On The Evolving China-Africa Relationship with David Shinn

David Shinn speaking to the delegates of the 2015 Duke-UNC China Leadership Summit at the Sanford School of Public Policy
CLS 2015 Co-Director James Williams sits down with former Ambassador to Ethiopia and current George Washington University Professor David Shinn to discuss the current state of China-Africa interaction. 

Williams:

So, we’ve kind of established that generally speaking the average African has a more negative view of China, whereas the elites, the government officials, the leading businessmen seem to be more positive on China. Now, I wonder is the difference due to a matter of incentive such that the government can…do a better job of what it wants to do with China as a partner whereas the individuals – the traders on the street – cannot? Or does it also have to do with a level of foresight, or ability to see the larger picture? For example, the trader on the street might not understand that the Chinese coming into Africa is what led to the financing of this road they’re using, which is ultimately positively impacting their way to make a good living. All they see in the immediate surrounding is that [they’re not] selling [their] wares because there’s a Chinese trader with a cheaper product. Whereas the leaders, being more educated, can view the bigger picture. They can see that while there are drawbacks, there are overall more benefits than gains with the Chinese coming in. Bottom line: is it a difference in incentive, or a matter of ability to see the bigger picture? 

Shinn:

It’s all of that, but more. At the governmental level, yes, the leaders are going to tend to think more broadly. They’re going to think…beyond their personal needs to whatever segment of the government they are responsible for. If they think they are gaining advantage from whatever China is doing in a particular country they will be pleased. And most of them are indeed satisfied with what China is doing in any particular country in Africa. They will even tend to repress and put aside some of the negative things that come to their attention -- it's not that they're unaware of it. In some cases they even go to the point of insisting that none of the negative stuff becomes a public issue -- that the government-controlled press not write about it, or that they not raise it with the Chinese officials -- because they have so much resting upon capital coming in the form of loans, aid, and military cooperation. 

The people on the street would have mixed emotions: they may appreciate the new road but they probably don’t understand the financing mechanisms behind it -- that it’s a loan and that people of their own country would have to pay China back. They would have a positive reaction simply because the road is there. They're probably looking at it even more personally than that. The person on the street is going to constantly ask himself, what am I getting out of this? If you’re the African street vendor facing competition from Chinese trader, that’s going to outweigh any good feelings that come from the road being there...The average African is not going to see this philosophically.

 
Williams:

I guess my follow-up question would be, if you are an elite in society, and what you’re trying to do is to develop your own country’s economic capacity, do you listen to the criticism of people whose scope is very narrow, or do you say, we know what’s best because we can see the bigger picture?

Shinn:

You have 54 countries in Africa, and so you have a whole range of how they respond to the will of the people. You have total autocracies where they don’t care a darn of what people think, and others that are fairly democratic -- countries like Botswana, Mauritius, Namibia, Cape Verde, Seychelles, maybe Senegal, South Africa, five or six more. In those countries, they know they have to pay attention to some of the negative feedback from the populous. The countries that are totally autocratic will act on what they think is best, and they have enough control that they don’t have to worry about what the average person thinks.


Williams:

I hate to sound un-democratic, but is that a problem necessarily? The peasant farmer knows so little about the economy relative to the elite, and sacrifices may have to made for the greater good.

Shinn:

That’s a fair point. And I think there’s a lot of merit to it, if these autocratic leaders got it right…but corruption is a huge problem. It’s a bigger problem in Africa than it is in China. If I were convinced that these autocratic regimes were acting in the best interest for the people 90% of the time, I could go live with this argument even though it doesn’t coincide with the Western liberal model of democracy, but too often they don’t.


Williams:

In those early stages of development -- and we see this argument made by the Chinese government -- it is often not effective to have democratic rule. It's more effective to have a Central Party that has a vision that may require sacrifices for the greater good to make all the decisions, and then transition into democracy after you have a level of economic capacity…That seems to me to be a good model if in the initial stage there’s a strong central government doing good for the population, and smartly.

Shinn:

China can indeed make a very strong case for this. However if you go back a few decades to the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution -- these were catastrophes. While I'm not saying that China will return to a catastrophic phase, I’m not convinced that China has a monopoly on making the right decisions.

With Xi Jinping we’re seeing today a return to Chinese nationalism, and an ideological twist to what's happening in the economy. This is a very interesting time for China, and this may be a bit of a watershed. Regardless of how Xi's rule plays out, I know that it's going to be ten times harder to do what the Chinese did in Africa. The idea that the African leaders can take the Chinese model, and apply it to Ethiopia or Nigeria, say, my view is that there are some elements that you can adopt, but if you try to adopt the so-called Beijing Consensus -- which is about as stupid as the Washington Consensus -- forget about it. You will utterly fail. Fortunately most African nations are not doing this, and China is not pushing its model. China is simply too different. The population size, the savings patterns, the ethnic make-up, the work ethic…none of it is transferrable.


Williams:

So what about China's non-interference policy, as it pertains to Africa? There seems to be two sides of the same coin, one of which is an element of humility, saying that we cannot necessarily apply our model to other states, and on the other side an abdication of responsibility with the whole self-serving aspect--i.e. we don't interfere with you, so you better not interfere with us. 

Shinn:

While I cannot make statements on why the Chinese do or do not do certain things, I have noticed some nuanced tweaks to Africa's policy on non-interference. The Chinese academics have noticed this too, and no one knows what to call it. Africa still fully believes in non-interference, but its record has been murky ever since Darfur when China put pressure on Bashir to accept a AU-UN peacekeeping force in light of the Beijing Olympics. Now, is that interference in internal affairs, I don't know, but it certainly is a modification of the principle of non-interference. China is now doing a similar thing in South Sudan -- a lot of behind-the-scenes arm twisting to try to end the civil war. To be sure China has oil interests in South Sudan but I can't say whether either side considers this as interference in international affairs.


Williams:

Do you think Westerners, outside of those studying China-Africa relations, see this relationship as something important to focus on?

Shinn:

Well, I think anyone's whose following Africa is interested because the Chinese engagement is so huge that it simply can't be ignored. I do think a lot of it is overstated -- there's a lot of mythology out there -- and the Chinese are getting wrongly blamed for a lot of stuff. Let's just say that by the time I finished my book with Joshua Eisenman in 2012 the China-Africa relationship has become such a hot topic that our phones are always ringing off the hook for speaking engagements, events, and so on.


David H. Shinn is Adjunct Professor of International Affairs at The George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs. His diverse career in the foreign service of the United States has included ambassadorships to Ethiopia and Burkina Faso. Shinn is also a frequent commentator in the news media on political issues, and has provided consultancy to the U.S. government on Horn of Africa related matters as well as Sino-African relations. His book on the China-Africa relationship China and Africa: A Century of Engagement was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2012.

James Williams is a rising senior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.