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Joshua Eisenman and David H. Shinn, "China's Relations with Africa: A New Era of Strategic Engagement" (Columbia UP, 2023)
01:42:23
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- [00:00]
A
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- [01:07]
B
Welcome to this episode of the New Books Network. I am your host, Nome Anthony Kanayot. And today I am delighted to be joined by two distinguished guests, Professor David Sheen and Professor Joshua Eisenman. Thank you both for joining me on this episode today. Professor Sheen and Professor Eisenman are household names in the African China research space. But for the benefit of our new listeners, I would begin by inviting each of you to briefly introduce yourselves to our audience.
- [01:41]
A
Sure. Thank you very much. Kanayo. I served for 37 years in the US Foreign Service as an American diplomat at embassies primarily in Africa. Also serving as Ambassador to Burkina Faso and Ethiopia towards the end of my career. Retired in 2000 and have been teaching in the Elliott School of International affairs at George Washington University ever since I retired.
- [02:12]
C
And I'm Joshua Eisenman. I'm a Professor of Politics at the Kehoe School of Global affairs at the University of Notre Dame. I'm also Senior Fellow for China Studies at the American Foreign Policy Council. And I've been working with Ambassador Shen for many years on China Africa relations. So thrilled to be here. Thanks for having us.
- [02:33]
B
Once again. Thank you. It's my pleasure to have you both today. So, before I turn on to our main discussion, which is your latest co authored book titled China's Relations with a New Era of Strategic Engagement, published by Columbia University Press. I would like to begin with a brief reflection on your collaboration. Back in 2012, you published your first joint book titled China and A Century of Engagement. And I also observed that in between those years, you have also had some projects together. So. Prof. Could you share with our listeners how the two of you first connected, what inspired these continued collaboration and how it has evolved over time?
- [03:23]
A
Sure. Let me start with that. And I'm sure Josh will want to add it was almost accidental how we we connected. It happened actually at the Elliott School of International affairs at George Washington University when a a former dean of the Elliott School was retiring. And Josh and I met almost by accident at that reception. Josh was at the time looking for someone to do some some work on China Africa. This was back, oh, gosh, I think it was about 2005. I may have the year slightly off. So it was a period when not very many people were working on China Africa. I did not really follow China at that time. I felt very comfortable dealing with Africa. Josh was very comfortable with China, but not with Africa. And he just asked if I might know anyone who would be willing to make a presentation on China Africa. And I agreed to do it somewhat reluctantly because I was getting into an area that was new to me. But anyway, that was the beginning and I'll let Josh pick it up from there.
- [04:35]
C
Yes. And if anybody wants to see Ambassador Shin's testimony before the US China Economic Security Review Commission, I believe it's still available on their website that he testified before the Congressional Commission along with Ambassador Princeton Lyman and Ambassador Shin talked about North Africa and East Africa, and Ambassador Lyman talked more about Sub Saharan Africa. So it was actually, I think, still remains an excellent resource. And so people can go back these 20 years and find the Ambassador Shin's original testimony, as he said, maybe his first, I would say public comments on this matter. And then over time I would just pick up the story and say our collaboration evolved with the topic itself. And you can see this in the book, because our first book covers a variety of different topics, including Chinese communities in Africa, variety of different economic issues, issues that later after our book became issues that people delve very deeply into. You can find no limit of work now on the China Africa economic, trade, investment, enterprise, labor issues. I mean, it's really become a vast great cornucopia of different work. But what we had noticed was that it was the political and security side that wasn't getting as much attention as we thought that it deserved or as much attention as it seemed China thought it deserved. But. So we decided to undertake that in this new book, which was to kind of not set aside entirely the economics, but knowing that that issue has been well trodden, to really look into these harder topics that people, for a variety of reasons, have not been able to delve into. And of course, we weren't able to get to the bottom of every topic. But I do believe this new book really sheds light on a variety of topics that have not yet really been examined fully. So I think that's one thing that both of these books did, right? First, they both grounded themselves in history, which I think is very important. And second, I would say they evolved with the discussion on China Africa relations, which makes, I would say them more relevant over time.
- [06:53]
B
Okay, thank you so much for that clarification. That book, that 2012 book provided a comprehensive account of China African relations that goes beyond 1949, the establishment of the People's Republic of China. In a way, this book, this new book that we'll be discussing today is a continuation. But just like you mentioned, this is unique in its focus and also in the sense of the quantity and depth of the details on the focus topic. So, Professor Shin, this book argues that Africa has become central to China's global strategy, but this was not the case until around 2010. 2010. Can you help us understand why this became the case or why Africa, what drove Africa, Africa's ascendancy into China's geostrategic calculus?
- [07:54]
A
I think there are several factors that play into that. One is the emphasis that China is putting on the global south, particularly in recent years during the Xi Jinping rule, where China really does see itself as being the leader of the global south. It looks around the world and says, well, where is the global South? Well, 54 of those countries are in Africa, so the single biggest bloc is in Africa. And in terms of just sheer voting power, you have to pay attention to 54 different countries if you want to be the leader of the global south. The other component, though, is the degree to which China has stepped up its. Not only its engagement, but its presence and its interests in Africa. And it clearly has done that during the, the 21st century in a major way. So that there are far more Chinese activities on the continent. There are more Chinese nationals living and working there. There's more Chinese business there than there used to be. And when you do that, you. You also open yourself up to a certain amount of potential blowback. The greater the presence, the greater the engagement. The greater the likelihood that some, not only good things will happen, but some bad things will happen, and you put yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time, and you can end up being at the. At the front of some sort of terrorist activity or ordinary crime or corruption or whatever the case may be. But, but bad things happen in addition to good things. And I think China has experienced more and more of, of some of these negative kinds of activities, which requires a security response, because if you want to take care of your nationals, you need to protect them. You need to figure out ways to deal with that. And I think that's what China has been grappling with, particularly in the last 10 years or so.
- [10:03]
B
Professor Simon, you want to add anything?
- [10:07]
C
Yeah, I think I could add a couple of things. I think Ambassador Shen laid it out very well just to add a couple of points here. First, I think that there's a historical context of China's relations in Africa. We go into this a lot in our first book book, but in our second book, we do as well a little bit talking about the. The extensive ties dating back to the Mao era and a lot of the liberation movements. And it's important to, I think, remember, especially for us living in countries like the United States, which gained our independence from Britain in 1776, that, you know, African countries, many of them, you know, people who are older in those countries, lived under colonialism. Right. That colonialism is relatively recent. So while China has these invested relations, if you talk to somebody, you try to talk to them about the colonial influence, if you do that in Africa, it's going to resonate a lot more. So the narrative of China as the leader of the global Sufferers Club, or as Ambassador Shin said, the leader of the global south, resonates more in a place where colonialism is more recent and where the harms of colonialism were arguably at their extremes in a lot of cases. So there's a kind of fertile ground, I believe, also especially among some of the older leaders of Africa who are, you know, from these older generations, where I think the political relationship has a kind of, as I said, a fertile soil which the seeds can develop. And you can hearken back to the liberation struggles, and you can hearken back to the Tanzan railway and the nostalgia. But at the same time, Africa is the youngest continent in the world. Not every country is young, but some of them very young. And so you're also speaking to a new generation and helping them to understand China in the way that Beijing wants them to understand China. So I think that there's a variety of reasons why Africa is important for China's geostrategy and why China calls it a cornerstone of its relations in the global South.
- [12:14]
A
All right.
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B
So the book identified two defining features of this engagement. It characterizes it as being multi tiered and then Sinocentric. Professor Shing, can you help us understand what this means and probably the implications.
- [12:33]
A
Of the multi tier relationship? Is that the nature of the question?
- [12:36]
B
Yes, the feature, the two defining features, which is the motor teared nurse and the Sinocentricism.
