Xi Jinping had one message for dozens of visiting African leaders: choose China

Analysis by Simone McCarthy, CNN

Beijing (CNN) — Xi Jinping had a clear aim as he hosted delegates from more than 50 African countries for a major summit in Beijing this week: proving beyond doubt that China is the continent’s premier foreign partner.

The Chinese leader made his case with ceremony on Thursday when, flanked by dozens of African leaders and the UN secretary general in the Great Hall of the People, he vowed to elevate ties between China and the continent to an “all-weather community with a shared future” – a status that Beijing reserves for its staunchest diplomatic allies.

He also made a raft of promises to the continent, to be fulfilled over the next three years: more than $50 billion in financial support; the creation of one million jobs; tens of millions in food and military aid – while vowing to “deepen cooperation with Africa in industry, agriculture, infrastructure, trade and investment.”

Leaders including South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa, Kenya’s William Ruto and Nigeria’s Bola Tinubu assembled in the Chinese capital this week for the three-day forum that Beijing hailed as its largest diplomatic gathering in years.

Xi’s bid to African governments comes as China appears to be reining in its previously free-flowing funding for Africa’s development – amid its own economic slowdown and criticism its lending there had helped to saddle countries with unsustainable debt.

Now, other powers like the United States are ramping up their own efforts to boost ties with the resource-rich continent, as they seek to counter China’s political influence and secure access to critical resources key to powering the green energy transition.

The three-yearly forum on China-Africa cooperation, which wrapped Friday, was a key opportunity for Xi and his officials to telegraph their commitment to the continent, whose backing has only grown in importance for Beijing in the face of its mounting friction with the West.

Here are the main takeaways from Xi’s pitch to the continent this week.

End of the infrastructure drive?

Xi and Chinese officials appeared keen to show that Chinese investment, including in African infrastructure, was not over – even as data show Chinese lending for Africa’s development and big-ticket infrastructure has fallen substantially in recent years.

The Chinese leader announced a commitment to back 30 infrastructure connectivity projects across unspecified countries and ambitions for “a network of land-sea links.” He said China would launch 30 clean energy projects, seen as part of a push from Beijing to make Africa’s market a destination for its green tech like solar panels and electric vehicles that now face tariffs in the US and Europe.

Deals cut in a procession of bilateral meetings this week also included infrastructure. China, Zambia and Tanzania inked a memorandum of understanding to “revitalize” the existing Tanzania-Zambia Railway Authority line on Wednesday, and Nigeria and China referenced developing the West African country’s “transportation, ports and free trade zones,” in a joint statement.

However, such projects and China’s overall pledge of roughly $50 billion in financial support for the continent, while heftier than that of the last forum in 2021, was still less robust than those of the previous decade, observers said.

“It is not insignificant, but if you look at the details, it is not as striking as it used to be,” said Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center think tank in Washington, noting that this amount would be spread across many countries and a number of areas of cooperation from health to green technology.

“It also means the funding for hard infrastructure will be reduced across the board. There might be a few major projects, but the more funding they take, the less there will be for other things,” she said.

African country leaders had arrived in China seeking seeking investment, trade, and support industrializing their raw commodity sectors to create jobs. They are expected to be closely watching for follow-through on Beijing’s wide-ranging promises in the coming years, with analysts saying fulfillment of past commitments have been difficult to track.

A debt crisis loomed large

This year’s gathering also played out under the shadow of a debt crisis across a number of African countries, which have struggled under heavy foreign debt, including from Chinese loans, in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic – and raised questions about China’s role in fueling the issue.

Analysts have largely debunked earlier “debt trap” claims that Beijing was purposefully seeking to indebt countries in order to gain leverage over their assets, as it lent toward the construction of highways, rail lines and power plants across Africa under Xi’s flagship Belt and Road Initiative.

African leaders have also pushed back on the premise while in Beijing, with South Africa’s Ramaphosa rejecting the “notion that when China (invests), it is with an intention of, in the end, ensuring that those countries end up in a debt trap or in a debt crisis” in comments to reporters.

China is also not seen by observers to be the main cause of African debt distress in most cases, with debt to its lenders making up a comparatively small portion of the continent’s overall public debt.

But the influx of Chinese loans increased the debt burden, and while Beijing has defended its lending practices and its efforts to ease debt repayment, observers suggest it has moved too slowly or been inflexible in cases helping countries that are heavily indebted to it get relief.

These realities – along with China’s own economic slowdown – are seen to have reduced its appetite for such lending. Even before the pandemic, Chinese lenders had already been slashing funding for the big-scale infrastructure projects and touting a transition to so-called “small yet beautiful” investments, with smaller budgets and environmental or social impact.

Xi highlighted such projects while laying out Beijing’s plan for supporting the region in the coming years, but did not address the debt shouldered by countries in his public remarks.

Competing visions

Instead, the Chinese leader reached back into history to paint the West as the driver of challenges both for China and for Africa – part of what observers say is Beijing’s effort to portray the continent as firmly on its side when it comes to its broader geopolitical rivalry with the US.

China, Africa and other developing nations have for decades “been endeavoring to redress the historical injustices” of Western modernization, Xi told visiting delegations, in an apparent allusion to colonialism and exploitative practices in centuries past.

Now, Xi predicted, China would, along with African countries, “set off a wave of modernization in the Global South.”

Analysts say Beijing sees the continent’s backing as crucial to Xi’s aim of positioning China as a champion of the Global South – and an alternative global leader to the US.

Playing up that backing was also a likely motivation behind China’s elevation of diplomatic ties with attending African countries to a “strategic” level and its designation of the “all-weather China-Africa community with a shared future for the new era,” observers say.

The US and its Group of Seven (G7) allies have launched their own effort to fund infrastructure in developing countries, with US officials saying African countries should have “choices” when it comes to their partnerships.

Noting that “more countries” were increasing attention on ties with African nations, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Thursday said Beijing “welcomes” such support for the continent – as long as it’s not done with a “condescending approach.”

Visiting leaders at the summit also rebuffed the idea of competition defining the relationship. Speaking on the summit’s sidelines, Senegal’s Foreign Minister Yassine Fall said that there would always be global competition, but noted that “Africans today are saying that China is on our side.”

African country leaders, however, are unlikely to be willing to choose between Washington and Beijing.

“Overall (at the forum), the African side created the impression that China remains pivotal,” said Paul Nantulya, a senior China specialist at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies in Washington.

“But this does not mean that they will ditch the US and others. They clearly do not want to isolate themselves from opportunities and multiple engagements and partnerships,” he said.

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