By Peter Lewis
The mutual attraction is obvious: Africa gets no-strings-attached aid and mentoring from a formerly poor agrarian economy that transformed itself into a world power. China gains access to rich natural resources, export markets and votes in the United Nations. n Over the past several years, China has charted an ambitious strategy toward Africa, and is now a dynamic presence throughout the region. In dozens of African countries, Chinese investment, trade, development aid and political overtures have attracted growing interest along with widening controversy. In November, Beijing hosted a China-Africa summit that attracted 48 heads of state to the Chinese capital. Two billion dollars in trade deals were signed, and President Hu Jintao promised to double aid to the region in the next three years. For many observers, China’s engagement brings welcome opportunities for advancing Africa’s troubled economies, while affording African countries new alliances and political leverage. Others warn about renewed exploitation and an erosion of human rights and governance, with potentially damaging consequences for fragile states. Whatever the effects, China is poised to become a major power in Africa, shifting the continent’s traditional economic and political relationships while altering the global terrain in energy markets and international organizations. The Turn to Africa
Historically, China’s contacts with Africa span hundreds of years. During the Ming Dynasty, Chinese navigators ventured to Africa’s east coast in the early 15th century, decades before the European “voyages of discovery” touched on West African shores. In the modern era, China’s post-revolutionary government had considerable interest in the newly independent states of Africa, viewing the continent as a wellspring of developing world solidarity and anti-imperialism. Following a series of visits to Africa in the early 1960s, Premier Zhou Enlai declared Africa’s revolutionary prospects to be “excellent.” In succeeding decades, however, China’s engagement with the countries of Africa was largely peripheral for both sides. China offered rhetorical support for anti-colonial struggles and national autonomy, along with modest assistance to independence movements in southern Africa. Many African governments, particularly those with a socialist cast, established relations with the People’s Republic of China. Beijing sponsored a number of large-scale development schemes, including the Tanzania-Zambia- Railway, touted as a model of internationalist cooperation. For the most part, Chinese assistance was visible in symbolic projects such as conference halls, government buildings, stadiums, monuments and some infrastructure. Sino-African relations were a middling priority for Beijing, and few governments in the region emphasized these ties. Many, in fact, preferred the economic benefits to be garnered from recognition of -Taiwan. China’s rising international stature over the past decade has been reflected in new policy priorities. Long past the era of revolutionary change and confrontation with the West, Chinese leaders now focus on economic objectives and alliances that can enhance their position in global forums. Seen in this light, the African continent holds many attractions. Engagement with Africa can serve China’s stated goals of encouraging a “multipolar” global system to offset U.S. dominance. Africa includes 48 countries south of Sahara, offering a large voting block in the United Nations and other international organizations. The consolidation of relations- with China by many African states (and their corollary rupture of relations with Taiwan) serves to bolster the mainland’s “one-China” policy. The continent’s plentiful natural resources provide another crucial draw. China’s headlong growth over the past 15 years has fostered an enormous thirst for energy and other resources. The Gulf of Guinea, along the western African coast, is among the fastest-growing areas of oil and gas development in the world, with proven reserves of at least 50 billion barrels of petroleum. Gold, platinum, diamonds and other rare minerals are found in abundance in Africa, along with such commodities as timber. Chinese companies are also eager to expand their export markets in Africa. Despite low incomes and weak economies throughout much of the region, many countries provide attractive markets for Chinese manufactures, especially low-cost consumer goods, electronics, machinery and armaments. These concerns for energy, trade and strategic leverage have encouraged broader initiatives toward the developing world, seen also in China’s engagement with Latin America. The rising prominence of Sino-African relations has been expressed in general policy statements from Beijing, an official white paper on policy toward Africa and an increasing volume of high-level visits and bilateral agreements with states from South Africa to Chad. Rules of Engagement