- [12:45]
A
Sure. It's important, I think, to keep in mind that the bilateral relationship is always in the final analysis the most important one and we shouldn't ignore that. But having said that, there are numerous other layers of relations that China is working to, to develop to the maximum extent possible and has done so with, with some degree of success in a place like Africa. You have, starting with the, with the African Union and the relationship between China and Africa, particular through the Forum on China Africa cooperation relationship is perhaps the most important one. But beyond that, you have all kinds of regional organizations that are equally important. It might be ECOWAS in West Africa, SADC in Southern Africa, EGAD and the Horn of Africa, not to mention some of the lesser known organizations in Africa or less important ones in Central Africa and North Africa that have not had quite the same impact that the first three that I just mentioned. But you have in, in addition, some, some economic focused organizations like Komesa, which cover much of sub Saharan Africa that are very important to the the China Africa economic relationship. China works all of these organizations. And then beyond that, you get into organizations where there's more of a political involvement, such as the BRICS organization, which now is both economic and political, which has more and more members from, from Africa involved. Or you have the organization involving Islam, which brings in a lot of the North African and East African countries. You even have Indian Ocean organizations that bring in all of the island nations of Africa in addition to the coastal, eastern coastal area of Africa. China is engaged in all of these organizations and very much maximizes its effort to get what it can from them and to expand the relationship with the African countries and African regional organizations.
- [15:29]
B
Okay.
- [15:29]
A
Prof.
- [15:30]
B
I want to follow up a little on that point, that the bilateral relationship or that approach is the foundation of China's relations with Africa. That was actually in page 329. I highlighted the quote. The question I want to ask Africa is always portrayed as people or a continent that have collective interest, but we also know that uniquely they have unique national Interests that sometimes conflict. And China on its part has relationship, engages in bilateral relationship with almost all of these African countries. So how does China manage to balance its relationship with African countries that have conflicting interests?
- [16:24]
A
Let me go to Josh first and then I'll jump in.
- [16:27]
C
Yeah, I appreciate that, Ambassador Shin, because I do think that perhaps you're the best to answer that immediate question. But I did notice that the initial question had a Sinocentric component. So I just want to speak to that part of the question, which was to say, as you said, as we discuss in the book, you have a multi layered relationship. And that is Ambassador Shin articulated is you have a bilateral, you have a sub regional, and he was listing the different sub regional organizations. Then you have regional where you have the African Union. You have also the FOCAC mechanism that China created. And then you have the international relations that, you know, the WTO or the UN or other just global level institutions. And so these things are kind of, they're interacting with each other. Right. And they're reinforcing each other. Now you. With regard to the Sinocentric element of it. So the US has what we like to call, or the west has what we call the rules based order, which would be suggesting at least, and of course that there's, there is hypocrisy in the world. And I don't deny it, but that at least in principle, countries, no matter their size, have to essentially have the same set of rules that they abide by in the international world order. Right. At least that's the, the premise by which the UN and other institutions are founded. With regard to China, they have something different. They call it the community of shared future for mankind. And for them, the community, like all communities, has a leader. And the leader of the community of shared future is China. And so whoever's closer to the community leader or whoever has better relations with the community leader is going to have a better set of outcomes than if somebody does not have a close relationship with the community leader. And this is based in a kind of Confucian way of analyzing the world. We quote Chin Ya Chen, who's a Chinese political theorist in international relations and who talks about how the Chinese system is a hierarchy. It's not about a Westphalian system of nations that are at least in principle equal. It is a system in which China is at the center, is the core. And the core of China is the Communist Party. And the core of the Communist Party is Xi Jinping. Right. And so this is a, it's better to look at as a kind of like in a solar system, if you will, with different countries at different levels. So this is what we mean when we meet Sino centric. So I want to kick it back to Ambassador Shin to maybe talk about your question, but I wanted to make sure that we answered the Sinocentric part, because I do think that for China, it's very important that this current international world order evolves into something that they want to see and they've articulated through their development vision there. I'm forgetting for a moment here, Ambassador Shin, they have the four development. The four.
- [19:22]
A
What are they?
- [19:23]
C
Initiatives.
- [19:23]
B
Four GS?
- [19:24]
A
Yeah.
- [19:27]
C
Yeah, the global initiatives. So global governance, global development, civilization purity and global civilization, yes. So those four which support this Sinocentric world order they call the community. So it's actually more robust than I think the rhetoric might seem.
- [19:45]
A
Just following up on a point that Josh made, which ties very closely into a current debate that has been going on in the China Africa Forum Group. It's basically an online group in which for the first time since I've been involved in studying China Africa relations dating back to 2005, there's a robust debate as to whether are we talking China, Africa or Africa China? In other words, is it backwards? Should. Should Africa be first? And most of the people involved in that debate are Africans, so they probably have a bias towards. Towards Africa, China. But there hasn't been any pushback on that until very, very recently, which I find kind of amusing in a way, because if you do look at the continent of Africa, even though all the countries combined still do not have the economy that China has, they are closely getting to the where the population of China is at 1.4 billion and China's population is declining. Africa continues to rise sharply. And at some point in the not very distant future, Africa is going to surpass China in terms of population. Now, that in and of itself is not going to make perhaps a huge difference, but it will underscore the nature of this argument. Should it be Africa, China, or China Africa? But going back to the bilateral country question, I would only point out that you have quite a variety of countries in Africa that interact differently with China. Some are obviously in a stronger position to obtain agency than are others. If you're South Africa or you're Egypt or you're in Nigeria, you're operating on one footing. If you're Togo or Benin or Lesotho, you're. You're dealing from a different point of view vis a vis China. Now, the exceptions to that can be a little country like Djibouti or Seychelles where there is strategic value involved for China. In the case of Djibouti, they have a military base. In the case of Seychelles, it's just very strategically located in the Indian Ocean for purposes of the PLA Navy activity. So a little country can on occasion develop more agency with China than a big country can. But those are the exceptions and you have to take that into account whenever you look at the bilateral relationships between any particular African country and its interaction with Beijing.
- [22:31]
C
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- [23:02]
B
Thank you for mentioning the argument on the China African Research Network. I was also following it and to mention this, I am writing an article that is under review and will published on that topic. This interview also will be sent on that forum. So I hope that some of our guests would also get to hear your take. Professor Asa Man I want to refer to an argument that was made in chapter two. One argument was the growing concern about Africa's, the asymmetric nature of these bilateral ties. And some scholars would argue that the notion of Africa's lack of agency in its engagement with China. You know, some people would say that Africa actually, you know, possess agency. So can you help us understand Africa's agency or lack of agency in its interaction with China?
- [24:04]
C
Okay, this is, this is a great question. Let me, let me say one thing about our book that I, I like our title because the title sidesteps a little bit this question about should it be China, Africa or Africa China? We're very clear we're talking about China's relations with Africa. So other people may write a book about Sierra Leone or Nigeria, whomever's relations with China. But our effort here is very much to look at China's interactions. But in my opinion that doesn't discount in any way other people looking from other perspectives. So we provide one perspective because we think that's what that sheds light on the way we view the relationship. But that doesn't mean it's the only way. So I don't think we have to choose necessarily either or because there's multiple perspectives on almost any issue at all. And those perspectives, as long as they are done with good research and good faith are almost always a valuable contribution. So I don't know where that puts me in terms of this debate, which I haven't seen. But maybe there isn't a need for such a debate. Right. Maybe we could just, you know, maybe the different perspectives can all have their validity in terms of agency. Right. So first of all, let me just voice a bit of displeasure about the use of this word agency, because it seems like it's being used in a kind of binary sense. You either have it or you don't.
- [25:31]
B
Right.
