China and Africa

The New Era

Daniel Large

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781509536344
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Economic Policy
• Index: Economics

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.

The New Era in Context

Former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere’s description of post-colonial Tanzania–China relations as the ‘most unequal of equal relationships’ could well be applied to relations between all African countries and China today.¹ Indeed, since 1978 this characteristic of post-colonial China–Africa relations has been accentuated by China’s economic transformation. China is now the world’s second largest economy, and the GDP of provinces like Zhejiang dwarf even Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy. China continues to style itself as ‘the largest developing country’ in partnership with Africa, ‘the continent with the most developing countries’. Xi Jinping’s adoption of major power foreign policy, however, confirmed China’s pre-eminence in an already existing de facto political hierarchy.

This chapter presents foundational context for the rest of the book. First, reviewing the history of China–Africa relations since 1949, it examines how China’s New Era Africa relations follow but depart from deeper historical connections. Many ‘new eras’ have been declared in past China–Africa relations, but that under Xi Jinping represents a historic departure beyond its formal designation. Second, it examines the changing political and institutional framework of China’s Africa engagement, emphasizing CCP reassertion under Xi Jinping since 2012 and how China’s fragmented party-state-military system has been evolving as it adapts to the challenges of major power diplomacy and more complex ties with Africa. Third, it considers how African states, regional organizations, the AU and other non-state actors engage with China and co-shape relations. Rather than emphasizing China at the expense of Africa, this chapter thus introduces thematic background to both.

HISTORICAL PHASES SINCE 1949

China’s official historical narratives stress the continuity of Africa relations since 1949, with phrases like ‘enduring friendship’, but in practice these have been episodic.² China’s Africa relations waxed and waned after 1949 largely according to domestic Chinese politics, until the development of ties from the 1980s, and especially after 2000, saw a departure in so far as China’s longer-term role was concerned. For the purposes of this book, after outlining key aspects of relations from 1949, the main focus will be on relations since around 2000.

The founding of the PRC on 1 October 1949 led to a new foreign policy under Chairman Mao Zedong. The Mao era saw politics in command of China’s Africa relations. China’s preoccupation with domestic affairs initially meant that it lacked the will and the means to engage meaningfully with a distant continent, much of which was still under colonial rule. At the 1955 Asian–African Conference at Bandung, China’s Premier Zhou Enlai affirmed the recently formed Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence: mutual respect of sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence. These have remained directly or indirectly foundational to how the CCP formally presents its Africa relations. Premier Zhou Enlai visited ten African countries over two months in 1963–64. In Ghana, he outlined China’s ‘Eight Principles for Economic Aid and Technical Assistance to other Countries’. As well as stressing equality and mutual benefit, sovereignty and non-conditionality, these defined the nature of Chinese economic aid (long-term interest-free or low-interest loans), and Beijing’s intention to enhance ‘self-reliance and independent economic development’. Despite domestic hardship and political convulsion, the Chinese government extended aid to African countries. It also embraced projects deemed uneconomic by Western powers but which mattered to African states. The iconic example is the Tanzania–Zambia (TAZARA) or Freedom Railway, built to connect Dar es Salaam on the Tanzanian coast and landlocked Zambia’s Copperbelt region, thereby avoiding the land route through Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and apartheid South Africa.³

Under Mao Zedong, exporting revolution was a very real aspect of China’s Africa relations, at least in terms of geopolitical strategy. Mao’s revolutionary model inspired many in a continent emerging from or still fighting against colonial rule. Concern in the West about the growing influence of China in Africa consistently overstated the nature, extent and outcomes of Beijing’s role. Revolution was prominent in China’s African relations, especially from 1960 after the Sino-Soviet split, when China contended for influence not just with Taiwan or Western powers, but other communist powers as well. In practice, however, China’s African relations had a more pragmatic character. Africa became the object of a concerted engagement by the Chinese government driven by a mixture of exporting revolution, self-interested strategic calculus and philanthropic purpose. Underscoring the importance of African state support at the UN, in October 1971 African votes helped the PRC enter the UN and replace Taiwan on the UN Security Council.

