China and Africa: Dynamics of an Enduring Relationship

Garth le Pere is Executive Director of the Institute for Global Dialogue, Midrand, South Africa.

The historical record shows that in the early days of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), a mighty armada of sixty-two ships crossed the China Sea, then ventured west to Ceylon, Arabia and east Africa. The fleet was under the astute charge of Zheng He, who became the embodiment of China’s maritime spirit, adventure and ambition. Admiral Zheng earned the moniker “Grand Eunuch of the Three Treasures”, because three times since 1405 he and his ships had sailed to ports in Indochina, Indonesia, south-west India and Ceylon in search of exotica for the Ming court. Between 1405 and 1433, Zheng launched eight great expeditions, making calls at more than thirty countries and territories, including what are today Somalia, Kenya and Madagascar. All this maritime activity, it must be recalled, took place about half a century before Columbus’s famous voyage to America, making Zheng’s expeditions one of the most remarkable feats in the history of navigation.

A Growing Partnership

These antecedents presaged the enduring links between China and Africa. Indeed, Zheng, as envoy and commercial representative of the Ming court, is the historical icon of the traditional friendship and relations that have prevailed and endured between China and Africa—with different rhythms, ebbs and flows, depending on the era and particular junctures in world politics. There is a healthy debate at present about China’s real or perceived predatory “resource imperialism” in Africa. Importantly, however, China’s image in Africa has remained positive for the most part. What constituted China’s underlying intentions and calculations historically also remains relevant today: Zheng’s early explorations were not motivated by a colonial or settler project. As Philip Snow explains,

 

the Chinese were not aggressive. Unlike the Portuguese, they stormed no cities and conquered no land … They did not burn, as the Portuguese would, with the urge to impose their religious convictions, to lay siege to African souls. All they sought from Africans was a gesture of symbolic acquiescence in the Chinese view of the world.¹

 

After the Second World War and following the birth of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, African countries forged a new phase of relations with China, which included Chinese moral and material support for different generations of liberation movements and struggles for independence—although this was a source of great acrimony with the Soviet Union, which was itself vying for spheres of influence in Africa. Sino-African relations were consolidated when Premier Zhou Enlai visited ten African countries in 1963–4. He articulated “Five Principles” that would underpin the promotion of friendly Sino-African relations and “Eight Principles” that would inform aid. Sino-African diplomacy was further strengthened by high-level visits by African leaders to China, including over 150 visits by forty-nine African heads of state since the founding of the People’s Republic.

 

Following Premier Zhou’s ground-breaking trip, high-level Chinese visits to Africa have proceeded apace. They include those of Premier Zhao Ziyang in 1982–3; President Li Xiannian in 1986; Premier Li Peng in 1991 and 1995; President Yang Shangkun in 1992; and most importantly, President Jiang Zemin in 1996, when he made his famous speech at the headquarters of the Organisation of African Unity in Ethiopia to set up a “New Historical Monument for Sino-African Friendship”. In 2004, President Hu Jintao made a nine-day visit to Africa to solidify economic co-operation. More recently, in April and June 2006 respectively, both Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao also made high-profile tours through Africa. All these visits are a function of a greater strategic and diplomatic focus on Africa since Deng Xiaoping’s “opening” and economic reforms in 1978.

 

There has been robust co-operation (dating back to 1956 as the inauguration of China’s official aid programme) which has provided a range of benefits to Africa’s fifty-three countries in areas as diverse as agriculture, animal husbandry, fisheries, textiles and other light industries, energy, transportation, broadcasting and communications, water conservation, public and civil construction, education, health, and so on. Some flagship projects include the 1,860-km Tanzania–Zambia railroad (now largely moribund, but through no fault of China’s); the Port of Friendship in Mauritania; the 122-km Canal of Friendship in Tunisia; the International Convention Centre in Cairo; and an 80,000-capacity stadium in Kinshasa.