Chinese leaders have emphasized respect for national sovereignty and nonintervention in the affairs of other countries as central tenets of their foreign policy. To many Africans, particularly the continent’s political elites, these principles offer welcome alternatives to the influence of Western powers and donor institutions. The onerous conditions of International Monetary Fund and World Bank loans, accompanied by pressures for democratization and transparency from the G-7 countries, have long rankled African leaders dependent on such external assistance. By contrast, the Chinese government offers “aid without strings,” furnishing new sources of political and economic support while asking little in return beyond recognition of Beijing. There are many appealing aspects to the relationship. Closer links with China can provide new investment, trading opportunities and heightened development aid. Moreover, Chinese engagement comes as a package in which economic, diplomatic, political and security dimensions are combined. When African governments sign an agreement for investment in the petroleum sector, they also may benefit from debt cancellation, new funding for critical infrastructure, assistance with development projects, military cooperation and diplomatic backing in the United Nations. Where governments feel isolated by global markets, threatened by local challengers or ostracized by the major powers, “looking east” may provide critical support. In another sense, China embodies an alternative path to the orthodoxy of liberal reform advocated by U.S. and European donors. Many Africans remain skeptical about wholesale market reform, while a number of leaders urge caution in rushing toward disorderly political liberalization. China exemplifies a poor agrarian economy that has become substantially richer, shaking off foreign domination to fashion a vibrant industrial system. Chinese leaders have also pursued economic reforms under carefully regulated conditions, maintaining considerable state control of the economy while resisting pressures for rapid democratization. China serves as a credible model, and ready sponsor, in the pursuit of alternative strategies of development. Mutual Benefits?
The expansion of economic relations between China and Africa has been impressive. Over the past decade, China’s trade with Africa has been driven by double-digit growth each year. Just between 2002 and 2004, the value of African exports to China increased by 100 percent, rising to nearly $10 billion. Total trade flows currently exceed $40 billion, vaulting China to third place (after the United States and France) among the continent’s largest trading partners—overtaking Britain, the former colonial power. Much of this trade has been in the critical areas of energy and minerals. African countries (including Angola, Congo-Brazzaville, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Nigeria and Sudan) provide more than a quarter of China’s oil imports, and China sources copper, chromium, diamonds, platinum and uranium from South Africa, Zimbabwe and elsewhere. Chinese exports of manufactured goods to Africa also have risen rapidly. Trade has been accompanied by rising investment in the region. The volume of Chinese investment across Africa now stands at about $1.2 billion, with more than 700 Chinese ventures operating throughout the continent. Most African states have investment or trade agreements with Beijing, and investments can be found in activities as diverse as manufacturing, mining, trade, construction and transportation. Aid and economic assistance have followed the path of trade and investment. In recent years China has devoted nearly half of its development aid to Africa, and has cancelled about $1.3 billion in bilateral debt of 31 African countries. These trends are welcome in a continent that has suffered from marginality in the world economy. Africa today accounts for less than 2 percent of global exports or inflows of direct foreign investment, reflecting a precipitous drop since the 1980s. As the continent’s traditional economic partners remain skittish, China’s avid engagement promises new resources and capacities. Trade and investment can bring jobs, technology, skills and new sources of demand to African economies. These are among the selling points of Chinese approaches in the region, and important attractions for many leaders and commentators in Africa. Yet the signs of renewal may owe more to optimism than reality. While many African states clearly welcome the attention from China, the net benefits are not clear. About 90 percent of Africa’s exports to China consist of natural resources, with petroleum leading the way. A substantial portion of Chinese investment is also directed to the energy sector. These interests simply reproduce the traditional patterns of commodity-based production and trade that Africans have lamented for decades. China’s involvement is controversial in other sectors as well. In the late 1990s, Chinese investors established textile and apparel ventures in several African countries, which dramatically increased output and exports. This activity was largely prompted by U.S. passage of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which opened American markets to exports from selected African states. Many of these ventures were