China’s relations with Africa under Deng Xiaoping, who led China from 1978, were recalibrated away from Maoist ideology towards economic interests in keeping with Deng’s reform and opening policy. Premier Zhao Ziyang toured eleven African countries in December 1982 and January 1983. The timing was significant. From 1978, China had switched from providing to also receiving aid to serve its domestic development efforts. Premier Zhao confirmed a new realism by emphasizing the effectiveness of development projects, which would preferably not require substantial investment, and declaring Four Principles of Sino-African Economic and Technological Cooperation: equality and mutual benefit; emphasis on practical results; diversity in form; and common development. These reoriented China’s engagement towards a more market-based logic that would evaluate projects according to commercial viability and value, not political solidarity. This shift demonstrated how different domestic priorities, namely reform and modernization, now informed China’s development-oriented foreign policy, which was guided by the maxims ‘keeping a low profile’ and ‘biding time and hiding capabilities’.

Following the Chinese government’s use of deadly force and Tiananmen bloodshed in June 1989, subsequent Western pressure on China and Taiwan’s attempts to win diplomatic recognition from African states, Africa’s role in China’s foreign policy became more important again but economic drivers became central. After becoming a net oil importer in 1993, rapid domestic growth compelled China to look for energy supplies and other raw materials overseas. This contributed to growing ties with resource-endowed African economies like oil-rich Sudan from 1995. President Jiang Zemin visited six African countries in 1996 and framed a forward looking ‘twenty-first-century’ relationship. In 1997, Premier Li Peng emphasized that China’s policy of providing development aid to Africa had evolved ‘from aid donation to economic cooperation for mutual benefit’. In 1998, a Ministry of Defence white paper cited energy security as integral to China’s overall security. The ‘going global’ strategy from 1999 ensured new state support for Chinese companies to expand overseas, including in Africa. Long ranked among the world’s top FDI recipients, the Chinese government began actively to promote outbound investment. Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) pursued resources, markets, customers and experience in African countries, as well as pathways to global markets beyond. In 2000, Beijing hosted the first China–Africa meeting of what became FOCAC. Presided over by President Jiang Zemin, it emphasized strengthening economic co-operation.

Relations gathered momentum from 2002 under Jiang’s successor, Hu Jintao. The second FOCAC, held in Addis Ababa in December 2003, saw leaders, diplomats and business representatives meet and mingle. China was also developing regional engagements within its continental relations. In 2003, for example, Macau hosted the first Economic Forum for Co-operation between China and the Community of Portuguese-speaking Countries. China had created two significant policy instruments in 1994: the Export–Import Bank of China (or China EXIM) and the China Development Bank (CDB), which became more involved. The breakthrough year, 2006, began with the release of China’s first ever African Policy. President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao visited ten African countries on respective tours. In November, Beijing hosted the third ministerial FOCAC and first heads of state summit. Despite being relatively modest by subsequent standards (for instance, a $5bn China–Africa development fund), at the time China’s new initiatives and financial commitments signalled ambitious intent. If the first FOCAC in 2000 passed relatively unnoticed, this summit rendered China–Africa relations visible on the world stage. A year before in Scotland, the G8 Gleneagles summit and push to ‘make poverty history’ captured global attention; China was upstaging that and implying Western aid to Africa might be history instead. The next FOCAC, held in Sharm el-Shaykh, Egypt, in 2009, came in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, which disrupted economic relations and renewed interest in the ‘China model’ as an alternative to Western politics and economics. The fifth ministerial FOCAC in Beijing in July 2012 was held in the twilight of Hu Jintao’s administration. To the 50 African countries present, President Hu outlined five priority areas, including support for ‘African integration’ and – for the first time – a peace and security initiative.

The Hu Jintao-Wen Jiabao period saw important trends that need to be appreciated in order to understand how things changed after 2012. First, in terms of how the Chinese government managed Africa relations, power and roles broadly reflected a prioritization of economic interests. China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (or MFA) suffered institutional decline, even while overseeing the most extensive diplomatic presence of any foreign power in Africa. By contrast, the institutional stature of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation, renamed the Ministry of Commerce (or MOFCOM) in 2003, grew as China’s foreign strategy became more trade focused, including with Africa. Through its Department of Aid to Foreign Countries, MOFCOM was in charge of China’s aid to Africa as part of a fragmented and poorly coordinated aid bureaucracy. Second, the number of entities involved in China’s Africa relations grew sig...