A Post State-Centric Analysis of China-Africa Relations

Internationalisation of Chinese Capital and State-Society Relations in Ethiopia

Edson Ziso

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9783319664521
• eBook ISBN:
  9783319664538
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Afrikanische Politik

This book offers a new alternative to understanding the relationship between China and Africa. Here, the author not only explores the changing nature of Ethiopia's internal politics as a result of Chinese investment and commercial links, but also compellingly questions the existing state-centric macro or strategic investigation of China-Africa relations. By thoroughly reviewing and deploying the 'second image reversed' approach and the relational concept of state power analytical approaches, Ziso challenges the Western-centric Weberian conceptualization of state. This volume presents an eclectic approach to interpret the state transformation in Ethiopia in light of Chinese capital, arguing for a "state in society" framework which does not treat the state as a unitary black box. This analysis challenges the conventional binary staple which is often framed on whether China is the new imperialist power plundering Africa's resources or is Africa's historically all-weather friend. This volume offers an original contribution to knowledge on China's relations with Ethiopia in particular, and with Africa in general.

© The Author(s) 2018

Edson ZisoA Post State-Centric Analysis of China-Africa Relations Critical Studies of the Asia-Pacifichttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66453-8_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Edson Ziso¹

(1)

University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

End Abstract

1.1 Introduction

The impact of Chinese investment in Africa has become one of the most central questions in international relations and international political economy. There is a multiplicity of views in the analysis of China’s contemporary engagement with Africa. However, these views seem to be guided more by what China is imagined to be than what Africa is. Mawdsley summarises well how this image is reflected in the media: China is depicted as ‘guzzling,’ ‘aggressive,’ an ‘economic juggernaut,’ ‘insatiably thirsty’ for oils and minerals, and ‘voraciously’ capitalist.¹ The central question in much of this literature is what drives Chinese economic and commercial diplomacy in Africa and what implications this process holds for the political institutions and economic growth of particular African countries. There have been—as will be discussed subsequently—two broad answers to this question: one says that Chinese economic relations with Africa are predatory and a new form of imperialism is resulting in reinforcing Africa’s exploitation; another answer sees in this investment a possibility of new forms of development and a more assertive developmental role for the state. Here China offers alternative developmental futures that are distinct from the neo-liberal policies imposed by multilateral institutions. In this book, I argue that these are answers to the wrong problem or based around a wrong-headed problematic. It is a problematic that is based on a set of stereotypical assumptions about rising powers and the role of China that has become the staple of international relations literature.

At its core, the book argues that we need an ‘inside out’² approach that looks at the constitutive relationship between the internal and external as it plays out within processes of state transformation both in Africa and in China. The central question thus is: How are Chinese economic relationships—particularly the role of Chinese capital—internalised within the state? Ethiopia is the case study. In essence, the focus is on the specific internal ways in which social forces have been impacted in Ethiopia. Our present understanding of this issue remains scant at best and unknown at worst. This is where this study comes in, focusing specifically on state-society relations. Thus, the approach of this work challenges the view of the African state as a black box that either acts autonomously in relation to China or as the instrument through which China pursues its strategic interests. Hughes and Floyd, for example, open their article with the question: ‘Is China good for Africa or bad? That seems to be the never-ending debate from international development and investment policy experts and organizations.’³ This Eurocentric assumption is pervasive and has best been exposed by Tull. He notes that ‘there is indeed a growing awareness in Europe that China’s rise as a global superpower poses significant challenges in terms of its accommodation into a global order of things that hitherto was largely defined by Western countries.’⁴ The approach of this book, however, is different. Instead of viewing China’s presence in Africa as deliberately exploitative where Africa is a passive victim, the analysis regards the African state in relational terms as an institutional complex through which different social forces act.

Using this approach, the study looks at the internal implications brought about by the external forces through Chinese capital to explore the new implications of South-South interaction. This is because in Africa, broadly speaking, Chinese globalisation is viewed through the prism of this traditional South–South cooperation model. By definition,

South-South cooperation is a broad framework for collaboration among countries of the South in the political, economic, social, cultural, environmental and technical domains. Involving two or more developing countries, it can take place on a bilateral, regional, sub regional or interregional basis. Developing countries share knowledge, skills, expertise and resources to meet their development goals through concerted efforts. Recent developments in South-South cooperation have taken the form of increased volume of South-South trade, South-South flows of foreign direct investment, movements towards regional integration, technology transfers, sharing of solutions and experts, and other forms of exchanges.⁵

The proposed ‘inside out’ approach illuminates the discussion on state-society relations in Africa and how they are affected by Chinese investment in the context of broader South-South arrangements. Informed by Gourevitch’s ‘second image reversed’⁶ analogy, which explores the links between domestic and international politics, the ‘inside out’ approach is crucial, as the study is centred on the interaction of both domestic and external factors in shaping state-society relations in Ethiopia. Chinese investment in Ethiopia is therefore the external variable and its form and China’s behaviour is read as ‘globalisation with Chinese characteristics.’⁷

In explaining globalisation with Chinese characteristics, several key features that explain it stand out. Breslin notes that the form of capitalism that has materialised in China is one where state actors, often at the local level, remain central to the functioning of an economic system that has dysfunctionally emerged to suit their interests.⁸ China is not just an alternative economic partner—a new source of aid and investment and an increasingly important market—but an economic partner with a distinctive developmental model from that advocated by traditional institutions such as the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It is this distinctiveness of its neo-liberal model and its mutual accommodation with Ethiopia’s own political economy that is at the core of the thesis of this book.