- [25:31]
C
It's either you have agency or you don't have it. But in all engagements and all bilateral engagements in particular, people have, or entities or actors have different levels of agency. It's very rare that one actor has all the agency and the other has none of it. So what we're talking about here isn't a binary. It's not, China's got it, Africans don't. That's it, Case closed, end of story. Each individual country, as Ambassador Shin was just articulating, has its own agency on particular topics where it might have particular advantages. So Djibouti has this naval base, Chinese naval base, that may give it some advantages, but in terms of, I don't know, economics or other things, maybe it doesn't have those advantages. So, so this is a slippery topic. And I think people get into this topic in a. In a way that's almost oversimplified. So I do want to beg the question a little bit because I think that we need to have maybe a bit more nuance here. That being said, I don't think anybody doubts that China is a more powerful country than all, other than all African countries. Right. So there's no one African country that has a military, an economy, a political system. I mean, let me give you one example. Ambassador Shin and I, in going to Africa, visited, had the pleasure of visiting several headquarters of different African political parties. We visited one, one of the major parties in Ghana, they had a building for their political party. And then we visited another in South Africa where they had a floor of a building for their. That was their political party headquarters. The Ghanaian political party headquarters was entirely built from them for the. By the Chinese government. The Chinese Communist Party built it for them, gave it to them. Right. We also, in our research, went to the Communist Party of China's International department. That one building in Beijing, not the entire party, just the building of the International department, was bigger by orders of magnitude than any African political party's entire headquarters, if you follow me. So the Communist Party of China has how many buildings? Hundreds. Right. Each one of those buildings is bigger than any one political headquarters of any one political party in Africa that we visited. Right. So I think, you know, when we talk about agency, when we talk about relative capacity, we talk about resources. I mean, China is building, or has built already, the Julius Nureri School in Tanzania to train African political parties that cost China $40 million from the Communist Party's budget. So that's the kind of asymmetry I think we're talking about in terms of resources, of course, in terms of military. We know things like the fishing fleet that is, you know, in West Africa. East Africa. I mean, I think the great analogy here is, and I want to go on for too long, is we're putting out Notre Dame and the Atlantic Council next week. We're putting out three briefs by African scholars from West Africa, including from 11 different countries, 22 scholars looking at mining issues, forestry issues, and fishery issues. Three different briefs. Ambassador Shin will be there at this conference at the Atlantic Council next week. But in this, you can see that the Chinese trawlers, one thing they do when they come in the trawlers and they swamp the local canoes and literally drown them. And I think that's what we talk about when you have to. I think that's a good way to think about this. It's not that there's no agency in the canoe. The canoe has its agency, but the Chinese trawler has the capacity to swamp the canoe, both literally and figuratively. And I think that if you forget that fact and if you go on simply saying, these are two countries operating in complete equality without asymmetry, I think that you're overlooking an important part of the relationship. And in fact, it allows you to then blame the African side more and say, well, why did you do better? When in reality, they got the best deal they could that anyone could. And I think that there's a lot of finger pointing that goes on. When we say, well, you had agency. Why didn't you do something? Well, the answer is, well, we did the best we could. Often, not always, but often. And I think that the blame game can settle in and the Chinese will do this too. They say, well, the Africans accepted it. Well, what options did they have? You know, that has to be discussed within these discourses. I would say.
- [29:57]
A
I would just add on one point that Josh made here, that if you look particularly at the fishing issue off the coast of Ghana, part of the problem there revolves around corruption in Ghana itself, where you have Ghanaian business interests that are collaborating with the Chinese owners of the ships flagging the, the ships as Ghanaian or, or making and legally identifying them as Ghanaian. But in fact they're owned by Chinese and doing a lot of harm to local Ghanaian small fisher organizations. So it's corruption can also play a very, very important role there.
- [30:39]
C
In fact, I would say this is true for all three. From Mining, Forestry and Fisheries. We've seen the same exact thing go on where you have essentially somebody gets a local license and becomes the local front for Chinese investors who then essentially they're supposed to be doing small scale artisanal mining, for instance, and they come in and they end up doing much more larger scale mining because they're under the wrong permitting. But then corruption, as Ambassador Shin rightfully says, sets in and people get paid off. So this is again, it's another kind of reflection of the asymmetry of the relationship, which again doesn't reflect no agency on the African part, but it does reflect an asymmetry in that agency.
- [31:21]
B
Another point that was brought up in, in, in Chapter two is something, something that has, hasn't always baffled me as a person, and I guess that may be the case for some of our listeners. It's about the Belt and Road Initiative. So Africa was not in the original thoughts of the bir, except for passive mentions of some countries in East Africa. In page 59, it was stated that Africa only became part of the Belt and Road Initiative after African leaders began to ask China about how the Belt and Road Initiative would benefit their countries. But what I also observed is that most of the projects that later became referred to as Belt and Road Initiative, most of them are projects that have already begun that was already in place. So can you help us understand why those projects would later be referred to as Belt and Road Initiatives?
- [32:27]
A
Yeah, I think you're right in citing, as we indicated in the, in the book, that Africa was something of an afterthought. When you come to the Belt and Road Initiative, it did come into play in terms of the maritime Silk Road, which was an initial part of the Belt and Road Initiative. But that really only impacted a couple of several countries in Northeast Africa and mainly the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, which border both Africa and the Middle East. Beyond that, there was almost no mention whatsoever of the Belt and Road Initiative for the first couple of years of the bri. You did then get some African countries, I think, quietly complaining to Beijing that, hey, wait a minute, where are we in the Belt and Road Initiative? Well, Beijing got the word and eventually Africa became a very important Part of the bri, not just Africa, but Latin America, all of Asia, even the, the Arctic became part of it. I mean it was, it became a global policy for all practical purposes. But you're also right in pointing out that in order to expand the scope of the bri, China effectively brought into it all of those projects that either were underway, had been signed and agreed upon, were partway completed, were just under review for the first time, which was a massive number of projects. And I'm not saying that's a wrong thing to do. If I were running the government of China, I probably would have done the same thing. But it, it does mean that you take in effect an ongoing policy, put a slap a name on top of it and start expanding it. And you have a much more impressive policy than you would have had if you were starting from absolute scratch. So it gave China a certain propaganda advantage that I'm not sure a lot of people fully understand.
- [34:36]
C
If I could just add a couple of things to that, I agree with everything Ambassador Shen said. Let me hearken this back to something that some of the viewers, listeners may not know. So when I was studying Chinese history, Chinese contemporary history, Deng Xiaoping gets a lot of credit for saving the Chinese economy and having his economic reforms. The story of reform and opening up is one that is taught in classrooms in China and the United States and elsewhere. But what I only came to understand later was that during the Mao era, there was a lot of productivity that took place at the household level that was unreboarded, that didn't make it onto the books because it was semi legal activity. So you didn't report it, you didn't pay taxes on it. Everybody just did it. And it was, they were called household family plots and they made up 20% or so of what was going on. They were, they were sold locally or consumed locally. Well, when Deng Xiaoping came on board, he took all of this productivity and registered it for the first time and taxed it. So it looks like if you look at the data, the Chinese agricultural productivity has shot up. In fact, it did go up, but it didn't go up nearly as high as it looks because as Ambassador Shin articulated with bri, you took existing productivity, existing projects, you put them on the books, suddenly it looks like what you've done is more than what it really was. So just to say, this is not the first time we've seen this in China where one leader comes in and then takes the previous leader's work, rebrands it and says, you know, I'm going to take credibility for that. But I think one important question with regard to BRI is whether or not it did what China wanted it to do. And I think this is, this can be looked at again from different perspectives and depending on your perspective you'd say yes or no. From the perspective of getting China's name out there, from getting, you know, the fact that we're talking about the BRI a decade on, yes, it was effective. I think from a political perspective, geopolitically speaking, setting the bar, especially as the US might be political pulling back and retreating, China was leaning in. So I think that it also aided this narrative of we are the leader of the global south with our Belt and Road Initiative, with our community, et cetera, et cetera. So I think from a political perspective one could argue it was very successful. But the question from an economic perspective is different because that has to do with whether or not these loans are getting paid back. And that's a question I think that has not been as successful. So it doesn't, I don't, when I tried to get data on this, it's impossible to get. Only the Chinese government knows how much of its existing loan portfolio is active or not. But from a Chinese perspective you could look at it politically and say successful, but it came at a cost. Now one could also argue it did a lot of deploying Chinese excess capacity abroad. So maybe it was successful in a temporary sense for those firms. But I do think that the history is yet to be written on the Belt and Road Initiative and from different perspectives you could imagine it being successful or not. What we do know is this China is constricted the Belt and Road Initiative into its small and beautiful projects, so itself believes it may have gone a little too far and is trying to work it back a little bit into something more sustainable. So that suggests that they, they like the branding maybe, but not as much in terms of, you know, whether these non performing loans are going to actually come back to roost.
