Teaching a New Dog Old Tricks: China’s Growing Interventionism in Africa

By Eli Scott

“We will not take the old path of Western colonists, and we absolutely will not sacrifice Africa’s ecological and long-term interests.”

The above statement comes from what Chinese Minister Wang Yi said on his tour of five countries in Africa earlier this January. Wang was trying to quell native African fears of a new scramble for resources on their continent between China and the United States. The Sino-African share of global Chinese trade has skyrocketed from 1.9 percent in 2002 to 7.5 percent in 2013. In fact, growing Chinese influence in Africa forced the Obama Administration to conduct the Africa Leader’s Summit earlier in 2014 in order to signify that the United States could offer an alternative to the Chinese model of foreign investment. China’s ability to supply investment with “no strings attached” provides it with a comparative advantage, but China’s policy of non-intervention and indiscriminate provision of aid may be challenged with the recent case of South Sudanese civil unrest.

Despite recent attempts at repositioning its interests in Africa through Power Africa, a program to increase access to electricity in sub-Saharan Africa, and other initiatives, the United States is unable to compete with China in Africa due to United States’ emphasis on normative legalism as opposed to the usage of favoritism and bribery in awarding contracts. The United States is also hindered by its engrained status as the ideological leader of the monolithic West. Many developing countries look to China as a non-Western alternative to the interventionist development strategies of the United States, and China’s comparative advantage in African trade against the U.S. actualizes this claim. China surpassed the United States as Africa’s largest trading partner in 2009 and amassed $166 billion worth of trade with the African continent in 2013, more than 2.5 times the amount of trade as the United States does with Africa.

While the Chinese presence in Africa has centered on economic development and resource extraction, the United States maintains more of a military presence and conducts counterterrorism activities in economically underdeveloped regions of strategic partners such as Kenya and Nigeria. The U.S. also funds development aid policies focusing on promoting democracy and instilling practices of good governance. Because of the complex government-corporate structure of many state-owned Chinese corporations, the Chinese government is more capable of providing financial backing to Chinese firms than the United States is able to do for its private firms. Accustomed to financing high-risk ventures in developing China, the Chinese government is also more willing than the U.S. to invest in the volatile markets common throughout Africa, particularly in oil-rich countries such as Angola. The Chinese also hold a familiarity advantage over the United States because Chinese businesses, much like they do in China, are able to gain contracts through the usage of clientelism and bribes, a behavior prohibited for American firms by the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

Chinese investment in economic development and infrastructure creation seems to be mutually beneficial for China and African nations; however, this strategy is not without its critics. China’s strategy is characterized by non-intervention and nonexistent political ambition such that it deals with democratic regimes the same manner in which it negotiates with authoritarian governments. This policy has fared well for resource-thirsty China, but it has a mixed record of success for native Africans.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

In essence, state-owned Chinese corporations provide financing and white-collar expertise for infrastructure projects in exchange for the extraction of natural resources. But such indiscriminate policy devoid of any political considerations further entrenches nondemocratic regimes, legitimizes government and business corruption, and crowds out local workers and firms. Such negative consequences have elicited criticism from native Africans, despite the continued support of Chinese investment from African political leaders and governments who feel that Chinese involvement legitimizes their regimes. While resentment of Chinese investment is growing with local Africans, most Africans still maintain a neutral or positive opinion of Chinese firms.

Native Africans have decried the more than one million Chinese settlers and numerous businesses for disregarding local customs as well as ignoring local labor laws and failing to comply with trade unions and environmental regulations. China’s “no strings attached” policy, thus, leads it to invest in countries with deplorable human rights records and rampant corruption and legitimizes the rule of leaders such as Jose Eduardo dos Santos in Angola, Omar al-Bashir in Sudan, and Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. It is resentment of this policy, along with civil war in South Sudan that is ultimately testing the sustainability of China’s foreign policy in Africa.

In the past two months, China’s non-interventionism has been turned upside down as its oil assets have been threatened by the outbreak of war in South Sudan. A small contingent of Chinese peacekeepers has arrived in South Sudan, and a total of 700 are slated to be in place before April. This provision of forces will be a marked transition to responding to internal political developments in countries of economic interest to the Chinese. The Chinese are looking to protect the oil interests of the China National Petroleum Corporation, which holds a 40 percent stake in the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company, the largest oil company in South Sudan. To protect these investments, China has taken a hands-on diplomatic approach, from advocating for peace talks to negotiating an expansion of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan. China’s involvement in South Sudan is a telltale sign of the decreasing utility of its non-intervention policy and of a possible shift to a policy more in line with that of the United States.

Despite a recent attempt at the expansion of its soft power in Africa, China has become entangled in military intervention in domestic affairs in South Sudan. Moreover, native Africans, although still maintaining a net positive image of China, have become increasingly disillusioned with its indiscriminate investment without regard for human rights advocacy or the reinforcement of good governance like the United States does. Although China will maintain a comparative investment advantage to the United States for the foreseeable future due to stronger and more flexible government support, the rising power must alter its non-intervention strategy and seek to better aid positive changes in internal governance and promote local stability. In order to follow through on its rhetorical claims of win-win investments projects in Africa, China should adopt a more activist and interventionist strategy by ensuring internal political stability in the countries in which it invests so that its investments serve to further Chinese wealth as well as to facilitate good governance in Africa.