China and Africa

A Century of Engagement

David H. Shinn, Joshua Eisenman

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780812244199, 9780812244199
• eBook ISBN: 9780812208009
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The People's Republic of China once limited its involvement in African affairs to building an occasional railroad or port, supporting African liberation movements, and loudly proclaiming socialist solidarity with the downtrodden of the continent. Now Chinese diplomats and Chinese companies, both state-owned and private, along with an influx of Chinese workers, have spread throughout Africa. This shift is one of the most important geopolitical phenomena of our time. China and Africa: A Century of Engagement presents a comprehensive view of the relationship between this powerful Asian nation and the countries of Africa.This book, the first of its kind to be published since the 1970s, examines all facets of China's relationship with each of the fifty-four African nations. It reviews the history of China's relations with the continent, looking back past the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949. It looks at a broad range of areas that define this relationship—politics, trade, investment, foreign aid, military, security, and culture—providing a significant historical backdrop for each. David H. Shinn and Joshua Eisenman's study combines careful observation, meticulous data analysis, and detailed understanding gained through diplomatic experience and extensive travel in China and Africa. China and Africa demonstrates that while China's connection to Africa is different from that of Western nations, it is no less complex. Africans and Chinese are still developing their perceptions of each other, and these changing views have both positive and negative dimensions.

1

Introduction

Unity and cooperation with African countries remains a cornerstone of China’s foreign policy.

—China President Hu Jintao, comments to South African
President Jacob Zuma, 22 September 2009

Political leaders in Beijing regularly refer to China as the world’s “largest developing country” and Africa as “the continent with the most developing countries.” Yet China is hardly a typical developing country and Africa is hardly a cohesive political entity. China’s growing economic and political clout over the last decade is a fact, but its remarkable rise remains incomplete and the global implications uncertain. Meanwhile, rising commodity prices have given African elites newfound wealth and in many countries “stability” has become the motto of autocrats. Although China’s influence on global affairs is growing, its actions to safeguard its interests are increasingly affecting the interests of the international community. Beyond its neighbors perhaps nowhere has China’s political and economic relations with developing countries received more attention than in Africa. Going forward this trend is set to continue as China’s expanding engagement will influence both the international system and the continent’s prosperity and stability for decades to come.

This volume explores the development of China-Africa relations during the era of modern China, 1911–2011, but focuses the lion’s share of its attention on the post-1949 period. It pays particular consideration to the People’s Republic of China’s objectives and methods vis-à-vis African countries on a wide range of issues, from arms sales to education exchanges. In this book we have sought to provide academics, journalists, practitioners, and policymakers with a comprehensive analysis of China’s relations with all fifty-four African countries. Indeed, the toughest hurdle in writing on this topic is that any attempt to generalize is treacherous, particularly in diverse Africa; there are always exceptions and unique circumstances that beg for closer examination. It is for this reason that our book uses a continent-wide approach that examines each country’s relationship with China individually, while covering each subtopic in intricate detail. We hope this book will serve as a researcher’s desk reference, a university textbook, a guide for government, private sector, and nongovernmental organization (NGO) practitioners and an engaging read for nonspecialists and long-time watchers alike.

This book is the product of an extensive five-year research project designed to gain a more complete understanding of the phenomenon of China and African states’ relations and their rapid expansion. The initial goal was to investigate the political, economic, military, and social aspects of China’s relations with African countries over the last decade. But it quickly became clear that a complete examination of the relationships that dominate contemporary news reports and polemical accounts would require an explanation of the historical basis of China’s relations with African states.

To dig into this history we relied on the work of a previous generation of senior China-Africa researchers, including George T. Yu, Bruce Larkin, and Alaba Ogunsanwo. We also included a full array of newspaper coverage, government reports, academic journal articles, declassified documents, think tank reports, NGO studies, and onsite interviews.

During the course of our examination, we traveled to nine African countries,¹ visited China a half dozen times, and conducted more than 400 interviews with a panoply of Chinese and Africans from across the social spectrum, including Chinese ditch diggers in Sudan, West African textile traders in Guangzhou, China’s ambassadors to several African countries, Taiwan’s Ambassador to Swaziland, and African ambassadors to China. Examples of third country national interviews include Africa-based oil executives, the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs, Japan’s ambassador to Egypt, the chief of staff to Portugal’s prime minister, as well as Members of the European Parliament and senior officials in the European Commission. During many of these interviews we used our combined Chinese and French language skills to great advantage and also referenced documents in both languages.

Key Themes and Historical Trends in China-Africa Relations

While we were writing this volume, nine key themes and historical trends in China’s relations with African countries stood out. To make them more accessible to the reader they are briefly summarized below in no particular order.

