Framing of development policies toward Africa: a comparative study of China and the European Union

ABSTRACT

The European Union (EU) has been the leading development assistance provider to African states, with a long history and the largest amount, while China’s engagement as an emerging donor is burgeoning without aligning with the rules and norms established by traditional donors. Current research on the two donors’ development policies toward Africa overwhelmingly focuses on their differences and rivalries. However, various processes of convergence may also be traced in the evolution of the development policies of China and the EU toward Africa. This article investigates whether, and if so, in which aspects, Chinese and the EU’s development policies toward Africa are converging in the 21^st century. It gauges the convergence or divergence in the two donors’ development policies in Africa from the perspectives of normative underpinnings and institutional set-ups, through a discourse analysis of their policy documents, the study of official cooperation frameworks and an analysis of institutional changes. The findings demonstrate that whereas China and the EU are converging to a significant extent with regard to their normative underpinnings, there are fewer similarities in institutional set-ups.

KEYWORDS:

• Development policy
• Africa
• China
• European Union
• institutional set-up
• normative underpinning

Introduction

The year 2000 marked a pivotal moment for both China-Africa and Europe-Africa relations. In this year, China, with 80 ministers from 45 African states, unprecedently institutionalized China-Africa relations with the First Ministerial Conference of the Forum on China – Africa Cooperation (FOCAC). The European Union (EU) established the Africa-EU Partnership at the First Africa-Europe Summit, followed by the signing of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP)-EU Partnership Agreement (also known as the Cotonou Agreement) with 79 ACP countries. After two decades, the development policies of China and the EU toward Africa have undergone significant transformations. Symbolically, in 2021, China’s State Council released the white paper of China’s International Development Cooperation in the New Era. Meanwhile, the EU and Africa concluded the post-Cotonou negotiations with a new Partnership Agreement between the EU and the Organization of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS). In light of the rapidly evolving development policies of China and the EU toward Africa, discussions on this topic appear to be constrained by their inherent distinctions.

Debates on the development policies of China and the EU are largely focused on assessing or analyzing their differences and rivalries primarily due to the distinct natures of these policies when they were first formulated. The framework of Chinese development policy can be traced back to the “Eight Principles” of China’s foreign aid formulated by Premier Zhou Enlai in 1964, emphasizing equality, cooperation and mutual benefit (Zhou and Xiong 2017). Building upon this guiding policy, Chinese actors have developed a multitude of diverse yet less institutionalized forms of development cooperation, including complete projects, concessional finance, debt relief, medical teams, development assistance and so forth. These contain both traditional and unconventional methods of delivering aid. In contrast, the EU rigidly aligns with the traditional norms and standards of development assistance established by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC). Consequently, China, along with other “emerging donors” such as Brazil, India, and South Africa, is typically regarded as a challenger and an alternative model to the traditional donors (Bräutigam 2011a; Grimm and Hackenesch 2017; Swedlund 2017; Woods 2008). The prevailing argument is that these two models are fundamentally divergent and largely irreconcilable (Foster et al. 2009; Humphrey and Michaelowa 2019; Naím 2009).

Nevertheless, in the context of the waning of multilateral problem-solving approaches and the ascendance of nationalistic populism, the primacy of national interests is becoming increasingly evident in countries’ development agenda (Roberts 2018). Development cooperation policies have been further instrumentalized to respond to domestic strategic interests including trade, security, migration, and climate change (Mawdsley et al. 2018). This trend stimulates both traditional and emerging donors to adapt their narratives, norms, standards, institutional set-ups, and policy priorities in their development cooperation policies. For instance, China established the China International Development Cooperation Agency (CIDCA) in 2018, and in 2021 released the first formal development cooperation law, the Administrative Measures for Foreign Aid, to build a more institutionalized and transparent assistance system. The EU has been expanding the instruments of its African policy from political dimensions such as good governance, to economic and social dimensions such as the launch of the Global Gateway Initiative in 2021 that focuses on the infrastructure sector. The literature begins to identify these convergences since 2015 from certain policy documents or development projects, arguing that fragmented and limited commonalities are emerging in their discourses (Mawdsley 2017; Pahle 2021), modality and sectoral focus (Kragelund 2015), aid efficiency and goals (Yuan 2019).

Corresponding with these adaptions is the blurred definition of development cooperation. Mthembu (2018) argued that the definition of development cooperation originated from the OECD DAC and was also accepted by China in its White Paper on Foreign Aid (2011), loses any real meaning when it is largely about economic transaction between different actors. He defined development cooperation as official transfers of money, goods, and services to developing countries specifically for their economic development and welfare. Mitchell (2020) further develops the idea of development cooperation from financial transfer to its overarching objectives: a country’s policies, and how they affect the current and future welfare and growth of other countries’ people and economies. On this basis, and to avoid the redundancy of distinguishing various terms such as development cooperation and development assistance, this paper employs “development policy” to refer to policies and actions that enhance the welfare of people in African countries and/or are likely to facilitate their economic, societal, and environmental development.

