This month, Beijing played host to the heads of state from 53 of the 54 African countries at the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation
summit. It was a spectacular diplomatic show that might have made Western governments and media outlets feel jealous and bitter, leading some to harp on about debt traps. Others see the event as a victory for China’s grand strategy to gain influence on the global stage.
Africa has been an integral component of China’s grand strategy. It is a crucial geopolitical link in China’s
Belt and Road Initiative. African countries can provide vital support for China in international affairs as a voting bloc in the United Nations and other international organisations.
Beijing’s interest in Africa is nothing new. It started in the 1960s and 1970s when China was isolated by the international community under Western domination, and when the Sino-Soviet relationship deteriorated. In the 1960s, Chinese premier Zhou Enlai spent more than a month in Africa, openly supporting countries’ anti-imperialist national independence movements and calling Africans comrades and brothers.
China was helping to
build infrastructure even when its own per capita gross domestic product was lower than that of some African nations. Some Africans still remember and are thankful for these projects that are still in use today. Ideologically, they have found Maoism more attractive than liberal democracy in their fight against Western domination and in their effort to build new nation-states.
In the 1980s and 1990s, China enjoyed a honeymoon period with the West under
Deng Xiaoping, who led the country towards explosive economic growth. When the West finally realised that Deng was only interested in Western technology and market economics but not in its political system and ideology, it tried everything to prevent China from developing further.
It is partly against this background that China started to refocus on Africa in 2000. Beijing’s current approach is to forge business partnerships based on mutual economic benefit without interfering in each other’s sovereignty.