 

Beijing’s military programme in Africa remains controversial. China is Sudan’s chief arms supplier and provided arms worth $1 billion to both sides in the 1998–2000 Ethiopia–Eritrea conflict. Other African arms customers include unstable and/or autocratic regimes such as those in Zimbabwe, Angola, Mali, Sierra Leone, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. But China has also provided non-military technical assistance, financial aid and training for many countries. It has signed loan framework agreements on favourable terms with more than twenty countries; it has cultural co-operation and exchange agreements with forty-two countries; it offers in-country scholarships to five thousand students from fifty-one countries and hosts around one thousand African students at Chinese universities. Over the last thirty-five years, nineteen hospitals with two thousand beds have been built with Chinese aid and nearly fifteen thousand Chinese medical personnel serve in forty-two African countries.²

 

There has been equally close Sino-African co-operation in international affairs. The most profound symbol of this, helping to define the relationship, was the casting by twenty-six African countries of affirmative votes to make possible the assumption by China of its United Nations seat in 1971. China’s presence on the Security Council is very much seen as a vanguard for protecting developing-country interests, even though its voting record is rather conservative in this regard. Nevertheless, the formal acceptance of China’s leading role is reflected in the “Group of 77 plus China”, a loose coalition of developing countries at the United Nations which actually includes more than 130 states and which, since its Havana summit in 2000, has concentrated on addressing the adverse effects of economic globalisation, improving South–South partnerships and bridging the North–South divide. Since joining the World Trade Organisation in December 2001, China has become active in confronting the trade asymmetries that exist between developed and developing countries, but it has been especially sympathetic regarding the marginalisation of African countries in the global trading system.³ The establishment of formal diplomatic relations with the new South Africa in 1998 and the launching of the South Africa–China Binational Commission in 2001 have further served to deepen and consolidate Sino-African ties and lend weight to a more vigorous South–South co-operation.

 

This paper seeks to provide a sketch of the main features of a diverse and enduring historical relationship. It is a relationship that has been anchored in several core principles and declarations, all of which can be usefully summarised in terms of President Jiang Zemin’s “Five Point Proposal” for co-operation with Africa. These are to promote friendship; respect the principles of sovereign equality and non-intervention; promote common development on the basis of mutual benefit; increase consultation and co-operation in international affairs; and co-operate to create a more peaceful, stable, secure and prosperous world. These principles very much form a prism through which the main trajectories of Sino-African relations can be traced.

Trade and Investment

China’s global agenda is driven by three main objectives: access to raw materials, market access and a greater role in international relations. In the pursuit of these objectives, Africa features quite prominently. China is the world’s second-largest energy consumer after the United States. Oil accounts for 25 per cent of its energy needs, and based on current consumption patterns, China is expected to import 50 per cent of its petroleum requirements within the next decade. While the Middle East supplies half of its imports, China obtains 25 per cent of its oil from Africa, which is also one of the primary sources of the most sought-after sweet crude variety. Sudan is a major supplier, but China has also focused attention on other rich sources such as Nigeria, Angola, Algeria, Equatorial Guinea and Libya.

 

China’s appetite for raw materials is often described as “voracious”, and Africa is fast emerging as a strategic supplier of many of these. Imports of the raw materials that feed China’s industrial machine have surged in recent years. Between 1990 and 2003, China’s global imports of iron ore rose from 14 million tonnes to 148 million tonnes; of aluminium, from 1 million tonnes to 5.6 million tonnes; and of refined copper, from 20,000 tonnes to 1.273 million tonnes. Platinum imports rose from 20,000 ounces to 1.6 million ounces. China also imports an additional 40 million tonnes of steel a year to supplement its own 220 million tonnes of domestic production. And compared to the United States, it consumes more of the world’s copper (22 per cent vs 16 per cent) and aluminium (21 per cent vs 20 per cent).⁴

 

Although trade with Africa makes up only 3 per cent of China’s global trade, it is expanding rapidly. This is because China’s engagement with Africa is “geared to expand its commercial penetration. What has surprised is the speed and aggressiveness with which Chinese companies have established a presence in Africa’s economies … Chinese exporters are quickly displacing traditional suppliers of products in Africa”.⁵ As a consequence, trade increased by 700 per cent in the 1990s and nearly doubled between 2000 and 2004. By the end of 2005, China was fast becoming Africa’s third-most important trading partner, behind the United States and France.