criticized as opportunistic “wall jumpers,” positioned to get around export restrictions on Chinese textiles, and indeed a number of plants closed when China’s quotas under the Multi-Fibre Arrangement were relaxed at the beginning of 2005. The resulting surge of low-cost Chinese imports (in Africa as well as in the United States) decimated textile industries from Nigeria to Kenya to South Africa, with a loss of thousands of jobs. More generally, Africans have expressed resentment that China’s trade is lopsided and that inexpensive Chinese manufactures crowd out local business and jobs. Michael Sata, a populist opposition candidate in the recent Zambian elections, loudly criticized Chinese involvement in the Zambian economy, and won agreement from the electoral authorities to avoid using Chinese computers in the vote count, in view of their ties to the incumbent government. Governance and Security
The Zambian controversy draws attention to another crucial issue in China-African relations: the implications for governance and security. China has cultivated friends across the continent without regard for domestic politics. Democratizing states such as Ghana, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia have enjoyed good relations with Beijing. Many of these countries struggle with corruption and weak governance, areas that Chinese leaders have clearly relegated to the realm of domestic affairs. China’s economic and political support could offer African politicians increasing leeway in misusing public funds or manipulating institutions to preserve their own power. Civil society activists, journalists and reform-minded politicians in Africa have sounded cautionary notes over China’s growing role in the region’s fledgling democracies. More disturbing is the embrace of such regimes as Equatorial Guinea, Sudan and Zimbabwe—widely regarded as among the most autocratic and corrupt governments in the continent. All of these countries possess strategic resources, and their leaders have variously benefited from economic assistance, military cooperation, arms transfers and sympathetic actions from China in the U.N. Security Council. Sudanese leaders have counted on Beijing to blunt pressures for U.N. peacekeepers in Darfur. Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, widely censured for his regime’s human rights abuses and economic mismanagement, boasts openly of his friendship with China as an antidote to Western pressure. Oil-exporting states including Angola, Chad, Equatorial Guinea and the Republic of Congo can do business with China unencumbered by concerns over fiscal transparency or the control of corruption. All of these countries have also experienced political uncertainty and substantial conflict. Resource exporters are notoriously vulnerable to corruption, dictatorship and instability since their revenues are highly concentrated in unaccountable governments, and export windfalls often provoke intense competition over distribution and control. There are grounds for concern that commercial relations “without strings” will enable further abuses, with harmful effects on petroleum-producing countries. While elites may benefit from new investment and trade, it is certain that average citizens will bear the brunt of corruption and instability. In short, China’s growing involvement in Africa could create a more permissive environment for misrule by undermining incentives for reform and facilitating malfeasance in poorly governed states. Nonetheless, these problems cannot be laid at China’s doorstep. During the Cold War, Western countries pursued decades of aid and support to autocratic African regimes, largely heedless of the costs for development and citizens’ rights. With few exceptions (notably Sudan and Zimbabwe), African countries that have recently grown closer to China continue to enjoy trade, investment and aid relations with the G-7 and the multilateral development institutions. Although there are legitimate concerns that China’s policy priorities will erode incentives for political and economic reform, the sources of weak governance in Africa are too diverse to attribute to a single set of bilateral relationships. New Strategic Terrain
It will be unclear for some time whether China’s heightened involvement with Africa proves to be a boon for African development or reinforces liabilities to growth, governance and stability. Much will depend on the capacity of African governments and elements of civil society to constructively manage these relationships. U.S. engagement with China also can be helpful in such areas as resource management and conflict resolution. One reality is clear: China’s rising influence in Africa is unlikely to abate any time soon. Beijing’s global interests—and the intensifying competition in world energy markets—will insure a widening and deepening engagement with the states of Africa. The United States must adapt to the new strategic terrain. For Africans, the challenge is to harness the benefits of engagement while evading the pitfalls of opportunism. Peter Lewis is an associate professor and director of the African Studies Program.
| 
