China’s Policy Towards Africa Threats and Opportunities

Abstract

China is striving to enhance its political relations with African countries, intensifying diplomatic activities and strengthening its soft power to improve its image on the continent. It is more and more engaged in several cultural and social fields ranging from multiplying Confucius Institutes and intensifying people to people exchanges, to providing health assistance and training courses. Nevertheless, China's presence in Africa remains essentially economic. China has become a key economic player on the continent, developing a pattern of relations that merges trade, investment and aid. In 2009, it replaced the European Union and the United States as Africa's major trading partner. Its trade with Africa grew at an extraordinary pace from just $9 billion in 2000 to attain an estimated $200 billion in 2012, a more than twenty-fold increase since the turn of the century. China is also becoming an important investor in Africa and its Foreign Direct Investment flows on the continent have increased six-fold between 2005 and 2012 to attain $26 billion in 2013 . China is also becoming an important provider of development aid to African countries according nearly half of its total foreign aid to the continent, differentiating deeply itself from western donors by its singular approach of "no political strings attached aid". China's increasing presence on the continent brought the imperative to secure its growing economic interests and to ensure the safety of its nationals present on the ground. It is why China is today more and more involved in the security issues of the African continent leading it to call into question one of the most sacred principles of its foreign policy which is that of non-interference, pushing its limits until projecting to open a military base in Africa. Owing to the impressive scale and scope of China's engagement towards Africa, it may be considered as one of the most significant developments that the continent has known in recent years. China's African policy has its own characteristics quite different from that of the West. This uniqueness has been analysed, extolled and questioned. To its supporters, it represents the enduring partnership between Africa and China engendered by the historical affinities of struggles against Western imperialism. It is seen as an opportunity that must imperatively be grasped by African governments. To its critics, China's African policy is reminiscent of European colonisation a century earlier, with Africa serving as a cheap source of raw materials, and a lucrative export market for Chinese manufactured goods. Rather than a development partner, some analysts see China as Africa's biggest economic competitor, whose explosive growth and insatiable quest for global markets threatens Africa's industrialisation and competitiveness