Focac summit will mark a major shift in China-Africa relations

And there are signs that this sixth meeting of the 15-year-old Focac – and the first at summit level in Africa – will indeed mark a qualitative shift in relations between China and Africa.

Focac has been the institutional vehicle of those relations, politically, economically, culturally and otherwise.

As Wang pointed out at the Lanting Forum in Johannesburg last week, last year trade between Africa and China topped 220 billion US dollars, 22 times higher than where it stood in 2000 when Focac was launched.

It accounted for 20.5% of Africa’s total foreign trade, up from 3.82% in 2000. China’s investment stock in Africa now exceeds 30 billion US dollars, 60 times more than it was in 2000.

There are more than 3,000 Chinese enterprises doing business in Africa, Wang said. In 2014, more than 3.6 million mutual visits were made between China and Africa.

Of course much of that trade and investment would have happened without Focac. The first 15 years of Focac coincided with an immense surge in Chinese imports of African commodities to fuel its gigantic manufacturing machine. That helped boost African economic growth to an average of about five percent a year in the 21st century.

But perhaps the closer relationship with China forged through Focac persuaded China to buy African rather than other commodities.

Focac has also played an important role in channelling the demands of the African side about the need for China to help change the unbalanced economic relationship.

That had been – and largely remains – one where China mainly imports vast quantities of African commodities and mainly exports vast quantities of manufactured goods to Africa.

That has created large trade surpluses for China with most African countries. It has also prompted some criticism that China’s economic relations with Africa were exploitative and neo-colonial – in fact even more so than Africa’s relations with its former colonial masters, which now often include a greater proportion of value-added exports compared to Africa’s exports to China.

And so, as Ghulam Asmal, director of Nepad and international partnerships in the Department of International Relations and Cooperation, said at a recent briefing on Focac: “The most challenging aspect of the relationship for Africa was to convince our Chinese partners to create more industrial capacity on the continent, to have more beneficiation, and to make this a development relationship rather than one which is extractive of natural resources.”

Asmal acknowledged that the relationship had already been beneficial to African economies. As Wang said, China had built or was still building 5,675 kilometres of railway and 4,507 kilometres of roads in Africa, and had built more than 200 schools in Africa, and provided more than 7,000 government scholarships to Africans.

Added to that, Asmal said there had already been some Chinese investment in beneficiation, particularly in Ethiopia. But more needed to be done.

Chris Alden and Yu-shan Wu of the SA Institute of International Affairs noted, in an article in The Star last year, that the joint agreement between the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) and China’s Hebei Iron and Steel Group to open a steel mill in Phalaborwa, was an important sign of a possible shift in the nature of commerce between South Africa and China.

This project would boost manufacture and create jobs in South Africa instead of just exporting raw iron ore.

Wang’s speech to the Lanting Forum indicated that the first Focac summit in Africa, which is being held in South Africa on 4 and 5 December 2015, would mark a significant shift towards the more balanced and equal economic relationship.

Asmal said:”Through initiating a series of major cooperation schemes in industrial and production capacity relocation, infrastructure development, human resources development, investment and trade facilitation, green development, financial services as well as peace and security, we will upgrade our practical cooperation, with focus shifting from general trade to production capacity cooperation, from project contracting to investment-based operation, and from government assistance to independent development, so as to achieve common development and prosperity.”

Wang said China’s shift in focus would address Africa’s two most urgent tasks, accelerating industrialisation and agricultural modernisation.

“We will support Africa to remove two major bottlenecks, namely, backward infrastructure and inadequate professional and skilled personnel. We will focus on helping African countries build three major systems of industrialisation, food security, as well as public health and disease prevention and control, to resolve three major issues of employment, food supply and health of the African people,” said Wang.

And official sources are saying that President Xi Jinping will indeed announce this week a very substantial amount of new Chinese investment in Africa and other assistance to the continent.

To those who might be alarmed at the slowdown of the Chinese economy, Wang gave the assurance that China still expected to import over 10 trillion US dollars worth of goods, invest over 500 billion US dollars overseas, and see more than 500 million Chinese tourists travel abroad over the next five years.

Focac is not only about economic relations, though. Through it, Africa has persuaded China – traditionally very non-interventionist – to increase its contribution to African peacekeeping efforts.

Wang boasted in his speech that “China has sent more peacekeepers to Africa than the other four permanent members of the Security Council. China has taken part in 16 peacekeeping operations in Africa, and sent a total of nearly 30,000 peacekeepers”.

The Chinese navy has been providing escorts for merchant shipping since 2009 to guard against pirates in the Gulf of Aden and off the waters of Somalia.

This year President Xi announced US$ 100 million of free Chinese military aid to the AU to support the building of the African Standby Force and the African Capacity for Immediate Response to Crisis, which are tasked with maintaining stability on the continent. China has also, for the first time, contributed a full battalion of troops to a UN peacekeeping mission, sending 700 soldiers to join the UNMISS operation in South Sudan.

It is also true, though, that China has a large national interest in South Sudan through its heavy investment in oil extraction, which needs protection.

Beijing has also been criticised for selling arms to the South Sudanese government, thereby implicitly taking sides in the civil war there.

Wang said that China would strengthen cooperation with Africa in fighting terrorism and extremism.

He ended his speech intriguingly, saying China was ready to work with all parties to advance Africa’s peace and development.

Some observers see competition among China and other world powers, such as the US, for African resources and African support. Wang’s proposal of cooperation among these powers in helping Africa should instead be actively taken up. - ANA