2.2 China’s role in Africa
2.2.1 History
At present-day China can be seen as a donor, a market, a financer, an investor, a contractor and a builder to many sub-Saharan countries. This is the result of a gradual increase in mutual interests that started in the 1950s, a few years after Mao Zedong came to power. As the political troubles with Taiwan -that claimed its secession from China’s mainland in 1949- were fairly recent, the first formal relations between the PRC and various African countries were established to promote and gain diplomatic recognition for the principle of ‘One China’. In addition, China already began to spread the concept of a multipolar world by presenting itself as being part of the non-aligned developing world during the first Asian-African conference at Bandung, Indonesia (Tull 2006, p. 467; Strauss 2009). After the first cracks in the Sino-Soviet relation in 1956 over differences in the interpretation of Marxism, which eventually led to the Sino-Soviet split in 1961, this concept would gradually become more important.
During the first major tour to Africa in 1963, Chinese premier Zhou Enlai visited various countries to promote China-Africa relations, including Sudan and Somalia. At the time, China mainly focused on movements that fought for independence and that engaged in anti-colonial activities (Gill and Reilly 2007, p. 37; van Dijk 2009, p. 9). During the state visits, Zhou addressed aspects of China’s foreign policy that still apply to it today: respect for state sovereignty, friendly relations grounded on equality, support for anti-colonial movements, non-conditional development assistance and support of self-reliance (Strauss 2009, p. 781-782). At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, China heavily started to promote Maoism, as a turn against the post-Stalin Soviet Union, and as an ideological foreign policy in Africa. However, Maoism was not taken well amongst most African leaders, who feared losing their positions as a consequence. Maoist ideology namely heavily preached for taking a critical stance towards rulers, to the point of fighting for the removal of incompetent ones. Furthermore, Maoism promoted the building up of a strong working class, which in most parts of Africa was completely absent. However, due to the lack of positive response from African leaders, and the contradiction of propagating Maoism as an “exporting revolution” with the principle of non-interference in international affairs, China ended the Maoist diplomacy during the late 1960s. Instead, China started to provide aid to Africa that was free and unconditional and more often started to support socialist regimes (Van Dijk 2009, p. 9). This ending of the critical Maoist diplomacy into ideology-free diplomacy gradually recovered the majority of African bilateral relations (Li 2007, p. 91), and would become the glue in the structure of bilateral involvement of China’s official and semi-official coverage of China-African affairs in later decades. Although China’s diplomatic tone would never lose the initial Maoist rhetoric entirely, as Strauss (2009, p. 779) points out in his research on China’s rhetoric and diplomacy.
In the post-Mao era in the late 1970s, Deng Xiaoping and other Chinese leaders tried to make it their first priority to recover and modernize the Chinese economy and to gradually maximize access to foreign markets (Mohan and Power 2008, p. 30; Zhang 2012). While China implemented the adjunct ‘Opening Up’ and ‘Reform’ policies, many African states gained independence from their former colonial superpowers. Since both China and the newborn African countries focused primarily on their own independent political development, bilateral relations mostly relied on mutual political support, with anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism at its diplomatic core (Zhang 2012). However, economic China-African relations were not particularly intensified (Tull 2006, p. 462).
In the 1980s, when both China’s ‘Opening Up’ and ‘Reform’ policies already started to show results, China turned to the industrialized West to gain more knowledge and experience in relation to economic development, for which it still had much to learn. And by the end of the Cold War, China was working towards a ‘socialist market economy’, a market economy model with Chinese characteristics. Or, as the official explanation of the model stated: “A socialist market economy is an economy based on socialist public ownership in which the government executes macroeconomic regulations and the market fulfils its basic role in the distribution of resources” (Yasuo 2003, p. 2). On the basis of this structure, China’s state-owned enterprises were thus beginning to gain more importance for China’s economic development path. Additionally, and most importantly, China’s foreign policy underwent a transformation into a more active stance to establish and emphasize non-Western diplomatic relations outside East Asia. According to Tull (2006, p. 460-462) this more outward view and need for allies, had three different reasons.
