moçambique
G20 – Group of 20
ID-CCP – International Department of the CCP
IDP – internally displaced person
IMF – International Monetary Fund
MFA – Ministry of Foreign Affairs
MINUSMA – UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali
MOFCOM – Ministry of Commerce
MOU – Memorandum of Understanding
MPLA – Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola
NEPAD – New Partnership for Africa’s Development
NDB – New Development Bank
NGO – Non-governmental organization
OECD – Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
PLA – People’s Liberation Army
POC – Protection of Civilians
PRC – People’s Republic of China
RMB – renminbi
SAIIA – South African Institute of International Affairs
SEZ – Special Economic Zone
SGR – Standard Gauge Railway
SOE – State-owned enterprise
SWAPO – South-West Africa People’s Organization
TAZARA – Tanzanian–Zambian Railway Authority
TICAD – Tokyo International Conference on African Development
UK – United Kingdom
UNCTAD – UN Conference on Trade and Development
UNGA – UN General Assembly
UNHRC – UN Human Rights Council
UNSC – UN Security Council
UNMISS – UN Mission in South Sudan
UNOG – UN Office at Geneva
US – United States of America
WHO – World Health Organization
WTO – World Trade Organization
ZANU–PF – Zimbabwe African National Union–Patriotic Front
Tables and Boxes
TABLES
1 China–Africa Trade, 2002–2019
2 China Imports from Africa: Top 10 Countries, 2019
3 China Exports to Africa: Top 10 Countries, 2019
4 Chinese FDI Flows to African Countries: Top 10 Recipients in 2019
5 Chinese Loan Commitments to Africa, 2000–2018
6 Chinese Loan Commitments to Africa by Lender, 2000–2018
7 Top Arms-Supplying Countries to African Countries, 2014–2019
8 China’s Contribution to UN Peacekeeping by Mission in Africa, 2020
BOXES
1 ANC–CCP Party Relations
2 Gold Mining in Ghana
3 Chinese in Namibia: Becoming a Single Social Field?
4 South Sudan: Gaining Experience Under Fire
Introduction
Two large maps of Africa and China, under the caption ‘Friendship Peace Cooperation Development’, stood out at an official exhibition off Tiananmen Square in November 2006. The Africa map was filled with images of smiling children, a baobab tree, a bare-chested man drumming, and hints of the ruins of an ancient civilization. That of China was filled with images of the Great Wall, Forbidden City and other civilizational achievements. At the time, the Chinese government was hosting the third Forum on China–Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) and Beijing had been carefully prepared to welcome leaders and delegations from some 48 African countries. Billboards proclaiming ‘win–win cooperation’ and other official slogans signalled the Chinese government’s portrayal of China as a different, progressive partner of the continent. This FOCAC put China–Africa on the map of global attention, and catalysed interest in China’s suddenly visible engagement with the continent. Cliché images aside, the emptiness of this map of the African continent, however, suggested ignorant paternalism at a time when relations were rapidly developing.
Much has changed since then, as has become evident in the ‘New Era’ of China’s relations with Africa. China’s New Era is the era of Xi Jinping. Since taking power as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in November 2012, and becoming state president in March 2013, Xi Jinping has presided over a transformation in China’s domestic and global affairs. In 2018, at another FOCAC in Beijing, he welcomed ‘African countries aboard the express train of China’s development’ and declared: ‘No one could hold back the Chinese people or the African people as we march towards rejuvenation.’ China committed financing in Africa of $60bn and a marked expansion of its investment in human capital and training. Xi Jinping reportedly met the leaders of 53 African countries for an event described by China’s Foreign Minister as setting ‘a new record in FOCAC history, and indeed, in all the diplomatic activities China ever hosted’.1 Welcoming Gambia, Sao Tome and Principe, and Burkina Faso, which had previously supported Taiwan, the summit confirmed China’s near total victory over Taiwan in the continent. Africa, as the President of Burkina Faso, Roch Marc Christian Kaboré said, had ‘chosen China’. This FOCAC showed how established China’s relations with Africa had become in Xi Jinping’s New Era.