As a supplementary perspective to the traditional focus on the rivalries and differences between China and the EU as donors in Africa, this article aims to portray them more systematically and comprehensively by examining whether, and if so, in which aspects, Chinese and the EU’s development policies toward Africa are converging. The first goal of this research is to trace the evolution process of two donors’ development policies in the past two decades. Based on that, the research will identify the converging aspects of two donors’ development policies that have been overlooked in current research. Finally, the article concludes that a better understanding of emerging convergences is essential to transcend the stereotypical judgments of China-EU competition in Africa and to facilitate collaborations between them in the global development agenda.

Two key points about this article should be noted. Firstly, this article focuses on the framing of development policies mainly based on policy documents and political discourse analysis (rather than analysis of the finance and practice of Chinese and EU development cooperation). This article aims to set a comprehensive foundation for future research by thoroughly comparing the policy history and institutional reform of China and the EU in the past two decades and reexamining their development policies toward Africa in the broader context of the global development cooperation and contestation. While there may be potential disjuncture between policy framing and practice, it is essential in bridging the gap between actors’ policy history and their current interests. In addition, it indicates actors’ engagement with international development agenda by providing the guidance and benchmarks of various policy practices. Secondly, considering the EU as a homogeneous unity and partially neglecting the heterogeneity among member states has limitations in analyzing the EU’s development policy, but domestic decision-making process of member states is beyond the scope of this paper. Nevertheless, member states are regarded as pivotal actors in the formulation of EU development policy, a fact that will be demonstrated in the subsequent analysis of the EU’s institutional structure.

The remainder of the article is as organized as follows. Section 2 situates the comparison of Chinese and EU development policies within the broader context of development cooperation discussion and justifies the contributions of this article to the existing literature. Section 3 extracts the analytical framework employed in the following policy analysis based on Carol Lancaster’s (2007) theory. Sections 4 and 5 examine the development policies of China and the EU toward Africa from normative underpinning and institutional set-up. The final section concludes by recapping the convergences and divergences of Chinese and the EU’s development policies toward Africa and devising some paths for further research.

Literature review: an overwhelming emphasis on differences

Literature abounds surrounding the development policies of China and the OECD donors including the EU. Most of the discussions can be categorized into two trends. Comparing the differences and similarities between traditional and emerging donors is the one with a long history, while discussing the relationship between them and their policies is a rather recent topic. In comparative studies, discussions have unfolded around whether the development assistance of the emerging and traditional donors converge or diverge in terms of conception, norms (Manners 2008), conditionality (Crawford and Kacarska 2019), implementation, and finance (Dreher et al. 2018). In International Relations literature, the debate is usually centered on the mutual influence of different donors and their balance of cooperation and conflict (Swedlund 2017). Only some recent studies bring African countries’ influence and voices into discussion, although they are indispensable actors in this trilateral relationship (Stahl 2018).

Systematic comparisons of the development policies of China and the EU have always been challenging, despite the availability of numerous studies that elaborate on their features (Alden 2007; Lum et al. 2009; Naim 2000; Tull 2006). One of the principal reasons for this lies in the lack of transparency on the part of the Chinese government regarding their policymaking process and the implicit power distribution among various domestic participants. At the same time, however, a considerable amount of public information is available. Consequently, the majority of current studies on Chinese and EU development policies toward Africa tend to investigate their differences in a concrete but unbalanced manner. For instance, Deborah Bräutigam has made significant contributions to investigating China’s development assistance paradigm and its differences from traditional development assistance methods (Bräutigam 2009, 2011a, 2011b). She has compared the two assistance regimes from history, conceptional difference, assistance priority, finance composition, and institutional set-up (Bräutigam 2011a; Bräutigam and Gallagher 2014). Her research is primarily concerned with the characteristics of China’s development policies in Africa, with Western donors considered to be an overall counterpart of China. Therefore, the diversity and variability of Western donors’ African policies are not fully acknowledged.

Another popular strand of research is to discuss China-EU reciprocal influence or China-EU-Africa relations in terms of development cooperation. Most of this research portrays China as an ambitious new actor in Africa and attempts to identify aspects and elements that will potentially influence the structure of the future relationship between OECD donors and African countries (Hackenesch 2009; Luo 2009; Men and Barton 2011; Regilme and Hartmann 2018; Stahl 2018). Some scholars have also observed that the mutual influence of China and the EU in Africa is relatively limited based on empirical data. In that regard, China’s activities are found to be largely driven by its economic interests instead of the competing intention with Western donors. The financial flows from the OECD donors remain as the main income source for many African countries (Swedlund 2017). China’s involvement in Africa thus has very limited influence on European countries’ Africa policy, and even less on the EU’s collective actions (Grimm and Hackenesch 2017). Among the most frequently cited accusations of China’s engagement in Africa is the undermining of the EU’s efforts to promote democracy in African countries (Erickson 2013; Scheipers and Sicurelli 2008; Taylor 2006). However, empirical analysis suggests that African countries’ domestic factors, such as the regime stability, are much more influential in local governments’ intention and capability to engage with the EU, while China could hardly be considered as an obstacle to democracy promotion (Hackenesch 2015).