Firstly, after the aggressive military interventions against the separatist movement in Lhasa in 1959, China’s new military aggression against the peaceful pro-democracy protesting students in Tiananmen Square in Beijing in June 1989 flared up negative reactions and sanctions of Western countries aimed at Beijing. These sanctions pushed China towards other allies (Zhu & Blachford 2005, p. 244). During the three years after the clashes on Tiananmen Square, Chinese foreign minister Qian Qichan paid a visit to 14 African countries to establish new diplomatic relations. These new diplomatic ties would function as a shield for Beijing from further Western criticism about the government’s reaction to the students’ protest within many multilateral organizations, like the UN Security Council, and later the United Nations Commission of Human Rights (Tull 2006, p. 467)
Secondly, the growing international hegemony of the US in the post-1989 period and the changing references to China by US leaders, from ‘strategic partner’ to ‘strategic competitor’, contributed to the fact that China started to address the concept of multipolarity even more than before. This worldview aspires a stable distribution of power in which more than two nation states have an equal amount of cultural, military and economic power and international influence. Within this paradigm, China perceived itself to become one of the power poles, next to the US and Japan (Yasuo 2003, p. 30).
The third reason for the expansion of diplomatic ties with Africa was the Asian financial crisis in 1997. The Chinese leadership realized that China’s domestic situation, including its social tensions and the established monopoly of the Communist Party, was also subject and vulnerable to external influences. This urged Beijing to diversify its trade relations and become more independent from external economic shocks within the Asian region. And so, a year later, the Chinese government and the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade introduced China’s new ‘Going Out Strategy’ (van Dijk 2009, p. 17). This policy push generated support for Chinese companies and State Owned Enterprises (SOE’s) to expand their businesses to international markets. This would create a more steady pace for economic development. But it also intensified China’s diplomatic advances towards different countries in the world, including the ones located in the sub-Saharan African region.
However, many experts in the field state that the expansion towards sub-Saharan Africa was part of China’s realistic geo-economic strategy and mostly focused on investments that secured long-term access to natural resources (Economy, 2010, p. 145-147; Gill and Reilly 2007, p. 38; Tull 2006, p. 465; Large 2009). In 1998, President Jiang Zemin and the Chinese Ministry of Defense declared that energy security had to become the main focus for China’s overall security position. China’s increasingly wealthy population, its urbanization, and the many industries within its rapidly growing economy, asked for more natural resources, mainly crude oil, than China could provide for itself. Moreover, at the time, global energy politics already became more intense and competitive. As a result, many Chinese state owned oil companies then started to increase their oil import by securing new oil markets (Mohan and Power 2008; Tull 2006; Alden and Hughes 2009).
Nevertheless, there were more reasons for China to be involved in Africa, aside from its search for natural resources. Africa is not only an exporter of natural resources; it also has become a good sales market for Chinese products (Eisenman 2012, p. 800). In the last two decades China produced most of the world’s low-tech and low-priced products in local state-built economies of scale. Large Chinese “boomtowns”, specializing in mass-producing just one or two different products have made Chinese products highly competitive in the world market. Although much of China’s capital flows (Figure 1) are not disclosed publicly, estimates are that the capital going into Africa has grown 400% from in 2007, since 1991.
Figure 1. China’s capital flows by region over time (US dollars billion)
2.2.2 Current situation
Since 2000, further political and economic integration between China and African countries was further boosted with frequent high-level reciprocal visits, and has intensified through the establishment of the Forum of China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), which is held every third year since 2000 (Zhang 2012). Receiving a great deal of coverage in the media, this platform facilitates collective political dialogue and win-win solutions that stimulate economic cooperation between 51 African countries and China. New important topics that improve China-African relations are big infrastructural projects, promotion of Chinese private enterprises presented as partners of China’s development and investment goals for Africa, cancellation of debts, setting up of special economic zones, and the setting up of an Africa development fund (Strauss 2009, p. 791). In 2005, an African Chamber of Commerce was established in Beijing. And at the Beijing Summit of Forum on FOCAC in 2006, China released a White Paper on its Africa Policy in which it expressed to aspire the development of more friendly relations and cooperation with African countries based on the ‘Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence’. Hu Jintao called this a “new type of strategic partnership” (Alden and Hughes 2009, p. 564, 565).
