China Must Give Its Africa Policy Ethical Content

EARLY last year China published its Africa-Policy with the hope to develop a new strategic partnership with the continent characterised (as is usual in Chinese jargon) by equality, sincerity, friendship mutual trust and common development.

One would posit that it is not a very complicated exercise, even for a foreign policy neophyte to understand the reasons why Africa has moved higher up the foreign policy priorities of the “empire in the middle”. Whilst the love affair between Africa and China is not a new one, since the former outstanding Chinese premier Zhu Rongji “managed marketisation” in the 1990s it has taken a new dimension with the rapid economic ascent of China and its thirst for natural resources to meet rising domestic demand.For the biggest part, African leaders are seduced by China’s rhetoric of a win-win ideology in its Africa policy and the dearth of any political-conditionalities such as good governance, democracy etc.As a consequence of China’s changing context, its presence and interest in Africa generates two types of difficulties: First, at a socio-economic level, over 130000 Chinese live in Africa of which roughly over 5 000 are in Namibia and the number continues to grow.Yet, it is doubtful if the presence of this new wave of Chinese immigration contributes positively to the economic development of the continent.Most of these Chinese don’t bring with them needed skills which could fill gaps in strategic sectors of our economies.In fact, much of the African press is laced with examples of an invasion of small traders, who in some instances don’t hesitate to imitate local products, be it djellabas or many other authentic products of African artisans.We are already witnessing Chinese traders selling local products and cheap counterfeit goods to locals in Dakar or Oshakati, inviting in the process the anger of the local traders, who are displaced and destroyed by the new ones.Perhaps this underlines the fate of Africans as eternal consumers, permanent underdogs, even in their own yard.And the case of my Cameroonian friends in Chateau Rouge (a district of Paris) is instructive for they buy their manioc and mutumba (Cameroonian delicacies) from Indian or Chinese traders.Progressively, the aid and loan modalities of China are taking forms which include prospecting, transportation, construction and the list goes on.One of the largest Chinese investments in Africa has been the construction of a 1 300 km pipeline in Sudan that would allow the transportation of petrol through the port of Marsa-al-Bashair on the fringes of the Red Sea.One would expect such big projects to provide jobs to locals, but the reality is that we solve some of China’s problems in our own backyard by providing jobs to Chinese labourers.I think Africa is possibly the only continent where Chinese construction companies bid for government tenders, get them and ultimately import manual Chinese labour.Policymakers and opinion leaders would duck this under the cover of economic globalisation or the weight of old-style liberation friendships would be enough to turn a blind eye in some cases to the reality of the labour conditions of the few locals employed.The second related difficulty of these relations is of a political nature.Sino-African relations are essentially devoid of any political content and this absence not only complicates efforts at deepening and strengthening democracy and human rights, but also some of the international initiatives at conflict resolution, notably the genocide question in Darfur.China’s economic self-interest in this matter, encapsulated in its red-cahas complicated any substantive UN resolution on this issue through its looming threat of a veto in the Security Council.This self-interest in China’s Africa policy empties it of moral content since it would not raise an iota of concern with regard to the plight of the people of Darfur, considering it as is usual in China’s foreign policy jargon, an internal Sudanese question.To conclude, instead of Sino-African relations constructing a buffer against crude economic liberalism as it were, they have embedded themselves in economic globalisation without any meaningful modern political discourse and worse, a moral consensus.Certainly, this is possibly not a matter of concern for governments in power or China itself, but it is for the people of these countries who are inevitably victims of resource-rich undemocratic regimes whose wealth does not necessarily filter to the bottom.Alfredo Tjiurimo Hengari is a PhD fellow at the University of Paris Panthéon-Sorbonne in France.Whilst the love affair between Africa and China is not a new one, since the former outstanding Chinese premier Zhu Rongji “managed marketisation” in the 1990s it has taken a new dimension with the rapid economic ascent of China and its thirst for natural resources to meet rising domestic demand.For the biggest part, African leaders are seduced by China’s rhetoric of a win-win ideology in its Africa policy and the dearth of any political-conditionalities such as good governance, democracy etc. As a consequence of China’s changing context, its presence and interest in Africa generates two types of difficulties: First, at a socio-economic level, over 130000 Chinese live in Africa of which roughly over 5 000 are in Namibia and the number continues to grow.Yet, it is doubtful if the presence of this new wave of Chinese immigration contributes positively to the economic development of the continent.Most of these Chinese don’t bring with them needed skills which could fill gaps in strategic sectors of our economies.In fact, much of the African press is laced with examples of an invasion of small traders, who in some instances don’t hesitate to imitate local products, be it djellabas or many other authentic products of African artisans.We are already witnessing Chinese traders selling local products and cheap counterfeit goods to locals in Dakar or Oshakati, inviting in the process the anger of the local traders, who are displaced and destroyed by the new ones.Perhaps this underlines the fate of Africans as eternal consumers, permanent underdogs, even in their own yard.And the case of my Cameroonian friends in Chateau Rouge (a district of Paris) is instructive for they buy their manioc and mutumba (Cameroonian delicacies) from Indian or Chinese traders.Progressively, the aid and loan modalities of China are taking forms which include prospecting, transportation, construction and the list goes on.One of the largest Chinese investments in Africa has been the construction of a 1 300 km pipeline in Sudan that would allow the transportation of petrol through the port of Marsa-al-Bashair on the fringes of the Red Sea.One would expect such big projects to provide jobs to locals, but the reality is that we solve some of China’s problems in our own backyard by providing jobs to Chinese labourers.I think Africa is possibly the only continent where Chinese construction companies bid for government tenders, get them and ultimately import manual Chinese labour.Policymakers and opinion leaders would duck this under the cover of economic globalisation or the weight of old-style liberation friendships would be enough to turn a blind eye in some cases to the reality of the labour conditions of the few locals employed. The second related difficulty of these relations is of a political nature.Sino-African relations are essentially devoid of any political content and this absence not only complicates efforts at deepening and strengthening democracy and human rights, but also some of the international initiatives at conflict resolution, notably the genocide question in Darfur.China’s economic self-interest in this matter, encapsulated in its red-cahas complicated any substantive UN resolution on this issue through its looming threat of a veto in the Security Council.This self-interest in China’s Africa policy empties it of moral content since it would not raise an iota of concern with regard to the plight of the people of Darfur, considering it as is usual in China’s foreign policy jargon, an
internal Sudanese question.To conclude, instead of Sino-African relations constructing a buffer against crude economic liberalism as it were, they have embedded themselves in economic globalisation without any meaningful modern political discourse and worse, a moral consensus.Certainly, this is possibly not a matter of concern for governments in power or China itself, but it is for the people of these countries who are inevitably victims of resource-rich undemocratic regimes whose wealth does not necessarily filter to the bottom.Alfredo Tjiurimo Hengari is a PhD fellow at the University of Paris Panthéon-Sorbonne in France.