African flags are flown at Tiananmen Square. Leaders of African countries were welcomed by dancers, honor guards and flag-waving children. They are escorted in a huge motorcade bearing banners celebrating “A Shared Future for China and Africa” and large, elaborate flower arrangements.
China has pulled out all the stops for a gathering of leaders and top officials from more than 50 African countries in Beijing this week, welcoming them with pomp and fanfare. Chinese leader Xi Jinping has cast his country as a defender of the developing world, who can force the West to listen to the voices of poorer nations.
“Modernization is the inalienable right of all countries,” he told the gathering on Thursday. “But the Western approach to it has caused great suffering to developing countries.”
After three consecutive days of back-to-back bilateral talks with leaders of nearly two dozen countries, from impoverished Chad to continental economic powerhouse Nigeria, Mr. Xi hosted a luncheon for visiting officials at the start of the program on Wednesday. .
The three-day forum is meant to showcase Beijing’s global influence despite rising tensions with the West. Mr. Xi’s courtship with African countries is part of a larger geopolitical competition with the United States that has intensified in recent years with Russia’s war in Ukraine and China’s aggressive posture toward Taiwan.
Eric Olander, editor in chief of the China-Global South Project website, said China is “trying to take advantage of the space left by the US and Europe, which are increasingly disengaged with Africa.” “China really sees an opportunity to increase its engagement, and not necessarily just with money.”
And Beijing’s diplomatic push is more urgent this year as China, facing slowing economic growth at home and accusations of dumping excess production abroad, looks for new buyers for its goods.
“As China’s relations with the US and Europe deteriorate, African markets, as well as other parts of the global south, will become more important for Chinese goods,” said Yunnan Chen, a research fellow at the Overseas Development Institute in London. Studied cooperation between China and Africa. That’s especially true for new technologies like solar panels or electric vehicles, she added.
Still, some African leaders have indicated they would prefer a more balanced relationship, with China buying more manufactured goods from the region, for example. “We want to narrow the trade deficit and address our trade structure,” South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, told Mr. Xi on Monday during talks on the sidelines of the forum. Official Transcript.
The incident is also an opportunity for China to defend its engagement in Africa. It has come under criticism for offering financing without environmental, financial or human rights conditions leading to projects tainted by corruption, pollution or labor abuse. Even China, one of the world’s biggest lenders, is reluctant to offer debt relief to most countries. crippling load which carries some.
The meeting, held once every three years, has historically been a platform for China to pledge large, multibillion-dollar packages of financial and technical assistance to Africa. Kenyan President William Ruto, for instance, is hoping to get funding to finish A railway line From the Rift Valley to the town of Malaba on Kenya’s western border with Uganda. It is also seeking more investment to build roads and dams and set up industrial parks for pharmaceutical companies.
China has adjusted its approach to new aid to the region. Instead of big railway and other infrastructure projects, Beijing is now emphasizing less expensive commitments, such as digital skills training — a useful contribution to a continent with a young population — and what it calls “small and beautiful” projects. On Thursday, Mr Xi said China would train 60,000 people, cooperate with African media and military and work with Africa on the “peaceful use of nuclear technology”.
“We are in a period of recovery, where both African governments and Chinese banks are more sensitive to risks,” said Deborah Brautigam, director of the China Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.
Chinese lenders pledged $4.61 billion to African countries and banks last year, the highest amount since 2016. Data from Boston University. But that’s still a fraction of the nearly $30 billion a year they pledged in 2016 at the peak of Chinese lending to Africa.
The shift is partially executed Changes within ChinaWhere the property sector is in crisis and local governments are overextended, and by high interest rates post-pandemic, which increases the cost of debt for African countries. Angola and Zambia now owe Chinese state banks billions of dollars.
“The world’s financial situation does not allow large-scale loans to developing countries,” said Tang Xiaoyang, an international relations scholar at Tsinghua University in Beijing, referring to high interest rates. “The cost is too high.”
Critics have said that past meetings have led to bloated loans that African countries cannot repay. (African countries also owe significant sums to the World Bank and other international lenders.)
And when Chinese lenders financed critical infrastructure on the continent, they also supported Coal based power plants and other projects which contributes to greenhouse gas emissions.
In the run-up to the summit, Chinese state media outlets have highlighted projects supported by Chinese lenders in African villages, such as solar panel installations and soybean-planting techniques, that bring direct benefits to the communities.
An emphasis on smaller, greener initiatives could help alleviate concerns about unprofitable megaprojects in Africa, said Jana de Kluwer, a research officer at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria. “This aspect is to ensure that China-Africa relations, at least globally, do not look predatory,” she said.
Although the scale of Beijing’s cooperation with Africa has changed or declined, “the fact that China has maintained this triennial summit over two decades is a major political achievement,” said Ms. Chen of the Overseas Development Institute.
Such meetings are a way for Beijing to demonstrate China’s commitment to Africa. In contrast, the United States held one such summit with African leaders eight years later in 2022.
Ms. Brautigam said the summit follows behind-the-scenes diplomacy between Chinese and African officials. “You can contrast that with how we do things in the US, where engagement is more ad hoc,” she said.
China has officially emphasized that it does not see Africa as a region where the great powers are Compete for geopolitical advantagesInsisting it is interested in working with the region towards so-called “win-win cooperation”. At the same time, Chinese aid, investment and diplomacy have helped secure African support for China in international organizations such as the United Nations.
China has also gained support on the African continent for its position on Israel’s war in Gaza. Beijing has brought rival Palestinian factions together for talks as it seeks a bigger diplomatic role in the Middle East. It has emphasized its longstanding support for a Palestinian state and criticized Israel’s bombardment of the territory.
That position aligns China with countries such as South Africa, which have criticized Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians as “An extreme form of apartheid“ Joint China-South Africa statement The release on Monday cited the two countries’ shared interest in an “immediate ceasefire and an end to all fighting” in Gaza.
“China’s full embrace of the Palestinian cause has completely aligned it with almost the entire global South,” Mr. Olander said. For many Africans, he added, the war “resembles the colonial wars that devastated their countries.”
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