China: ‘All-weather friend’ or ‘new colonialist’?

‘All-weather friend’ or ‘new colonialist’? The ongoing narrative wars over China’s African involvement between (mostly) Western Sinophobes and those they deride as ‘panda-huggers’ have become as predictable as the opening moves in a game of chess.

No Chinese account is complete without an initial reference to the pioneering voyages of Admiral Cheng Ho in the 15th Century, progressing through Chinese support for African liberation movements to today’s ‘win-win’ partnerships, contrasted with the colonial past and neo-colonial present of the West.

No Western response is complete without the contrast between China’s ideological Maoist past and its pragmatic present. This is seen as characterised by naked economic self-interest driven by a lust for Africa’s raw materials, comparable to the 19th Century ‘scramble for Africa’. The comparison of course invites the flattering conclusion that these are ‘bad old days’ which unlike China, the enlightened and philanthropic West has now left behind it.

Ian Taylor, Professor in the School of International Relations at St Andrews University in Scotland, is also an honorary Professor at Stellenbosch and at China’s Renmin University, as well as at the Institute of African Studies at Zhejiang Normal University. With a foot in three continents he is well placed to challenge both predictable orthodoxies. In this brief and thorough account of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) and its four conferences to date he does just that, as well as bringing out and questioning the assumptions they share.

China’s early African involvement centred on Egypt which, as Taylor points out, was the only ‘non-western’ African participant at the 1955 Bandung conference. Ethiopia, Liberia and Libya were all at the time pro-Western, and Sudan and Ghana, (then ‘Gold Coast’) though both present, were not yet independent.

China’s early period is rightly associated with support for liberation movements. In the early 1960s China established diplomatic relations with 14 newly-independent African countries, and China was actually a member – and even vice-chair – of the OAU’s liberation committee. This led to close personal links with a number of key nationalist leaders.

As well as the famous ‘friendship railway’ China replaced Britain as Tanzania’s source of credits and military assistance, especially after Nyerere broke diplomatic relations with Britain over its failure to deal with Rhodesia’s UDI. Tanzania was also one of the rare instances where Chinese aid exceeded that of the Soviet Union. And as Tanzania was a base for many of the liberation movements in southern Africa, this put China in a favourable position for the future.

But all was not plain sailing. Zhou Enlai’s 1963 tour of Africa ruffled some feathers among the elites of newly-independent states when he declared that revolutionary prospects throughout Africa were ‘excellent’. And for many China’s image took a knock as a result of Beijing’s reaction to the Sino-Soviet split. As Taylor points out, ‘If a movement indicated a strong attachment to Moscow China generally switched its aid to a rival organisation and this took on features of a competition for influence’.

This attitude proved unpopular with many as the OAU’s Liberation Committee generally sided with Moscow-backed organisations such as the ANC (African National Congress), FRELIMO (Liberation Front of Mozambique), MPLA (People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola), SWAPO (South West Africa People's Organization) and ZAPU (Zimbabwe African People's Union). This isolation was accentuated by the Cultural Revolution, when Chinese ambassadors were recalled from all African countries except Egypt, and Tunisia, Egypt and post-Nkrumah Ghana severed diplomatic relations with China. These strains and stresses are of course glossed over in today’s official Beijing accounts, though they have not necessarily been forgotten by those involved.

China’s current claim to be an ‘all-weather friend’ to Africa owes more to the immediate post-Cultural Revolution period when China was seeking political support from African states for its bid to take the Chinese seat at the UN. Between 1970 and 1976 China’s aid to Africa exceeded that of the Soviets for the first time.

But as Taylor points out, there was no direct line between then and now. In the 1980s the immediate result of China’s economic reforms was not the present, allegedly resource-driven orientation to Africa but an emphasis on ‘stability’ and order’. Despite the continuing rhetoric of championing the global ‘south’ against the global ‘north’, in practice, Taylor argues, relations with the superpowers were given priority and the policies of African governments were criticised from a ‘neoliberal’ position.

A May 1985 editorial in Peoples Daily went so far as to blame ‘errors in policymaking’ by African governments for poor economic performance. In 1986 African students in China demonstrated against Beijing’s policy with banners saying ‘remember the UN 1n 1971’.

What changed, Taylor argues, was not the chase for raw materials as Western observers usually assume, but rather China’s diplomatic isolation after Tiananmen Square in 1989 and the need for greater diplomatic support wherever it could be found. This lead to a revival of a rhetoric of opposition to ‘neocolonialism’ and the existing global economic order, even as China’s export-led growth was made possible by the global liberalisation of the 1990s, which also saw the ‘opening up’ of Africa which made its resources accessible to China.

