Chinese Involvement on the African Continent: Beyond Natural Resource Exportation
There are many extant critiques that China overlooks environmental degradation repercussions through its business involvement with African countries. Appeasing resource-rich yet corrupt and brutal governments is an unfortunate facet of development (conditional aid, as is more the style of Western donors, has been known to make beneficiaries balk due to attached stipulations). While it may be tempting to place China in the same category as Western neocolonialists, viewing Sino-African relationships solely through the framework of business transactions and access to resources strips away greater historical context and several differences that set China apart from true neocolonialists. Understanding the intricacies of these relations– from both African and Chinese perspectives– may help provide a deeper understanding of China’s interest in African countries and the future trajectory of their relationships.
Sino-African relationships are not monolithic; they are mutually constructed and dynamic relationships. Most attempts to discern motivations behind Chinese investments and loans to the continent focus on what China gets out of these relationships. African interests and decisions in these situations should be given equal weight as we examine whether they are reaping the appropriate benefits required for economic development.
During the Cold War era, Chinese investment did not match the ambition and scope of American or Soviet efforts. But mere decades later, China worked to catch up on developing formerly lackluster relations with African countries by redoubling its foreign funding efforts. By 2007, China moved from being the eighth largest bilateral donor to becoming the second largest investor (with the US being the first). Rapidly developing in its own right, China picked up the slack by investing in many countries at an unprecedented level of commitment. Eswatini (Swaziland) is the only African country never to have formal relations with China, having received no economic assistance and recognizing the Republic of China (Taiwan) instead of the PRC as the sole representative of China.
There are several key factors that set China apart from its traditional Western investor counterparts: strategy, focus, and manifestation. China offers an alternative model of development based on trade rather than foreign aid and subsidized loans. This strategy holds a greater capacity to equalize international relations, since China regards African countries not simply as destitute, developing countries, but viable business partners. This is palpably different from that of the charitable, hand-out style that other foreign investors and donors have normalized. China has also chosen to focus on infrastructure, a sector that Western assistance traditionally overlooks. Such projects provide opportunities for significant African development while leaving room for the Chinese to benefit by way of grants to mining rights. Another major difference is the phenomenon of exporting Chinese migrant labor. Whether this stems from concerns about expertise, a lack of trust in African partners on the ground, or some combination of these two factors, the proliferation of blue-collar Chinese workers across Africa sets China apart from the entanglements of other foreign powers on the continent.
There is no question that China’s increasingly high demand for natural resources comes from its strain to accommodate its rapidly expanding middle-class. China had to find viable external venues to export and digest its excess industrial and constructional exports to circumvent domestic, large-scale deflationary pressure, and the African continent was a perfect and willing venue for such partnerships. Solidifying Sino-African relations boosted African public revenues. As part of the post-Cold War era, a number of newly independent African governments found themselves struggling to develop from a lack of external investment and attention, even though they boasted a wealth of natural resources.
One political studies thesis produced at the University of Tartu in Estonia examined correlations between oil availability and corruption, crime rates, and level of democracy. While a correlation between oil and gas reserves and Chinese investments was found in five countries, data analysis revealed that natural resources are not the sole impetus for Chinese investment. For example, Zambia has no such reserves but was still classified to the medium category in investments, while Angola boasted only modest reserves but was the recipient of some of the biggest investments, more so that South Africa, Ghana, and Nigeria, which all have far more natural resources. Assumptions that China only focuses on funding countries with natural resources neglect how Chinese business interests are in fact very geographically diverse, with heavy commitments in telecommunication, transport, energy, and even regional educational opportunities. It is important to recognize how Chinese involvement has boosted African economies. African exports to China increased by 110% from 2006 to 2008 and 32 countries exhibited a net gain in earnings. And while African perception of the Chinese presence varies wildly depending on socio-economic status and geography, African leaders overall view China with less suspicion than the West, seeing trade and investments as pulling the continent onto the path of globalization.
China has also been criticized by international observers and foreign policy correspondents for carrying on with business as usual despite the repressive or brutal nature regimes that they support, or at least turn a blind eye to, when supporting or spearheading mega infrastructure or resource extraction projects. Officials at the Zimbabwe Embassy in Beijing attempted to downplay how the capital city Harare made mining rights available to Chinese firms by buying back concessions once held by western or South African companies (however, it should be noted that Zimbabwe’s tactic of offering minerals as a swap for other necessities such as oil is not unique to its relationship with China, having done the same with Iran and Russia). Similarly, third-party observers construed China’s financing of the Ayago North and Ayago South dams in Uganda as a way to secure access to oil. Examining how China prioritizes resource extraction availability in the context of investment decisions and how this criteria fit into the African demand for investments and export markets may shed light on both China’s deeper motivations.
Some studies on the external environmental factors influencing China-Kenya trade have found that Chinese foreign direct investment has an affinity toward countries with not only abundant natural resources, but also corrupt institutional environments. Chinese investments de facto feed into the institutional failings of resource-rich beneficiaries. This leads to the question of where the lines should be when it comes to China’s responsibilities in choosing countries to invest or work with. While it would be unfair and impossible for China to bear all the burdens and implications of investing in unstable regimes, China must acknowledge that their business ventures have repercussions on the ground.
Only time can truly show what exactly what dimensions exist in terms of evolving Sino-African relationships– these complicated relationships are neither purely inherently exploitative and neocolonialist or wholly charitable. While development inevitably carries a certain degree of exploitation — both internally as African countries organize and build their own internal structures and externally when foreign powers contribute to the process — there is certainly potential for deeper and more balanced relationships as China and African nations better carve out the boundaries of beneficial partnerships.
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