The of “build on past achievements and open up new prospects for the new type of China-Africa strategic partnership” of the 5th Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) grasped the general trend of Sino-African relations transitions and provided a comprehensive and short-mid-term strategy for promoting sustainable development of this relationship. We should have a more clear view of the transitions in Sino-African relations and a longer strategic vision for its future development.
 
1. Three Transitions in Sino-African Relations
 
In the past 6 decades, Sino-African relations has significantly upgraded from a linear and single-dimension relationship to a multi-layer and multi-dimension one, with the support of institutionalization efforts, especially the establishment and development of the FOCAC. It’s important to note that it is such a development itself that facilitates the current transitions in Sino-African relations that is of great importance to its sustainable development.
 
Such transitions include the following three aspects. First of one, Sino-African relations now is on the way from one based emotional/ideological intimacy to one based on economic interest consideration. On the one hand, in the past decade or more, China-Africa economic relations developed quite fast: with trade volume increased 15 times from US$ 10 billion in year 2000 to US$ 160billion in 2011 and it’ll amount to US$ 200 billion, accumulated investment in Africa to US$ 15 billion and the accumulated assistance to RMB 110 billion in 2011. On the other hand, the historical emotional/ideological intimacy is fading due to the various developments, including the passing away of the older generation leaders who share similar experience of national liberation movement with Chinese older leaders, the rising of new generation leaders who were educated in the western universities, the growing people-to-people exchanges that have both positive and negative impacts on mutual understanding between two peoples, etc. With economic interest consideration rising and emotional/ideological intimacy fading, economic indicators gradually become the main criteria for measuring bilateral relations.
 
The second transition is the natural consequence of the first transition, that is, with the growing importance of economic consideration, now Sino-African relations is transfer from economic interest promoting to economic interest protecting. The reasons are diverse, while the Going Global Strategy has had tremendous achievements and needs to think about how to upgrade for sustainable development, there’re also a lot of problems arising that need to be rethought. Meantime, even wars and conflicts are decreasing, the instabilities in African continent are still the main hurdle for international investment and trade, and even humanitarian aid. Since early 2011, the outbroken of so called ‘Arab Spring’ highlighted the importance of protecting China’s overseas economic interests and national citizens. Based on the principle of people first, to protect overseas Chinese and economic interests is and will be one of the top priorities of China’s foreign policy in general and China’s Africa policy in particular.
 
While the above two transitions are already happened, the third transition in Sino-African relations is a would-be one that will happen in the next few years or decade. I named this transition as from asymmetrical interdependence to symmetrical interdependence. As all know that the current Sino-African relationship is an asymmetrical interdependent one with China depends more on African natural resources and Africa depends more on opportunities along with China’s rising and Sino-African relations developments. However, there’re several developments that have potential for undermined the current interdependence between these two parties. The first is the slowing down of China’s economic growth that it is a natural development after 3 decades and more rapid growth with the signs have emerged early this year, the growth rates of the first quarter 2012 was about 7.5%. While China is slowing down, Africa is rising, with 6 African countries on the list of 10 fastest growing in the first decade of 21st century, and 7 African countries on the list of 10 fastest growing from 2011 to 2015. The third development that will change the interdependence between China and Africa is that Africa now is returning to the traditional powers’ strategic consideration and entering into that of the emerging powers, we have witnessed the recovery of EU-Africa Summit and Japan’s TICAD and the creation of India-Africa Summit, South Korea-Africa Summit, India-Africa Summit, and Turkey-Africa Summit.
 
2. Counter-Measures by 5th FOCAC
 
Noticed such transitions in Sino-Africa relations, the Chinese government has adopted some counter-measure to address them including the following three dimensions.
 