With the ‘Going out’ strategy still in force today, China currently tries to maintain embassies in every African country to support its Chinese companies, apart from the six countries that have ties with Taiwan (Tull 2006, p. 462). The main function of these embassies is to guide Chinese businesses in their pursuit of entering the African economy. China’s government controls many of these corporations; and so China’s national interests are plausibly factored into the business strategy. Whether it is this government-controlled structure, or China’s indifference to human rights abuses (both forms of illiberal capitalism), China-African economic engagements are increasing (Taylor 2006; Alden 2007). Sino African trade volume increased from $12 Million in 1950, to $200 Billion in 2012 (Zhang 2012). And China’s investments have grown exponentially (Appendix 1). And most of the African oil that was imported by China in 2006 came from two African niche markets; one of which was Sudan (Tull 2006: 479). And, since 2009, China has become Africa’s largest trading partner.
China’s trade with African countries is often only part of the deal. China provides most African countries also with unconditional aid to establish good relations. Despite political and social tensions and escalations in various African countries, China assists African countries with their development through three different forms of aid: grants, soft loans, and debt relief (van Dijk 2009, p. 15). China’s grants and soft loans are facilitated by two government-controlled banks, namely: the Export-Import Bank (Exim Bank), and China’s Development Bank (CDB). The Exim Bank primarily focuses on expanding Chinese trade. Whereas the CDB, which has more assets than the World Bank; the Asian Development Bank; and the African Development Bank combined, promotes Chinese economic and infrastructure development (Jakobson and Brix 2012, p. 28).
China’s grants often come in the form of construction works and infrastructure projects that are carried out by Chinese companies, and thus financed by the CDB. The first project in Africa in the 1970s was a 1,860km railway track from Tanzania to Zambia. Later came hospitals in Luanda, Angola; sport stadiums in Benin and Sierra Leone; a water supply project in Mauritania; and so on. The loans provided by Exim Bank and the CDB are under the framework of the FOCAC and thus have the purpose of broadening the financing channels of African small to medium enterprises (CDB Sustainability Report 2012). Although the CDB states that it follows market rules, these loans are known for their below-market rate interests, long repayment periods, or refund in the form of a lucrative trade deal. Lastly, China has helped many African countries with debt relief; diminishing the debt that was built up throughout the years via state loans. This enforces China’s motive of being a partner in development.
Although China’s aid is far from the amounts that Western nations provide African states, in comparison to Western aid, it comes with very few moral or political strings attached. China sticks to the principle of national sovereignty, and therefore does not impose other political attachments to its aid, like the anti-corruption measures that Western nations often use as prerequisites. African leaders have found that China’s support and critique on Western interference in other states’ domestic politics, has generated leeway to diminish the pressures of the West on the liberalization of their political systems (Tull 2006, p. 461). According to the US and many international organs, China is thus ignoring corruption and breaches in human rights and is only pursuing its economic aims. Therefore, China does not contribute to gradual economic development in these African nations and does not take enough responsibility.
Mohan and Power (2008, p. 70), among others, call the Chinese involvement in Africa ambivalent for this reason (Large 2009; Alden 2009). This unconditional aid and China’s noninterference policy however, could not only lead to the so called ‘resource curse’ in oil-rich countries, which staggers development in the country and favors the status quo, it could indirectly lead to risky situations where Chinese corporations and SOE’s are working in unstable and even dangerous situations (Jensen & Wantchekon 2004). Although Beijing does not want to interfere with other countries’ businesses, the Chinese government might have less choice in the future. The more it invests in unstable African countries or rogue states, the more China might want to protect its own assets and investments and thus might have to take more responsibility.
