By Mark Varga
Foreign Policy | October 17th, 2014
China has made a badge of honor out of Zheng Bijian’s term coined in a seminal 2005 Foreign Affairs article,
which described the Middle Kingdom’s path toward modernization as a
“peaceful rise.” At the time, Bijian was trying to counter the dominant
Western narrative that viewed Beijing’s ambitions and the country’s
rapid growth with suspicion. The article ended with one of the most
unexpected statements of intent coming from a country that had been the
world’s foremost power for the better part of a millennium “(China) does
not seek hegemony or predominance in world affairs.” A decade has
passed since and China is still unsure of the part it should play on the
international stage. Torn between its commitment not to intervene in
the affairs of other countries and the growing demands of the West to
use its growing clout to share some of the burden of shaping the world
order, all eyes have turned to China’s budding soft power.
To find an answer to this conundrum, one must look no farther than
Africa, where China is dovetailing its “peaceful rise” while also
bringing new allies onto its side. Driven by the need to secure reliable
sources of raw materials, Beijing has seen bilateral trade with the
Dark Continent grow 20-fold in the past two decades, surpassing both the
U.S and the EU. Many have argued that the process has been eminently a
political one, amounting to little more than “check book diplomacy”,
the practice of lending money to largely benefit China’s own
construction groups, buying alliances and access to commodities. More
than 2,000 Chinese companies now have assets in Africa, especially in
South Africa, Zambia, Nigeria, Algeria and Angola, spanning all economic
sectors. As a result, some 20,000 Chinese are currently involved in
local projects, a number that will only go up in coming years. Moreover,
in November 2013, the government announced plans to invest $1 trillion by 2025,
thus turning Africa into the one-stop shop for Beijing’s state-owned
enterprises (SOEs). But China’s cold and pragmatic approach has managed
to drive a wedge between the West’s historical interests in Africa and
China’s nascent world reach, leading to numerous muffled conflicts. Two
cases studies show how the traditional Western relationship with the
continent are increasingly strained by China’s desire to win over the
hearts and minds of Africans.
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