China Initiates the Relationship: From the first voyages of Admiral Zheng He in the Ming Dynasty until today, China has largely determined the agenda in its relations with African countries.² China’s relative national strength has grown over time along with Beijing’s ability to chart the course of the relationship. Behind the rhetoric of equality in China’s commercial deals with African states, China’s GDP ($10.1 trillion in 2010) dwarfs every African country, even South Africa ($524 billion in 2010).³ As a single country representing over 1.3 billion people, China interacts with fifty-four African countries whose combined population is 1 billion. The most populous country, Nigeria, numbers about 150 million people. By 2008 China’s total foreign trade by dollar value was two and a half times larger than that of all fifty-four African countries combined. China’s ability to guide the course of China-Africa relations also depends on its coordinated continent-wide approach, anchored by the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) framework begun in 2000.

China’s overwhelming economy and its comparative advantage in most labor and capital intensive production has resulted in some pushback against the large quantity of low-cost Chinese imports available in most African markets. Each African country’s ability to derive long-term benefit from its own unique bilateral relationship with China is the result of its leverage or lack thereof on contentious trade issues and the level of coordination in its response to China’s superior economic and political strength.

China’s “Package” Strategy: Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Beijing has used a state-run packaged approach to relations with African countries. In the early years, China offered modest foreign aid, had little trade with Africa and provided almost no direct investment. During that period there was a greater emphasis on high level visits, cultural exchanges, student scholarships, and less expensive technical assistance. Although far smaller at their inception, these exchange programs remain just as state-controlled today. Beginning in the mid- to late 1990s, however, Beijing’s growing need for raw materials resulted in increased aid, trade, and investment with most African states. As China’s state-directed assistance and commerce grew, so did the presence of state-run firms in African countries, building bridges, dams, roads, and railroads. With China’s assistance some African countries are building special economic zones (SEZs) that offer Chinese firms preferential tax and investment terms.

China is now engaged at all levels and competing successfully in most areas with Western countries. The fruits of China’s multipronged engagement strategy in Africa have already been tasted. In 2009, China became Africa’s largest trading partner, surpassing the United States; China’s arms makers are an increasingly important supplier of military assistance; Xinhua has more bureaus in Africa than any other news service; every year Chinese universities and training centers teach thousands of Africans; there are twenty-eight Confucius Institutes in Africa and the Chinese equivalent of the U.S. Peace Corps program, albeit on a much smaller scale.⁴ Even Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI), which still lags that of Western countries, is growing rapidly. Those who question whether China has a “package” strategy in Africa would do well to read Beijing’s official 2006 Africa white paper.

No “China Development Model”: Although China has a strategy toward Africa, this does not mean it is promoting any particular development model. Impressed by China’s official 10 percent annual GDP growth rate over three decades, some African leaders envisage a similar result in their own country. Although there may be individual aspects of China’s model that can be replicated in some African countries, the goal of importing the Chinese development model is unrealistic and Chinese growth rates remain little more than a campaign promise. Idealists in Africa and the West regularly depict China’s modernization in romantic terms—the so-called “Beijing Consensus”—without fully appreciating the vast differences between Africa and China. Omitted variables include population size, political system, colonial history, state coercive power, religious beliefs, savings rate, role of the Chinese overseas community, and so on. By contrast, the Chinese themselves often scoff at the idea of a one size fits all “China Model,” and suggest an experimental approach that takes each country’s national conditions into account.

The Taiwan Issue: From the establishment of the PRC in 1949 until today Beijing has invested enormous energy and financial resources to end African countries’ diplomatic recognition of Taipei. For African countries (as it was for the United States, Japan, and other countries), diplomatic recognition of the PRC is acceptable only if that country is willing to end official ties with the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan. In the past several African countries have taken advantage of Chinese determination and strategically switched their recognition between Beijing and Taipei in an effort to obtain increasing amounts of largesse from both sides. At the end of 2007, Malawi was the latest country to switch recognition from Taipei to Beijing. Soon after the election in late 2008 of Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou, Beijing and Taipei initiated an unofficial diplomatic truce, leaving only four African countries that officially recognize the Republic of China (Taiwan)—Burkina Faso, Swaziland, Gambia, and São Tomé and Principe.

Over the years much of the PRC’s efforts have been quiet and behind the scenes, some public and overt. While Beijing is determined to end Taipei’s official diplomatic presence, it is far less concerned about Taiwan’s commercial presence in Africa. But when Taipei’s commerce and trade offices are located in capital cities as in the case of its office in Abuja, Nigeria, this implies a more official connection than Beijing is prepared to accept. Instead, China’s diplomatic demarches to Nigeria’s government calling for the office to be moved to Lagos or any other city suggest that in the case of important African countries Beijing is prepared to tolerate Taipei’s semi-official presence in commercial hubs.