With China’s growing prominence in international development cooperation, the development policy convergence between China and OECD countries is attracting increasing scholarly attention. Some studies have analyzed the fragmentated converging policy choices of China and OECD countries in specific areas including finance (Dreher et al. 2018; Kragelund 2015), implementation (Jin 2010), national interest (Stahl 2011), conception (Janus and Lixia 2021), and discourse (Yuan 2019). Meanwhile, a few studies have charted the development policy convergence of China and specific OECD countries comprehensively, including modalities, motives, substance, conception, and values (Pahle 2021). With regard to the comparison between China and the EU, scholars posit that although there might be similarities between EU practices and Chinese approaches toward Africa, the negotiation space is quite limited because the EU’s founding identity as a normative power constrains the possibilities of long-term deep engagement with China (Alden and Barber 2015). Consequently, the divergence in normative approaches remains evident, particularly in the issue of ownership and transparency (Esteban and Olivié 2021).

As complex and dynamic as Chinese and EU development policies toward Africa are, the current literature places an unbalanced emphasis on their distinctions and rivalries, while discussions on the emerging commonalities are relatively underdeveloped. This article aims to identify and synthesize the actual convergences of Chinese and EU development policies toward Africa emerging in the past twenty-years by scrutinizing how the two actors frame their respective Africa policies through governmental documents, official cooperation frameworks, and institutional arrangements.

Analytical framework: normative underpinning and institutional set-up

In the research on development policy making, a wide range of variables have been introduced to elucidate its underlying logic, including norms, finance (Bräutigam 2011a), conditionality, policy preference, institutional structures (Zhang and Smith 2017), and modalities (Vazquez, Mao, and Yao 2016). This research draws upon the conceptual framework proposed by Carol Lancaster (2007) to analyze and compare the foreign aid policies of different donors. Lancaster identified four categories of domestic political forces that shape foreign aid: ideas, political institutions, interests, and aid organizations. In her analysis, political institution refers to a country’s electoral rules and parliamentary institutions versus presidential systems. In this research, the comparison will be conducted between China and the EU. The former is a fully-fledged nation state whereas the latter’s main trait is its supranational character without a uniform voting system. Therefore, the implications of institution in Lancaster’s framework are not comparable between China and the EU. Moreover, as aforementioned, this paper focuses on the framing of Chinese and the EU’s development policies toward Africa. A comprehensive investigation of development policies’ interests must consider both practices and financing. It is therefore beyond the scope of this paper as well. Thus, this research will only employ the two remaining factors – ideas and aid organizations – which have been commonly discussed in general foreign aid policy analysis and in the comparative studies of emerging donors and traditional donors. In order to provide a more explicit understanding of the implications of these factors in the context of analyzing the development policies of China and the EU, this research adapts them to the respective normative underpinnings and institutional set-ups.

Normative underpinning refers to the rules and values that China and the EU are aligned with in development cooperation with African countries. This paper investigates key FOCAC announcements and action plans from 2000 to 2021 signed by China and African countries, two policy documents on China’s African policy, and three policy documents on China’s foreign aid and development cooperation. On the EU side, it selects the landmark policy documents of the Africa-Europe summits and five EU policy documents regarding strategies to Africa from 2000 to 2021. This paper traces the evolving values and norms reflected in these documents and identifies the moments when commonalities emerge.

Institutional set-up is defined as a context to determine who sets the issue agenda, who has access to decision-makers, who decides policies, and who can veto decisions. This article analyses the overarching political systems of China and the EU where their foreign policymaking is embedded in and investigates what they have done to redistribute powers among governmental institutions, to facilitate functional coherence and efficiency, and to redefine the role of various domestic participants.

It should be noted that this article concentrates on governmental policy documents, action plans, and institutional arrangements of China and the EU in the past two decades to comprehensively capture how their development policies toward Africa are evolving and in which aspects convergence can be detected. Development policy is a sprawling and dynamic assemblage of ideas, actors, policy designs, and practices. Thus, the integrated trend might look vague when the analysis dominantly focuses on the details at the implementation level such as the finance allocation. In contrast, political discourse is a more synthetical source reflecting the changes of norms and values and the distribution of power and responsibility, especially when the analysis covers a twenty-year time range.

Normative underpinning: mutual benefit vs. responsible charity?