 

China’s five largest African trading partners in order of importance are South Africa, Angola, Sudan, Nigeria and Egypt. Africa’s exports to China were $16 billion in 2004, and its imports from China stood at about $14 billion. Two-way trade increased to $40 billion by 2006 and is expected to rise to $100 billion by 2010. But the African trade surplus distorts the overall picture: it is the oil suppliers such as Angola, Sudan and Nigeria that account for huge trade surpluses while almost every other country, including South Africa, runs trade deficits with China. Like the rest of Africa, most of South Africa’s exports to China are raw materials and hence “South Africa–China trade is a classic North–South model—the South exporting raw materials, while importing manufactured goods”.⁶ These trade deficits raise serious concerns and consequently, China agreed in 2005 to tariff exemptions for certain commodities from twenty-five least-developing countries in Africa. Recently, it has expressed a willingness to check damaging import surges in clothing and textiles through voluntary export restraints.

 

As far as investment is concerned, Chinese investors have established eight hundred business ventures in forty-nine African countries in a wide spectrum of activities. Contracted investment stands at $1.25 billion in over three hundred projects covering construction, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, light industry, and textiles. China has bilateral investment protection agreements with twenty African countries, concerning matters such as the avoidance of double taxation, fair treatment, and protection of assets. The Chinese business centres already established in eleven African countries are expected to serve as nodal points for increased trade and investment initiatives. African investment in China is essentially driven and led by South African companies, which have over two hundred projects worth $400 million.

 

Tourism is another growth sector since China has granted several countries “Authorised Destination Status”, allowing Chinese citizens to travel in tour groups to the approved countries. The list includes Ethiopia, Kenya, Mauritius, the Seychelles, South Africa, Tanzania, Tunisia, Zambia and Zimbabwe. As a result, more than 110,000 tourists from China visited Africa in 2005, up from 70,000 in 2004. Even tourist traffic from Africa to China has risen, with nearly 30,000 African visitors in 2005.

Agreement and Friction

Most African countries now have formal diplomatic ties with China, and there are only five which still maintain links with Taiwan on the basis of long-standing aid programmes (these are Burkina Faso, Gambia, Malawi, Sao Tomé e Principé, and Swaziland). China supports efforts by African countries to prevent and combat terrorism, including their adoption of a counter-terrorism convention and the establishment of an anti-terrorism research centre under the auspices of the African Union’s Commission. Many African countries which are subject to both continental and external pressures for improved governance and human rights are sympathetic to China. There is an emerging critique that China is lukewarm about or even impervious to the issues of democratisation, transparency and accountability that are important elements of the African Union’s socio-economic blueprint, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD). China’s policy of non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs is one that many autocratic African governments find very appealing.

 

China’s non-interference principle comes up against the imperatives of Western-sponsored good governance conditionalities. This variance is bound to create contradictory tendencies among African countries and have centrifugal effects precisely at a time when the African Union and NEPAD’s promotion of democracy, peace and security faces its severest tests. China did host a human rights seminar in Beijing in 2004, at which twenty-seven African countries were represented. But its main purpose was to co-ordinate positions on human rights in international forums and to develop a common approach with African countries that share China’s outlook. Even if China were willing to attempt to transform African governance, its ability to do so would be questionable given its “limited resources and international influence … The urgent need for economic success at home does not give Beijing’s policy makers the luxury of conditional involvement on the African continent”.⁷

 

Notwithstanding China’s hands-off approach on internal matters, welcome to many African states, some political differences remain, a serious case in point being the deleterious impact on employment caused by China’s cheaper clothing and textiles exports. In addition, China has refused to sign the Ottawa Treaty banning landmines, in contrast to the African position which calls for a total ban; and despite its own mounting domestic environmental challenges, China has not signed the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, which is endorsed by most African countries. Finally, there is the language and cultural barrier, which is becoming increasingly prominent, if not divisive, given the growing presence of Chinese nationals and businesses across Africa.