At the same time, crucially, Ethiopia is a good example of a typical African state still associated with numerous questions surrounding the very aspect of ‘state.’ According to Flanary, the African state ‘is widely understood as existing as a hierarchically structured and centrally directed system of authority which is inherently a source of inequality, both in terms of power and the benefits which are attainable as a result.’⁹ In addition to all these, Ethiopia still must be analysed individually in its own right as a state. It possesses its own set of distinctive circumstances and local challenges including religion, ethnicity and underdevelopment. These factors shape the state transformation processes that are taking place as attributable to the presence of Chinese capital in the country. Therefore, whilst acknowledging the political roots of the relationship, the study goes further and extends frontiers by stressing that new South-South cooperation is now more organised in economic rather than political terms. The China–Ethiopia relationship is therefore a good example of new South-South cooperation. Although it is a bilateral relationship, the study emphasizes that this relationship is also uniquely intertwined with regional and global factors.

China’s current prominence is located firmly within its stature as an ‘emerging’ power. According to Alden, ‘emerging powers’ is a phrase coined to describe a new group of states which have through a combination of economic prowess, diplomatic acumen and military might have managed to move away from developing country status to challenge the dominance of traditional, mainly Western, powers.¹⁰ At the moment, China shares this label with Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa or ‘BRICS’ countries. The emergence of this wider ‘BRICs-plus’ group—or the new global ‘middle’—is already giving rise to the reordering of actual global relations and highlighting the need to rethink definitions and practices of global governance.’¹¹ In the past two decades, China has re-emerged as a global economic force mainly due to decades of internal reform and its economic transition from socialism to capitalism, albeit a distinct form of capitalism: state-oriented capitalism.

Externally, China has spread its wings and its economic force continues to be felt across the world. However, this book argues from the point of view that China in Africa is better analysed in terms of bilateral relations with individual countries. The book agrees with Aning and Lecoutre that this makes for good analysis as, ‘consequently, China adopts an individualised approach towards each country instead of a-one-size-fits-all approach to the whole of Africa.’¹² This helps the study avoid the hazard of misleading over-generalization because China is essentially engaging and impacting different countries differently. This study therefore exclusively analyses the China–Ethiopia relationship in a bilateral context, without necessarily negating the multilateral complex. Statistically, Ethiopia is fourth after Nigeria, South Africa and Zambia with the most Chinese investments in Africa.¹³

This introductory chapter will lay out the study’s research questions before explaining the aims in greater detail. Because the study is located within the broader China–Africa relations scholarship, the next section discusses the perspectives and approaches that have so far dominated academic analysis on China–Africa relations. By identifying the gaps therein, the groundwork is laid of the book’s argument as it explains how it aims to contribute to this body of literature whilst at the same time filling these gaps. To reinforce the uniqueness of the study, the section that follows then justifies Ethiopia as a case study, further explaining why the East African country’s political and economic relations with China provide the perfect laboratory to test the main arguments of the book. In the section that follows, a detailed discussion of the methodological approaches employed in the course of gathering and analysing all the necessary data used in the study is provided. Lastly, an overview of the structure of the thesis closes the chapter. Throughout the whole thesis, the US dollar ($US) is the currency of value.

1.2 China in Ethiopia

The broad research question upon which this book is premised is: In what ways is Chinese capital affecting state-society relations in Ethiopia? China has become a very important, if not decisive, component of Ethiopia’s contemporary economic development trajectory. This is seen through various w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Ethiopia-China Relations: An ‘Inside-Out’ Perspective
• 3. Crisis and Contradiction in Ethiopia Since 1974: Setting the Stage for Chinese Investment
• 4. From Dergue Socialism to an ‘Ethiopian Neoliberalism’: Transition and Reform Under the EPRDF Since 1991
• 5. The Drivers of Chinese Investment in Ethiopia Since 1995: Institution, Economics and Politics
• 6. Chinese Investment and New Modalities of State Intervention in Ethiopia
• 7. The Impact of Chinese Investment in Ethiopia: Party Capitalism and the Informalisation of Institutions
• 8. Conclusions: Summary of Main Findings and Some Suggestions for Future Research
• Backmatter