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The current relationship between China and Africa is very much dominated by trade, investment and economic cooperation. China’s trade with Africa has tripled since 2002, reaching approximately 40 billion USD in 2005, fuelled mainly by the rise in Chinese textile exports and China’s increasing import of African oil and minerals to diversify its import sources to feed its fast-growing economy. Early in 2005, Angola became China’s top oil supplier, passing Saudi Arabia. While securing energy resources may be important for China’s increasing engagement with Africa, China is also strengthening trade, investment and aid ties with Africa through various bilateral and multilateral forums such as the Asia-Africa Summit, China-Africa Cooperation Forum and China–Africa Business Council. This is part of a wider effort to create a paradigm of globalization that favours China.
Recolonization by invitation!
Though China’s rise poses a number of challenges, the opportunities should outweigh the threats if managed correctly. Regrettably, missing from the new China–Africa cooperation arrangement is a clear and coordinated policy strategy by African leaders on how to engage China constructively. While China knows what it wants from Africa, African countries have yet to develop a common framework on how to negotiate with China from a stronger and better-informed platform.
The New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD), which is supposed to provide a coordinated African framework for regional and sub-regional development in Africa, has offered no viable alternative on how to slow down the Chinese economic onslaught. This decided lack of an alternative strategy is partly explained by NEPAD’s failure to grasp the organizing principles of the current global order and its subsequent subscription to the dominant policies of unhindered market integration into the global economy which it regards as the only salvation for Africa. In so doing, the NEPAD programme induces states to opt for being instruments of competition, rather than being instruments of development. This decided lack of collective African response towards China poses a number of risks: security risks; environmental risks; governance risks; and economic threats. It is, therefore, hypocritical for African leaders to complain about unfair advantages for China when their own collective blueprint for development is explicitly committed to creating a conducive environment for unrestricted and unchecked operation of market forces.
The lack of progress in building the key institutional foundations for democratic governance further compounds the problem of establishing a mutually beneficial relationship between China and Africa. Much of the Chinese onslaught on Africa is being facilitated with the explicit consent of parasitic and unaccountable African elites. At the moment, the scramble for resources passes over the doorsteps of governing African elites where concessions are sold and royalties are collected. Chinese companies have therefore been able to thrive in African countries where the legal and regulatory frameworks (i.e. environmental and labour standards) are very weak or non-existent. I call this “recolonization by invitation”.
A strategy for engaging China: Regional cooperation as a survival imperative
Much of the current discourse on China–Africa relations has been characterized by paranoia. While China’s rise poses a number of challenges, the opportunities should outweigh the threats if correctly managed. Unfortunately, the current discourse tends to be one-sided, putting all the blame on Chinese authorities, and offering little in the way of a roadmap on how African countries can harness the new relationship to their own advantage.
Clearly, policies and programmes to deal effectively with the economic imbalances between China and Africa have to be comprehensive, collectively created and implemented, and thus have to be located within a very different paradigm. Given the size of individual African markets and the nature of their economies, a sub-regional problem-solving approach is an economic imperative – not just a political imperative, whether African countries deal with China or the rest of the western world. Selective strategic engagement with global forces (among which China is the latest force) from positions of greater collective economic and political strength within regional groupings is critical in order to improve gains and minimize disadvantages.
This brings us face to face with the need to revisit and redefine the NEPAD agenda and its constituent parts. What NEPAD should embrace is a “development integration” approach which gives priority to the integration of systems of investment, production and trade, including promoting freer trade. A regional approach will help African countries to negotiate with China from a stronger and better informed platform. This might include:
Clearly, policies and programmes to deal effectively with the economic imbalances between China and Africa have to be comprehensive, collectively created and implemented, and thus have to be located within a very different paradigm to the neo-liberal assumptions which currently dominate the NEPAD project.
Over the next year or two, the Nordic Africa Institute plans to organize a series of seminars and conferences on the evolving China–Africa relations, and produce a number of critical and timely policy briefs. A key aspect of the research strategy will be to engage a number of Africa-based African researchers to capture the complexities of China–Africa relations on the ground. We hope to provide a forum for structured dialogues between Nordic, African and Chinese researchers and policy makers.
le Pere, Garth (ed.), China in Africa: Mercantilist predator, or partner in development?. Institute for Global Dialogue and the South African Institute of International Affairs, 2006.
Manji, Firoze and Stephen Marks (eds), African Perspectives on China in Africa. Nairobi and Oxford: Fahamu, 2007.
Research and analysis on Africa
Decoding the evolving China–Africa relations
In the near future, the Nordic Africa Institute plans several activities focusing on the evolving China–Africa relations. In this article, the Institute’s new Research Director gives a description and an analysis of the rapidly developing relation between the two.