Hypothesis 3: China’s recognition of South Sudan and not of Somaliland is subject to China’s political and economical interests in its bilateral relations, which are increasingly economically motivated.
2.3 China’s peaceful rise
“Rich countries assume a huge responsibility. […] The more successful development China achieves, the more people expect China to reach out to help those small or poor countries and deal with difficulties with them. In the same manner, as China gains higher status geopolitically, her share of responsibility in world security shall increase as well.”
Koffi Annan, United Nations Secretary-General (Yan 2006, p. 7)
China’s international power image has risen considerably in the last few decades, partially due to the promotion of its fast economic development. However, China’s perception on normative power and the related idea of soft power differs from that of the West. China finds that normative power is related to cultural soft power and not to cultural norms that apply to quality of authority. Where the West focuses on good governance, human rights and democratic values, China focuses on modernization. Where the UNSC follows the legislation of the International Court of Justice as the highest legal organ in the world, China has refused to submit to ICJ’s jurisdiction or even appear before it for a long time (Posner and Yoo 2006, p. 7). China believes that the ICJ is biased in favor of the US; therefore China does not feel itself bound to Western interpretations on the rules of the UN Charter. However, due to China’s rising power status, cooperation and interplay with other nations may determine or influence its stance towards some foreign policy issues. The question thus sets to what extent the international arena may influence China’s attitude towards secessionism. Russia however, shares with China its distrust in relation to the aforementioned international organs. Considering both countries’ ideological background, we can assume Russia may have an influence on China’s future decisions in the international arena.
Posner and Yoo (2006, p. 7) overly state that, so far, China and the US have taken different sides in every war in the hope of containing a new ally in their rivalry. However, Kerr and Xu (2014) argue that the different notions of normative power between East and West might be gradually converging in relation to security issues. An important difference in approaching security issues lies in the fact that China has always adhered to the norms of sovereignty, noninterference and territorial integrity, which on their turn might undermine Western efforts and which lacks a feeling for responsibility outside domestic borders. But there are other differences: Western countries or organizations are more focused on normative interventions when it comes to security situations. China on the other hand pays attention to views of regional organizations and grants these organizations more responsibility to solve the problem, before positioning itself. This may be enforced by the fact that Africa’s bargaining power is increasing as well. China exports technology and helps to build Africa country’s necessary infrastructure for self-sustaining economic development, following the ‘China Model’ (Eisenman 2012, p. 801). However, Zhang (2014) explains that Africa’s growing influence is also translating in recovery of other bilateral relations, which could marginalize China’s role in Africa in the future. In some cases, it is therefore necessary for China to take other bilateral relations and other powers into account while choosing its political stance. However, relevant actors and attached relations differ from state to state.
However, simultaneously, during the last decade China has become too powerful to be offended. China’s relative growth in comparison to the US raises concerns, since the economic growth makes it possible for China to spend more on its defense. And global analysts identify Chinese goals to be increasingly prone to constrain Taiwan from independence with a hard realist approach (Posner and Yoo 2006, p. 5). At the same time, no country wants to risk its economic relations with China over moral disagreements. This might have an influence on how China reacted on secession, a sensitive subject, at different moments in time. During Somaliland’s secession China was not yet perceived as the new global superpower, but during South Sudan’s secession it increasingly was. Therefore the following hypothesis is followed:
Hypothesis 4: China’s stance towards secessionism is influenced by its growing power in the international arena.
[su_button url=”https://saxafimedia.com/fine-line-chinese-recognition-case-study-somaliland-and-south-sudan/5/” style=”soft” size=”12″ wide=”yes” center=”yes” text_shadow=”0px 0px 0px #FFFFFF” rel=”lightbox”]CONTINUE READING ON METHODOLOGY & RESEARCH DESIGN >[/su_button]