- [38:02]
B
Professor Sheen, Chapter four focused on party to party exchanges and you explored the relationship between the CPC and over 130 African political parties from 2002 to 2022. In that you highlighted that China has many objectives for this kind of initiatives. It wants African partners to legitimize its political system, adopt concepts and method of governance akin to cpc, support China's territorial claims and advance Chinese interest, and oppose the United States and the liberal values it promulgates. Now I want you to help us understand how we can account for the success of these efforts from the Chinese standpoint. And I want to, I, I want you to talk about it beyond the quantity of relationship, but the quality, like the outcomes for the Chinese.
- [39:10]
A
Josh did most of the work on party to party activity. So I'm going to push that question back to him. I may add something to whatever he says.
- [39:21]
C
Thank you, Ambassador Shin. So from the taking, the question you asked, which is what is, I guess, China get from these relationships? Right. What is the outcome? Is that fair enough?
- [39:33]
A
Yeah.
- [39:34]
B
The way I want you to look at it is, is it leading to the intended objectives, goals that the Chinese government would, you know, want these exchanges to bring about?
- [39:49]
C
So the short answer I would say is yes. Now, whether or not it's a good bang for the buck, we don't know the budget. Right. So. But do we see outcomes? Yes. And let me give you a couple of outcomes. Right. When Ambassador Shin and I started down this road, as we said at the beginning of the podcast, 20 years ago, there were a number of countries in Africa that recognized Taiwan. Now there's only one eSwatini. Right. So from the perspective, you know, throughout the 90s and 2000s, there was a dollar diplomacy struggle going on in Nigeria. Ambassador Shin and I visited the Taiwan consulate in Abuja, which was being forced to Lagos, and there was a whole struggle. All that is now, as I understand it, finished. So one great success of China's political outreach has been to politically isolate Taiwan in Africa, where it actually had had some significant relations. Now, Taiwan does have economic relations, but it's politically nowhere. And I don't think that anybody would bet money that Taiwan's re establishing relations with any government that it's lost at this point. So the seesaw, I think back and forth is over. Second, we also see many countries supporting Chinese territorial claims. For instance, you have, I think, Rwanda and others who have said China's claims in the South China Sea are, we support them. Now, why would Rwanda, a small landlocked African country thousands of miles from the South China Sea, you know, declare its policy on who controls that sea? Well, because their Chinese friends asked them to do it. And so we can see time and again, Ambassador Shin and I have an article that we wrote on this where we talk about how China has received the support of African countries across the spectrum of its political interests in terms of a variety of different things. As I said, from Taiwan to the South China Sea to Tibet, on Hong Kong, for instance, while many countries criticize China in Hong Kong, many African countries actually publicly supported China on Hong Kong. So you've got a lot of support there that China has gained. But also I would say that it has seen and developed and cultivated interpersonal relationships within African political parties. One question is how deep are those relations? Do they go to the new cadres in those parties or are they simply with the older generation? Now this is I think almost a country by country question. But I do believe China has. We mentioned the Julius Nureri school a moment ago. So that's a symbol of this investment that they made, a physical symbol that they've literally built it and given it to the African political parties, the so called sister parties that it has kind of anointed as sisters. To my knowledge, these are not parties that called themselves sisters that China said you are the sister parties and. And here's the school, right. So we can see that China has developed these relationships both also sometimes in Ghana, for instance, with opposition parties. So that even if you have a change of government, the China policy remains relatively constant. So I would say that China has done actually a quite a good job in terms of building its relations with African political parties and essentially getting what it wants out of these relationships. Now is it a good bang for the buck? I think that's a different question that I'm not sure we're fit to answer. But I do think that they are getting what they want out of the relationship and they continue to invest in these relationships in terms of bringing delegations to China, not related to Africa. But for instance, I was at the international department of the Communist Party of China two weeks ago. I had a lunch there. As I was coming out of the building, there was a large delegation from Venezuela, big Venezuela delegation right there in the lobby. I said I'm sorry about the ships guys and we all had a laugh. But the point was this is the kind of investment they have to bring a delegation like that from Venezuela, 20 plus people, I think underscores also the kind of investment they have for many African countries is.
- [43:52]
B
Before Professor Shin dives in into this topic, I want to ask a follow up question. Maybe he would also address it together. So it's about a particular objective which is obviously China does not just seek one objective, it has multiple objectives. The one I want you to respond to is African system reflecting Chinese sort of party systems. So African governments have had these authoritarian tendencies themselves. So where do we also draw the line on what is being learned from China and what is truly African in this regard of system, political party, governance system, where do we really draw the line?
- [44:43]
A
Now you raise a very important point for most in fact, probably all countries in Africa, as you well know, you have an enormous variety of political thinking in different African countries as to how democratic or undemocratic the governments think they are or think they ought to be. And this variation creates a real dilemma in terms of trying to analyze it because you literally have to look at each country individually. But because there are a number of countries in Africa that are quite authoritarian in, by background which have no relationship whatsoever to China or has nothing to do with China or the China relationship historically, but they just happen to have been autocratic for their own reasons, those countries, generally speaking, tend to be easier for China to develop a relationship with. I'm sure there are some exceptions to that, but I think if you, if you look sort of at the more authoritarian countries on the continent, you'll find that the, the China particularly party to party relationship will tend to be stronger than is the case with those countries that tend to have more democratic backgrounds, political backgrounds or political parties. Again, they're going to be a couple of exceptions to that. But it, it's, it's important to make this distinction and it's also important to realize that the authoritarian background in certain African countries has nothing to do with China. It has, it has to do with other historical developments in that country that led to the authoritarianism in the first place. And in terms of dividing the continent up today, I'm not even sure I'd want to try to decide which, what percent is relatively democratic and what percent is relatively authoritarian. There are organizations that do that. I look at these, at these analyses and sometimes shake my head when I see which countries they have listed on one side of the ledger or the other. But the point being that there is quite a variety here and China has been, I think, pretty good at reacting to them to the point where you can have a, a Communist Party in Sudan which still exists, although it's very weak today, but it was strong at one time and China never had a particularly good relationship with that Communist Party because the Communist Party in Sudan had a lot of independent thoughts and it, it didn't want to align itself particularly with China or anyone else. On the other hand, you have a Communist Party in South Africa where there tends to be a, a somewhat closer relationship between the Communist Party of, of China and that of South Africa. But there are not that many Communist parties existing in Africa today. So we're, for the most part we're thinking of other more authoritarian kinds of groups, often military leaders, where China will take advantage of the authoritarian tendencies in that country.
- [48:00]
C
I mean, I think it's important for us to recall that China does have good relations with every country in Africa, pretty much, except for Eswatini. Right. So if. So that. Speaking to whether it's been successful or not, China's diplomacy has led it to have positive relations, and I believe embassies in every country on the continent, except for the one that doesn't have relations with it, which is a tiny little country. But I think the key word here is sharing.
- [48:25]
A
Right?
