In practical politics, they say, any publicity is good publicity. Although the attention the world has accorded the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the past few years has come with mixed blessings, it has nonetheless helped raise the international profile of a society that was – up until the last decade of the 20th Century – one of the most secretive and self-enclosed.
The dominant western media is almost unanimous in its agreement that China is not so good a country by conventional international standards.Its Communist regime has a history of low regard for basic human rights, while its continued meteoric rise as an economic and industrial power has left in its wake a trail of environmental Armageddons that continue to threaten the very existence of humanity if left unchecked (The Economist, 2008), and not in the least worsened by its immense demographic resources. Its hunger for rubber, timber, coal, energy, nearly all major known minerals, and now more increasingly food, has sent the dragon of Asia deeper into previously unthinkable territories.So it is with Australia’s iron ore, Angola’s oil and the poverty-laden diamond and gold mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Among traditional allies as among erstwhile antagonists, it is a strange cocktail of economic and political bedmates. China is a terrifying country with an enormous potential to be even more terrible in the future because of its support – covert or otherwise – of recalcitrant and illegitimate regimes that would not hesitate to uproot or even decimate through genocide their own citizens in the pursuit of political self-perpetuation as is the unfolding tragedies in Khartoum, Harare and N’Djamena.
As a rising power, and a unique one as such owing to its unprecedented experimentation combining Communist political ethos with neo-liberal economic logic, the question of carving an official foreign policy compliant with its strange mix became critical in the early 1990s. Even now, the need to project itself to the marginalized developing nations as a dependable ally and a partner different from the west is a strategic imperative for China.Nonetheless, the greatest dilemma remains how to reconcile the desire to cultivate an image of an internationally responsible player with a domestic policy that refuses to allow significant popular participation in governance. The PRC’s dilemma on this front has not been easened either by the strange cocktail of partners whose credentials in the international arena range from the democratic to the not-so-democratic. From military juntas in Myanmar and the Sudan to its dalliances with 1 the horror that is Robert Mugabe.In all these happenings, the international community has remained positively vigilant.
It is in this context of many contradictions that we look at the place of Africa in a re-emergent Sino-Africa relationship. Another World is Possible: the Search for Alternatives The experiences of Africa with the structural adjustment programs, the Washington ‘Consensus,’ and the debilitating failure of the ‘shock therapies’ that promised short term suffering for long term economic prosperity (UNRISD 1 , 1995) are not lost to Africans.The reversal of post-independence gains have left many countries in the global South groping for alternative pathways to transformation, but not without contending with the sabotage of IMF, World Bank and the WTO policies. These failures propel the continuing search for workable and democratic economic and political structures that can serve humanity with justice, fairness and transparency.It is in this search for positive social transformation that Africans have turned to China for viable economic models.
China’s continued thrust into the realms of formidable global power brokers has raised hope and admiration as well as uncertainty and trepidation. Consequently, this painstaking but systematic rise has drawn its fair share of a vibrant debate among established geopolitical experts and post-Berlin Wall students of international affairs.These jitters and apprehensions may be attributed to the fact that many academies, staffed by Cold Warriors, rolled out graduates long resigned to the realization that the emergent post-1989 unipolar world was here to stay, and therefore whose training failed to factor in the possibility of an alternative global power structure, and not in the least the possibility that such a power would rise elsewhere away from the historical dominance of transatlantic paradigms in international affairs.The changing nature of official policy towards China by for instance the US is indicative of the acceptance of this reality. By 2000 Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Lewis Libby et al. were concocting Project for the New American Century and its militaristic thrust aimed at preventing the rise of any power to match the US (Foster, 2003).
This notion informed president George Bush’s policy line when he took office in 2001 and would form the basis for The National Security Strategy of the United States of 2002, largely seen as prompted by China’sunexpected rise and aimed – among others – to make US “… forces … strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States. ” However, this combative principle of containment had to be abandoned with the realization that China’s rise was as inevitable just as the political and economic decline of the US was imminent.It is this realization that led to the adoption of the present policy of constructive engagement aimed at repainting Beijing as part of global solutions, not necessarily the problem. Sino-African Relations in Historical Context The nature of relationship between China and the people of Africa can be conveniently divided into three historical moments.Although most literature locate primary contacts between Africa and China to the 15th C when Admiral Zheng He visited East Africa during his legendary global circumnavigation, the first moment of contact was much earlier, about up to three thousand years ago as evidenced by the archeological excavations in Timbuktu in West Africa’s Sahel region, the Great Zimbabwe ruins, and the Mozambique channel in southern Africa from whose ruins archeologists have dug out fine Chinese porcelain among other evidence of commercial and cultural exchanges (Melville & Owen, 2005).The second moment is most widely acknowledged as the premiere phase of China-Africa engagements.
Set in motion by the birthing of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) under Chairman Mao after the revolution of 1949, it was set against a backdrop of the struggle for independence in Africa and the formative years of the Cold War. In this moment in time the relationship was basically ideology driven, with China seen as an ally against colonialism, neo-imperialism and other forms of western domination.This era was characterized by infrastructural developments projects, military assistance and other technical exchanges. The Tazara (Tanzania-Zambia) railway stood as the most symbolic of these relationships.
At the peak of the Cold War, this railway would prove particularly instrumental as it enabled freer movement of vital goods and people, hence breaking dependence on routes through apartheid Rhodesia and other Southern African countries. This moment was followed by a lull in the 1980s that saw a relaxation in the vibrancy of Sino-African relations.Now we know that this period also coincided with the PRC’s ‘in-ward’ looking policies that saw the birthing of state-led 3 economic reforms that have managed to pull millions out of gross poverty in as short a period as a decade. Now in the third moment lies the most delicate balancing act for Africa and China.
Although writing on hegemony and power politics in a different context, it is possible to employ Antonio Gramsci’s (23 January 1891 – 27 April 1937) notion of the old is dying yet the new cannot be born to define the emerging Sino-African relations in the 21st Century.But at the same time it can be argued that the present moment of SinoAfrican relations bears a delicate combination of both the old and the new, a ‘crisis’ whose solution must remain the forefront challenge for both African and Chinese leadership. The old herein refers to western legacy of political manipulation, rabid exploitation of natural resources, and forced reliance on primary commodity exports underpinned by imbalanced trade regimes at the global market.The new that must be born can be attributed to the continuing search for a workable, fulfilling, respectful and mutually-beneficial relationship divorced from the enduring negative experiences of Africans in the present econo-political order.
It is in this regard that it can be argued that the third moment is set to become the preeminent phase of Sino-African relations. Largely consolidated by the early 1990s, this period has seen a redefinition of Africa-hina relations from an ideological ally to a trading partner, with the Chinese medic and technocrat rapidly switching places with the Chinese entrepreneur and corporation (Obiora, 2007).This third moment, it can be argued, was formally launched in the 2006 China-Africa Summit which saw 48 heads of state and dignitaries attend what was the largest international meeting ever to be held in Beijing. When, by this time Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao set a target that China-Africa trade volume should increase from the previous year’s $39. 7 billion to $100 billion by 2010, it seemed rather ambitious.
Yet by the first quarter of 2008, the figure stood at $55 billion (Kariuki, 2008).At this historic summit, China announced it would provide $3 billion in preferential loans to Africa, cancel debt in the form of interest-free government loans that matured at the end of 2005 owed by HIPC 2 and the least developed countries with diplomatic links with Beijing. It also committed to increase from 190 – 440 the number of items exported to China with zero-tariff for countries with diplomatic relations, establish 3-5 free economic cooperation zones in Africa.
