China's Expanding Role in Africa

[Jedburgh]

China’s Expanding Role in Africa: Implications for the United States, A Report of the CSIS Delegation to China on China-Africa-U.S. Relations November 28–December 1, 2006

...While China’s more ambitious and complex Africa policy of today may in due course bring financial and political payoffs, alter the playing field in Africa, and create pressures for changes in U.S. policy approaches, multiple risks also attend China’s strategy. In particular, Beijing faces nine core challenges in translating its vision of a strategic partnership with Africa into a sustainable reality:

1. China will need to work assiduously to overcome obstacles tied to language, culture, religion, and racial bias.

2. Although the FOCAC Beijing Action Plan calls for increased exchanges between African and Chinese media, and for the two sides to facilitate the placement of resident correspondents in China and in African countries, Chinese media and popular culture have only very limited entry into African markets thus far. Knowledge and expertise about Africa in China’s policy advisory and think tank communities is thin and lacking in up-to-date, on-the-ground experience.

3. Evolving African popular opinion—the “African street”—is not currently factored systematically into Beijing’s thinking.

4. The Chinese approach is neither familiar nor well equipped to engage with the emergent and increasingly vocal and influential nongovernmental groups in Africa.

5. Adhering to a formal policy of noninterference and putting it into consistent practice will be difficult and likely clash over time with deepening Chinese interests.

6. In the future, China will be under increasing pressure to define how it will direct and coordinate internally the complex bundle of ambitious policy and programmatic initiatives it is advancing.

7. The Chinese diaspora business community poses special “reputational risks” related to bribery and counterfeiting, among other controversial practices.

8. Pressures will mount for China to do more to harmonize its donor activity in Africa with ongoing international assistance, especially with respect to debt.

9. Pressures will mount on Beijing to manage its relations better with its most important bilateral partner, the United States, vis-à-vis Africa....

[Rob Thornton]

There is a great book called When China Ruled the Sea: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne (1405 -1433) by Louise Levathes.

It discusses a period in Chinese history when it was very involved with discovery and trade. A period where it was very ambitious in diplomacy and very interested in the world.
Regards, Rob

[goesh]

I heard/read somwhere about a month ago that China was going to budget 5 billion for road projects. I wonder how long it will be until they fully project force into the sea lanes. They've been in space already.

[tequila]

I find it instructive whenever people warn of an impending China threat to compare defense budgets. China is, even if you triple their official budget, less than $100 bn. The latest U.S. defense budget request comes in at $481.4 bn --- and this completely excludes the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns at $140 bn.

Frankly we should welcome China attempting to compete with us as a conventional peer. They will never match us and will end up wasting enormous resources trying to. Unfortunately I doubt they're that stupid.

[Tom Odom]

I will look at this more but the tone of the Executive Summary strikes me as hyped when it comes to expansion. What I have read so far reads more like a glossy sales brochure than an assessment.

China has long been in Africa and in many ways was more effective at it than the US or the USSR because the Chinese tended toward a low-tech, man power intensive model. In contrast, the US talks low tech and adaptable project models that better meet local needs but in securing funding we often get driven toward high (or higher than the Chinese) tech solutions.

Cuturally Communist Chinese models for communal agriculture in many cases better matched cultural tendencies even when they failed dramatically in execution.

And even during the height of the Cold War, U.S. "allies" like Mobutu were more than willing to drag their skirts in front of the Chinese to prompt renewed fervor among their Western suitors. Witness this paragraph:

Moreover, Beijing believes this history compares very favorably with the poor political and security legacy left to Africa by the U.S.-Soviet superpower rivalry of the Cold War era that stoked wars in places like Angola, Mozambique, and Ethiopia and created alliances with corrupt strongmen like Zaire’s President Mobutu and Somalia’s President Barre.

The PRC was also a player in those arenas as well as in others.

Overall I am not impressed. CSIS is usually much better.

Tom

[goesh]

Another past reference cited it would produce 9 times the output of Hoover Dam when fully functional. That's alot of juice and it won't all go to commercial factories for consumer goods - some of the benefit has to go to China's military and naval expansion to my way of thinking seems the logical choice, but that's an aside from the Africa issue at hand. I can't see them wasting resources on look-good-feel-good PR like money for AIDS, but I could be wrong on that too. Where I was at in W. AFrica they had built a soccer stadium that was never used and they quickly saw there wasn't any benefit from being much involved with that small nation.

[Jedburgh]

The Jamestown Foundation's China Brief, 7 Feb 07:

Beijing’s Great Leap Outward: Power Projection with Chinese Characteristics

...Western reports of Hu’s on-going eight-nation African tour have focused on China’s anxiety to secure a long-term, reliable supply of oil and other strategic commodities; African crude already accounts for nearly a third of China’s total oil imports. The Chinese leadership has inked new deals on oil and other minerals with several countries, including Cameroon, Sudan, Zambia and South Africa. Equally important, however, has been Beijing’s eagerness to demonstrate the impressive sway of Chinese economic and diplomatic prowess. During the FOCAC as well as the current trip, Beijing has written off hundreds of millions of dollars of debt owed by 33 African nations. China’s direct investment in 49 African countries is close to $7 billion. While meeting Zambian leaders earlier this week, Hu vigorously defended his country’s assertive strategy toward Africa against charges of “Chinese-style neo-colonialism.” “China is eagerly expanding imports from Africa,” the president said, adding that tariffs for African products had been drastically curtailed. Hu declared that Chinese aid and investment in areas ranging from infrastructure and mining to hospitals and schools would be increased. The Africans and the Chinese, Hu said, would always remain “good friends, good partners and good brothers”.

It is true that an increasing number of African politicians—particularly those in the opposition—have protested against China’s “exploitation” of Africa’s resources and the ill-treatment of local laborers by the Chinese owners of African-based firms. Hu and his foreign policy advisers, however, are convinced that as far as the “mainstream elite”—particularly the authoritarian rulers and businessmen in several countries—are concerned, China has already displaced the United States as Africa’s big brother. Indeed, one of the main purposes of Hu’s trip is to demonstrate that China’s African policy is on par with Western norms. Thus in Liberia, the president inspected Chinese peacekeeping forces billeted there under the auspices of the United Nations. In Sudan, where China has been accused of supplying arms to government forces committing atrocities in Darfur, Hu urged President Omar al-Bashir to do more to permit a UN-sponsored initiative aimed at halting the genocide in Darfur. Western diplomatic sources in Beijing noted that a key reason behind Beijing’s newfound eagerness to participate in UN-organized peacekeeping missions is to demonstrate China’s rising clout, particularly when juxtaposed against the declining influence of the United States in Africa and the Middle East....

[bismark17]

Poole's latest book, The Terrorist Trail, goes into into detail about a Jihadist/African/China nexus that has been developing for a period of time that I find to be very interesting and credible.

Of course, being a Poole book, it veers totally off into another vein and now I am reading a study of the Southern African conflicts starting with the Zulu warriors, the Boer campaigns, the Selous Scouts and that totally hooah SADF strategic recon unit and how they operated.

I really love his books but just wonder if they might be better broken into seperate policy papers or smaller more focused individual books...Don't get me wrong, I love his books, and would love to meet the guy but they just seem to be oddly packaged...I digress... sorry!