Engaging Africa

The Forum for China–African Co-operation (FOCAC), established in October 2000 in Beijing, is today the key institutional mechanism through which China co-ordinates its activities in Africa. FOCAC’s work was significantly enhanced and complemented by the publication of China’s white paper on Africa in January 2006. The white paper sets out an ambitious co-operation framework, underpinned by targeted initiatives. Its main spheres are political (with six initiatives); economic (ten initiatives); education, science, culture, health and social development (ten initiatives); and peace and security (four initiatives). FOCAC is devoted to improving dialogue and consultation, and at the inaugural meeting in Beijing, which was attended by eighty African ministers from forty-four countries, participants adopted the Beijing Declaration and Programme for China–Africa Co-operation in Economic and Social Development.

 

Meetings are held every three years at ministerial level, preceded a year beforehand by a high‑level preparatory meeting. FOCAC’s second ministerial meeting took place in Addis Ababa in 2003, with forty-four African countries represented. This meeting resulted in the Addis Action Plan, which proposed sixteen areas around which co-operation could be structured. It was at this meeting that Premier Wen Jiabao announced that China would cancel the debt of thirty-one African countries, totalling $1.27 billion, and promised support for NEPAD. He further backed Africa’s position on multilateralism, the elimination of trade barriers and farm subsidies, an increase in official development aid, and deeper debt relief. A side event brought 150 Chinese and 250 African entrepreneurs together, resulting in signed agreements or understandings for twenty projects worth $680 million.

 

The third ministerial meeting took place in Beijing in November 2006. It focused on further strengthening the pillars of co-operation set out in the white paper, building Africa’s capacity in such areas as science, education, and health, and improving Africa’s climate for trade and investment. Deals worth $1.9 billion were signed, and pledges made to boost Sino-African trade and development. Beijing also won African backing for its “one-China” policy of reunification with Taiwan.

Dealing with China

These developments invite reflection on broader systemic issues which underlie China’s emergence on the global stage. In the last twenty years, China has achieved breathtaking economic success in its quest of modernisation. Although it might have imitated much of what has made the United States successful, China retains an instinctive apprehension of Washington in its international relations. China’s leaders hardly see the United States as a benign and well-intentioned superpower. They suspect that it is committed to systematically undermining China’s legitimacy by various means. It has been suggested that “China’s primary foreign policy goal today is to weaken American influence relatively and absolutely, while steadfastly protecting its own corner”.⁸

 

It is not surprising that China remains suspicious of a unipolar world dominated by the United States. In a unipolar system, rising powers that are expanding economically tend to become more ambitious and dissatisfied with the status quo, and more defensive about their established international interests and commitments, to the point where they are prepared to disrupt the dominance of the world’s major power. In such an “anarchic” environment, a country like China will tend to balance its position against the dominance of the hegemonic power as states become more enmeshed in what is after all a zero-sum game of winners and losers. It is for this reason that China has embraced globalisation, which it sees as offering a way of becoming

 

rich and strong and simultaneously [of] reducing fears of fast-growing Chinese material power … China’s new foreign policy choice highlights the potential role of globalization in transforming great-power politics from the unmitigated struggle for supremacy of earlier eras to a more co-operative form of interstate competition that increases prospects for China’s peaceful rise.⁹

 

China’s economic and political development has profound implications for every region in a world of global interdependence. Economically, Beijing’s reforms and open-door policy have exposed China to commerce and investment opportunities on an unprecedented scale, and the world is probably better off for its market-led growth and innovations and efficiencies in production methods, albeit on the back of cheap labour. The converse is that a poor and unstable China of 1.3 billion people would be a huge welfare burden with which the international community would be unable to cope. Hence, there is much to commend the argument that China should not be contained but must be encouraged to become a responsible global citizen: “for economic, environmental and security reasons alike, a major priority is now to bring China into the centre of global, as well as regional, governance … into an institutional arrangement which recognizes that, within a short space of time, China is beginning to matter as much for the rest of the world as Japan, the EU or the United States.”¹⁰

 

China needs a peaceful global environment in order to advance its economic modernisation programme and to address its own myriad domestic challenges and reform imperatives as a developing country. It cannot be in its interests to destabilise existing regional orders and international regimes. Indeed, since the end of the Cold War, China has deliberately set out to develop and institutionalise co-operative relations with a broad spectrum of countries and regions. It has promoted regional economic co-operation, especially among developing countries, has participated in bilateral and multilateral security dialogues in Asia, and has signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Crucially, in November 2001, China was accepted into and joined the World Trade Organisation. Apprehensions about a strong and prosperous China thus need to be more nuanced. The realist preoccupation with relative gains only perpetuates mutual suspicion. What makes greater sense is an emphasis on absolute gains that encourage China and other countries to co-operate more intensively in key areas such as international relations, diplomacy and trade, thus advancing global peace, stability and prosperity.