- [48:26]
C
So China does not come in at this point. It did once in the 60s, by the way, but not anymore. It doesn't come in and say, you have to, and demands you accept the Chinese governance lessons. The key word is it shares its governance lessons. It offers its governance lessons. Right. And then African countries can pick and choose or not at all what they want. But so the. The way they talk about it, it's very different. It's not like in the Maoist era where they were. They had a party line and they were going to enforce it. And if not, you know, they, you know, they even got thrown out of some countries, like Kenya, for. For this kind of aggressive promotion of ideology. I would say the Chinese Communist Party today is trying to share its governance lessons, but it's not ideologically driven to, you know, workers of the world unite or any of that kind of stuff like that we had seen during the Mao era. I think it's important for us to draw a line and see that evolution in the party, which has evolved considerably since, you know, the initial engagements.
- [49:25]
A
This is a very important point, and I just want to add to it the Global Governance Initiative, which is the most recent of the four global initiatives coming out of Beijing. In fact, it's only about a month old now. And this one, interestingly, is being pushed harder in Africa than I think, any of the other three. Maybe not any more so than the Global Global Development Initiative, but there's an effort to try to sell the Global Government Initiative, Governance initiative in Africa, more so than any other that I have seen so far. Not only getting all of the Chinese embassies or as many as possible to come out with public statements and getting into the media, making speeches about it, but finding African surrogates who will make the same speech and make it sound like they are speaking for the Africans themselves as to why they ought to accept the Global Governance Initiative. This is a very important development, and it's one that I think needs to be watched very carefully by the Africans, particularly because they could get sort of sucked into something here that they're going to regret over the longer term.
- [50:42]
B
A follow up to this is the focus of chapter five, which sort of explored African focused propaganda. I was in China in 2022 during the COVID from 2019 to 2022. And one thing the COVID pandemic did reveal about China, African relations is the disconnect between government rhetorics and on the grand reality, especially regards to people to people relations, which is also something that is being brought up more frequently lately. I want to get your take. Prof. How does Chinese government or the Chinese Communist Party reconcile this disconnect between government rhetorics and the reality when it comes to people to people relations? I mean, Joshua, can they manage it or is it already under control?
- [51:43]
C
Who was that? Was that for Ambassador Shen?
- [51:45]
A
Well, yeah, I suggest that you go ahead and start with it and I'll comment on it also.
- [51:51]
C
Ah, okay. Well, in that chapter, you know, we look at a variety of different approaches, right? We look at the media propaganda, we look at educational propaganda, we look at cultural propaganda. So we look at three different aspects of the propaganda effort. And each, you know, each one of them is somewhat different, but ultimately they're trying to do what Xi Jinping said, which is tell a good Chinese story and trying to paint China in the best possible light. Now, I was for the first time actually able to witness one of these. I was a couple of weeks ago, I was at the forum for Global south think tank and media. And I can tell you, you know, what we had there was, you know, all the flags were lined up. Each one of the participants gave their speech praising China and talking about China as an example of the Global south, talking about China in terms of representing leadership in the Global South. And it was all, as you might suggest, right? But when you have discussions on the sidelines, I think people understand that they're, you know, what they're participating in, right? That they understand that this is a very much a propaganda show. It was literally run by the Xinhua News Agency. So it's not surprising. I mean, that's the propaganda news agency. So they're there to paint China in the best possible light. And so they, you know, this happens in a variety of different ways in the African continent. The most kind of old school of them is, you know, through publications, you know, magazines and other things that, you know, TV things that, you know, cgtn, things that have been around for a long time. But increasingly, you know, there's a variety of different social media, cable networks and other ways that this occurs. And as Ambassador Shin was noting a moment ago, one of the ways that this is happening more and more is through African surrogates who will republish work or reformat and then republish work that came out in Xinhua and other China related or China controlled outlets. So you have a kind of multi front effort here to have Africans, particularly younger Africans, to perceive China in a positive light through the media work. At the same time, education think tanks, as I said, you have just efforts to bring in more students from Africa to give them opportunities. Now this is getting difficult because the budgets in Chinese universities are getting tighter. So there may be less opportunities than there were in the past, but still China is taking advantage as the US is making it harder for African students to study, making it difficult to get visas. China is making a lot of Africans travel either visa free or simplifying the visa process. So you can see some of this effort now increasingly in juxtaposition to the US's stepping out of this role. Ambassador Shin and I heard on several occasions during our interviews that African students would prefer to have studied in the US or UK and offered them scholarships and opportunities that were simply too good to pass up. Now, I haven't followed the cultural propaganda as much recently, but for sure at this event that I was at this global think tank and media forum, there was a fashion show, you know, a fashion show from the local ethnicity where they were, you know, with the participants taking pictures. They did. You know, I've never been to a fashion show before, so it was new to me, but the cultural element was present. As we walked in, there were dancing girls and boys on both sides wearing traditional local ethnic costumes, right, Greeting all of the people. So there is this, this effort to say, hey, China is more than just Beijing and Shanghai. So an effort to develop these cultural ties and relations. So I would say that China puts a lot of effort into these things. They spend a lot of money on these things. This was quite an event I attended. So you can see that it must matter to them in terms of the way that they outreached Africans.
- [55:57]
A
You make an important point on this people to people engagement. And I want to expand on that a bit. This is a relatively new focus for China. I think Josh and I first ran into it during a meeting with the Chinese ambassador to South Africa when we were visiting there about seven years ago. And he was making the point that he was under instruction to make a far greater effort to reach out to individual South Africans on a people to people basis and that his whole embassy was instructed to do that and I've noticed ever since then that has been very much of a focus of Chinese policy. China has always been good at the government to government level. They, as Josh said earlier, they've had a, a very successful program of engaging African governments across the board, have a cordial relationship with all of them. They don't always have a good relationship with African civil society, I. E. People to people relationships. And I think China realized that, that this was a, an area where they were not as successful as many Western countries have been. I think Western countries or citizens from Western countries just find it a little easier to interact with people from other parts of the world than for the most part Chinese nationals or particularly Chinese officials have found to be the case. So China made a real effort starting a number of years ago to focus on people to people. That has been a consistent theme in the Africa relationship ever since. And if you go to the global government initiative, it's interesting, they have five core concepts in that initiative. Number four is securing or staying committed to the people centered approach, one of five core concepts now in global governance, something they're pushing very, very hard in Africa. And it simply underscores this, this focus on trying to improve the people to people involvement of all things Chinese with all things African.
- [58:13]
B
Okay, thank you.
- [58:14]
A
Prof.
- [58:14]
B
The one of the conclusion, you know, sometimes my own curiosity and interest is to actually examine whether beyond perception, this whole interaction is leading to another element, which is adoption or imitation, emulation. And my interest is beyond the elites because like I mentioned, there is always a tendency of those people to have sort of authoritarian, prefer the authoritarian patterns. But the African civil society, which is the people to people. This is what my dissertation is and that is what I'm investigating to see beyond perception. But the conclusion, one of the conclusions in that chapter is that the United States still holds favorable perceptions in Africa compared to China. That is in page 149. But I want to get your comments. In the face of recent developments between the United States and Africa, changing government and caught in U.S. aid, would you consider this situation or your conclusion as still being the same?
- [59:32]
A
Well, that's, that's a good point. And we're still very early in the, in the US Africa relationship with the Trump administration. So I don't want to get too far ahead of my skis on this, but certainly the initial indications are that this is, this is going to be a setback for US Policy in Africa. Certainly the virtual elimination of most, not all, but most USAID activities on the continent, the shutdown of the voice of America for the continent or for the world for that matter. The removal of some smaller organizations in Washington that have had benefits from, for, for Africa by, like the US Institute of Peace, for example, which had a, a fairly active program in Africa, small organization, not a, not a major impact upon U.S. africa relations. But it, it's gone now. It's shut down. All of these things, they add up and they, they send a signal obviously to not only African citizens, but to African governments that now maybe the United States is a little less interested in the continent than it once was. The goal, as I understand it, is to try to replace a lot of this with US Trade and investment. And all I can say to that is lots of luck. We've tried to do that for decades in Africa over many different administrations. And it's totally dependent upon the, largely on the private sector. You can have certain incentives from the US Government to encourage investment in trade, but by and large it's going to be the American private sector that's going to determine the success of that. And I, I just don't see that making up the difference with the abolition of, of most of USAID and some of these other organizations. So we could, the US could be in for a difficult period in the, in the coming years in its relations with Africa.
