What Does China Want in Africa?

             China’s intentions for its interventions in Africa have raised many questions.  Some see their aims as nefarious.  Others believe they want to help other developing countries. China has a long track record in Africa, dating back decades.  They are not new players on the continent.

            For example, the Tanzania-Zambia Railway Authority, more popularly known as the Tan-Zam Railway,  running between Dar es Salaam and Kapiri-Mposhi on the Zambian border, was built in the early 1970s with Chinese aid. It provided the main outlet to the sea for Zambia’s copper exports prior to the political changes in South Africa in the 1990s that opened southern transport routes.

            More recently, Chinese loans have been used to finance coal projects in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Morocco, Malawi, Botswana, and Zambia. According to the China-Africa Research Initiative, since 2000, Chinese state-owned banks have supplied $3.7 billion in financing for coal projects in Africa, totaling 6,800 megawatts.  Prior to the creation by the administration of George W. Bush in the early 2000s, the U.S. government had virtually abandoned infrastructure projects in Africa.

                Conversely, China’s Africa infrastructure projects have grown over the years.  They include the China State Construction work building Djibouti’s Doraleh port and construction on Cameroon’s Kribi deep water port and China Harbour Company’s expansion of Ivory Coast’s Abidjan port and Madagascar’s Tamatave deep water port.

            Chinese involvement on the continent has created mixed feelings globally, but negative views of China are more often found outside African than among Africans themselves.  According to the most recent polling by Afrobarometer, an international research institution, public attitudes surveys in 18 African countries between 2019 and 2020 revealed that perceptions of China’s political and economic influence across the continent are net positive. The surveys found, for example, that 59 percent of individuals interviewed believe China’s economic and political influence is “somewhat or very positive.”

            Undoubtedly, China has self-interested motives in its involvement in Africa.  Since the 1950s, China has been deeply involved in the Non-Aligned Movement, which is a forum of 120 developing country governments considered not formally aligned with or against any major power bloc – either the pro-Soviet communist countries belonging to the Warsaw Pact, and the pro-American capitalist countries belonging to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. After the United Nations, it is the largest grouping of governments globally.  By using its  membership in the Non-Aligned Movement, China obviously hoped to leverage the African group of nations because it is the largest regional element in the World Trade Organizations and other groupings.  Portraying themselves as akin to their African counterparts despite their increasing size and economic prominence, China had identified a channel to push its agenda.

            One part of this agenda has been to promote its stand that there is only one China and that other nations must withdraw their recognition of Taiwan.  Up until the latter part of the 1960s, Taiwan, rather than China, had greater acceptance and diplomatic recognition in Africa. But since 1971, when the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution replacing Taiwan with China as the permanent member of the Security Council, Taiwan has struggled for a role, a place and relevance within the community of nations. This is especially the case on the African continent where, by mid-2018, only one African country (Eswatini) recognized Taiwan as a sovereign nation.

                A major Chinese initiative was announced in the fall of 2013 that impacted Africa as well as many other nations. Shortly after assuming power, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced his plan to build a land-based “Silk Road Economic Belt,” extending from China to Central and South Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, and a sea-based “21st Century Maritime Silk Road,” connecting China to Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe via major sea lanes.

The so-called Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is now truly global: 39 countries in sub-Saharan Africa have joined the initiative, as well as 34 in Europe and Central Asia, 25 in East Asia and the Pacific, 18 in Latin America and the Caribbean, 17 in the Middle East and North Africa, and six in South Asia. These 139 members of BRI, including China, account for 40 percent of global GDP. Sixty-three percent of the world’s population lives within the borders of BRI countries.  Clearly, the Africa contingent is a major part of the BRI project.

China has been criticized for buying up and degrading farmland and natural resources in many countries in Africa, Southeast Asia, central Europe and Latin America, as well as exporting entire food productions through non-market means. The accusation is that China is compromising food security and driving poverty in host countries.  However, the World Bank evaluated data from registries in 14 countries and found that some 56 million hectares of large-scale farmland deals were announced but never implemented between 2008 and 2009, and two-thirds of these were in sub-Saharan Africa. The data also show that farming had started in only about 21 percent of the agreements reached due to a range of risks related to host institutions, poor infrastructure, technology and price changes. 

Land Matrix, the group that initially published the much-quoted figure of 83.2 million hectares of Chinese large-scale land acquisitions globally, revised its estimate dramatically downward in June 2013 to 32.6 million hectares.  So, there is land-grabbing in Africa, but apparently, China is not the major culprit.

Unlike some other countries accumulating land in Africa, many of the Chinese-operated farms in various African countries reportedly do not produce for large-scale export to China but rather for the local market.  In fact, the Chinese government for the past year has been on an unprecedented, massive food-buying binge.  The move to buy up such enormous quantities of food has not only caused food prices to spike globally but raised real worries that China may be preparing for some dark event, such as a possible war with Taiwan.

Nevertheless, China has certainly demonstrated a self-interest in monopolizing African natural resources, especially rare earth elements – 17 minerals that have dozens of uses, but are vitally essential to the production of renewable energy technology.  China has dominated the mining and production of rare earths for several years now, and Chinese academics suggest that China's actions on rare earths are guided by a combination of high domestic demand, support of environmental concerns and the desire to abide by international trade regulations, as well as other aims, rather than resource nationalism.  To be sure, China's share of global mining production has slipped – from a high of 97.7 percent in 2010 to 62.9 percent in 2019, which represents the lowest point since 1995. China's share of global rare earth reserves also has fallen from 50 percent to 36.7 percent over the same period.  So perhaps the Chinese academics have a point when they explain China’s interest in increasing its share of the control of these elements vital to modern society.

Getting back to American and other Western negative views of China, the United States has continued to warn African governments about using Chinese technology due to concern about Chinese surveillance built into their technology.  China and the African Union (AU) have dismissed a report that Beijing had bugged the regional bloc’s headquarters, which it built and paid for in the Ethiopian capital.  The French newspaper Le Monde quoted anonymous AU sources saying that data from computers in the Chinese-built building had been transferred nightly to Chinese servers for five years.

After the hack was discovered a year ago, the building’s IT was examined, according to Le Monde. During a sweep for bugs after the discovery, microphones also were found hidden in desks and the walls, the newspaper reported.  China dismissed reports it bugged the AU headquarters as "preposterous", but the Le Monde article said the discovery resulted in all the AU servers being switched.

China is undoubtedly self-interested, and it has long seen its relationships with African governments and their officials as a key to achieving their goals.  It is not so much that they appear to aim specifically to harm African countries; they primarily act to advance their own interests first, last and always.  Therefore, it is incumbent on African governments to assert their own country’s interests in any deal with China.  Unfortunately, too many African officials have succumbed to Chinese inducements to enter into deals tilted toward Chinese interests so long as they personally benefit. 

If that continues, we have to blame these African officials.  As the saying goes: you can’t cheat an honest person.