This book aims to bring the China–Africa story up to date.2 It argues that politics defines China’s New Era Africa relations most, thus challenging conventional wisdom and popular associations about China’s relations with Africa, which hold that ‘Chinese leaders see Africa mainly as a source of natural resources.’3 Politics is a fluid, highly contested concept, which attracts simple definitions but defies easy characterization. Using a more expansive understanding, this book situates the politics of relations in terms of Chinese and African histories, institutional frameworks and politics, before exploring select key themes: China and Africa in global politics, evolving economic ties, the China model and African politics, Chinese–African relations, and China’s expanding security engagement in the continent.
China–Africa relations have never been just about politics or economics but shifting combinations of both across different historical periods. Politics always mattered; it drove post-colonial revolutionary ties and never disappeared. Since around 1996, however, economics has been the main association between China and Africa, following the tour by China’s then President Jiang Zemin of six African states that marked an inflection point ‘from geopolitics to economics as the driver of ties’.4 In 2000, President Jiang spoke of the ‘all round friendship’ between China and Africa. Nonetheless, economics was the foundation of a ‘long-term partnership’ and enhanced economic ties would do most to help China’s domestic economic development while contributing to growth in African countries.5 Since 2012, however, and Xi Jinping’s leadership of China, there has been a shift towards a decisive role of politics both inside and outside China, including in its Africa relations.
Arguing that politics needs to be returned to the centre of understanding China’s Africa relations today is not to suggest, simplistically, that economic ties are of secondary importance. Nor that politics can be separated from economics. Economic factors remain central to relations but are very much bound up in and determined by politics of various kinds in an evolving political economy of relations encompassing a spectrum of local to global dimensions. China’s role in Africa has also always had its own politics but these have become much more prominent, deeper and widespread in the New Era. In other words, much arises from the nature of economic ties, from the diverse impacts of China within African countries, unease about China as a creditor, Chinese migration, security challenges and, ultimately, perceptions of its new power. At the same time, Chinese government officials have come to recognize how central politics is, not just for China’s relations with Africa or in terms of China’s global politics but also to achieving Africa’s broader development goals.
What, then, is China’s New Era, and what does this mean for its Africa relations? The term ‘New Era’ simplifies and provokes questions (what was wrong with the old one? how long can something be new?). In essence, it means the reassertion of China’s party-state under Xi’s leadership in Chinese domestic politics and economy. It also means a more ambitious and expansive role for China abroad, signalled in Xi’s closing speech at the 18th National Congress of the CCP in November 2012, when he talked of the ‘great renewal of the Chinese nation’. 6 The CCP’s 19th Party Congress in October 2017 was seminal in declaring the New Era and defining Xi’s power. It elevated him to the core of the CCP’s leadership, with no anointed successor. In his report to the Congress, Xi Jinping noted that China had ‘stood up, grown rich, and is becoming strong’. The New Era would see ‘China moving closer to centre stage’ and this would require ‘major country diplomacy with Chinese characteristics’ in order to build China into a great, modern and global ‘socialist power’ by the mid twenty-first century.7 The approach China had adopted after 1978, that of keeping a low profile in order to focus on domestic development, was dumped in the dustbin of history. The CCP’s grand strategic goal has become the ‘great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation’. Following the 19th Party Congress, the New Era refrain was incorporated into China’s Africa relations. China’s relations with Africa have evolved considerably to become more complex, multifaceted and consequential. Relations are continuing to evolve, in much changed and changing circumstances within China, in China’s relations with 53 different African states and global politics.
