The Great Dragon: Africa’s great hope for development or simply profiteers?

May or may not Africa be viewed as an economic springboard for China’s forecasted rise to geo-political dominance? For its last event of the season, Maastricht Debates on May 20 decided to take a closer look at “The China’s strategy in international relations and trade”. Professor David Zweig director of the Center on China’s Transnational Relations in Hong Kong, and Mr Yang Guang, a research professor at the Institute of West Asian and African Studies in Beijing, were invited to expose their views on China’s booming economic development and more specifically the implications for Africa of the Great Dragon’s growing need for energy supplies.

The debate was moderated by Meine Pieter van Dijk, a professor at the Maastricht School of Management (MSM), and a large group of African students from the school were also in attendance.

“This is not China’s century”
Any misconceptions about the belief held by many that China will soon surpass the United States as the globally dominant superpower were quickly cast aside by Professor Zweig: “This is not China’s century”, he stated. “China is growing within an international system still characterized by the United States’ hegemony.”

In fact, said Zweig, “there are many that want the US to attack China in the next twenty years for the purported threat that it poses to the US as it rapidly develops,” He placed the US within a distinct “Realist” sociological perspective, which he characterized with the motto: “To hell with the challengers!”

In Zweig’s opinion, China falls more in line with the “Constructivist” approach.

Constructivism is infinitely more pacifist in its application, as it seeks “to manage conflict and avoid war,” and this is the course that Zweig believes China has been vehemently attempting to follow.

Having had to rely on energy importation since 1993, China is now seeking full energy independence, explained Zweig. To achieve this, it is doing three things: going outwards in search of sustainable energy sources, securing long term contracts with those sources, and protecting its sea lanes with a larger navy which can operate beyond shallow coastal waters.

Are these to be viewed as foreboding hints at growing militarism? Zweig didn’t comment. .

The risk for territorial and international conflict that increased investment in the military might incur was reflected by the results of opinion polls taken among Chinese students. Sixty-eight percent of the students polled view their homeland as likely to engage in armed conflict but still, a not insignificant 41.4 percent want China to continue to pursue alternative energy sources.

Zweig identified Europe as a guarantor for conflict avoidance with China but didn’t outline how it may assist in this endeavor in more detail. It was strange that nobody requested further clarification during the question round, as this was the only time Europe was mentioned in a positive light throughout the evening.

A “mutually beneficial” partnership?
Instead of discussing China’s new role in the world at all, as Zweig had done, Professor Yang Guang started off with a brief history of Chinese-African relations, which he said began as early as the eighth century and were characterized by peaceful communication and cooperation. Guang gave examples of mutual assistance, such as China’s help in completing the Tanzania-Zambia railway project, and Africa’s easing China into ending its isolationist existence.

“Unfortunately this mutually beneficial relationship was disrupted by imperialist western powers in the 16th century”, observed Guang. Considering the setting of the debate, Guang’s trumpeting of the great “mutually beneficial” relationship between the Chinese and Africans that was ruined by the marauding Westerners sounded to this writer like a cheap shot.

Looking at the 1980’s Guang said that a “distinct change” took place in the Sino-African relationship, as simple “peaceful communication” was replaced by a greater need for economic cooperation. The focus on China’s desire for energy independence was a reiteration of the points made earlier by Professor Zweig.

Refreshingly, Guang did not deny that China has reaped enormous financial gains from its energy dealings with Africa, but he did not hold that tone. He believes in fact that China is keeping many impoverished African economies afloat by importing their oil: “China has contributed to the growth of oil exporting countries,” he claimed.

Guang backed up that statement by displaying the growth rate of the African continent in 2007: 5.4 percent in total, and more significantly 15.9 percent in Angola and 12.8 percent in Sudan.

This type of cold and inflexible statistics characterized the rest of Guang’s exposé, as it sounded dry, over-prepared, overly positive and unbalanced. In fact, the speaker’s praise of economic progress at Chinese hands in Angola and Sudan felt disturbing, since both countries’ long history of being wracked by civil conflict makes their relationship with China most suspect as to who is truly benefiting from it.

Guang elaborated on the industrialization of Sudan, specifically in the completion of an oil refinery seventy kilometers outside of the capital Khartoum, run by the Chinese oil company CMPC.

By showing a photograph of the refinery the Chinese professor attempted to emphasize that the refinery both benefits the Sudanese economy and respects its culture.

Cattle could be seen grazing in the foreground of the photo while an artificial lake, visible behind the cattle and in front of the refinery (which once served as toxic waste storage) “is now inhabited by fish of many sorts.”

Brave questions and disappointing answers
After Guang’s concluding remarks, the floor was opened to questions from the audience. The African students from the Maastricht School of Management, who perhaps felt that they had the strongest connection to the topic, were the most enthusiastic in gaining clarity of the speakers’ points.

Incidentally, it was a pity that no similar contingent of Chinese students, or any other sense of diversity was displayed in the audience.

An African member of the audience asked about to the neo-imperialist slant of China’s interest in Africa as, “today in Africa there is a Chinese delegation visiting every day, the same as [the] European explorers.”

Guang was quick to rebut the point by saying that unlike the Europeans of old, “China takes the sensitivity of Africa’s domestic markets into account when deciding upon the extent of its investment and its profit margins.”

A European Studies student asked something that was on the tips of everyone’s tongue. “In exchange for oil China delivers huge amounts of weapons to Sudan. Is this policy maintained because China wants to keep a good relationship with its allies regardless of what is done with the weapons?” Guang replied that government armies in Sudan use Chinese weapons, but that their origin is unknown to China. That was an answer that seemed like an uncritical response to a responsible and necessary question about the fate of an African nation that has been wracked by genocidal warfare for over a decade.

Furthermore, by this answer Mr. Guang gives further credence to the argument that China is assisting in the perpetuation of genocide in Sudan. Indeed many believe that by using its veto power at the UN Security Council to block UN sanctions against Sudan, China wants in fact to guarantee the continued shipping of oil from the Sudan’s Chinese-built refineries.

Guang’s answer sadly characterized the answers to all of the questions asked of both speakers, as there was a clear disregard by both Zweig and Guang for open discussion and further explanation beyond the points they had conveyed during their earlier presentations. Many in the audience seemed disappointed as they had put much thought into their – quite extensive – questions, and they did not receive a proportionate response for their queries.

It was obvious throughout the evening that the tardy start of the debate – due to both the audience and the moderator’s late arrival - affected the tone and cogency of the presentations. The speakers made frequent mention to their lack of time and rushed through many points that, in this writer’s opinion, handicapped the audience’s full understanding of the deeply complex nature of some of the points discussed.

The starkest difference between Zweig and Guang was the tone of their talk: the animation and humor dispensed so liberally by Zweig were completely absent from Guang’s speech, and indeed we had the feeling that we were being read a text prepared and approved by the Chinese Government’s public affairs office rather than an insightful and critical take on China’s role in the world and in Africa.

There was no real argumentation between the speakers, and in the case of debates organized by Maastricht Debates this seems to be a recurrent issue, as the same lack of true divergence of opinion similarly affected a debate a year ago about Israel and Palestine.

The best aspect of the evening had to be the cogent and brave questions asked by the audience, and it was more the pity that the answers to their questions were not equal in honesty. In the end, this debate served as a forecast, not of a shift in the global balance of power, but of a new reality where one more player is staking its claim to Africa’s “benefit.”

By Eliot Rolen

Eliot Rolen is an American expatriate living in Maastricht and a regular freelance contributor to Crossroads.

Further information:
Presentations by David Zweig and Yang Guarg at the Clingendael Institute