China as a Neo-Imperialist Power in Africa

Introduction: China's Rising Influence 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 and 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 that oil bring with them additional factors that complicate the relationship between China and various African countries. 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 that shed light on China's plans for Africa's future — plans that include nothing short of a fundamental reimagining of the geographies of power on the planet.

As mentioned, 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. It 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).

Only by considering the entirety of China's relations with Africa can one 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. Although China is undoubtedly the preeminent neo-imperial power in Africa, it has cemented itself in this role in a fundamentally different way than European and American endeavors in earlier decades and centuries.

China's Cooperative Framework and Diplomatic Strategy

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 across 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 the earlier imperialist powers of Europe and the United States, which 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 that ensure:

Cooperation should be based on the principle of equality and of mutual benefit — it should not be, in other words, the one-way distribution of alms, but mutually beneficial. It should always respect the sovereignty of the recipient countries, and not impose any conditions on them, or extract any privileges. 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 appearing to do so out of aggressive self-interest, largely by contrasting its behavior with 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 China a psychological advantage when it comes to winning over African countries and their economies (Mohan & Power 2009). As will be shown, this advantage has meant everything when it comes to Africa's future, because China has essentially used this relationship to place itself as the literal and figurative center of geopolitics for easily the next century.

The Shift from Equal Partnership to Neo-Imperial Interest

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, China has from the outset approached Africa as an equal, eager to assist in mutual growth despite the actions of Western countries. However, as China grew in strength and influence following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the nature of this relationship changed even while the ostensible terms of engagement appeared 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 superpowers 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 bipolar 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 left the United States with an 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 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 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, it would be a mistake to ascribe a single motive to the relationship." Nonetheless, as oil prices continue to rise and new sources become 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. China's over half-century of relations with Africa reveal the relationship to be far more complex than a simple resource grab. China thus 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" yet one with which China has ample experience (Hanson 2008).

Conclusion

China has a rich history of diplomacy and mutually beneficent cooperation with Africa, but over the course of the last decade this foreign policy has gradually migrated from that of equal partners to one of neo-imperialist power in the form of China and subtle colony in the form of Africa. For much of its history, China was careful to separate itself from Western nations when it came to Africa, choosing to approach the continent in a holistic manner rather than strictly through the lens of colony and then failed state. Thus, where Western nations engendered resentment and distrust through their many ineffective aid programs, China was able to present itself as a friend and equal — a developing country no more or less developed or worthy of respect than the nations of Africa.