Are China’s increased trade, investment and aid flows to Africa a neo-colonial threat or a new opportunity for South-South cooperation? Probably nothing so simple, concludes Nick Young in this review of the growing literature on the topic—but if the relationship is to be “win-win” it must embrace a wider and deeper discussion.
“China is resigned to the fact that US [global] domination is a cold reality it has to live and contend with. China has come to see globalisation as a way of transforming great power politics and establishing more co-operative forms of interstate competition that can increase the prospects for China’s peaceful rise. This has led to a situation where China, while recognising the dominance of the US, seeks to limit it through the UN and other international organisations, and by using its resources to forge stable relations with other countries and regions.”
This analysis is offered by one of the most level-headed studies in a recent spate of China-in-Africa literature: “China in Africa: Implications for Norwegian Foreign and Development Policies,” principally authored by Elling N. Tjønneland. Norway, prosperous but unencumbered by great power pretensions, is relatively well placed among Western nations to be level-headed about global issues. Former premier, Gro Harlem Brundtland, set a famous precedent in 1987 by heading the Commission that produced “Our Common Future,” a landmark report on sustainable development—which, alas, was more talked about than acted upon.
But Tjønneland’s assessment of China’s approach to Africa is not the Western norm. More typical is the widespread suspicion that China must be up to no good. This is nowhere more true than in the USA, which is struggling to come to terms with a shifting world order that it may still dominate but that it does not in any simple sense control, and which is meanwhile doing a remarkably bad job of promoting its flagship democracy.
According to the emerging, Western media narrative, China is “resource-hungry.” This suggests a ravening wolf at Africa’s door, while omitting to mention that Europeans and Americans continue to consume most of the world’s resources,or that many resources “consumed” by China are used to produce finished goods for export.
China is also frequently presented as a spoiler for transparency, good governance and human rights, which Western donors, NGOs and even, nowadays, corporations congratulate themselves for advancing in Africa.
Yet it is clear to any adult observer that Western aid and diplomacy is driven more by trade, energy and geopolitical interests than by abstract principles or generous impulses. Consider, for example, US military and economic aid to Egypt, totalling around USD 2 billion per year since the beginning of the century and making that country the third main recipient of US aid after Israel and unhappy Iraq. The aid flows in because the US sees Egypt as a key partner in securing “stability” in the Middle East and as a bulwark against “Islamic fundamentalism.” (Even though, just as in Iran 30 years ago, American support for an undemocratic, secular regime risks strengthening popular demands for a religious state.)
It is not hard, then, to see why Professor Kwesi Kwaa Prah, Director of the Cape Town-based Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society, should say (in an interview last year with Pambazuka News), that:
“It is a bit hypocritical for Western states to be concerned about how China is approaching Africa when they have had centuries of relations with Africa, starting with slavery and continuing to the present day with exploitation and cheating . . . so that a cow in the European community gets a subsidy of $2 a day and 60 per cent of Africa doesn’t get [earn] that.”
That interview is included in a collection of essays by (mainly) African intellectuals and activists, “African Perspectives on China in Africa,” published this year by Fahamu, a pan-African information platform (and operator of Pambazuka News) that locates itself in “a global movement for human rights and social justice.”
Many of the essays echo Kweis Kwaa Prah’s comment and appear to show that, if only out of weariness with the West, the contributors are prepared to see cooperation with China as offering a new opportunity for development. But there is also clear evidence here that the relationship could rapidly sour if China insists on dealing only with African political elites and neglects the opinions and aspirations of Africa’s civil society.
What do Africans think?
“The march of neoliberalism within China and its impact on the Chinese people has advanced hand-in-hand with China’s growing imperialist role abroad,” writes Stephen Marks in an Introduction. Although this sweeping statement does reflect one strand of thinking in the book, the contributions of other authors encompass a considerably wider range of views.
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