Presidential candidate of Young Progressive Party (YPP) in the 2019 general election, Prof. Kingsley Moghalu in this piece examines the relationship between China and Africa post-COVID-19…
The Coronavirus crisis has created a welcome opportunity for us to reassess the relationship between China and Africa on several levels – trade, supply chains, excessive borrowing and predatory lending, racism towards Africans.
Our eyes are now clear, but some years ago, in the haze of Chinese courtship of Africa, I argued against the conventional wisdom: Africa was not “rising”(what is the continent’s industrial productivity or a clearly noticeable worldview to drive a rise?)but only “emerging”.
Some of us argued that African countries are approaching their relationship with China on the wrong foot, that it provided an opportunity to learn some important lessons, but we were focused on the wrong things. We thought that seemingly cheap loans, trade (with trade deficits in favor of China), diplomatic summits in Beijing with African leaders lined up like turkeys on display, and fine words of solidarity, meant that love was in the air. Today, many countries are re-assessing their relationships with China, a world power no one can ignore.
China’s economy has been dented by Covid. Its $200 billion in trade with Africa is threatened, and more important, African countries can’t pay their $200 billion in debt to China and are asking for debt forgiveness. China is NOT in the business of debt forgiveness.
China is unlikely to be able to finance its Silk Road infrastructure initiatives in African countries in the immediate future,and the economies of African countries will be depressed after Covid. All in all, China’s economic adventure in Africa is now poised to be unprofitable.
How did we get here? My purpose in this thread, which I promised to do, is to set out the back story on Africa and China, and perhaps we can use it as a guide to the future. The motto of my alma mata
@LSEnews is “rerum cognoscere causes” (to know the causes of things). Vital.
China should be a lesson for Africa at three fundamental levels. First, how communist China became a member of @UN only in 1971 and achieved global reckoning in 40 years. Second, how China achieved internal economic transformation, then globalized it to achieve dominance.
Third, China is a great example, of relevance to Nigeria in particular, of how a large population can be harnessed to achieve a demographic economic dividend of gargantuan proportions. But first, it had to bring its population under control before this could happen.
Not least important, China offers a classic importance and potency of a coherent worldview backed by masterful strategy, which is what my book Emerging Africa recommended to African leaders and peoples.
The China-Africa relationship offered an opportunity to both parties to create an axis of influence that, unlike Africa’s history with the west as nothing more than exploited client states, Africa’s strategic relationship was also served by this relationship.
This opportunity was blown because African countries could not identify correctly, let alone press, their own l interests. They lacked a worldview. Corruption also caused a looking the other way. And it all became China’s game. Africa simply became the “Sinosphere”
China hasn’t just discovered Africa. In the 1950s it supported Egypt’s seizure of the Suez Canal, and backed the decolonization of Africa at the Bandung Africa-Asia Conference in 1955. China established diplomatic relations with Ghana on the latter’s independence in 1957.
Second, the China-Africa relationship in the 60/79s was rooted in three things:China’s competition with the Soviet Union for global socialist influence, a shared history of humiliation that led China to support anti-colonial struggles, and its effort to isolate Taiwan.
Third, with China’s capitalist economic transformation started in 1978 by Deng Xiaoping, it’s influence in Africa is now driven more by the need for raw materials and energy to support its economy than was the case in the socialist past when it was more about “solidarity”.
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Fourth, Africans were inspired by China’s success. The Asian global giant seemed to demonstrate that poverty was not destiny. Fifth, the rising relationship was part of China’s strategic positioning in its increasing competition with Western powers.
Africa was sucked in by China’s emphasis on business with “no questions asked” ( meaning, “we don’t care about your human rights record”). And also by the emphasis on “infrastructure” which seemed very “practical” compared to the western focus on democracy/ institutions.
But our leaders did not ask themselves a simple question: is who is giving you what, between China and the West, the basis of the economic transformation of your country? Instead, like the abused spouse, African leaders now felt “romanced” and appreciated.
