The Past in the Present: Historical and Rhetorical Lineages in China's Relations with Africa

Abstract

China's official rhetoric on its relations with Africa is important; it frames, legitimates and renders comprehensible its foreign policy in this ever-important area of the world. This article explores the following puzzle: why China's rhetoric on its involvement with Africa has retained substantial continuities with the Maoist past, when virtually every other aspect of Maoism has been officially repudiated. Despite the burgeoning layers of complexity in China's increasing involvement in Africa, a set of surprisingly long-lived principles of non-interference, mutuality, friendship, non-conditional aid and analogous suffering at the hands of imperialism from the early 1960s to the present continue to be propagated. Newer notions of complementarity and international division of labour are beginning to come in, but the older rhetoric still dominates official discourse, at least in part because it continues to appeal to domestic Chinese audiences.

China's ‘Developmental Outsourcing’: A critical examination of Chinese global ‘land grabs’ discourse

“…Wang 2010, Breslin 2009, Strauss 2009. Interestingly, China's present approach in foreign affairs has a historical parallel with the policy principles issued by Mao Zedong, which were mutual respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty; mutual non-aggression; mutual non-interference in internal affairs; equality and mutual benefit (Alden and Aves 2008, 47).…”

“…Yet, others say that the policy of non-interference is used by China to justify the opacity around its land deals with foreign governments (Alden and Hughes 2009). Moreover, the country's unconditional aid and investments are also an opportunity for regimes to better their position without pressures to change the political system (Alden 2007/2005, d'Hooghe 2010, Strauss 2009). 13 On the other hand, there are those who maintain that China's 'soft power' might entail a 'new economic diplomacy' that might have greater effect than Western aid programs in good governance and the rule-of-law.…”

The Africa-China relationship: challenges and opportunities

“…The tone and substance of the rapidly growing relationship became more pragmatic and economic as it shed its earlier ideological lenses, although the rhetoric of antiimperialism, mutuality, friendship, non-interference, and non-conditional assistance showed remarkable continuities because it remained appealing to the political elites in both China and Africa and their respective constituencies (Strauss 2009). In fact, it became even more imperative for China as its economic power rose and the country eventually emerged as the world's second largest economy.…”

China's Resource Diplomacy in Africa

“…The 'five principles' of pancheela (alternately panchsheel or panchshila ), agreed upon by India's Jawaharlal Nehru and China's Zhou Enlai at the conference were meant to serve as a model for intra-Asian relations and were partly a response to rising border tensions between China and India (Strauss 2009 ). These were as follows: 'respect for territorial integrity; nonaggression; noninterference in each other's internal affairs; equality and mutual benefit in relations; and peaceful coexistence' (Jones 2005 : 851).…”

“…The construction of a seamless continuity in Chinese official narrations of China-Africa engagement is perhaps best illustrated by China's own articulation of the principles by which it lives in general and towards Africa in particular, which have been remarkably consistent for the past 50 years (Strauss 2009 ). Principles of non-interference, mutual benefit and absolute state sovereignty that were worked out with India around the Bandung conference in the interests of lessening border tensions in the mid-1950s and then expanded more generally, have since been 'set in aspic' (Strauss and Saavedra 2009 : 558), leaving very little rhetorical room for the Chinese government to encompass other discursive rhetorics to legitimate and explain its actions domestically and abroad.…”