Executive Summary
China´s engagement with Africa is growing fast and deepening, and its soft power is expanding. This move undoubtedly has significant geopolitical implications for competitors in the region, such as the US and the EU. Indeed, China has displaced the US since 2009 as Africa’s major trading partner, and the EU´s trade volume has been declining steadily.
It should be noted that at the heart of China´s engagement with Africa lies a long-term political goal, which goes well beyond the dominant narrative of economic partnership.
By now it has become evident that China is a great power by all measures and a real competitor to the established great powers in Africa and elsewhere. However, it is not helpful to engage in the old debate about whether China is a status quo power or a revisionist state, as any rising power, by default, challenges the existing distribution of power and/or political order. Clearly, as things stand now, China has engaged in neither the quest for territorial expansion nor a civilizing mission, apart from building a modern-day economic empire, as witnessed by the case study of the Sino-Ethiopian love affair.
China is mostly filling the gaps left by the great powers in Africa. Among other things, the strength of the Sino-African relationship can be attributed to China’s ‘no strings attached’ policy, massive infrastructure loans, lack of colonial legacy, disentanglement of interests and values, its discourse and framing of ‘the poor help the poor,’ and its pragmatic foreign policy.
At a strategic level, China has employed aggressive cultural diplomacy, mainly through its Confucius Institutes, multifaceted economic engagements, and effectively-utilized vaccine diplomacy, and it has garnered significant political solidarity from African states at the regional and international levels.
Foreign aid has always been used as a pillar of foreign policy by great powers in order to maintain a sphere of influence and project soft power. In this regard, China´s recent foreign aid policy should be understood within this broader context, and the EU´s countermeasures, if any, will reflect this reality.
Even though a trilateral forum for Africa, China, and the EU is commendable, a strategy founded on the unilateral socialization of China, especially when it comes to values and human rights norms, is flawed and will be counterproductive.
Direct confrontation with China appears to be costly because of the complex nature of the current world order, with multiple regional actors, the relative receptiveness of China´s actions in Africa, declining US hegemony, and the lack of a comprehensive EU policy towards Africa.
Introduction
The (peaceful) rise of China with its own ‘civilization package’ and assertive foreign policy has significantly challenged the end of history -- if there ever was one. One of the regions where China’s rise has been felt particularly strong is Africa, a continent in which the stakes are high and the geopolitical impacts are consequential. Although the relationship between Africa and China is not a new phenomenon -- with the launching of the Forum for China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in 2006 -- Sino-African engagement has taken on a new form and nature. This has come at a time when the decline of Western engagement with the continent has become increasingly apparent.1 China’s ‘going global’ strategy cannot be ignored, given that its actions to safeguard its interests are increasingly affecting the interests of the international community, including European countries. It is true that “China is not the only show in the town.”2 But with great power politics on the rise again in Africa, the primary concern for major actors such as the EU should be the geopolitical impacts of the Sino-African love affair. This paper examines why China has -- compared to other major powers – become so dominant in the continent.
Picture: GovernmentZA
Moges Teshome joined the International Institute for Peace as a project assistant in April 2022. Mr. Teshome holds a Bachelor of Law from Addis Ababa University, LLM in International Criminal Justice and Human Rights from the University of Dundee and Master of Advanced International Studies from Vienna School of International Studies. Mr. Teshome’s research interests include conflict management and regional security, global human rights and advocacy, international criminal justice, the normative study of international relations, non-proliferation and peaceful uses of nuclear technology and sustainable development. Before joining the IIP, Mr. Teshome interned at Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-proliferation as well as served as a lecturer of law and associate dean at Haramaya University College of Law. At Haramaya University, he was responsible for teaching various legal courses, undertaking policy-oriented research and community services, notably coordination of free legal aid for the needy and marginalised section of the society.