During Xi Jinping’s period in office, China’s Africa relations have been ever more defined and shaped by politics, which extends to China’s foreign policy and global politics. The prominence of Beijing’s Africa engagement stands in contrast to the actual economic importance of the continent to China. Africa accounts for around 45% of China’s global development aid but around 4% of China’s total global trade volume in the first half of 2020, and that trade in turn was dominated by a handful of African commodity exporters.8 Similar to trade, China’s investment in Africa is not significant in the context of China’s global investment, accounting for some 3.7% of total outward global investment stock in 2015. Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative (or BRI) has revised Africa’s former prominence in China’s regional engagements by its global scope. However, for Africa, which accounted for 2.9% of world production, 2.6% of world trade and 16.3% of the world’s population in 2019, China’s investment and engagement means much more. 9
The centrality of politics flows from Xi Jinping’s leadership of China and the more established, far-reaching nature of Chinese engagement in Africa. Before Xi, from 1978 China’s leaders after Mao prioritized economic development as the way to maintain power. By prioritizing politics, Xi Jinping has done the opposite, starting with attempting to renew the CCP’s legitimacy, and reasserting its dominance over all walks of life. It was also inseparable from Xi’s more ambitious foreign policy. Xi Jinping has sought to redefine China’s Africa relations in his terms, including incorporating Africa more overtly into the CCP’s vision for China’s future centrality in world affairs. China’s 53 African state allies are important in China’s foreign policy and global multilateral role in this context. Since African state votes helped the People’s Republic of China (PRC) enter the UN in 1971, the continent has been a significant part of China’s multilateral engagement but the stakes have become higher in the New Era, which has seen more explicit promotion of the CCP’s China model. In turn, China is more important in the foreign relations and global politics of many African states. Economic relations have been evolving from years of high growth rates until 2014, when global commodity prices fell. The idea that Chinese investment could propel Africa to become ‘the next factory of the world’ became popular.10 Since around 2015, trade and investment have declined, debt mounted for some African states and, in 2020, the first recession in 25 years hit many African countries. China now has a more established, multidimensional and consequential presence across the continent: it is an emerged power. The importance of China within African politics on the back of its evolved economic and global role represents a major, historically unprecedented change.
In 2020, when there were celebrations to mark the 20th anniversary of FOCAC, the 2006 summit had faded into history, and China’s domestic and global politics looked very different. Xi’s leadership saw China become a self-declared major power with a clear sense of long-term global strategic purpose. China’s relations with Africa have seen a transformation, having widened, deepened and diversified, and becoming dominated by issues like industrialization or security, which were absent in 2006. Africa is part of China’s global rise, now proceeding in the context of open strategic competition with the United States of America (US). Overall, politics has become far more important, in the context of economic challenges, changing global politics and higher stakes.
Approach
Interest in China–Africa relations has grown exponentially.11 It is expressed in ever more diverse ways, including in literature, art and film. China–Africa is an intensely mediated subject and reflects changes in the global media landscape under the impact of digital technologies and social media, which has recently become more prominent in African countries (some more than others) and in global conversations about China and Africa.12 Chinese diplomats in Africa now use social media like Twitter to promote official views, for example, but in China, the tightly controlled media must, as Xi Jinping has said, ‘love’, ‘protect’ and serve the interest of the CCP, or be ‘surnamed Party’. Like domestic issues, media coverage of Africa relations in China has to follow the official line.
China–Africa relations are often described in simplistic and sensational ways, not just by commentators but also by politicians in and outside African countries. Binary terms are commonly used, such as ‘win–win development’ or ‘new imperialism/colonialism’; ‘partner or predator’; ‘saviour or monster’; ‘parasitism or mutualism’ etc. In addition, simple, monocausal metanarratives officially explain China’s engagement as win–win development or reduce this to imperialism, dependency, or exploitation. It follows that grand causal claims frequently attend the subject; such as that China has undermined democracy or human rights, or has engaged in a deliberate strategy of entrapping African governments in debt. Such claims can place unwarranted agency in China and neglect actual African politics, multistranded external relations and forms of agency. While it is all too easy to blame the media, this influences opinion, can shape worldviews and impact policy engagements. In short, images and language matter, especially when added to personal experience in African countries. The topic of China’s relations with Africa has become an information minefield. Rumours, misunderstandings, or those looking for profitable attention can manufacture myths that can take on a life of their own and fuel politics in an age where social media matters.13 Emotive online news stories about Chinese exports of human flesh or plastic rice to Zambia, Kenya, Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Senegal, for example, have been proved false but have nonetheless continued to appear, spread disinformation and influence popular perceptions about China.