Closer Political Relations: Some African countries have multiparty systems of government and meaningful opposition parties, relatively strong labor unions, significant numbers of NGOs, and an outspoken civil society. These features generally do not exist in China, which has struggled to understand their role and counter African criticism about Chinese policies and labor relations both at home and abroad. In recent years, however, China has made an effort to overcome these differences through the development of exchanges with African political parties, parliamentary delegations, cadres, and cultural and educational groups. More recently, China’s political outreach has even been extended to carefully selected opposition political parties, NGOs, and, increasingly, civil society. African labor unions and human rights activists remain a serious challenge for Beijing, largely because their interests generally conflict with those of China’s state-run firms.

From Support for Revolutions to Pragmatism: China’s approach to Africa shifted from a focus on support for wars of national liberation and revolutionary movements in the 1950s and 1960s to a more pragmatic approach from the mid-1970s onward. The escalating Sino-Soviet split coupled with the U.S.-China rapprochement gradually refocused Beijing’s objectives in Africa: first to counter the Soviet Union, then later in support of China’s post-1978 economic reform efforts. This shift was evolutionary. As a new crop of independent African nations emerged from colonialism in the 1950s and early 1960s, China engaged them using Zhou Enlai’s “Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence.” During China’s Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, leftists on both sides pushed a more revolutionary agenda. When Deng Xiaoping gained power in the late 1970s, this signaled a new age of stability and predictability in China-Africa relations. To some extent it is also possible to date this change between pre- and post-Mao policies, but the movement toward pragmatism evolved gradually, apace with both Chinese and African countries’ domestic political and economic conditions and the Soviet threat.

By the 1990s, pragmatism had overwhelmingly prevailed, particularly in the economic relationship. Since its inception in 2000, a wide range of China-Africa political and economic interaction has occurred under the FOCAC framework. In addition to African government actors, there are scores of Chinese agencies and firms at the central and provincial levels that continue to influence the trajectory of contemporary bilateral relations between China and African countries under the banner of the “Going Out Policy” initiated under Jiang Zemin.

Quick Succession: Although during its Maoist period China was well known for close ties to African revolutionary movements, it also developed ties with some more right-leaning independent African countries. China established relations with Morocco’s conservative monarchy in 1958, Kenya’s moderate government in 1963, Tunisia’s conservative government in 1964, and tried hard to establish relations with Ethiopia’s Emperor Haile Selassie throughout the 1960s, finally succeeding in 1970. Since the mid-1970s, however, Beijing has proved particularly adept at cultivating ties with various types of African governments to advance China’s interests, and above all to squeeze Taiwan out. China has maintained a consistent policy of supporting the status quo regime in nearly all African countries regardless whether that government is a democracy, monarchy, dictatorship, or under military or Islamist rule. China will try to maintain cordial relations with any government in control of the levers of state power. As regimes change in Africa, China has proven itself adept at moving quickly to establish cordial relations with the successor government.

Unencumbered by domestic pressure groups and an activist parliament, China’s one-party state allows it to quickly establish relations with new African regimes. China has even made this transition when it had close ties with the preceding ruling party. Beijing had backed several losing liberation groups in southern Africa, but after their defeat quickly reached out to their victorious rivals. In the case of Zambia, Beijing skillfully switched from the United National Independence Party to the Movement for Multi-Party Democracy after the latter’s victory in the 1991 elections. It had to make another transfer of allegiance when the Zambian opposition presidential candidate won in 2011. As China’s economic power has increased in recent years, both its commercial carrots and sticks for new African regimes have increased, making it easier and faster to move from one regime to another. New African leaders, faced with the problems of go...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• 1 Introduction
• 2 A Historical Overview of China-Africa Relations
• 3 Political Relations
• 4 Trade Relations
• 5 Investment and Assistance
• 6 Military and Security Ties and Peacekeeping Missions
• 7 Media, Education, and Cultural Relations and Ties with Chinese Communities in Africa
• 8 China’s Relations with North Africa and the Sahel
• 9 China’s Relations with East Africa, the Horn, and the Indian Ocean Islands
• 10 China’s Relations with West and Central Africa
• 11 China’s Relations with Southern Africa
• 12 Conclusion: Looking Forward
• Appendix 1. Establishment of PRC Relations with African Countries
• Appendix 2. Trade Between Africa and China, 1938–2010
• Notes
• Index
• Acknowledgments