Since the 1980s, China’s role in the world has changed dramatically from a politically and economically important yet developing nation to a major power. Students of Chinese Studies will know that, before its decline in the mid-1800s, the Chinese state/civilization had been poised to become a major power in world affairs, and its recent return to a position as a key player on the global stage is also a return to a station it held in the past. This return to great-power status is a key component of Xi Jinping’s ‘Chinese Dream’. However, is the Chinese Dream a form of coordinated ‘grand strategy’, or is it simply rhetoric with no real consequences for Chinese foreign policy? While it is too early to evaluate the impact of the Chinese Dream on Chinese foreign policy, the ‘harmonious world’ concept—an integral element of the Chinese Dream—has been the central concept of Chinese foreign policy since 2005. This book examines the impact of the harmonious world and the Chinese Dream concepts on Chinese foreign-policy making.
One notable feature of China’s recent re-emergence in international affairs is its relationship with the African continent. ‘China-Africa trade totalled 170 billion US dollars in 2017, compared with 765 million US dollars in 1978’ (Xinhua, 2018). In 2016, China’s investment in Africa topped 100 billion US dollars (Ibid.). With increased trade has come increased migration of Chinese people to Africa, as well as more frequent exchanges of ideas and cultures. This intensification in trade and cultural exchanges has raised the importance of Sino-African relations for both parties. At the opening ceremony of the China-Africa Cooperation Forum, Chinese premier Wen Jiabao stated,
China-Africa cooperation is part and parcel of South-South cooperation. It is an unshakable policy of the new Chinese government to strengthen solidarity and cooperation with African countries and other developing nations…It is our belief that China-Africa cooperation should be substantiated with more actions, and should contribute to the economic and social development of African countries and their efforts to improve people’s livelihoods. (Xinhua, 2003)
The Chinese government reaffirmed the importance of the relationship in 2006, when it officially launched China’s African Policy, and again in 2015, when it updated that policy. These policies were a reaction to China’s growing involvement in Africa since the turn of the twenty-first century. China is seen as a driving force for change on the African continent. However, the nature of China’s participation in Africa is in dispute. One of the key discussion points regarding Sino-African relations is whether China’s involvement is part of a master plan or grand strategy to control Africa. Scholars such as Howard W. French (2010) have presented China as the next empire in Africa, and Deborah Bräutigam (2009, p. 311) claims that China’s ‘embrace of the continent is strategic, planned, long-term, and still unfolding’. Those who recognize the freedom Chinese actors have in their actions in Africa question the idea that China’s involvement in Africa is part of a grand strategy. These scholars argue that reasons for relations go beyond the state, to substate actors, creating a complex web of interactions between China and Africa, which is beyond the control of the Chinese government. Sarah Raine (2009, p. 60) best sums up this idea:
China is in a series of relationships with Africa that run not just from state to state, or from citizen to citizen, but between a multiplicity of interests and institutions within individual states at central, provincial, and city levels, combined with overlapping regional and sub-regional interests and institutions.
If Sino-African relations are examined with the state as the unit of analysis, China’s actions in Africa may seem as though they form part of an overall grand strategy. However, when Sino-African relations are examined with foreign-policy actors as the unit of analysis, conflicts appear among the actors, whose respective actions often diverge from what is perceived to be the grand strategy. This study argues that China does not have an overall coherent grand strategy towards Africa. In this context, a grand strategy exists when all state’s policies for a particular situation—for example, Sino-African relations—are coherently linked together under clear central control. Therefore, there is no grand strategy in Sino-African relations, since Chinese actors in Africa often are in conflict with each other or undertake actions that are counterproductive to one another’s policies. Rather than complying with a grand strategy, actors within the Chinese foreign-policy system act collectively in their actions in Africa due to the presence of a structural imperative, which, this study argues, is the hegemonic political discourse (HPD) in China. The hegemonic political discourse is an idea, a concept, or a theory that becomes the dominant political discourse in creating and implementing a public policy. In the case of China, the HPD under the leadership of Hu Jintao was the goal of achieving a ‘moderately prosperous society’ by constructing a harmonious society through the process of the ‘scientific concept of development’. Later, under the leadership of Xi Jinping, the HPD would become the achievement of a ‘moderately prosperous society’ through the Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation. These HPDs act as structural imperatives, allowing for collective action in the public policy process as it creates social norms. In the context of a foreign-policy process, the social norms are understood to be the national interests, and this provides an incentive to motivate participation among actors within the process. Although the national interests/social norms are subjective, depending on who is defining them and what political/ideological perspective they hold, they set a limit on the action an actor may take. This is due to the fact that a particular aspect of the national interests/social norms is held in the collective and must be adhered to if an actor wishes to operate within a process. If an actor within the process does not comply with these national interests/social norms, its standing within the process is reduced and, therefore, its ability to operate within the process is reduced.
