{"id":42176,"date":"2022-12-05T09:21:46","date_gmt":"2022-12-05T14:21:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.geopoliticalmonitor.com\/?p=42176"},"modified":"2022-12-05T09:25:05","modified_gmt":"2022-12-05T14:25:05","slug":"china-africa-relations-in-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.geopoliticalmonitor.com\/china-africa-relations-in-review\/","title":{"rendered":"China-Africa Relations in Review"},"content":{"rendered":"
\u201cChina did this,\u201d \u201cthe Chinese did that.\u201d There is an essentialization of China and Chinese actors that hinders our understanding of China-Africa relations \u2013 whether to praise or demonize them \u2013 as it lumps a multiplicity of approaches, as well as actors, into a fantasized strategy. Hence, the need to use the plural to talk about these Chinese presences in Africa.<\/p>\n
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Chinese Actors in Africa<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n To begin with, there are institutional actors who may clash within the embassies themselves. There are divergences between officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who subordinate the commercial to the political, and those from the Ministry of Trade who, conversely, subordinate the political to the commercial. This disagreement was particularly sensitive after the institutional reform of 2003 which, in fact, granted a certain pre-eminence to the Ministry of Trade over that of Foreign Affairs. This rivalry between the commercial and the political is also reflected in the relationship between officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the ExIm Bank of China, which is under the Ministry of Finance: the former encourages the granting of loans at subsidized rates, while the latter prefers to grant loans at commercial rates. These frictions in Africa can be expressed through political confrontation \u2013\u00a0and thus opposing strategies\u00a0\u2013 at the central government level in China. These institutional disputes may become even more important as the National Development and Reform Commission depends on piecemeal information from institutional actors, or even the inevitably biased information provided by recipient companies.<\/p>\n Chinese companies and their strategies, which are as diverse as they are varied, depend as much on their status as on their search for markets, without us being able to reduce them to the observation of a grand plan, except for a certain desire to internationalize (zhouchuqu<\/em>) as encouraged by the Chinese government. It should be noted that this internationalization does not automatically make these companies multinationals or globalized companies insofar as the turnover they achieve abroad remains marginal in their total turnover. Among the large state-owned enterprises under the direct supervision of the central government, a distinction can be made between those that are effectively mandated by the Chinese government to guarantee the supply of raw materials and those that are market-seeking, such as the large construction companies that have no other objective than to make profits. Then there are the provincial state-owned enterprises whose primary loyalty is to local governments, which strengthen their power through the profits they make.<\/p>\n There are also large private or supposedly private companies such as Huawei which, in the early 2000s, opposed the Chinese government’s desire to impose purely Chinese telephone standards for the sale of telephone equipment abroad. Certainly, in the current situation, marked by the Sino-American economic war and the intransigent authoritarianism of the Chinese Communist Party, it is not certain that companies like Huawei can still enjoy such great decision-making autonomy, as shown by the recent setbacks of Jack Ma (former CEO and founder of Alibaba). Private SMEs are potentially free electrons. Think of the Haite company, which had a project to set up a special economic zone in Tangiers, but which, despite the initial support of the Banque marocaine du commerce ext\u00e9rieur (future Bank of Africa), failed to receive the support of Beijing.<\/p>\n The Chinese authorities put the number of Chinese companies active in Africa at between three and four thousand. The difference with the number stated by the 2017 McKinsey report (10,000 Chinese companies in Africa) results from a confusion. The companies mentioned above are Chinese companies (or their subsidiaries) under Chinese law \u2013\u00a0and therefore incorporated in China\u00a0\u2013 whereas the McKinsey report also includes small private companies under local African law (and therefore legally and statistically non-Chinese) run by Chinese nationals whose allegiance to Beijing may be inversely proportional to the autonomy they enjoy.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n China-Africa Economic Relations in Review<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Analysis of Chinese statistical data, as well as that of international institutions, clearly shows that Chinese companies in Africa do not act specifically as investors, contrary to the oft-repeated clich\u00e9. They act as service providers, customers and suppliers of goods. The amount of these commercial activities (services and goods) is on average 80 times higher than the amount actually invested in Africa. For instance, in 2019, the amount of Chinese direct investment in Africa was $2.7 billion, which is roughly the value of Dong Feng’s stake in the French car manufacturer Peugeot (PSA): that is, the same amount for, on the one hand, a single Chinese company investing in a single foreign company, and on the other hand, a significant number of Chinese companies investing in the 54 African countries.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n