The subject of China and Africa relations has grown as an area of academic research, moving from a previously peripheral small field mainly concerned with international relations towards much more multi-disciplinary approaches.14 African studies have grown within China. Efforts have been made to promote China-related research and education about China in an increasing number of African countries. As well as being relevant to business, this is also a very policy-oriented subject. One obvious problem with the meta-organizing tag ‘China–Africa’ is that this is shorthand for an increasingly diverse range of studies, conversations, media coverage, human encounters, and forms of political contestation. More than a conversation or subject of debate by spectators, this is also a meaningful, lived reality for many. China–Africa is not a subject that follows any neat, coherent narrative but has become a topic about which opinion is required and, increasingly, judgement.
Much China–Africa analysis takes development and economics as its starting point or primary interest.15 This is essential; however, any focus on economics is insufficient when it comes to approaching China–Africa relations. This has become more readily apparent in recent years with the evolution of more complex relations that, at a minimum, combine history, economics, politics and international relations. In this way, political economy approaches seek to better locate and explore China’s role beyond forms of methodological statism that ignore wider structural forces.16 The tendency to isolate and magnify China’s role has been criticized; some have argued that studies of China–Africa engagements throw broader processes like neoliberalism in Africa into starker relief. Studies utilizing a global political economy framework have thus offered reflections on the extent to which economic investment in Zambia, for example, is or can be considered ‘Chinese’, or reflects qualities, political relations and patterns of exploitation familiar in the global behaviour of capital.17 This perspective recasts the Chinese role as a new chapter in global capitalist relations.18 Such an approach, while important, risks downplaying CCP New Era Chinese characteristics and connections. In the attempt to demonstrate conformity to historical extraversion or the logic of capital, the Chinese qualities of these dynamics, even when mediated by hybrid global dynamics, can be stripped away and questions about forms of CCP-governed Chinese power avoided.
This book thus explores the interplay between political, economic and social dynamics in relations. As well as offering a deeper and broader framework, this general political economy approach helps overcome a number of problems. For instance, available data, including the accuracy of economic statistics from Chinese, African and other sources, is problematic. Even where data exist, traditional statistics like trade don’t capture global value chains well. Another problem is over reliance on official Chinese foreign-policy principles. Because these are constitutive of relations, they cannot be either taken at face value or dismissed as pure hypocrisy. Much like the architect of China’s economic reforms from 1978 Deng Xiaoping’s emphasis on seeking ‘truth from facts’, examining the empirical substance of relations – what is, not what is supposed to be – enables analysis to go beyond that based on official rhetoric.
A fundamental challenge in studying China–Africa relations is the abstraction inherent in ideas about and uses of ‘China’ and ‘Africa’. With an official population of some 1.4bn in 2019, China is a continental-sized country with 23 provinces, five autonomous regions (including Xinjiang), four municipalities, and two special administrative regions (Hong Kong and Macau). The complexity of ‘China’ must be always borne in mind. It also needs to be disaggregated. Although there are multiple Chinas, China has a dominant political centre controlled by the CCP party-state-military. ‘Africa’ can mean many things, including a place, an idea, a project, a centre or a periphery. Obviously, there are thus multiple Africas, including regions, diverse politics and economies, and some 2,140 living languages. In political terms alone, the African Union (AU) has 55 member states divided into five geographic regions.19 This means a huge variation in the political map of the continent – and China’s official interlocutors – featuring all manner of regime types, from established democracies to authoritarian regimes or conflict-afflicted states.
The 53 highly diverse African states with which China maintains diplomatic relations can be grouped into three general categories: first, states like Botswana, Benin, Ghana, Senegal, Mauritius or South Africa that have established, open and competitive democracies, even while many remain institutionally weak. A second group includes such different cases as Kenya, Uganda, Burundi, DRC or Zimbabwe, ruled by leaders with authoritarian tendencies but in contexts where there are popular opposition parties. Third, there are authoritarian governments with strong control but no qualms about holding elections, such as Cameroon, Chad or Rwanda.20 China, by contrast, is governed by an authoritarian party-state-military system. With over 91.91m members at the end of 2019, CCP membership alone is larger than the populations of all but three African countries: Nigeria, Ethiopia and Egypt. The contrast between China’s authoritarian capitalist party-state and diverse political systems in Africa is one starting point for putting relations into broad context. It also helps bring out the need to go beyond a state focus in Africa–China relations by including the diverse range of participants, such as the active role of different civil society groups or independent media in many countries in the continent.
