Pete Guest, Contributor
“I travelled to African countries 30 years ago, and I can see the difference,” says Zhong Jianhua, the special representative of the Chinese government in Africa. “Thirty years ago, you went to an African market and you’d see what they produce is what they’d brought from the village, brought from the fields or brought from the sea. Nothing was industrialized or produced in factories at all.”
Zhong is China’s top diplomat in Africa, responsible for everything from its mediation efforts in conflicts in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, through to its expanding commercial relationships with emerging powerhouses, such as Nigeria. Africa, he says, should not look to copy China’s development, but instead find their own routes out of poverty.
Today, market stalls across sub-Saharan Africa are laden with manufactured goods. Most of it, though, is stamped “Made in China”. Sino-African trade and investment is now worth around $200 billion. In the most part, unrefined commodities leave Africa for China, manufactured goods come back. This structure mirrors that of the old colonial powers’ relationship with the continent, creating a dependence on raw exports, preventing industrialization and cementing a reliance on expensive imports.
China expects to redress this balance, Zhong says. Investments in export processing zones, vehicle assembly plants and textile factories make up the next wave of Chinese commercial expansion. Higher wages, an ageing population and a desire in Beijing to reorient the export-driven economy to one based on domestic consumption are driving a search for new emerging markets by China’s corporates.
“Whether you have a government policy or not, they don’t listen to you,” Zhong admits. “They go after profit, not government policy. Of course we encourage it.
Just as China benefitted from offshoring following its economic liberalization under Deng Xiaoping, Africa is profiting from the development of the Chinese economy.
“The other Asian economies, like Singapore, Japan, they shifted some industry into China. Now it’s our opportunity to shift some industry into Africa and to create this huge market. More than one billion people,” Zhong says.
“When they want to have a better house, that means the materials for building becomes a huge market. When they want to buy a car, that means that automobiles are a huge market. People here want to improve their lives, for us, it’s a huge demand.
The Chinese premier Li Keqiang toured the continent in May, following the president, Xi Xinping, who came last year. Both promised billions in fresh lending and investment as Beijing keeps up more than a decade of concerted diplomatic and commercial courtship of sub-Saharan Africa.
Although, as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton made several visible attempts to reignite American interest in Africa, the Obama administration has been accused of continuing the Bush government’s focus on the humanitarian and security aspects of its relationship with the continent. Support for the French intervention in Mali and the Ugandan army’s hunt for the Lords Resistance Army, as well as the overt backing of the African Union’s military push in Somalia, has left America looking like the policeman to China’s banker.
Commercial programs are underway. The multi-billion dollar “Power Africa” initiative, which uses US development finance to backstop investments by American corporates into electrification, is a direct challenge to the US corporate sector to compete in Africa.
Japan has been ramping up its interests in the continent. Prime MinisterShinzo Abe made his first official visit to Africa in 2014, having announced $32 billion in public and private sector lending and investment the previous year. India’s diplomatic approach has often been incoherent and lacking in an obvious strategy, but the country’s businesses and Diaspora are expanding across multiple countries and sectors. Brazil, like China, has peddled a narrative of shared development as it invests in the mining and agriculture sectors.
After the proxy battles that were fought in Africa during the Cold War, many African scholars and politicians are understandably wary of the idea of competition between global powers in their backyard. However, the rapid development of the Chinese economy and its state-led, market-oriented model has given policymakers a compelling alternative to the free market ideologies of the Washington Consensus.
Zhong says that the Chinese economy has been built on a desire to improve the livelihood of the country’s people—a practical approach to achieving results, rather than an ideology.
“We are Chinese,” he says. “This means we follow Deng Xiaoping’s doctrine. His philosophy is that it doesn’t matter if the cat is white or black, as long as it catches a mouse. When we began our reform, we didn’t even know what the model was. We created the things that were good for the Chinese.”
Attempts to copy the Chinese model in Africa are “doomed to fail”, he says. “We know that each country’s model has to be unique, with its own traditions and cultures and ways of living. It can only solve its only problems its own way. If you only try to copy the Chinese model, you will not be successful.”
Zhong is also quick to head off talk that China sees its interests in Africa as competitive with other powers—even though its representatives have, in the recent past, talked tough over moves by Japan to expand its influence in the continent.
When Abe’s visited Ethiopia, Xie Xiaoyan, the Chinese ambassador to the African Union, called the Japanese prime minister “the biggest troublemaker in Asia”, and said that Japan’s activities in Africa to be part of a strategy to contain China’s expansion.
Zhong is more conciliatory. “There is, whether you’re willing or not, some kind of competition. But you must bear in mind: This is Africa. You are Chinese, he is American. You do not come here to compete in somebody else’s house. Who are you? You are the guest,” he says.
“If you are welcomed by the host, good luck. If you are not welcomed by the host, bad luck. But there is no room for two guests to fight each other in somebody else’s house.”
Source: forbes.com
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