China and Africa. Daniel Large

Introduction

      Two large maps of Africa and China, under the caption ‘Friendship Peace Cooperation Development’, stood out at an official exhibition off Tiananmen Square in November 2006. The Africa map was filled with images of smiling children, a baobab tree, a bare-chested man drumming, and hints of the ruins of an ancient civilization. That of China was filled with images of the Great Wall, Forbidden City and other civilizational achievements. At the time, the Chinese government was hosting the third Forum on China–Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) and Beijing had been carefully prepared to welcome leaders and delegations from some 48 African countries. Billboards proclaiming ‘win–win cooperation’ and other official slogans signalled the Chinese government’s portrayal of China as a different, progressive partner of the continent. This FOCAC put China–Africa on the map of global attention, and catalysed interest in China’s suddenly visible engagement with the continent. Cliché images aside, the emptiness of this map of the African continent, however, suggested ignorant paternalism at a time when relations were rapidly developing.

Much has changed since then, as has become evident in the ‘New Era’ of China’s relations with Africa. China’s New Era is the era of Xi Jinping. Since taking power as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in November 2012, and becoming state president in March 2013, Xi Jinping has presided over a transformation in China’s domestic and global affairs. In 2018, at another FOCAC in Beijing, he welcomed ‘African countries aboard the express train of China’s development’ and declared: ‘No one could hold back the Chinese people or the African people as we march towards rejuvenation.’ China committed financing in Africa of $60bn and a marked expansion of its investment in human capital and training. Xi Jinping reportedly met the leaders of 53 African countries for an event described by China’s Foreign Minister as setting ‘a new record in FOCAC history, and indeed, in all the diplomatic activities China ever hosted’.¹ Welcoming Gambia, Sao Tome and Principe, and Burkina Faso, which had previously supported Taiwan, the summit confirmed China’s near total victory over Taiwan in the continent. Africa, as the President of Burkina Faso, Roch Marc Christian Kaboré said, had ‘chosen China’. This FOCAC showed how established China’s relations with Africa had become in Xi Jinping’s New Era.

      This book aims to bring the China–Africa story up to date.² It argues that politics defines China’s New Era Africa relations most, thus challenging conventional wisdom and popular associations about China’s relations with Africa, which hold that ‘Chinese leaders see Africa mainly as a source of natural resources.’³ Politics is a fluid, highly contested concept, which attracts simple definitions but defies easy characterization. Using a more expansive understanding, this book situates the politics of relations in terms of Chinese and African histories, institutional frameworks and politics, before exploring select key themes: China and Africa in global politics, evolving economic ties, the China model and African politics, Chinese–African relations, and China’s expanding security engagement in the continent.

China–Africa relations have never been just about politics or economics but shifting combinations of both across different historical periods. Politics always mattered; it drove post-colonial revolutionary ties and never disappeared. Since around 1996, however, economics has been the main association between China and Africa, following the tour by China’s then President Jiang Zemin of six African states that marked an inflection point ‘from geopolitics to economics as the driver of ties’.⁴ In 2000, President Jiang spoke of the ‘all round friendship’ between China and Africa. Nonetheless, economics was the foundation of a ‘long-term

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