Many books warn against generalization and then generalize; this book is no different but does not go beyond the ways in which Africa is, in its terms, part of China’s foreign policy.21 Africa may be an abstraction but is one that remains necessary to use. The main reason why both China and Africa need to be used, on top of or along with defined African countries, is because the CCP, Chinese state, corporations and others frame and approach relations in these very terms. Africa has meaning as a category in China’s foreign policy, as FOCAC shows. However, China’s relations with 53 individual African countries mean relations have a strong bilateral character. Likewise, China’s Africa policy has a continental policy framework in theory, and 53 (or 54, if Taiwan-recognizing Eswatini, formerly Swaziland, is included) African policies in practice, and has evolved to incorporate a range of other actors and levels of politics. In China’s terms, then, it makes sense to consider China–Africa, even if these should always be qualified and the difficulties of moving from particular African contexts to generalized claims recognized. Finally, this book recognizes that China’s relations with Africa/African countries remains a project in the making. One way to conceptualize relations between China and Africa is as in a process of becoming, rather than something that already exists, and involving networks of agents, rather than static categories. This matters for such questions as the evolved but still evolving theme of China’s ‘power’ in Africa.
Overview
Chapter 1 provides background to historical, political and institutional dynamics in China’s changing engagement with Africa, and how different African protagonists engage with China. It first charts the main phases in relations after 1949. Second, it examines the CCP’s reassertion of power within China and in its Africa relations. Despite the centralization of power around Xi Jinping, China’s governing party-state-military system – and the many parts of this that maintain active Africa relations – remains fragmented. The CCP commands within China, and directs relations with African states and ruling political parties, but can struggle to exercise effective control. The Chinese government has been undertaking reforms to equip itself for major power diplomacy and better manage important parts of its Africa relations, such as development aid. Third, crucial in co-shaping relations, the diverse roles and impacts of state and non-state African protagonists exert formative influences on China’s engagement. Inter-state relations are formally equal but profoundly asymmetrical in reality. African states actively use external relations, including with China, for domestic political purposes. The AU, regional organizations and non-state actors, including civil society, also play important roles.
Chapter 2 examines the role and importance of Africa in China’s foreign policy and global engagement, China in the foreign relations of African states and Africa in global politics, and how these relate to other external engagements in the continent. Africa’s political importance for China in global terms has become more evident in the New Era. This can be seen in African state support for China’s foreign policy, deepening multilateral and global governance engagement. Africa has a clear part in China’s ambitions as a major power pursuing a vision of future global leadership: the continent showcases Xi’s China on the global stage, supporting Beijing’s claims about its progressive role in global security or development, for example, while also contributing in other ways towards China’s global goals. China has become more important in the foreign-policy calculations of African states, many of which have looked to use their growing economic ties with China to try to augment their autonomy; some also have quietly sought to move away from any undue dependence on China. The politics of divergent interests extends to the question of whether the Chinese government’s self-proclaimed championing of Africa in global politics is matched by commensurate political will and ability to meaningfully advance a reform agenda with and for the continent, which is itself fragmented and divided on such issues, starting with differences between states. Finally, China’s New Era role in Africa can’t be approached in isolation from the engagements of other external powers, in which the US stands out due to the importance of US–China global strategic competition.
Chapter 3 examines economic relations, which have been evolving from a narrow, extractive agenda to a wide-ranging engagement. It first considers trends in trade, aid and investment, showing how China matters increasingly in Africa but the continent does not have comparable economic importance to China. Second, it examines how approaches to economic development became based on an industrialization-led ‘structural transformation’ agenda and support the AU’s Agenda 2063, an expansive vision for unity, prosperity, peace and ‘transforming Africa into the global powerhouse of the future’ adopted in 2015. As well as a focus on infrastructure construction and manufacturing, economic relations have seen the BRI become more central to current and future ties. Third, China’s role as a holder of African debt reveals much about how relations have changed. China’s response to the debt crisis facing African countries like Zambia, Angola or Kenya in 2020, in part but by no means only arising from its previous lending patterns as well as impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, has been reshaping China–Africa relations in important ways. Finally, it argues that the idea that China can exert transformative change in economic development is a mirage in the face of the severe, intractable challenges facing African countries. These emanate not just from deep global structural constraints but the nature of African states where ruling political elites in countries like Kenya fail to seriously prioritize broad, longer-term developmental need. Further, China’s economic relations with Africa are evolving in a different phase where it was less willing and able to double or triple its financing at FOCAC, with investment dropping and new emphasis on its domestic needs.
