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Two large maps of Africa and China, under the caption ‘Friendship Peace Cooperation Development’, stood out at an official exhibition off Tiananmen Square in November 2006. The Africa map was filled with images of smiling children, a baobab tree, a bare-chested man drumming, and hints of the ruins of an ancient civilization. That of China was filled with images of the Great Wall, Forbidden City and other civilizational achievements. At the time, the Chinese government was hosting the third Forum on China–Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) and Beijing had been carefully prepared to welcome leaders and delegations from some 48 African countries. Billboards proclaiming ‘win–win cooperation’ and other official slogans signalled the Chinese government’s portrayal of China as a different, progressive partner of the continent. This FOCAC put China–Africa on the map of global attention, and catalysed interest in China’s suddenly visible engagement with the continent. Cliché images aside, the emptiness of this map of the African continent, however, suggested ignorant paternalism at a time when relations were rapidly developing.

Much has changed since then, as has become evident in the ‘New Era’ of China’s relations with Africa. China’s New Era is the era of Xi Jinping. Since taking power as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in November 2012, and becoming state president in March 2013, Xi Jinping has presided over a transformation in China’s domestic and global affairs. In 2018, at another FOCAC in Beijing, he welcomed ‘African countries aboard the express train of China’s development’ and declared: ‘No one could hold back the Chinese people or the African people as we march towards rejuvenation.’ China committed financing in Africa of $60bn and a marked expansion of its investment in human capital and training. Xi Jinping reportedly met the leaders of 53 African countries for an event described by China’s Foreign Minister as setting ‘a new record in FOCAC history, and indeed, in all the diplomatic activities China ever hosted’.¹ Welcoming Gambia, Sao Tome and Principe, and Burkina Faso, which had previously supported Taiwan, the summit confirmed China’s near total victory over Taiwan in the continent. Africa, as the President of Burkina Faso, Roch Marc Christian Kaboré said, had ‘chosen China’. This FOCAC showed how established China’s relations with Africa had become in Xi Jinping’s New Era.

This book aims to bring the China–Africa story up to date.² It argues that politics defines China’s New Era Africa relations most, thus challenging conventional wisdom and popular associations about China’s relations with Africa, which hold that ‘Chinese leaders see Africa mainly as a source of natural resources.’³ Politics is a fluid, highly contested concept, which attracts simple definitions but defies easy characterization. Using a more expansive understanding, this book situates the politics of relations in terms of Chinese and African histories, institutional frameworks and politics, before exploring select key themes: China and Africa in global politics, evolving economic ties, the China model and African politics, Chinese–African relations, and China’s expanding security engagement in the continent.

China–Africa relations have never been just about politics or economics but shifting combinations of both across different historical periods. Politics always mattered; it drove post-colonial revolutionary ties and never disappeared. Since around 1996, however, economics has been the main association between China and Africa, following the tour by China’s then President Jiang Zemin of six African states that marked an inflection point ‘from geopolitics to economics as the driver of ties’.⁴ In 2000, President Jiang spoke of the ‘all round friendship’ between China and Africa. Nonetheless, economics was the foundation of a ‘long-term partnership’ and enhanced economic ties would do most to help China’s domestic economic development while contributing to growth in African countries.⁵ Since 2012, however, and Xi Jinping’s leadership of China, there has been a shift towards a decisive role of politics both inside and outside China, including in its Africa relations.

Arguing that politics needs to be returned to the centre of understanding China’s Africa relations today is not to suggest, simplistically, that economic ties are of secondary importance. Nor that politics can be separated from economics. Economic factors remain central to relations but are very much bound up in and determined by politics of various kinds in an evolving political economy of relations encompassing a spectrum of local to global dimensions. China’s role in Africa has also always had its own politics but these have become much more prominent, deeper and widespread in the New Era. In other words, much arises from the nature of economic ties, from the diverse impacts of China within African countries, unease about China as a creditor, Chinese migration, security challenges and, ultimately, perceptions of its new power. At the same time, Chinese government officials have come to recognize how central politics is, not just for China’s relations with Africa or in terms of China’s global politics but also to achieving Africa’s broader development goals.