By: Fantu Cheru
The year 2005 marked the 50th anniversary of the beginning of China–Africa diplomatic relations and an important milestone in China–Africa relations. For the first time, in January 2006, China also issued the Africa Policy Paper, elaborating its policy toward Africa. In the Paper, the Chinese government put forward its proposals for cooperation with Africa in various fields in the coming years and declared is commitment to a new, strategic partnership with Africa in the long term, on the basis of five principles of peaceful coexistence (e.g. respect of African countries’ independent choice of development path, mutual benefit and reciprocity; interaction based on equality; and consultation and cooperation in global affairs). Important events such as the first summit of the China–Africa Forum (which took place in November 2006), aim to further boost China’s cooperation with Africa.The current relationship between China and Africa is very much dominated by trade, investment and economic cooperation. China’s trade with Africa has tripled since 2002, reaching approximately 40 billion USD in 2005, fuelled mainly by the rise in Chinese textile exports and China’s increasing import of African oil and minerals to diversify its import sources to feed its fast-growing economy. Early in 2005, Angola became China’s top oil supplier, passing Saudi Arabia. While securing energy resources may be important for China’s increasing engagement with Africa, China is also strengthening trade, investment and aid ties with Africa through various bilateral and multilateral forums such as the Asia-Africa Summit, China-Africa Cooperation Forum and China–Africa Business Council. This is part of a wider effort to create a paradigm of globalization that favours China.
Recolonization by invitation!
Though China’s rise poses a number of challenges, the opportunities should outweigh the threats if managed correctly. Regrettably, missing from the new China–Africa cooperation arrangement is a clear and coordinated policy strategy by African leaders on how to engage China constructively. While China knows what it wants from Africa, African countries have yet to develop a common framework on how to negotiate with China from a stronger and better-informed platform.
The New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD), which is supposed to provide a coordinated African framework for regional and sub-regional development in Africa, has offered no viable alternative on how to slow down the Chinese economic onslaught. This decided lack of an alternative strategy is partly explained by NEPAD’s failure to grasp the organizing principles of the current global order and its subsequent subscription to the dominant policies of unhindered market integration into the global economy which it regards as the only salvation for Africa. In so doing, the NEPAD programme induces states to opt for being instruments of competition, rather than being instruments of development. This decided lack of collective African response towards China poses a number of risks: security risks; environmental risks; governance risks; and economic threats. It is, therefore, hypocritical for African leaders to complain about unfair advantages for China when their own collective blueprint for development is explicitly committed to creating a conducive environment for unrestricted and unchecked operation of market forces.
The lack of progress in building the key institutional foundations for democratic governance further compounds the problem of establishing a mutually beneficial relationship between China and Africa. Much of the Chinese onslaught on Africa is being facilitated with the explicit consent of parasitic and unaccountable African elites. At the moment, the scramble for resources passes over the doorsteps of governing African elites where concessions are sold and royalties are collected. Chinese companies have therefore been able to thrive in African countries where the legal and regulatory frameworks (i.e. environmental and labour standards) are very weak or non-existent. I call this “recolonization by invitation”.
A strategy for engaging China: Regional cooperation as a survival imperative
Much of the current discourse on China–Africa relations has been characterized by paranoia. While China’s rise poses a number of challenges, the opportunities should outweigh the threats if correctly managed. Unfortunately, the current discourse tends to be one-sided, putting all the blame on Chinese authorities, and offering little in the way of a roadmap on how African countries can harness the new relationship to their own advantage.
Clearly, policies and programmes to deal effectively with the economic imbalances between China and Africa have to be comprehensive, collectively created and implemented, and thus have to be located within a very different paradigm. Given the size of individual African markets and the nature of their economies, a sub-regional problem-solving approach is an economic imperative – not just a political imperative, whether African countries deal with China or the rest of the western world. Selective strategic engagement with global forces (among which China is the latest force) from positions of greater collective economic and political strength within regional groupings is critical in order to improve gains and minimize disadvantages.
This brings us face to face with the need to revisit and redefine the NEPAD agenda and its constituent parts. What NEPAD should embrace is a “development integration” approach which gives priority to the integration of systems of investment, production and trade, including promoting freer trade. A regional approach will help African countries to negotiate with China from a stronger and better informed platform. This might include:
- Common regional framework on industrialization: directing Chinese expansion into areas of national/sub-regional interest; technology and management skills transfer, etc.
- Common framework on natural resource exploration: and social and environmental responsibilities
- Common framework on trade as opposed to bilateral EPAs that can only help fragment the continent and weaken the capacity of individual African countries to negotiate with China from a strong platform
- Common regional regulations on investment: which might include requirements for local inputs into Chinese ventures; encouraging the creation of backward and forward linkages to existing or newly stimulated local companies; labour rights and labour training.
Clearly, policies and programmes to deal effectively with the economic imbalances between China and Africa have to be comprehensive, collectively created and implemented, and thus have to be located within a very different paradigm to the neo-liberal assumptions which currently dominate the NEPAD project.
Over the next year or two, the Nordic Africa Institute plans to organize a series of seminars and conferences on the evolving China–Africa relations, and produce a number of critical and timely policy briefs. A key aspect of the research strategy will be to engage a number of Africa-based African researchers to capture the complexities of China–Africa relations on the ground. We hope to provide a forum for structured dialogues between Nordic, African and Chinese researchers and policy makers.
Suggested reading
Lee, Margaret, H. Melber, S. Naidu and I. Taylor, China in Africa. The Nordic Africa Institute, 2007, Current African Issues no. 35.le Pere, Garth (ed.), China in Africa: Mercantilist predator, or partner in development?. Institute for Global Dialogue and the South African Institute of International Affairs, 2006.
Manji, Firoze and Stephen Marks (eds), African Perspectives on China in Africa. Nairobi and Oxford: Fahamu, 2007.
the author
Fantu Cheru is Research Director at the Nordic Africa Institute.