Chapter 4 examines the ‘China model’, which has become more salient in light of the CCP’s reassertion of power within China and in foreign policy. Meaning different things at different times, this has been redefined under Xi Jinping into a form of authoritarian single-party state capitalism, characterized by extensive party-state control over political and social life, and whose economy involves a strong role of the party-state in core economic sectors together with market-based practices. The decisive New Era trend has seen Beijing more confidently and directly promote Xi’s China model, understood as a set of ideas about political organization and accompanying enabling possibilities, including in technology or investment. The Chinese government still talks publicly about not imposing its model, but under Xi Jinping Beijing has been overtly promoting it and taking a more concerted, confrontational stance. China is one of various external models African states – and others – can potentially engage, but it is upheld by the Chinese government as superior. The CCP’s efforts to promote its model matter, including via sustained, future oriented political party training that positions China for longer-term influence. What ultimately matters most, however, is how political elites in African states like South Africa, Ethiopia, Kenya or Nigeria understand the China model, and the ways in which these understandings are adapted and selectively used for domestic political purposes, sometimes in conjunction with the technical capabilities offered by China or other external partners.
Chapter 5 moves to a more micro-level concern with relations between people, including Africans in China, and Chinese in African countries, and the politics this can generate. While multi-billion-dollar mega projects involving Chinese funding and corporations attract headlines – from Algeria’s Great Mosque in Algiers, the largest mosque in Africa with the tallest minaret in the world, to Egypt’s ‘new administrative capital’ city, the DRC’s Grand Inga III dam, Ethiopia’s Grand Renaissance Dam or Tanzania’s prospective Bagamoyo port – ordinary exchanges between ordinary people and micro-dynamics matter. Often overlooked, apart from occasional moments of high political visibility, the everyday dynamics and immense diversity of such relations illustrate a complexity that simple narratives – such as those from the Chinese government about its South–South cooperation or media-fuelled stories about migrants as the vanguard of China’s new empire building in Africa – struggle to convey. Three broad themes are explored. The first is Africans in China, and Chinese migration to Africa, in the context of dynamic transnational trade networks. The second considers the politics of Chinese in African countries, the various levels and ways in which migrants have become prominent, such as Chinese gold miners in Ghana, and how China and African inter-state relations can impact on Chinese communities in Africa. The third considers trends going forward: a new phase for the African population in China with tighter regulation of foreign nationals; the uncertain status of some Chinese communities in African countries; continuing mobility of those who move on; and, in contrast, signs of growing rootedness of Chinese communities in countries like Namibia.
The growing Chinese presence in Africa has also been an important contributing factor behind a new foreign-policy challenge for the Chinese government, namely protecting people as well as economic assets overseas, and was one reason why security became a defining theme in China’s New Era Africa engagement. Chapter 6 examines different aspects of New Era security relations, which Xi Jinping termed a major ‘pillar’ of China–Africa relations in 2015. Far from being simply a defensive reaction to threat, mounting risks and vulnerability, and new realities of overseas investment protection imperatives, China’s engagement has had an experimental quality in a continent that has been a testing ground for gaining overseas corporate and military experience. The very challenges different Chinese actors have faced have necessitated and enabled a more proactive military role that, as UN peacekeeping exemplifies, serves China’s bilateral (gaining experience) and multilateral goals (as a self-declared responsible power contributing to global peace and security). The opening of China’s first overseas naval base in Djibouti in 2017 represented a historic departure in China’s foreign security policy. It was, however, one part of a multi-stranded security engagement unfolding concurrent with a reconsideration of the Chinese government’s traditional approach to intervention and non-interference.22 Under Xi Jinping, China has sought to strengthen its principle of ‘non-interference’ even as, in practice, this does not square the circle of a deeper role. The Chinese government maintains public opposition to non-consensual foreign intervention, but has become more accommodating of this in reality, including under the influence of shifting African approaches to intervention.
