China's (Re)-Emerging Relations with Africa: Forging a New Consensus?

Abstract

This article explores China's current engagements in Africa. It does not intend to reproduce the historical literature already evident in the discourse but rather seeks to place the current relationship in context and provide a more balanced view of where the points of convergence and divergence lie which may impinge positively or negatively on these relations. The articles seeks to treat emerging issues such as the possible impact of the economic crisis on China's relations with Africa and the extent to which China's foreign policy has adapted to African political realities. Moreover it assesses the scope to which such developments may advance or arrest the continent's fundamental project of pursuing a sustainable developmental agenda as African governments push for greater integration into the global economy. Finally the article will explore whether China, is indeed, disrupting Africa's relations with its Northern partners and what side effects this may have for the continent's emerging relations with other new actors from the South. In short this article asks one simple question: How should China's contemporary relations with Africa be interpreted as new international and domestic impulses begin to emerge across the continent?

Notes

There is some indication that Beijing is not a monolithic driver of policy and that various tensions amongst policy-making bodies are overlooked by some scholars in their analyses (see Bates and Reilly, 2007).

The term refers to a report published by The Economist as its cover story assessing the future of the continent in the Post-cold war period. ‘Hopeless Continent’, The Economist, 13–19 May 2000.

Peoples Republic of China (2006), ‘China's Africa Policy’, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 12 January. Available online at: http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/zxxx/t230615.htm (accessed 1 June 2009).

Confidential and anonymous interview, Accra, June 2007.

Senegal re-established ties with the PRC in October 2005, Chad in August 2006 and Malawi in December 2007.

These are Burkina Faso, São Tomé e Principe, Swaziland and the Gambia.

For a comprehensive description and analysis of contemporary China–Sudan relations, and China's commercial involvement in Sudan's oil industry, please refer to Srinavasan (2008).

See Zheng (2005).

This term was coined by the Washington Post, 14 December 2006.

At the time of writing the envoy is Liu Guijin, former Chinese Ambassador to South Africa and an acknowledged Chinese expert on African affairs.

Interview, Libreville, 22 June 2007.

The Standard Bank-ICBC deal highlights that corporations from the Global South are actually seeking more mergers and acquisitions with counterparts from the South in terms of advancing business strategies in Africa, which in many ways represents a challenge to the monopoly by corporations from the North investing in the continent.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sanusha Naidu

*Research Director, China in Africa Programme, FAHAMU, Stellenbosch, Cape Town, South Africa. Email: [email protected]

Lucy Corkin

**PhD candidate, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Email: [email protected]

Hayley Herman

***Research Manager, Centre for Chinese Studies, Stellenbosch University, South Africa. Email: [email protected]