China has developed an experimental and pragmatic model of development aid influenced mainly by its own experience of development and by the requests of recipient countries, aiming to combine development cooperation and investment (Bräutigam 2009; Yifu Lin and Wang 2017). The EU, instead, is a norm-driven actor that seeks to influence other states through norm diffusion, with the key principles that comprise its normative core, including human rights, democracy and good governance (Manners 2002; Sjursen 2006). Therefore, China is often depicted as a partner pursuing mutual benefit while the EU as a provider of responsible charity. In the two-decade development policy evolution, is this simplified statement sufficient to depict the whole story?

China’s norms of development policy in the making

China’s African policies have undergone a profound transformation since 2000, coinciding with the accelerated economic and political growth of both China and Africa. In October 2000, the first ministerial conference of the Forum on China – Africa Cooperation was held in Beijing which culminated in the establishment of FOCAC, attended by over 80 ministers from China and 44 African countries. Since then, FOCAC ministerial conferences have been held every three years, alternatively in China and Africa. It was an unprecedented institutionalization and formalization of China-Africa relations triggering intensified economic interactions among the influential developing actors (Taylor 2011). FOCAC meetings have become an essential arena for China and African countries to negotiate development policy norms and principles. During the presidency of Jiang Zemin, the foundation of pragmatism was set by underlining mutual benefit and practical results. China-Africa cooperation was basically conceptualized as an equal partnership within the framework of South-South cooperation, rather than a donor-recipient relationship. The norms and principles proposed during FOCAC 2000 including the reiteration of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, no attached political strings, and the emphasis of practical results, to a large extent, were a reflection of President Jiang Zemin’s speech “Toward A New Historical Milestone of Sino-African Friendship” delivered during his visit to Ethiopia in 1996 and his address at the United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000.

FOCAC II to V took place during the presidency of Hu Jintao. The development policy of this period was concentrated on facilitating the self-dependence and sustainable development of African countries and developing mutual-beneficial partnership with them. Meanwhile, China sought for deeper engagement in the international development agenda, such as the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In 2002, the Cross-Strait relation became increasingly strained due to the dispute over Taiwan’s “One Country in Each Side” narrative. Therefore, national sovereignty and the One-China policy were emphasized in FOCAC 2003, which were further addressed by Hu Jintao in his visit to Gabon in 2004. The “win-win strategy” received considerable attention during this period corresponding with a surge in investment cooperation. Resonating with the UN development agenda, China also targeted the achievement of MDGs within its financial capacity (State Council 2006).

Since 2013, China has experienced phenomenal changes in its domestic politics and economy, which has in turn shaped its global strategies. Since Xi Jinping assumed presidency, he has introduced a series of new concepts regarding China’s diplomacy, which also inform Chinese development policies. During Xi’s visit to Africa in March 2013, he delivered a speech at the Julius Nyerere International Convention Centre in Tanzania entitled “Remaining Reliable Friends and Faithful Partners Forever”, stressing two key principles that govern the relationship with African countries: right approach to morality and interest (zhengque yili guan) and “sincerity, practical results, affinity, and good faith” (zhen shi qin cheng) (MFA 2013). These concepts were further confirmed as important national strategies of international affairs at the Central Conference on Work Relating to Foreign Affairs (MFA 2014). In 2017, the concept of building “a community of shared future for mankind” was adopted by the UN General Assembly in its two resolutions adopted in November: “No First Placement of Weapons in Outer Space” and “Further Practical Measures for the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space”. Xi’s diplomatic philosophy was acknowledged at the international level. At the FOCAC 2018, his ideas were further summarized and developed into the so-called “Five-No” approach (FOCAC 2018). In FOCAC 2021, Xi’s diplomatic philosophy was comprehensively reiterated with extra emphasis on multilateralism and green development (FOCAC 2021).

In January 2021, the Chinese State Council published a policy paper entitled “China’s International Development Cooperation in the New Era”, theorizing China’s diplomatic ideology and practice of international development cooperation since Xi Jinping’s administration. This is the first time that the Chinese government introduced its diplomatic principles and theories systematically concerning development cooperation. As the document states, China’s development cooperation is embedded in South-South cooperation, the Belt and Road Initiative, and the UN 2030 Agenda, under the guideline of “promoting a global community of shared future” and “pursuing the greater good and shared interests”. China’s principles for development cooperation were further elucidated by emphasizing equality, mutuality, innovation, and efficiency (State Council 2021).

EU’s changing normative underpinnings in the Africa-EU relationship

As a significant norm-driven actor in Africa, the EU has been formulating its values and norms in its policies through political frameworks and agreements. Since the beginning of the 21^st century, the EU made the transition from the Lomé Conventions to the Cotonou Agreement. Considerate adaptions and revisions have been made since then, culminating in the signing of the New OACPS-EU Partnership Agreement (also known as the Samoa Agreement) in 2023.

