China Hosts African Leaders to Rekindle ‘Belt and Road’ Outreach

The Washington Post / Christian Shepherd, Vic Chiang

16:38 JST, September 4, 2024

BEIJING – Leaders and senior officials from 50 African nations are gathering in Beijing on Wednesday for a three-day summit hosted by Chinese leader Xi Jinping, part of China’s decades-long effort to be seen as a champion for the developing world.

The Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, held every third year since 2000, is a key component of China’s diplomatic outreach to countries often known as the Global South. Much of this effort is intended to reshape global trade and geopolitics to strengthen Beijing’s influence relative to Washington and its allies.

“The Washington perception that China is trying to be more vocal and have more presence in the world, that’s accurate,” said Zhou Yongmei, a professor at Peking University in Beijing. “I think that’s a good thing. Over time, China will be more active, but also the global governance system will move in the direction of voices from developing countries.”

The gathering is Beijing’s most important diplomatic event of the year and will “write a new chapter of unity and cooperation for the Global South,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi wrote in the official People’s Daily newspaper on Monday.

The forum is an opportunity for Xi to bolster the claim of a special relationship with the continent and to revitalize his signature “Belt and Road” trade and investment program from its pandemic slump.

Ahead of Wednesday’s opening ceremony, Xi met more than a dozen African leaders on Monday and Tuesday, announcing upgraded partnerships with countries including Nigeria, South Africa, Mali, Comoros, Togo, Djibouti, the Seychelles, Chad and Malawi.

A meeting with Cyril Ramaphosa, president of South Africa, on Monday resulted in a deal to rebalance trade and improve jobs for South Africans, with more Chinese purchases of raw wool and dairy products. The announcement of the deal did not give details of Chinese financing.

“The more complex the international situation becomes, the more Global South countries must uphold independence,” Xi told Ramaphosa, according to Chinese state media.

Past China-Africa forums have been dominated by grand pledges of Chinese financial support – Beijing pledged $60 billion in both 2015 and 2018 – but the combination of China’s economic slowdown and debt distress in some African nations means another big spending package is unlikely this year, analysts said.

“Even if the political relationship is strong and there is still enthusiasm on both sides, the supply of financing is not what it used be, and neither is the capacity of African sovereigns to borrow from China like they used to,” said Yunnan Chen, a research fellow at Overseas Development Institute, a London-based think tank.

China’s focus on its relationship with Africa stretches back to the time of Mao Zedong, who became the founding leader of the Communist Party-run People’s Republic of China in 1949. Even before then, the Chinese Communist Party aligned itself with African liberation movements as a fellow fighter against colonialism.

To this day, Chinese state media regularly describes the relationship as being forged in a global struggle against “imperialism,” and it is tradition for the Chinese foreign minister to begin each year with a trip to the continent.

Despite the political rhetoric, economic interest has driven Chinese engagement for the last decade. After Xi announced his signature Belt and Road infrastructure investment initiative in 2013, financing from Chinese banks shot up to a high of $28.4 billion in 2016.

But that flurry of Chinese spending on roads, railways and ports – as well as to secure oil, gas and critical minerals – began to drop in 2019. It then declined sharply during the first years of the coronavirus pandemic as Beijing wrestled with an economic slowdown at home and mounting criticism that its megaprojects were contributing to debt distress in several African countries.

The pandemic accelerated a rethink in Beijing’s approach to development finance. Instead of big loans for mega infrastructure projects, Chinese state-directed lenders have shifted focus toward smaller projects – often under $50 million in value – in areas such as information technology, health care and renewable energy.

Since 2018, the Belt and Road Initiative has been rebooted to focus on low-risk investments and on bailing out key partners in financial distress, according to an analysis of nearly 21,000 projects by AidData, a research lab at William & Mary University.

More recent loan data suggests the new approach is gathering momentum. Last year, China’s loans to Africa reached $4.6 billion, the highest in five years and the biggest annual increase since 2016, according to Boston University data released last week.

Most loans in 2023 went toward the financial sector, reflecting China’s effort to share financial risks with local partners.

There has also been an uptick in Chinese support for renewable power. Until recently, China’s renewable-energy sector was mostly interested in buying African raw materials such as copper, cobalt and lithium, which are used to make batteries.

But companies are increasingly seeing the continent as an opportunity for exports and manufacturing investment as well.

There is a huge need for more reliable and sustainable electricity generation in Africa. The continent has nearly a fifth of the world’s population but accounts for only about 2 percent of global electricity production.

Chinese electric carmakers and solar panel manufacturers are increasingly searching for buyers in the developing world after the European Union and the United States raised tariffs.

China inked three deals in Africa worth $500 million last year – for a solar farm, a hydropower plant and power transmission – according to Boston University data. That came during a year in which there were no Chinese loans for the African energy sector.

But Africa is still a relatively small market for Chinese clean-technology companies. “Africa’s share of China’s total new energy exports remains very small,” said Tang Xiaoyang, a professor of international relations at Tsinghua University. “China views the African market as still being in a relatively early stage,” he said.