China, the New Neo-Imperialist Power

China, The New Neo-Imperialist Power in Africa

Perhaps the most obvious sign of China's growing influence in Africa was its so-called "Year of Africa" in 2006, but even this ostentatious display of neo-imperial influence only serves to obscure the true extent of China's interests in the region or its rising power directed at protecting those interests. Like so many contemporary geopolitical developments, China's interest in Africa can be boiled down to oil, but the attendant economic and diplomatic actions China takes to secure this oil bring with them additional factors which complicate the relationship between China and various African countries. Thus, in order to understand just how much China has become the new neo-imperialist power in Africa, it is necessary to consider China's past history with the region as well as the more recent developments which can shed a light on China's plans for the future of Africa, which include nothing short of a fundamental reimagining of the geographies of power on the planet Earth.

As mentioned before, China held what it dubbed the "Year of Africa" in 2006, "which climaxed in November 2006 when 48 delegations of African political and business leaders attended the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in Beijing" (Vines 2007). This forum is as good a point as any to begin a study of China's ascendancy on the African continent, because it represents the fruition of a long-term strategy of diplomacy and investment and offers

"therefore a unique occasion to review how China views its now accepted status as a major player in Africa," despite the fact that "China's growing engagement with Africa has gone little noticed in the West" (King 2006, Alden 2006). It will be useful to examine King's observations in greater detail as a means of understanding the current relationship between China and Africa before moving on to a discussion of how that relationship came to be, because while "in the wake of China's Year of Africa in 2006, China -- Africa relations are currently the subject of unprecedented attention [but] although those relations are widely covered they are also under-researched" (Large 2008).

Thus, only by considering the entirety of China's relations with Africa will one be able to avoid "emotively [describing] China's rise in Africa in terms of a monolithic Chinese dragon in an unvariegated African bush stripped of historical and political content" (Large 2008). In fact, one look at the current China-Africa relationship reveals that this Westernized conception of the outsider making its way through confusing or hostile territory is patently false, because although China is undoubtedly the preeminent neo-imperial power in Africa, it has cemented itself in this role in a fundamentally different way than those European and American endeavors in earlier decades and centuries.

The most important thing to consider about the relationship between China and Africa is the fact that both sides frame it as a mutually beneficial, cooperative, "holistic partnership" (King 2006). By this King means that the relationship between China and Africa is based on cooperation and two-way influence on a variety of issues, and most importantly, by "China not presenting itself primarily as an aid donor, whether bilateral or multilateral," but rather "as a friendly developing country (with much historical experience of external oppression) helping other developing countries, to the best of its ability" (King 2006). As King notes, "this is not just semantics but is part of an almost 50-year history of China seeking to avoid the status of donor," because in doing so China precludes itself from being associated with any of the earlier imperialist powers of Europe and the United States, which have gradually transitioned from imperialism and overt oppression to less effective but nonetheless common methods of expressing their will through the selective granting of aid and certain developmental requirements.

China has striven to present itself as an alternative to "the seemingly endless and tortuous process of Western donors defining how donors can also be good partners with their recipients, and […] the asymmetrical nature of Western technical assistance and capacity building," instead advocating foreign policies which ensure that:

Cooperation should be based on the principle of equality and of mutual benefit; that it should not be, in other words, the one-way distribution of alms, but mutually beneficial; that it should always respect the sovereignty of the recipient countries, and not impose any conditions on them, or extract any privileges; that such economic cooperation should discourage dependency but rather set countries on a route towards self-reliance, and independent economic development; cooperation projects needed to yield results quickly so that governments could increase their incomes and accumulate capital; when technical assistance was involved, Chinese experts needed to have the same standard of living as the local experts, and to avoid having special amenities (King 2006).

Through the application of these principles throughout China's dealings with Africa, the country has been able to gain a foothold in the region without making it appear to be doing so out of an aggressive self-interest, largely by being able to compare its behavior to the far-more egregiously imperial machinations of Western countries and organizations. In turn, while "much of China's commercial interests are not vastly different from other commercial interests in the continent, […] in contrast to some donor countries and agencies, the Chinese […] do not see Africa as a 'basket case' (viewed only through the prism of 'aid' and 'development'), but as a region of profitable economic possibilities," giving the country a psychological advantage when it comes to wooing African countries and their economies (Mohan & Power 2009). As will be shown, this advantage has meant everything when it comes to the future of Africa, because China has essentially used this relationship to place itself as the literal and figurative center of geopolitics for easily the next century.

Where Western countries have sought to alleviate the damage caused by their explicit imperialistic endeavors with less brutal but nonetheless overtly self-interested aid initiatives, since its inception in the modern world China has approached Africa as an equal, eager to mutually assist in their growth despite the actions of the Western countries. However, as China grew in strength and influence following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the nature of this relationship changed while the ostensible terms of engagement appear largely the same. Thus, while "China's relations with Africa during the twentieth century were geopolitically motivated, as it was a way of opposing the super powers and western hegemony [….] in the 1990s this approach towards Africa became more economically motivated" (Van De Looy & De Haan 2006).