This study argues that there is no Chinese grand strategy for Africa and that, in fact, conflicts can occur among Chinese actors. These conflicts—whereby one Chinese foreign-policy actor behaves in a way that is counterproductive to the actions of other Chinese foreign-policy actors—are the result of each actor’s interpretation of the HPD on the basis on the institutional environment of that actor. This study aims to determine whether China’s actions in Africa are guided by a grand strategy to control Africa or whether the relationship is organic and beyond the control of Beijing.
1.1 Outline of Chapters
To approach this question, this study analyses how China makes its decisions regarding Africa, examines the Chinese foreign-policy process, and clearly defines how decisions regarding Africa are reached and implemented within that process.
Chapter 2 presents a variety of theories and perspectives on how the China-Africa relationship has been shaped. These debates are classified into three broad narratives based on realist, liberal, and social constructivist international relations theories. Broadly speaking, the realist perspectives agree that China is a unitary player that acts to protect its own strategic and economic self-interests. Those who hold a realist view of Sino-African relations highlight China’s involvement in the natural resources sectors of African economics as an example of this self-interest. Proponents of the liberal narrative explain China’s active presence in Africa by putting it in the context of China’s increasing importance on the global economic system, its movement from a centrally planned economy towards a market-based economy, and the end of the Cold War. According to the liberal narrative, this strong trading relationship should lead to spillovers in other areas of cooperation, such as education, cultural exchange, security, and so forth. The social constructivist narrative includes a broad group of theories, which are not normally classified as social constructivist. The broad social constructivist narratives share the same core argument: The interaction between China and Africa involves a complex web of interactors that includes multiple actors, whose relations are guided by factors far beyond self-interest.
Chapter 3 outlines the research structure and the research methods employed to conduct this study. The research structure links discourse analysis to a middle-range theory of foreign-policy analysis (FPA)—that is, the bureaucratic politics model (BPM) as outlined by Graham Allison. By combining discourse analysis with BPM, we further develop Allison’s original model of FPA. The research structure argues that, due to the single-party rule and bureaucratic nature of the Chinese state, bureaucratic politics among the actors plays a strong role in shaping the country’s foreign-policy behaviour. If this is the case, the result should be that Chinese bureaucratic actors attempt to fulfil the goals laid out by the hegemonic political discourse. The hegemonic class, in the terminology of the Gramsci School, produces the hegemonic political discourse, which allows the hegemonic class to control society without force. ‘The hegemony of a political class meant for Gramsci that that class had succeeded in persuading the other classes of society to accept its own moral, political, and cultural values’ (Joll, 1977, p. 99). As each bureaucratic actor develops its own interpretation of these hegemonic ideas and the goals that they perceive this hegemonic idea wishes to achieve, each creates its own ‘common’ cause, which allows for collective action within the bureaucracy, but which may create a situation where bureaucratic actors undertake actions that could have negative effects on other bureaucratic actors.
Chapter 4 looks at the actors in the Chinese foreign-policy process and analyses how decision making within that process has shifted from being controlled by a small number of individuals within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to being controlled by a large number of actors, including state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and the state bureaucracy. The chapter highlights how, through the professionalization of the state bureaucracy and the military, the capability of actors outside the core leadership improved to the point where they became more trusted with foreign-policy formation and implementation. It also explains the large increase in actors within the foreign-policy process—through either the creation of new bodies or the involvement of organizations that previousl...