- [61:37]
C
I'll just say one sentence on this, right? Ambassador Shen and I, in our, both of our field work in Africa 2007 and 2018, we heard many people say they didn't like US conditionality. They didn't on, you know, development aid, that they didn't like certain aspects where the US was promoting democracy and good governance initiatives. And they, they talked like in a negative way about these things. And I have to say I think this issue right now, people should rethink that, right? Maybe, maybe those things weren't a bad thing, right? Maybe liberal governance promotion was something that, you know, was a US hallmark, right? It was a US brand to some degree. And so maybe there's something lost there, right? Maybe conditionality is gone. But also, you know, the identity of U.S. engagement, right, that, the notion that there's something more here than just the, the thing itself, but also a larger idea of human dignity and freedom that's now gone from US foreign policy, as I can tell. So I don't know if people are missing that in Africa or not, or if maybe they don't miss it at all. Maybe it's the nostalgia in me, but as an American, I thought it was interesting to hear that. And I wonder if those same people are now Missing the US at all.
- [63:01]
A
There's one nuance. There's one nuance to that. We were largely hearing from African government representatives that they didn't like conditionality, they didn't like the bullying from the United States, et cetera. And indeed we, I'm sure overdid that on a number of occasions. But with African civil society, it was more of a mixed response. There were elements of civil society. He said, hey, keep it up. I mean, we want you to continue the pressure on our government to improve its human rights record or to improve democratization.
- [63:35]
C
Yeah, that's true. I should have made that distinction.
- [63:37]
B
Okay. Another thing that was addressed in I'm just going to join in chapter six and seven is China's security strategy and interest in Africa and how it protects this interest. One important issue that emerges from this theme is how protecting China's security and strategic interest in Africa affect its long held principle of non interventionism. Chapter 7 detailed host of external engagement that China is now involved in. So Professor Asenman, how can we understand these engagement in light of this long held principle? Do they sort of contradict Chinese long held principle of non interventionism?
- [64:24]
C
Well, I'll make a couple comments on this, but then I'll hand it over to Ambassador Shin since he worked largely on that chapter. I think it's really an evolving definition that we see here. Whereas there had been the idea that certain activities were considered intervention, things like having foreign bases in a country. China had frowned on that for decades. We heard about it in 2007, we in our interviews. But that has evolved over time. Now China, as we mentioned, has its own base in Djibouti, may consider at some point even another base on the west side of the continent. So there's kind of an evolution on what is considered not engagement but intervention. Right. What is this intervention mean? Actually, and I think that an. Ambassador Shin can go into more details here. But a lot of this Rev Re evaluation really came in light of the 2011 Arab Spring and the realization that so many Chinese were in Libya and needed to get out. Right. So there was a desire, as China became more engaged in the continent, it was pulled into having to do more security related work for its communities, for its interests. And then that almost led in a step by step manner to more efforts that maybe in the past might have been considered intervention. So you have a kind of creeping evolution of the terminology, but at the same time a kind of steadfast adherence to the principle. Even while it's evolving, you have an adherence to it. So why don't I stop there and turn it to Ambassador Shin, who I think can provide more detail on granularity.
- [66:07]
A
Well, I think it's true that there has been an evolving interpretation of what non intervention means within both the government of China and perhaps Chinese society at large. I think if you were to ask a Chinese official today, do they still believe in the same principle of non intervention in Africa that Mao Zedong did, they would probably say, yeah, we believe in the same thing. Nothing has changed, but in fact the interpretation is changing and it's just a question of how much you're willing to acknowledge that things have in fact changed. If you look, for example, at the, the involvement or China's role in getting Sudan during the Nimeri government to accept a combination United Nations African Union peacekeeping force, Nimeri did, excuse me, not, not Nemeri, but Namari's successor was not willing to accept a, a UN peacekeeping force in Sudan. But when the government of China went to the government of Sudan and said, you, you shall accept a, a combination African Union UN peacekeeping force or they're going to be some difficulties in our relationship, they agreed to accept it. And indeed Sudan went along with a com with a combined African Union United nations peacekeeping force in the country. That was one of the very earliest indications that China under certain circumstances was willing to take a different approach to non intervention in an African country's internal affairs. There have been a number of other examples of that subsequently. I think Josh is correct that the big change came in 2011 when 36,000 Chinese nationals had to be evacuated on very short notice from Libya when the government of Libya fell and the Chinese community was at risk in the country. And China not only had no idea how many nationals it had there, but it was really struggling with how do you evacuate 36,000 people on very short notice? Well, they ultimately did so, but ever since then it's been a real wake up call. And they've been looking at all kinds of ways to protect their interests throughout Africa. And there have been any number of incidents since then where they have had to either evacuate nationals or protect them in some fashion. You had evacuation from Ethiopia, you had where? From Tigray region, Ethiopia, from South Sudan, across the Red Sea in Yemen and several other smaller cases in West Africa of evacuations. And China has had to come up with new ways of protecting its own people and its own interests on the continent. And it's continuing to grapple with this and find ways to do it, such as using private security companies, some Chinese, some Non Chinese. The problem with the Chinese companies is that they're not permitted to carry guns. And if you are a Chinese security company and you're using a baton against someone with an AK47, you're at a great disadvantage. So they have to find other means in order to be more forceful to protect their own communities.
- [69:48]
B
Yeah. So talking about private security companies, because this is another theme that sort of was emphasized in this chapter. Can you help us understand to the extent these companies are private and probably how they differ from other Western security companies operating in Africa?
- [70:07]
A
Well, the big difference is the one I just mentioned, and that is that the Chinese companies do not allow their personnel to carry arms. So they get around that by subcontracting other groups, maybe an African group that is permitted to carry arms in that particular country and work with them, they supervise them. In effect, sometimes they actually hire on an after hours basis African security personnel to help protect Chinese companies on the continent or Chinese groups of Chinese nationals. And these individuals would also be permitted to bear arms on another, on other occasions they have contracted with Western companies that are willing to work with personnel who carry arms and employ them. So there are all different kinds of techniques for dealing with this. The only exception I know of where China has allowed its security companies to carry arms are on board some of the ships that were combating piracy in the Gulf of Aden in the Red Sea. And a few of these onboard groups were Chinese. They did carry arms and they were able to help fend off Somali pirates.
- [71:26]
B
Professor Aseman, I know we've talked about so much about the implications for China, but does this have any implication for Africa? Private security companies from the Chinese part, does it have any implication for Africa?
- [71:43]
C
I think Ambassador Shin might be in a better position to answer that since, you know, I think he's, he's certainly the Africanist between us, so maybe I could kick that one.
- [71:53]
A
But yeah, they, they do have implications. So far the, the implications have not been particularly troublesome in that the China has not taken a terribly forceful approach to how they use these companies in Africa. Now there have been a few instances where the Chinese nationals who may have had nothing whatsoever to do with the government of China were found having been armed illegally and were disarmed by African governments. I believe this was in Zambia, if I'm not mistaken, and had to be dealt with on an individual basis. So there have been a couple of cases where a problem has arisen as a result of the use of Chinese security personnel, but those are exceptions to the rule and otherwise China has managed to work out ways to deal with this so that it hasn't really irritated, as far as I know, the African governments. In the case of South Africa, there's actually been a collaborative relationship between these organizations and the South African government where they have worked very closely together. And China has funded training and funded equipment for, for South African groups that have been charged to helping to protect the Chinese community in South Africa with a certain amount of Chinese management. So it's been quite a collaborative relationship. But I think the South African example is unique.