The responsibility to respect and enforce human rights in African countries is primarily that of our countries, not China or the US. The US and the West care about it because it is part of their own worldview, which is built partly on human rights and individual freedom.
The Chinese care less about human rights in Africa because they have other priorities (our raw materials) and because their own worldview is built on something else: order and stability in their society as an end, and so the collective matters more than the individual.
The China-Africa relationship must be shifted away from a focus on extractive industries. Trade relations should be repositioned. Africa’s development salvation doesn’t lie abroad; it can only come from within. China won’t and can’t “develop Africa”, and not can the West.
The sun may rise in the east but even China knows it hasn’t set in the west. Africa should use its relationship with China to seek strategic changes in that with the west. China feels it’s future and image as a global power is tied to Africa. This gives Africa bargaining power.
Africa’s relationship with China is not advancing our strategic interest. That interest is to become productive and economies with a manufacturing industrial base. The China-Africa “special relationship” is preventing this interest from being realized.
Trade is the reason and the solution. We must challenge the “dumping” of cheaply produced, sub-standard Chinese goods on African countries at the World Trade Organization @wto Dispute Settlement mechanism.
It’s not forex import bans like @cenbank has stipulated or banning whatever else, while we sign deals to trade in Chinese renminbi, that will solve our problem. It is using trade policy to challenge and alter the structural disadvantage we suffer in the world trading economy.
Our trade relationships with China perpetuate this structural disadvantage. We must pursue our rights @wto including making a case for unique tariff regimes that will allow our local manufacturers to thrive, with their competition coming from within the African Continental Let us conclude: China’s vastly expanded foray into Africa over the past two decades is part of a worldview of global expansion and economic dominance. The question for Africa is: what is the continent’s worldview approach to China?
Let us conclude: China’s vastly expanded foray into Africa over the past two decades is part of a worldview of global expansion and economic dominance. The question for Africa is: what is the continent’s worldview approach to China?
For all of Africa’s strategic importance to China, Africa still remains a small part of China’s total world trade, roughly in the region of 3%. Outside of Asia, the rising superpower is also heavily invested in Latin America – portfolio diversification!
There are some vital lessons we can learn from China. One, economic development and transformation flows first from effective internal political organization. The Chinese “state-capitalist” economy is directed strategically by a COMPETENT, cohesive Chinese Communist Party govt.
Second, the Chinese state provides a supportive and conducive environment for Chinese companies to thrive internally and externally in world trade through competent economic policy and incentives. There is an obvious overall, cohesive strategy at play.
Third, the importance of philosophical worldviews as a foundation for true development, and the consistency of that worldview and its application to the organization of the country’s economic system. A shared worldview is how the Chinese authorities mobilize their citizens.
The Chinese worldview is based largely but not completely on their Confucian religion. That worldview is this: Time is endless, and is one continuum (this is why they think in 50-100 year horizons, not Ad Hoc like “some people”!); order/stability is the end in itself, not a means to an end; and, therefore, the society is more important than the individual. This worldview is very different from the western one, which is based on individual freedom and independent institutions, and rational thinking and innovation. But it has also worked well.
Worldviews are subjective. Racism and the transatlantic slave trade were based on a worldview of racial superiority. But if consistently applied, it can create prosperity and world orders.They can also be dislodged by an opposing worldview: slavery/colonialism ended.
Thus unity of purpose in the Chinese society has been essential to the rise of China. The lesson for Nigeria and other African societies, which are burdened by ethnic and religious disparities (just like the US, the preeminent world power) is that they must overcome their internal divisions if they’reto rise as nations.This requires the emergence of leaders with a worldview of transformation, a vision behind which their polities and citizens can be reorganized, before economic transformation can happen.Look at the discipline that drives China.
Solange Chatelard wrote: “ If there’s one thing African states can learn from China, it is how to imagine their future, explore new possibilities, and engage with the rest of the world while retaining control over the conditions of those engagements”