What, then, is China’s New Era, and what does this mean for its Africa relations? The term ‘New Era’ simplifies and provokes questions (what was wrong with the old one? how long can something be new?). In essence, it means the reassertion of China’s party-state under Xi’s leadership in Chinese domestic politics and economy. It also means a more ambitious and expansive role for China abroad, signalled in Xi’s closing speech at the 18th National Congress of the CCP in November 2012, when he talked of the ‘great renewal of the Chinese nation’. ⁶ The CCP’s 19th Party Congress in October 2017 was seminal in declaring the New Era and defining Xi’s power. It elevated him to the core of the CCP’s leadership, with no anointed successor. In his report to the Congress, Xi Jinping noted that China had ‘stood up, grown rich, and is becoming strong’. The New Era would see ‘China moving closer to centre stage’ and this would require ‘major country diplomacy with Chinese characteristics’ in order to build China into a great, modern and global ‘socialist power’ by the mid twenty-first century.⁷ The approach China had adopted after 1978, that of keeping a low profile in order to focus on domestic development, was dumped in the dustbin of history. The CCP’s grand strategic goal has become the ‘great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation’. Following the 19th Party Congress, the New Era refrain was incorporated into China’s Africa relations. China’s relations with Africa have evolved considerably to become more complex, multifaceted and consequential. Relations are continuing to evolve, in much changed and changing circumstances within China, in China’s relations with 53 different African states and global politics.

During Xi Jinping’s period in office, China’s Africa relations have been ever more defined and shaped by politics, which extends to China’s foreign policy and global politics. The prominence of Beijing’s Africa engagement stands in contrast to the actual economic importance of the continent to China. Africa accounts for around 45% of China’s global development aid but around 4% of China’s total global trade volume in the first half of 2020, and that trade in turn was dominated by a handful of African commodity exporters.⁸ Similar to trade, China’s investment in Africa is not significant in the context of China’s global investment, accounting for some 3.7% of total outward global investment stock in 2015. Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative (or BRI) has revised Africa’s former prominence in China’s regional engagements by its global scope. However, for Africa, which accounted for 2.9% of world production, 2.6% of world trade and 16.3% of the world’s population in 2019, China’s investment and engagement means much more. ⁹

The centrality of politics flows from Xi Jinping’s leadership of China and the more established, far-reaching nature of Chinese engagement in Africa. Before Xi, from 1978 China’s leaders after Mao prioritized economic development as the way to maintain power. By prioritizing politics, Xi Jinping has done the opposite, starting with attempting to renew the CCP’s legitimacy, and reasserting its dominance over all walks of life. It was also inseparable from Xi’s more ambitious foreign policy. Xi Jinping has sought to redefine China’s Africa relations in his terms, including incorporating Africa more overtly into the CCP’s vision for China’s future centrality in world affairs. China’s 53 African state allies are important in China’s foreign policy and global multilateral role in this context. Since African state votes helped the People’s Republic of China (PRC) enter the UN in 1971, the continent has been a significant part of China’s multilateral engagement but the stakes have become higher in the New Era, which has seen more explicit promotion of the CCP’s China model. In turn, China is more important in the foreign relations and global politics of many African states. Economic relations have been evolving from years of high growth rates until 2014, when global commodity prices fell. The idea that Chinese investment could propel Africa to become ‘the next factory of the world’ became popular.¹⁰ Since around 2015, trade and investment have declined, debt mounted for some African states and, in 2020, the first recession in 25 years hit many African countries. China now has a more established, multidimensional and consequential presence across the continent: it is an emerged power. The importance of China within African politics on the back of its evolved economic and global role represents a major, historically unprecedented change.

In 2020, when there were celebrations to mark the 20th anniversary of FOCAC, the 2006 summit had faded into history, and China’s domestic and global politics looked very different. Xi’s leadership saw China become a self-declared major power with a clear sense of long-term global strategic purpose. China’s relations with Africa have seen a transformation, having widened, deepened and diversified, and becoming dominated by issues like industrialization or security, which were absent in 2006. Africa is part of China’s global rise, now proceeding in the context of open strategic competition with the United States of America (US). Overall, politics has become far more important, in the context of economic challenges, changing global politics and higher stakes.