China developed policies of mutual cooperation with Africa "at a point when China's foreign policy was fiercely critical of the bi-polar cold war world, and was seeking to wrest the leadership of the non-aligned nations away from Moscow," but since the end of the Cold War and in light of the imperial decline which has led to the United States' increasingly tenuous claim to the title of "superpower," China has slowly and subtly begun to reap the benefits of its long-term planning and partnerships (King 2006). This shift in priority from one of ostensible equal cooperation to a more neo-imperial, bloodless conquest of the region is due to the fact that "China's discourse about common economic benefit, common political exchange, and common cultural cooperation appears to have been fully accepted by its African partners" to the point that China may begin using Africa as a means of achieving its larger strategic goals, rather than approaching Africa's success as an end in and of itself (King 2006).

China's long history with Africa is part of what has made it so difficult for analysts to accurately parse China's desires for the region, because the country has largely refrained from letting its nationalistic geopolitical goals overshadow the mutually beneficent aspects of the relationship. The most obvious of these nationalistic goals now becoming clearer is "the drive to secure energy resources," but as Alden (2006) notes, while "this certainly captures an important dimension of Chinese interests in the continent, but it would be a mistake to ascribe a single motive to the relationship." Nonetheless, as oil prices continue to rise and new sources becoming harder to extract, securing new energy resources does dominate China's interest in the region, even if it is unnecessarily reductive to claim that this represents the sum total of China's interests (indeed, while Alden's study is crucial for understanding the broad range of China's uses for the continent, he begins by challenging a relatively non-existent problem, because China's over half-century of relations with Africa reveal the relationship to of course be more complex than a simply resource grab). Thus, China finds itself perfectly placed to fulfill its energy needs by developing Africa, because it is "an oil-producing source whose risks and challenges have often caused it to be overlooked economically" is nonetheless a source with which China has ample experience (Hanson 2008). As this fact has led to China's positioning itself as the new neo-imperial power in Africa, it will be useful to examine how China is looking to Africa to fulfill its energy needs as well as its food and export requirements in order to understand the motivations behind this subtle shift in China-Africa relations.

China's massive growth over the last two decades has brought with it a similarly explosive need for energy resources, a need that as of yet cannot be fulfilled by domestic reserves. Thus, China imported 3.5 million barrels of oil per day in 2006, and that number is expected to increase to 13.1 million barrels per day by 2030 (Hanson 2008). Subsequently, "as the world's second-largest consumer of oil, and with only limited national resources, China is attracted to Africa's relatively underexploited petroleum and other natural resources" (Alden 2006). China's efforts in this area have become increasingly overt, to the point that "China's state oil company, China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), has invested heavily in partnership with national petroleum (and natural gas) interests in the Sudan, Angola, Algeria and most recently Gabon." Furthermore, as Alden notes, "China has used a range of other economic instruments -- financial assistance, prestige construction projects and arms sales -- to cement ties with these oil-producing states." As part of this, "Beijing secured a major stake in future oil production [in Angola] in 2004 with a $2 billion package of loans and aid that includes funds for Chinese companies to build railroads, schools, roads, hospitals, bridges, and offices; lay a fiber-optic network; and train Angolan telecommunications workers" (Hanson 2008).

However, China's booming economy has created other needs as well, such that "food security is a growing concern" (Alden 2006). With this is mind, China has invested heavily "in agriculture, ?sheries and related secondary production facilities in Africa," going so far as to have "China's Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Co-operation (MOFTEC) [state] that 'Chinese-invested companies engaged in the production of farm machinery, agricultural processing and small product trading targeted for the world market will find immense business potential [in Africa]'" (Alden 2006). In this way, one may see how China's longtime partnership with Africa has allowed it to segue relatively seamlessly into using the resources and emerging markets offered by Africa as a way to shore up its own strategic interests.

Before concluding this study, it is necessary to examine one more aspect of China's changing relationship with Africa, because it has huge ramifications for global politics following the emergence of this new neo-imperialist power. In short, the geographical ramifications of China's ascendancy represent a fundamental shift for the larger world, because "China presents an emerging challenge to Western political and economic dominance, as its phenomenal economic growth drives increasingly significant diplomatic, investment, trade and aid relations with Southern partners in Asia, Africa and Latin America" (Mawdsley 2007). Not only does China's decision to use the development of Africa for its own domestic ends herald a fundamental shift in the relationship of the two areas, but it also represents a realignment of power across the face of the globe, such that a largely abandoned (by Western countries) continent will become the site of the most important geopolitical machinations for at least the next two decades. In turn, this will bring with it the likelihood for greater conflict, because as Mawdsley notes, "China is accused of undermining efforts to improve transparency and accountability in Africa by financing and supporting authoritarian leaders and states, by supplying arms in conflict situations, by doing business without 'ethical' conditionalities, and by taking advantage of corruption." Furthermore, "the post?9/11 security agenda has included a greater focus on 'failed states', counterterrorism activities and development [so that] compared to the 1990s, these concerns have contributed towards a much higher profile for much of Africa, and it is now firmly back on the West's geopolitical map" (Mawdsley 2007).