The Cotonou Agreement reaffirmed respect for human rights, democratic principles, the independent rule of law, and good governance which are the fundamental components of all EU-Africa agreements and (joint) declarations. These political elements are compulsory conditionality of development assistance toward African countries by allowing for the suspension of aid if any of these principles is violated (EU 2000). These principles largely overlapped with the aid provision within the UN system which was accepted internationally by the signing of the Millennium Declaration. Besides reflecting international norms, the EU also tailored the principles to be more consistent with its domestic interests and assistance efficiency. The emphasis on development cooperation and the attenuation of development aid turned Africa countries from aid receivers to economic partners. The aid pillar of the Cotonou Agreement included only two forms of co-operation – grant facility and investment facility – compared with Lomé IV’s 10 different instruments (Hurt 2003). The Agreement set forth five fundamental principles to govern EU-Africa development cooperation: ownership, harmonization, alignment, results, and mutual accountability (Article 2), which were consolidated in the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness later.

As a direct response to the UN MDGs Report in 2005, the EU formulated the European Consensus on Development, which was the first joint EU vision of development policy based on common European values and visions, aiming to eradicate world poverty. The Consensus identified ownership, partnership, political dialogue, participation of civil society, gender equality, and the addressing of state fragility as common principles (EC 2006). Under the framework of the Consensus, the EU proposed the Strategy for Africa to foster the achievement of the MDGs in Africa, in which the EU enriched the implications of basic principles that govern EU-Africa relations, most prominently equality, partnership, and ownership. In contrast to its previous portrayal as an altruistic donor, the EU emphasized mutual recognition, mutual respect, and the definition of mutual collective interests (EU 2005).

To further break with the donor/recipient relationship between Africa and the EU, the Joint Africa-EU Strategy (JAES) was adopted at the Africa – EU Summit in Lisbon in 2007. The JAES placed great emphasis on equality and partnership, which were subsequently applied in the negotiations between Africa and the EU concerning a range of issues, including peace and security, democratic governance, and human rights. The JAES ambitioned a strong “community of values” between African and the EU by emphasizing co-management and co-responsibility, and burden-sharing and mutual accountability (AU and EU 2007).

The adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development at the 2015 UN summit laid out a new normative vision for sustainable development mainly from two aspects: the set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the promotion of global collaborative partnership to implement these goals. The New European Consensus on Development released by the EU in 2017 was a comprehensive reflection on the UN 2030 Agenda while also integrating the EU’s domestic pursuits in the international arena. The New Consensus called for “an increasingly diversified and tailored manner” to implement development cooperation based on “partners’ needs, strategies, priorities and resources” (EU 2017). The implication of “tailoring” was broad, which meant the space to adapt policies to be more responsive to the EU’s shifting interests and priorities arising from domestic demands and the international context, to be more flexible to the mutual interests of all partners involved, and to be more coherent with the EU’s cooperation toolbox (Di Ciommo and Sayós Monràs 2018). The New Consensus showed highly inclusive attitude to the assistance and cooperation model developed by Southern actors. In April 2021, the Cotonou Agreement was succeeded by the new Partnership Agreement between the EU and the OACPS after the two-and-a-half-year negotiations. The new Agreement indicated remarkable changes of principles governing the EU-OACPS relations, highlighting shared responsibility, solidarity, reciprocity, mutual respect and accountability. Meanwhile, it integrated human rights, democracy, and governance in people-centered and rights-based societies into the goals of sustainable development. In the key priority areas such as migration and mobility, the spirits of genuine partnership, effectiveness, and transparency were specifically emphasized.

As the EU’s development policies suggest strong historical continuity by iterating the norms and conditionalities of the previous agreements in the past two decades, trends can also be traced along with the EU’s evolving external strategic pursuits and the dynamic interactions among member states concerning these pursuits. For instance, in the negotiation of the New European Consensus on Development, different member states held disparate attitudes toward the nexus between development policy and security and migration (Hackenesch, Bergmann, and Orbie 2021). Nevertheless, this research does not delve into the domestic discussions of EU member states concerning certain topics but focuses more on their “shared competence” and the corresponding collective responses.

Transformation from assistance-oriented norms to development-oriented norms

Despite the fact that the normative underpinnings of China and the EU in 2000 both reflected the UN Millennium Summit, they had diverging stances concerning the development policies toward Africa in the beginning of the 21^st century. Over the twenty-year evolution, they have adapted and enriched their norms and principles governing development relations with African countries, leading to momentous convergences from several perspectives.