First of all, to remedy Sino-African emotional intimacy, China now is shifting its development assistance for Africa from ‘hard’ infrastructure assistance to ‘soft’ ones. Take the FOCAC as example, the 3rd and 4th FOCAC Ministerial Conference included 8 measures for promoting Sino-Africa relations, much of them provide support for ‘hard’ infrastructure in Africa, like roads, studios, conference centers, etc. However, the 5th FOCAC Ministerial Conference attaches more importance to ‘soft’ ones like education, people to people exchange, joint research, etc., rather than continue the former approach. Taking sub-for a building as example, as table 1 shows, the total number of sub-for a mentioned by the 5th FOCAC Ministerial Conference Action Plan (2013-2015), including those to create, to strengthen, and to institutionalize, is 10, among them at least 5 (colorful) are of ‘soft’ ones or related to China’s soft power in Africa.
 
Table 1. Sub-Fora mentioned by 5th FOCAC Meeting

To Create	To Strengthen	To Institutionalize
China-Africa forum on cooperation between local governments	FOCAC Legal Forum	FOCAC Think Tanks Forum
China-Africa Radio and Television Cooperation Forum	Forum on China-Africa Financial Cooperation	China-Africa People's Forum
China-Africa Energy Forum	FOCAC Science and Technology Forum	China-Africa Young Leaders Forum
	FOCAC Cultural Ministers' Forum

 
Secondly, to better protect China’s overseas rights and interests, China attaches more importance to security supporting rather than economic focusing. The 5th FOCAC Ministerial Conference declared that China will launch the ‘Initiative on China-Africa Cooperative Partnership for Peace and Security’, deepen cooperation with the AU and African countries in peace and security in Africa, provide financial support for the AU peace-keeping missions in Africa and the development of the African Standby Force, and train more officials in peace and security affairs and peace-keepers for the AU. For example, China is participating 6 of 7 UN peacekeeping operations in Africa, sending more than 1500 peacekeepers to African continent, the biggest contributor in the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.
 
Thirdly, to promote a symmetrical interdependent relationship, China focuses more on sustainable development support than natural resource searching. Considering the prospect of symmetrical interdependence, President HU Jintao declared at the 5th FOCAC Ministerial Conference that, China ‘will expand cooperation in investment and financing to support sustainable development in Africa’ and ‘support the African integration process and help Africa enhance capacity for overall development’, which includes supports to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Program (CAADP), the Program for Infrastructure Development in Africa and the Presidential Infrastructure Championing Initiative, and to extend aid-for-trade to African countries, to scale the China-Africa Development Fund up to US$ 5 billion, to implement the ‘African Talents Program’, and so on. The most recent 18th Party Congress also declared that China will contribute to building of a New Global Development Parnership.
 
3. Longer-Term Strategic Planning
 
While noticed above transitions and addressed them in the 5th FOCAC, there’re still urgent needs for longer-term strategic planning for better steering the future sustainable development of Sino-African relations.
First of all, China should build a stronger social basis for Sino-African relations. Lacking of non-governmental capability, the current people-to-people exchange induces more negative impacts than positive contributions. China should strengthen NGOs and civil society groups nurturing, create better platforms for public diplomacy, make best use of diversification of diplomatic skills and stakeholders, etc.
Secondly, China should make concrete contributions to African peace and security. On the one hand, China now has a blueprint for peace and security cooperation between two sides without detailed strategy and plan supporting; On the other hand, to initiate peace and security cooperation, there is a risk of violating China’s traditional principle of non-interference. Thus, China needs a comprehensive strategic plan for such an initiative with multilateral institutions as the main platform.
Finally, China should pave the way for future symmetrical interdependence between China and Africa. We have witnessed the failure the western suffered and the success we enjoyed. However, the picture is changing that argues for early warning measures including how to build a real friendship between a would-be ‘developed’ country (China) and a real ‘developing’ continent (Africa), how to consolidate the Global South network, how to be a reliable friend and partner forever of developing countries, etc. The future is bright, but there’s still long way to go.

Source of documents：China Daily (Africa Weekly)