- [73:27]
B
Chapter nine, I'm going to take it very fast, highlighted the increasing involvement of China in African waters, something Professor Asiman mentioned earlier. So we see increasing port calls, the establishment of bays in Djibouti, financing and construction of African ports, and frequent Chinese fishing vessels in African water. Now, the issue on this topic is that in 2017, when China established the base in Djibouti, there was a, there were backlashes. But China justified this establishment of overseas military base for the sake of piracy. It cited piracy against Chinese companies and Chinese interest both. But there was also this prediction about China using this as a pretest for more overseeing military bases in Africa. The prediction was that China would, you know, establish more basis. So two years after this book has been published, where are things? Have there been any signs that China is developed, constructing a base, another military base in Africa?
- [74:43]
A
Professor SIMON yeah, I follow this pretty closely and let me just back up for a moment on the issue of the Djibouti base. China, as you say, did express its interest in having a base in Djibouti for the purpose of supporting its anti piracy task force that it was sending on a routine basis every three or four months, two frigates and a supply ship to the Gulf of Aden, which it continues to send up to the present day. There has been no interruption in, in that effort. So in that sense, China's being quite accurate that that was the rationale behind establishing the base in Djibouti. But the fact is that Somali piracy pretty much came to an end about eight years ago. There have been a couple of small incidents involving Somali pirates since then, but it's really not been a significant issue. Nevertheless, these PLA Navy task forces continue to go to Djibouti with regular, on a regular schedule. Now that's because the base serves other purposes other than just trying to combat Somali piracy, as minimal as that problem is today. In the meantime, you've had the, the problem of the Houthi attacks on the Red Sea. Although China has worked out a deal with the Houthis, where you don't attack Chinese ships, they're to be left alone, and they have been left alone for the most part in the Red Sea. So that's not really the explanation for continuing this either. It clearly is an effort by China to expand its global naval power and it would suggest that at some point in the future there will be a desire to go beyond Djibouti. Now already China has, has become far more active and allegedly has a military facility in Cambodia. Nothing to do with Africa, but nevertheless it's part of this, this sort of northern Indian Ocean effort by China to establish a stronger presence throughout the Indian Ocean. There have been efforts in Sri Lanka to have a more permanent facility there. That has not happened yet, unlike Cambodia. So you're seeing evidence of increased desire and activity for Chinese presence, military presence in some of these northern Indian Ocean areas. We have not seen that anywhere else in Africa yet and we may not see it for some period of time simply because China can deal with its naval access issues by having access to so many African ports which will allow PLA Navy vessels to enter, that there's no immediate need to have a full fledged military base which is one, expensive and two, is very visible and creates some publicity issues that China would prefer to avoid for as long as it can. So I think you're going to have pressure at some point in the future to expand this, but we haven't seen it yet in Africa.
- [78:00]
B
Yes, please. Professor Selman.
- [78:02]
C
Yeah, there's one point I can add here. Just because I've been working on these memos, editing this memo on fisheries and the efforts of Chinese fishing trawlers. And so maybe I'll add a bit of that because I think that goes to a point you mentioned earlier, which is the issue of agency, because I think it's in here we can really see that there's quite a lack of agency, which is to say that Chinese fishing trawlers operate with impunity within the eezs of African nations along the West African coast. And that impunity, that act, that, that willingness to fish African fishing waters without the proper permits, without the proper approvals or through corruption really underscores this asymmetry, which is something we discuss us discuss quite a lot in the book. But you know, there is a long term detrimental implication to this for countries and communities who make their living and their livelihoods off of these waters. And so whether it be ballast waters that have invasive species that they release or the trawling which destroys not only the current Community of fish, but also the eggs and the smaller fish, the catching of smaller fish and the reselling of those fish. The use of dynamite was also a problem in fishing. I didn't realize how big a problem that was until I got into it. But I think all of this really suggests that African nations and in the briefs we argue that ECOWAS should form the basis of the collaboration in the West African region. But unfortunately it's hard to be optimistic because China just built ECOWAS's new headquarters. So China is here literally trying to influence the regional body, who we would hope would be the regional organizer, who would be able to crack down on these vessels, create databases of bad actors, identify those who have done wrong, and at least spread that word across the West African region so that if somebody is doing illegal fishing off the coast of one country, they can't just be chased to another and continue their. Their bad practices. So Ambassador Shin did obviously a great job talking about the military component, but I'm increasingly coming to understand that these fishing fleets, which by the way, I would add, we also see off the coast of Latin American countries. So this is not an Africa specific problem per se, but I would say that the way Africans are able to deal with it is going to be able to inform the way other regions are able to or deal with it or not deal with it. So I want to make sure that, you know, that that also gets, you know, tension.
- [80:49]
B
Another topic is technology and information security. China leverages technology to expand its influence in Africa, focusing on information technology, artificial intelligence and cyber security. Professor Shin I. Africans. A lot of Africans will argue about this and say that it's for the benefit of Africa, it is cheap, it provides some of the developments Africans desire. But you also highlighted how this also sort of abuses have a tendency of being used as a tool for abuse, individual rights and rights of dissent. So in your view, where should the balance be struck between development, cost of development, individual privacy and other human rights considerations in Africa?
- [81:52]
A
This is a real dilemma, I think, for most African countries in that companies like Huawei and ZTE do offer a good product at low cost. You can't deny that maybe it's not the best product in the world, but it's perfectly good and it clearly is at lower cost than what they would get from Nokia or Siemens or some Western company. And no American company is really even engaged in this area in Africa at the present time. So this is a dilemma for the Africa. If you're an African government, you're trying to meet a budget, you're trying to improve your information program upgrade, you're probably going to turn to China, as most of them have already done, and Huawei and ZTE and a whole lot of smaller Chinese companies have been extremely active in Africa on the smartphone market, for example. They pretty much dominate the entire market Africa today. China has approached this very smartly. I, I've got to give them credit for how they've gone about this. They, they are clearly the front runners in all of Africa for information technology. They're starting to lead in artificial intelligence, quantum computing, some of these other more advanced fields. But they've, they've gotten way out in front on this ahead of, of Western companies or Western governments. The, the dilemma for the African is where, what is the dividing line? And if you are an authoritarian African government, you probably don't see the dividing line. You're more than happy to work with the sort of authoritarian concepts that you find in Chinese information management and apply them to your own country. So it's almost a match made in heaven when it comes to the, the more authoritarian governments. If you're a more democratic government, then you have a dilemma. Then the question becomes what, what should we be doing with our surveillance capability? Is it to just stop crime and improve parking for people in downtown Lusaka, or is it, is it to try to track down our enemies and our political opponents? And this is where the rubber meets the road and you really get into some difficult issues and each African government's going to have to make a decision on that as to how democratic they want their information programs to be, particularly if they're buying into Chinese companies that are supplying this and supplying training and supplying a certain amount of ideology that goes along with it.
- [84:45]
B
I have two more questions and that will be the final one for Professor Sheen and one for Professor Acelman. African leaders have long criticized its relationship with the west, including the United States, and most of them term it as being paternalistic, a situation where the Western countries pose itself as teachers lecturing Africa. But in all the details provided in this book, it also seems that China is a teacher. Why Africa is the learner. But I am curious, why does African leaders appear to be okay being learners when it comes to its engagement with China, but increasingly refusing such teachability posture when it comes to the West? Professor SIMON well, I can give you.