Firstly, mutual benefit/interest has been rising as a consensus of China and the EU when they formulate development policies toward Africa. The concept of mutual benefit is a counter-paradigm to the OECD-DAC approach, advocating equal partnership between involved actors rather than the benevolent charity of altruistic donors to recipient countries. China has long endeavored to build a win-win partnership with Africa, portraying itself as an equal friend of developing countries who seeks common development and shares responsibilities and challenges with them. The EU has begun to add a reciprocal perspective in its African policies since 2000 by addressing mutual accountability, equality, and joint responsibility for shared prosperity. The concept of mutual interest has been further confirmed in the EU’s policy documents corresponding with a tailored manner of implementing EU-Africa cooperation.

Secondly, the legitimacy and significance of the Global South are increasingly acknowledged by China and the EU across their policy documents. China is considered as a leading power of the Southern actors, and it also contextualizes its partnership with Africa as a component of South-South cooperation. The South-South cooperation in China-Africa partnership has multiple implications. On the one hand, it refers to the mutual help among equals in the group of developing countries. On the other hand, it anticipates an improved international system that provides the South with equal participation in international affairs and equal rights to develop. The EU identified African countries’ right to develop in the JAES. Since then, South-South cooperation has been recognized as an essential part of global development cooperation. It has become universally acknowledged that different actors in the world should take common but differentiated responsibilities in global development based on their level of development and choice of priorities.

Moreover, China and the EU are further engaging in shaping the global development system. The international development assistance system was initiated by the OECD group where the EU has played an important role. Along with other developed actors, the EU has integrated its norms and values into the international development agenda. Meanwhile, it has adapted its development policies reflecting the changing normative underpinnings of the UN. Although China was a marginal power in this regard at the beginning of the 21^st century, Chinese leaders have continued to introduce Chinese diplomatic ideas in the UN negotiations, especially during Xi’s presidency. From MDGs to SDGs, China, along with other Southern countries, has gained more attention and more favorable policies. China’s theoretical contribution to the global development agenda has accelerated during Xi’s presidency, who formulated Chinese diplomatic ideology systematically and promoting it at the international level. The UN including the idea of “a community of shared future for mankind” in General Assembly resolutions is an illustration that China is growingly engaged in the evolution of the international development agenda.

Institutional set-up: pragmatism vs. institutionalism?

As a component of foreign policy, the development policies of China and the EU are embedded in their domestic political structures, inheriting distinct features from their parent political systems. China has incorporated a diverse array of domestic stakeholders into its development policymaking process as a pragmatic strategy, while the EU intends to draw a clearer line around who could be involved in decision making. However, given the complex nature of development policy, both China and the EU are facing challenges in coordinating the activities of multiple actors. This section examines the two distinct political systems in which Chinese and EU development policies are embedded. Moreover, it analyses their similar political strategies to ensure policy coherence.

China’s one party-led polity, governmental ministries, and SOEs

The policymakers of Chinese foreign policy can be categorized into three groups: agencies led by the Communist Party of China (CPC), governmental ministries and their provincial counterparts under the State Council, and the private sector. CPC agencies are the top policy designers and decision makers of Chinese domestic and diplomatic affairs, while governmental ministries such as the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) are mainly in charge of development policy implementation.

In China’s political system, the CPC is the sole ruling party with multi-party cooperation and political consultation. It convenes the National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (NCCCP) every five years, releasing one Political Report per year which outlines the top-level design of China’s foreign affairs. The Congress is also responsible for selecting the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CCCPC) as the political head of the CPC. The Politburo of CPC is the decision-making organ of the CCCPC consisting of 25 top officials. Within the Politburo, power is further centralized in Politburo Standing Committee, whose members are fully based in Beijing and in principle are eligible to influence foreign policymaking (Peoples Daily 2017).

In practice, the Politburo’s subordinate agency – the Foreign Affairs Leading Group – was the primary policymaking body of Chinese foreign policy. In 2018, the CCCPC published the plan of Deepening the Reform of the Party and State Institutions, in which the Foreign Affairs Leading Group was upgraded to the Central Foreign Affairs Commission. The revised institutional framework aims to strengthen the CPC’s preeminent role in China’s foreign policymaking and facilitate the coordination of involved domestic actors (Xinhua News 2018a). Members of the Commission are composed of both ministries under the State Council and departments of the CPC (Xinhua News 2018b). However, the fact that the Commission sits under the CCCPC instead of the State Council indicates that the CPC is dominating China’s foreign policymaking.

The State Council plays its role in China’s foreign policymaking mainly through various national ministries and their provincial counterparts. The principal ministerial participants include MOFCOM, MFA, and the Ministry of Finance (MoF). MOFCOM, and specifically its Department of Foreign Aid, is China’s core assistance agency, authorized by the State Council to plan, oversee, and manage all Chinese foreign aid projects. MFA is tasked with ensuring that the political dimension of the foreign aid plan is consistent with the broader foreign policy agenda. In terms of African policy, one of the MFA’s most significant responsibilities is to organize the triennial FOCAC. The MoF is responsible for coordinating the aid budget with the MOFCOM and allocating aid funds to relevant ministries (Zhou and Xiong 2017). Besides these three key ministries, China’s aid management bureaucracy also involves more than twenty central line ministries, commissions, and agencies. To improve the policy coordination among various participants, the MOFCOM led the MFA, the MoF and other relevant ministries and agencies to jointly establish the “foreign aid inter-ministerial liaison mechanism” in 2008 which was upgraded to an inter-ministerial coordination mechanism in 2011 (State Council 2014).

