To understand the change in China’s approach, it is important to take into account the fast-changing realities of its relations with Africa. For nearly 50 years, co-operation was largely political, built around a shared experience of colonisation. While history is still important to political dialogue, trade and investment have come to dominate relations in the past decade. China’s large and powerful ministry of commerce drives development policy

through its department on foreign aid. It seeks to harness the country’s strengths, such as infrastructure development, to those of its resource-rich African partners so that both sides benefit. China overtook the US as Africa’s largest trading partner in 2009. Trade rose from $10bn in 2000 to $210bn last year. Chinese companies are also big investors, particularly in natural resources and infrastructure

In recent years, however, China’s flourishing economic links with Africa have been threatened by instability and conflict. Chinese companies are increasingly encountering political and security risks. The country’s diplomacy is adapting, no longer just promoting, economic interests but also protecting its trade and investment. The foreign ministry has, as a result, become more involved in mediating conflicts and assisting with peacekeeping and security. When conflict broke out in South Sudan last December, and hundreds of Chinese oil workers were evacuated, Zhong Jianhua, special envoy to Africa, was quick to support regional efforts to broker a ceasefire.

Debate within China, and criticism emanating from Africa, has also led Beijing to re-evaluate its development policies; it wants to avoid such incidents as last year’s deportation of thousands of illegal Chinese miners in Ghana. Beijing is hoping, too, that enhancing the social aspects of its development policies will smooth the rough spots in its economic engagement; for example, it is increasing its support for education and joint research.

The convergence of European and Chinese approaches to development is surprising, and worrying, to many in Europe who maintain a critical view of China’s activities in Africa. Likewise, many Chinese experts and officials regard western engagement in Africa with great suspicion. Yet both sides may actually benefit. Europe can learn from China’s economic engagement in Africa in terms of opening up new markets for exports. Meanwhile, some Chinese experts and policy makers are piloting more targeted and sustainable poverty-reduction programmes, working with western and African partners such as Tanzania and Liberia.

At the same time, Beijing remains sensitive to concerns that it may join the “western camp”. African governments fear losing their ability to bargain between the two sides. Beijing is also weary of losing its own position as an alternative development partner for Africa through its distinctive brand of south-south co-operation.

It will be an uphill struggle to convince African governments to buy into development co-operation between the west and China. The inherent danger is that trade and investment will be pushed forward without proper consideration for development goals – at the cost of ordinary Africans.

The writer, author of ‘The New Kings of Crude: China, India and the Global Struggle for Oil in Sudan and South Sudan’, is a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies. Zhang Chun is senior fellow and deputy director of the Center for West Asian and African Studies at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies

(http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/e05c6154-a90b-11e3-9b71-00144feab7de.html#axzz2viVomVs5)

Source of documents：Financial Times