- [85:38]
C
My best interpretation, but again, I want to stress that Ambassador Shin is the Africanist between us and so he could speak more to, you know, some aspects of this. I think one particularly African reactions. But maybe it's the way in which China goes about what it's doing. China likes to use terminology, Win, win, cooperation, egalitarian. Right. They have a good propaganda line that is very much nested into, you know, the. What Africans want to hear. Right. They're very much couching these lessons in terms of, we were once where you were, we can help you to improve the way we did. Right. Whereas the west, as you say, often comes with perhaps a more paternalistic line. But for China, it seems, well, one, they're not trying to. Or at least their claim, they're not judging political systems. Right. As Ambassador Shin said, they're more than happy to work with any political system as long as that political system is going to work with them and, and going to serve their interests and build the relations with them. So for China, I think that it's, you know, they can say, we were once a student, right. We once, you know, had to develop, and now we've gotten some lessons that we can now share, and we want to do that in a way which is respectful of your national conditions. So I think one reason that Africans are more able to listen is because of the way China says, teach, teaches its lessons. I think another way is because China pays a lot of attention to hierarchy. So if you are the foreign minister of an African country who goes to China, you're almost certainly going to meet the foreign minister. And so the Chinese are very good at meeting people at the right level, hosting in the. Showing this kind of respect to the African guests, treating them with a certain level of appreciation that maybe they don't feel that they get in Western capitals. If the foreign minister of Benin shows up in Washington, I don't know if Marco Rubio is going to meet him. So I think that there's China's willingness. Perhaps the best example of this is every year, the very first trip the Chinese foreign minister makes is to an African country for over 30 years now. It's a signal that they're sending, Right. And in a continent which has been disrespected, which has faced marginalization, which has faced colonialization, I think these kinds of gestures are actually quite important, and they kind of underscore a relationship which then can be used so that China can say, well, we have this on offer. You know, we're not forcing it, but you're welcome to learn from it if you want. Meanwhile, you know, I'm a liberal, so, you know, I think liberalism is good, but if you're not a liberal and the west says, well, you must take our liberalism because it's the right way and your way is the wrong way. It can sound paternalistic. And we heard that from certain African governments. So African governments are very happy to hear from those people who are not trying to push them into liberalism or into something, but instead trying to offer them something that they believe can help to serve their interests. You were talking a moment ago about the surveillance technology, about different training and other things that China's been offering. China is also paying for these things. Right. So I was at, as I said, the forum on think tank and Global south think tank and media. I was the only one who paid my own ticket. Right. So yes, if the, if the African side is going to be hosted in China by the Chinese side gratis, that's another important indicator. Right. Who wouldn't want to go on one of those trips to see China? So I think that there's a variety of reasons. We can think about why Chinese lessons, if you will, are being more accepted by African governments. But these are a few that come to mind. Of course, Ambassador Shin may like to add some to the list.
- [89:52]
A
I would certainly agree with that. I would underscore that China really has done a brilliant job of taking maximum advantage of some of these slogans that it has developed over the years, like win, win or the shared community for, for mankind. These kinds of things are, I mean, how can you really argue with them? Whether they are really very meaningful or not is beside the point. They really, they sound nice and, and you find the Africans constantly repeating them. So they, they obviously have caught on there. The US Just doesn't do that nor, nor do other Western countries. A couple of points that I would add on sort of the US Side that make it more difficult for the US and we talked about this earlier and that is the, the background of Western colonialism in Africa makes it, it sort of gets the US off to a difficult start with the, the African governments, even though I would argue the US Is not a colonial power in Africa, has been long associated with colonial powers in Africa. And that that continued even through the, the early days of African liberation when the US was supporting its NATO allies and Portugal, the United Kingdom or France in its various contests to try to maintain power in Africa. And that created obviously some real problems for the United States as time went forward. The other issue that the US has faced over the years, and we've talked about this earlier too, and that is the constant lecturing that we do to vis a vis our African counterparts and African governments that almost be hectoring in some cases. Well, we're really pretty good at lecturing and hectoring. Well, no one likes to be hectored or lectured. It's just natural that you react negatively to that. Now, there may be good reason why we're doing the lecturing, but that's beside the point. The fact that you're doing it is just not liked, and that's going to be held against you by the government that you're interacting with. So these are issues that the US has to grapple with on its side.
- [92:23]
B
All right, thank you, Professor Sheen. I want to this is my final question, and Professor Essayman can dive in as well. So where does this leave the African and the United States relationship? Because I guess there is also something for the United States in Africa. But what is the implication of all these for African American, US and the Western relationship? But let's focus on the United States.
- [92:52]
A
Well, I break that down into two parts, the government to government component of the relationship on the one hand, and the civil society relations on the other. I think on the government side, as I alluded to earlier, we may be in for some difficult months and years ahead in terms of our interaction with African governments, because I'm just not sure I see that much interest taking place in the American government in terms of its interaction with African governments. The, the suggestion that what the US Is doing on the continent can be backfilled through trade and investment, in my view, is just not realistic. Trade takes place when you've got things you want to buy from each other. And if you're going to throw tariffs into the equation and make it even more difficult to buy what relatively few things the US Wants to buy from Africa, you've got a real problem. And there isn't that much that the US Is selling to Africa, although the, the African continent does have a small trade surplus with the United States, unlike its huge trade deficit now with China. So in that sense, you could argue that the US Position is more favorable to Africa than the China position, but I just don't see trade making up the difference. And likewise, I'm not sure that I see investment, American foreign direct investment, filling the void either. You have to get American companies that are willing to make decisions in their company to put a lot of money into various African enterprises. And I hope that that increases. I think there will be a modest increase, but I don't see it making up the difference of what USAID was doing or certain other American activities were doing in the continent. So I see some hard times ahead for the US Africa relationship. And then, of course, we don't know what's going to happen at the high level, people to the people level. Is there going to be another meeting in Washington of African heads of state? I have no idea. There was supposed to have been a major meeting at the United nations this fall. Never happened. It was announced earlier this summer and then never happened. I mean this is not getting us off to a good start.
- [95:24]
C
Maybe I could finish up by just answering a little bit of a different question because I think Ambassador Shin did a great job with the US Africa question, which is the China Africa question. Right. What's going to happen there? And I'd say I'm probably not as optimistic as I might have been two years ago only because having recently been to China, I do think the economy in China is suffering and I don't, and, and I, and so I don't know that China has the kind of capacity that it did in the past to continue to grow the relationship with Africa at the pace of that it had been growing whether in terms of trade, investment, people to people, almost on every level. China Africa relations had grown at like exponential rates over the last 20 years. And I think that set a kind of expectation and I heard this at the forum I attended where Africans participants were suggesting they were expecting China to fill the shoes of a retreating US that Ambassador Shin had referred to several times now. But can China actually fill those shoes I think is a big question mark in part because it doesn't do some of the things that the United States does, it does different things, but also a matter of capacity. I mean China's got a declining population, the GDP growth is just not what it once was and it's got deflationary pressures in its own country. So it's facing a lot of headwinds. And so there is a question in my mind about whether China Africa relationship can be as heady as they were in the next decade, as they were in the last decade. And so I would suggest that we should not expect high growth rates in China Africa trade to continue. I just don't expect it to happen. I mean maybe it'll happen, maybe I'll be wrong. I would not expect if I'm an African government, large amounts of loans coming in from China the way they may have come in a decade ago. I don't think the Belt and Road is going to be what it once was and I don't think anything is going to replace it. So I just, I think that there's a set of expectations over the last 20 years that people have begun to be, has been normalized. And I do think over the next decade we're going to see a slow air. It's not going to necessarily retreat, but it'll be slower. But what we may see, which is what Ambassador Shin and I did the book on, is more in the realm of the politics and in terms of the security. I think in the political and security relationship, we're going to see China continue to develop those relations, whether it be launching satellites for Nigeria or you know, a base on the west coast of Africa which may or may not come to pass, or more port calls or piracy. I think we're, that's, that's here to stay and so is the party to party stuff. So, you know, I think that the relationship is going to grow in some aspects and not in some others. But as Ambassador Shin says, that doesn't mean it's not a zero sum game. I think it's important and Afro Barometer research shows this as well, that it's not that most people either like the US or they like China. They tend to either like both countries or like neither country. And I think that kind of more nativist versus internationalist view is actually more indicative of what most people tend to see rather than the zero sum game that we often hear discussed in Washington and Beijing.
- [98:47]
B
Well, thank you, Professor Shin and Professor I Selman, for this wonderful conversation. I really enjoyed it and I hope our audience would also find it interesting. So thank you so much.