Threat or Boon?

It is no secret that China’s main objective in Africa is to develop and nurture its geopolitical influence on the basis of the instrumental imperatives that underpin both its future growth and its embrace of globalisation. China’s Africa policy is governed by the following concerns: obtaining secure and sustained access to natural resources; making inroads into an African market of 870 million people that is growing rapidly; advancing its own legitimacy and status through support for its “one China” policy; and crafting a place on the global stage as a major player on its own terms.

 

One is struck, therefore, by recent commentaries which epitomise the “China threat” syndrome. Take, for example, an editorial in India’s Financial Express following the release of the Africa white paper by China’s foreign minister, Li Zhaoxing. The article is symptomatic of the increasing hysteria about China’s role in Africa, lamenting India’s failure to keep pace with Beijing’s commercial, military and political penetration of the continent, which it presents in alarmist terms:

 

As Beijing cashes in on Africa’s natural resources and lays the foundation for military and political influence, India as usual is caught napping. That China’s White Paper on Africa, released last week in Beijing, got no attention in India reflects the familiar but sad story of Beijing racing ahead of Delhi in yet another frontier … Western analysts of China describe China’s vigorous African diplomacy as a rising great power’s attempt to gain control of Africa’s natural resources and markets, and lay the foundation for enduring political and military influence.¹¹

 

A similar type of discourse is doing the rounds in South Africa. With a little more subtlety perhaps than the Financial Express editorial, Greg Mills and Lyal White identify five threats arising from China’s involvement in Africa:

 

● Commodity booms can result in over-valued currencies (the so-called Dutch disease) and a failure to diversify economic activity.

 

● China might overwhelm Africa with cheap manufactured products.

 

● China’s reach into third-party markets will inhibit Africa’s ability to develop its own export alternatives.

 

● China has traditionally operated with principal concern for its own needs and couldn’t care less about democracy and good governance.

 

● The presence of large numbers of Chinese companies and Chinese citizens in Africa will have long-term effects that could undermine Africa’s development prospects.¹²

 

While the concerns raised by these articles might be legitimate and empirically defensible, the framework contained in Zhaoxing’s white paper represents a broader context of international relations, especially the globalising thrust of China’s foreign policy. As already suggested, the proper basis for an assessment of China’s role in Africa should not be Realpolitik and the sterile shibboleths of the “China threat”, but rather the ambition and dynamic of China’s “peaceful rise”. What China has accomplished in terms of its growth and emerging-power status demonstrates that a country’s economic sovereignty need not be enfeebled or undermined in the course of economic globalisation.

 

Indeed, individual countries and coalitions thereof have the ability to produce and mould new patterns of international relations in terms of alternate rules, regimes and orders. This is what the late Susan Strange called “structural power”, and its main elements are security, knowledge, production, finance, investment, and trade.¹³ The white paper is sensitive to all these dimensions as bases for improving relations with Africa and thus holds great promise for assisting with the construction of a more solid foundation for South–South co-operation.

 

A related consideration is a normative one arising from Jiang Zemin’s Five Points that should underpin China’s relations with Africa. This can be brought out by contrasting the “Washington Consensus” with the “Beijing Consensus”. The former emerged from the neo-liberal orthodoxy that helped define the Reaganite and Thatcherite approaches to globalisation, characterised by the promotion of unfettered markets, trade liberalisation and free societies. These continue to be the markers of America’s global hegemony.