In the CCCPC’s 2018 plan of Deepening the Reform of the Party and State Institutions, an International Development Cooperation Agency (CIDCA) was established under the State Council to replace the MOFCOM as the leading agency for Chinese foreign aid, reporting directly to Yang Jiechi and Wang Yi. Yang is the former minister of Foreign Affairs and now a member of the CPC Politburo overseeing foreign affairs, while Wang is the incumbent minister of Foreign Affairs. To further clarify the mandate of the new agency, in 2021 the CIDCA, together with the MOFCOM and the MFA, issued the Administrative Measures for Foreign Aid. According to the Measures, CIDCA is more than just the successor of MOFCOM’s coordination and management responsibilities. It is entitled to propose foreign aid strategies, negotiate with recipient countries, and sign international agreements on behalf of the Chinese government. It is also authorized to facilitate the reform of foreign aid mechanism, allocate foreign aid finance, approve aid projects, supervise the implementation and evaluation, and organize international cooperation (CIDCA, MOFCOM, and MFA 2021). CIDCA’s establishment is considered as the unprecedented institutionalization of China’s international development cooperation affairs (State Council 2021). However, it should be noted that the execution of foreign aid projects remains the responsibility of ministries, commissions, agencies, and their provincial counterparts under the leadership of MOFCOM.

Besides the governmental actors, the Chinese private sector – especially large state-owned enterprises (SOEs) – is highly influential in China’s foreign policy system. SOEs cover many important sectors of Chinese economy including military industry, electricity, energy, transportation, and financial industry, acting as the vanguard of Chinese international development cooperation. Under China’s “Go Global Strategy” since 2000, SOEs have made a huge amount of overseas investment, making foreign policy essential to their global interests. SOEs’ dual identity – led by the Chinese government but competing in the free market – results in a struggle between commercial benefit and national interest. The Chinese government provides financial and political support to SOEs in the international market, seeking long-term strategic interests and positive relations with recipient countries. However, Chinese enterprises are largely apolitical and pursue project efficiency and commercial benefits (Zhang and Smith 2017). Moreover, in Chinese political system, directors of important SOEs could be rotated into or already are high-level governors or ministers (Wang 2012). Thus, even if SOEs’ main objectives are commercial, their leaders may also intend to make political contributions for better political positions.

The EU’s institutional triangle, agencies, and member states

The EU’s foreign policies are mainly initiated by its three key institutions: the European Commission (Commission), the Council of the EU (Council), and the European Parliament (EP). The Commission makes policy proposals to the Council and the EP in the form of “communications” initiatives in the areas of exclusive and shared competence and dispatches delegations to third countries to implement EU foreign policy. With representatives from different EU member states, the Council approves proposals originating from the Commission (Stahl 2018). The EP, with its co-legislative role, influences EU development policy through budgetary control and supervision (Burni, Erforth, and Keijzer 2021).

Under the overarching EU institutions, there are subordinate or independent bodies responsible for the EU’s foreign policies. With the adoption of the Lisbon Treaty, the European External Action Service (EEAS) was established in 2010 through a merger of departments of the Commission Directorate-General for External Relations (DG RELEX) and the Directorate-General for Development and Relations with ACP States (DG DEV) and the Council Secretariat (EU 2010). The EEAS is composed of Commission staff and diplomatic staff from EU member states. It was deliberately conceived not as an EU institution, but as a functionally autonomous body, under the authority of the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. It is responsible for the policy dialogue and the funding and programming of external assistance and development assistance. Its mission is to ensure the coherence among various dimensions of EU external action and to ensure a uniform approach toward third parties.

Besides the establishment of EEAS, there was also restructuring in the European Commission. DG RELEX and DG DEVE of the Commission were dissolved and a new DG for Development and Cooperation – EuropeAid (DG DEVCO) was established. The new structure of DG DEVCO consists of three political and thematic directorates (EU Development Policy, Human and Society Development and Sustainable Growth and Development), five geographic directorates (East and Southern Africa and ACP Coordination, West and Central Africa, Neighbourhood, Latin America and Caribbean, Asia, Central Asia, Middle East/Gulf and Pacific) and an administrative directorate (EC 2011). It was renamed DG International Cooperation and Development (DEVCO) in 2015 and DG International Partnerships (INTPA) in 2021.