Conclusion
In just over two decades, China has gone from being a marginal, distant partner of Africa to attaining a leading position as an active participant in continental affairs, whose future importance is clear. These new trends mean more obvious disconnects between the official language of China–Africa relations and the actual realities of China’s more complex and consequential role, raising concerns about the different types of China’s actual, imminent and future power. China’s New Era ascendancy as a leading power in Africa and a self-proclaimed major power with ambitions to global leadership has been generating stronger political reactions in some African countries, as well as support from those who regard China as the future of globalization. In this way, the different aspects of China’s perceived and actual power now exert more obvious influences in relations.
The outline maps of Africa and China on display in Beijing in November 2006 should be impossible now, given how much has changed since then, including China’s more conspicuous and consequential footprint in the continent and the many ways different African actors have used, benefited from and sought to shape relations in their own ways. Nonetheless, for all the official claims about friendship and development of closer ties since then, periodic episodes suggest continuing ignorance and generate new friction and politics. A far more widely seen and high-profile example than the maps on the fringe of the 2006 FOCAC came in February 2018, when the China Central Television’s (CCTV) Spring Festival Gala, known as the world’s ‘most watched national network TV broadcast’, with up to one billion viewers that year, broadcast a comedy sketch that was supposed to celebrate China–Africa relations. 23 Instead, it provoked a storm of controversy over the use of blackface by a Chinese actress, a black performer in a monkey costume and the use of tribal African dancers and female attendants from Kenya’s Chinese-built railway linking Nairobi and coastal Mombasa. The sketch reproduced a narrative that was representative of China’s general approach to Africa, in which China is seen as a solution to the continent’s backwardness, and behind the performance was ‘a consistent top-down, ego-boosting effort to see and represent China as a way for Africa to enter modernity’. 24 The ‘racist and insensitive portrayals’ of Africans in the sketch was criticized, and there were calls for China to ‘incorporate racial awareness and sensitivity to the production of content by all its media outlets’.25
China–Africa relations are prone to attracting grand statements. The 1960s saw claims that ‘Red China’ had moved into Africa, ‘a major revolutionary outpost in a Sinocentric world’, and intended ‘to stay there’.26 More recently, many have argued that China can transform African development. From the days of Maoist revolution to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, commentary has tended to overstate China’s impact and underplay the formative influences of African protagonists. Nonetheless, today China’s relations with Africa are based on long-term goals; but this is a very different China, combining with all manner of African protagonists to be more consequential than ever.
Notes
1
‘Wang Yi, South-South Cooperation was Elevated to a New Level’, 11 December 2018 (
https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/ce/ceus/eng/zgyw/t1621540.htm
).
2
See Chris Alden,
China in Africa
(London: Zed Books, 2007); Li Anshan, ‘China and Africa: Policy and challenges’,
China Security
3 (3) 2007: 69–93; Kweku Ampiah and Sanusha Naidu, eds,
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon? Africa and China
(Scottsville: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2008); Deborah Bräutigam,
The Dragon’s Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa
(Oxford University Press, 2009); Ian Taylor,
China’s New Role in Africa
(Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2009); David Shinn and Joshua Eisenman,
China and Africa: A Century of Engagement
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012).
3
Minxin Pei, ‘China’s expensive bet on Africa has failed’,
Nikkei Asian Review
, 1 May 2020.
4
Lauren Johnson, ‘China–Africa economic transitions survey: Charting the return of a fleeting old normal’, Proceedings of the 38th African Studies Association of Australasia and the Pacific Conference (February 2016), 10, citing Chris Alden,
China in Africa
.
5
See Chris Alden, Daniel Large and Ricardo Soares de Oliveira, eds,
China Returns to Africa: A Continent and a Rising Power Embrace
(London: Hurst Publishers, 2008).
6
Elizabeth Economy,
The Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the New Chinese State
(Oxford University Press, 2018).
7
Xi Jinping, ‘Secure a decisive victory in building a moderately prosperous society in all respects and strive for the great success of socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era’, Speech delivered at the 19th National Congress of the CCP, 18 October 2017: 9.
8