 

China, on the other hand, has insisted on stability as the foundation of its foreign policy, informed by the values of Jiang’s Five Points: sincerity, equality and mutual benefit, non-interference, solidarity, and common development. While the Washington Consensus bears all the hallmarks of “end of history” arrogance, the Beijing Consensus is at heart developmental, with an emphasis on the economic, social and cultural. In many ways, it marks a shift from the politics of power to the politics of morality.

 

China’s engagement with Africa does not exactly conform to Western expectations, but it verges on hyperbole to argue that China’s turn to Africa “almost certainly does not contribute to the promotion of peace, prosperity and democracy on the continent”.¹⁴ Rather, China’s ability to compete effectively with other extra-regional actors provides new economic opportunities and development options for Africa. To take advantage of these will require significant changes and improvements in African approaches to governance, including better institutional and economic management. China’s growing footprint in their continent should not provide African states with a pretext for poor policy and the abdication of responsibility regarding good governance, human rights and democratic propriety.

 

China’s necessarily pragmatic approach to Africa, based on its long-stated policy of non-interference, its own development imperatives and its attempt to craft a new normative foundation for South–South co-operation, demands a focused and direct engagement. Its long history of involvement with Africa has been consolidated and enshrined in the white paper and the FOCAC declarations, which now bring all the elements of the China–Africa co-operation agenda into a coherent policy template in three strategic areas, namely, the political, the economic, and the social. The challenge for African governments is to respond to China’s engagement with effective and appropriate strategies to ensure that relations are not reduced to a zero-sum game. China has put a wide array of areas for potential co-operation on the table, and its Africa policy is very much the metaphorical equivalent of an invitation to a banquet. But crucially, it is also an invitation to participate in devising the menu. After all, who said that yams and cassava cannot be served with noodles and fried rice?

Endnotes

 

1. Philip Snow, The Star Raft: China’s Encounter with Africa (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988), p. 29.

 

 

2. See Warren Weinstein and Thomas Henriksen, eds., Soviet and Chinese Aid to African Nations (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1980); and Deborah Brautigam, Chinese Aid and African Development (New York: Macmillan, 1997).

 

3. Ironically, Beijing’s efforts in this regard occur against a backdrop of accusations that China has mercantilist inclinations and enjoys an unfair competitive advantage in the clothing and textiles sector that has had dire consequences for many African countries.

 

4. All figures are from David Hale, “How China’s Need for Commodities Will Change Global Politics”, in Enter the Dragon: Towards a Free Trade Agreement between China and the Southern African Customs Union, ed. Peter Draper and Garth le Pere (Midrand and Johannesburg: Institute for Global Dialogue and the South African Institute for International Affairs, 2005), p. 120.

 

5. Martyn Davies, “The Rise of China and the Commercial Consequences for Africa”, in Enter the Dragon, ed. Draper and le Pere, p. 157.

 

6. Ibid., p. 158.

 

7. Garth le Pere and Garth Shelton, “Afro-Chinese Relations: An Evolving South–South Partnership”, South African Journal of International Affairs 13, no. 1 (summer/autumn 2006), p. 35.

 

8. David Shambaugh, “Containment or Engagement of China? Calculating Beijing’s Responses”, International Security 21, no. 2 (autumn 1996), p. 187.

 

9. Yong Deng and Thomas G. Moore, “China Views Globalization: Toward a New Great-Power Politics?”, Washington Quarterly 27, no. 3 (summer 2004), p. 118.

 

10. Vincent Cable and Peter Ferdinand, “China as an Economic Giant: Threat or Opportunity?”, International Affairs 70, no. 2 (April 1994), p. 261.

 

11. “India Caught Sleeping: Losing Africa to China”, Financial Express (Mumbai), 16 January 2006.

 

12. Greg Mills and Lyal White, “Africa Can Decide Whether China Is a Threat or Boon”, Business Day (Johannesburg), 18 January 2006.

 

13. See Susan Strange, States and Markets: An Introduction to International Political Economy (London: Pinter Publishers, 1988).

 

14. Ian Taylor, “The ‘All-Weather Friend’? Sino-African Interaction in the Twenty-First Century”, in Africa in International Politics: External Involvement on the Continent, ed. Ian Taylor and Paul Williams (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 99.