The EEAS was considered as a unique opportunity to ensure the consistency of the Union’s external action and to gather the instruments available (Spence and Bátora 2015). The design of the EEAS is a prime example of an attempt to improve policy coherence through collective action, in this case through bureaucratic innovation. Its staff members are drawn from three different parent institutions. However, systemic incoherence, such as unclear or overlapping mandates, has only been partially addressed. There are still differences between the EEAS and the Commission concerning engagement with crisis countries. DG DEVCO has maintained its focus on development priorities and its implementation practices have generally not changed. At the same time, the EEAS has sought to adopt a more overtly political approach that has not always been in line with the more traditionally developmentalist approach of the Commission or the European Parliament (Furness and Gänzle 2017).

Member states have a strong influence on the EU’s development policy. It is often said that the EU is the world’s largest provider of foreign aid. In fact, the figure for the EU includes resources managed by the European Commission and by the Member States (Carbone 2007). For example, the collective Official Development Assistance (ODA) of the EU and its member states amounted to €74.4 billion in 2018, with the institutions providing approximately 18% and the states providing 82% (EC 2019). Despite this impressive performance, the high degree of fragmentation has undermined the effectiveness of EU assistance and prevented it from influencing the course of international development. Coordinating member states’ foreign policies and ensuring policy coherence in Africa has long been a struggle for the EU. The EU has proposed several policy initiatives to improve its collective action, including the European Consensus (2005), Division of Labour (2007), the Operational Framework on Aid Effectiveness (2009), and Joint Programming (2015).

However, the implementation of these various reform initiatives has been constrained, and there persists a significant disparity between the policy directives in Brussels and their actual implementation in African countries (Carbone 2013; Delputte and Orbie 2014). Member states have neither sufficient incentives to act collectively due to varying internalization of development and aid effectiveness norms (e.g. varying preferences related to budget support), nor are negotiable in their economic and other policy objectives and interests in Africa (Grimm, Gänzle, and Makhan 2012). Stronger EU economic interests increase challenges for the strengthening of collective action across policy fields.

Towards converging solutions to similar problems

Although China’s political system is more centralized than the EU’s, it is challenging for both actors to coordinate activities and interests among various actors. The development policy requires the allocation of political, economic, and social resources at the domestic level to support external actions. In institutional reform, China and the EU tend to choose similar strategies to improve policy efficiency and coherence: establishing a new overarching institution with members from parent institutions that have necessary resources to complete a development project. In the case of China, this is the CIDCA, while in the EU it is the EEAS. Both institutions are responsible for development strategy planning and development project coordination.

After the establishment of new institutions, the consequential dilemma for China and the EU is similar. The newly founded institutions are not competent enough to balance the interests of various actors. In particular, the economic interests vary greatly with the rapid industrialization of African countries and their trade and investment potentials. The crux of future institutional reform for China and the EU might still be interest coordination among actors across various policy fields.

Conclusion

This article synthetically reviews the evolution of Chinese and the EU’s development policies toward Africa in the 21^st century to investigate whether and to what extent convergences exist in their normative underpinnings and institutional set-ups. Despite the pervasive focus on the contrasting approaches of these two actors, there is evidence of emerging commonalities in their African policies, although these are not evenly distributed across different aspects.

The normative underpinnings of Chinese and the EU’s development policies exhibit a considerable degree of convergence, indicating a balance between self-interests and the international development agenda. Following the remarkable achievement of domestic economic development, China has been seeking to portray itself as a responsible actor in the international arena. To assume a more prominent role in the settings of international development norms, China incorporates international development norms such as the UN SDGs into its African policy and advertises its own principles at the UN level. To reconcile its domestic interests and emulate emerging donors’ approaches, the EU expands its norms in the pragmatic dimension including mutual benefit/interest and common but differentiated responsibilities.

The commonalities in institutional set-ups are relatively minor, which mainly result from functional pressures to increase coherence and effectiveness. To reconcile the discrepancies between various domestic actors and overcome the incoherence of development policy, both China and the EU choose to establish a new overarching institution with members from parent institutions that have the necessary resources to complete a development project. Both China’s CIDCA and the EU’s EEAS are responsible for development strategy planning and development project coordination.

Scrutiny of the development policies of China and the EU toward Africa in the past two decades indicates that there is a certain degree of convergence. However, the governmental documents, public statements, and institutional arrangements that this research analyses are only one part of the complex reality. Difficulties remain in understanding actors’ decision making process for various reasons, including the potential inconsistency between political narrative and ultimate implementation, the obstacles to tracing actors’ negotiation details, and the non-transparency of some development cooperation data. Comparative studies of China’s and the EU’s development policies could extend beyond an analysis of policy design to encompass an examination of the actual allocation of finance and development practices on the ground.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the China Scholarship Council under Grant 201806050009.