In Taylor’s words; ‘Ironically, as China’s leadership more and more assimilates itself into the extant global economy and plays by fundamentally Western capitalist conventions, it has sought after consolidated political links with diverse African countries as a useful defensive instrument to be set out against those very same pressures if and when they threaten key domestic interests and agendas. This irony reflects the wider strain in China’s foreign policy, of both engagement in and suspicion of the ongoing global order’.

But there is little joy here for China-bashers either. Western criticisms of China’s African role are seen in the same sceptical light. China is used by the West as a scapegoat for relations with authoritarian governments of resource-rich nations which Taylor argues, have more to do with ‘the nature of the state in much of Africa’ than with China or the West, whose dealings with such states are in reality little different. He might have added that these states themselves are largely the creation of the Western colonial period.

Western concepts of ‘human rights’ are indeed a way of universalising specifically Western capitalist values, with ‘individual freedom’ seen as indissolubly linked with ‘economic freedom’. But while China has a point in stressing that human rights are economic and material as well as political, Taylor also points out that some sorts of human rights violations are anti-developmental in ways that threaten economic and material development.

As Taylor concludes: ‘Sino-African relations are processes not of colonization but of globalization and the reintegration of China into the global economy - a project that has enjoyed the hitherto enthusiastic support of Western capitalism’.

The same calm disregard for the widely-accepted stereotypes is carried through into the author’s detailed account of the proceedings of each of the four FOCACs to date. In contrast to the attitudes of the early 1980s, FOCAC I places the blame for Africa’s problems on broad economic and social factors, thus exonerating the ruling elites. The ‘five points’ establish a framework for future relations with the crucial inclusion of a follow-up mechanism, and opening the way for the key involvement of the provinces as well as Beijing.

FOCAC II, preceded by a first-ever China-Africa business conference, strengthens the business emphasis as well. With the Addis Ababa Action Plan, it marks a commitment to pan-African initiatives such as NEPAD where these have been taken by the African states themselves.

FOCAC III as the first summit-level meeting marks a new stage with the issue of the White Paper and the initiation of regular meetings of Foreign Ministers. Inevitably FOCAC IV marked something of a shift to a lower key, but also a shift of focus with a greater emphasis on civil society, culture and the environment – reflecting perhaps the concerns and criticisms of African civil society.

Like many before him Taylor concludes that ‘China has an African policy; Africa does not have a China policy’. Despite Chinese support for AU initiatives Africa continues to negotiate with China on a country-by-country basis, which has ‘inevitably resulted in inexpert African responses to China, be they at the regional or continental level’ especially given the wide variations in competence between African states.

The Chinese ‘no questions asked’ approach and support for free trade combined with a strong state is acceptable not only to many African regimes but also to Western businessmen – whatever the public protestations of their governments. But how far is there an exportable ‘Chinese model’?

China’s own economic achievements depended on a ‘capable state’ – itself the product of a revolution. But as Taylor points out ‘granted even the relative declining reach of the Chinese state as liberalization progresses, the type of comparative internal strength and concomitant stability that Beijing is able to enact is beyond the ambition of most - if not all - African leaders’.

Do these factors and the inevitable asymmetry of power that they produce, not create the danger that FOCAC will simply reproduce the inherited dependency? As the author rightly concludes ‘It is the host that establishes the rules on foreign investment and it is the host country’s responsibility to take advantage of China’s increased interest in Africa. Only Africans can develop their continent and its natural resources, not China or any other state’.

There are real deliverables of the FOCAC process which Taylor himself has documented. And given the follow-up mechanism most of them have actually been delivered, unlike so many promises from elsewhere. So Taylor is perhaps unnecessarily provocative in asking how far China-Africa relations would suffer if FOCAC simply disappeared, and in his conclusion that ‘Symbolism and spin then is at the root of the whole FOCAC enterprise’.

But he is surely right to point out that if FOCAC reinforces the unreal picture of China as monolithic it could work to China’s disadvantage if the Chinese government is blamed for every misdeed by a Chinese company’. We can be sure that this point is already being made by China’s Africa experts and policy advisers. And given Taylor’s interesting combination of posts and contacts, the same is doubtless true of the many other perceptive points in this well-informed and independent-minded account.

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* Stephen Marks is a freelance writer and researcher, specialising in issues on emerging powers, development and human rights.
* Ian Taylor’s ‘The Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC)’ is published by Routledge (ISBN 978-0-415-54860-1).
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.