The Political Economy of the Asia Pacific Series Editor Vinod K. Aggarwal More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/7840
Steve Hess Richard Aidoo Charting the Roots of Anti- Chinese Populism in Africa
Steve Hess University of Bridgeport Bridgeport, CT, USA Richard Aidoo Coastal Carolina University Conway, SC, USA ISSN 1866-6507 ISSN 1866-6515 (electronic) The Political Economy of the Asia Pacific ISBN 978-3-319-17628-4 ISBN 978-3-319-17629-1 (ebook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-17629-1 Library of Congress Control Number: 2015943311 Springer Cham Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Printed on acid-free paper Springer International Publishing AG Switzerland is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)
To our children: Adaline Hess, Joel and Jairus Aidoo.
Contents 1 The Changing Shades of China Africa Relations in the Twenty-First Century: Different Regimes, Non-interference, and Anti-Chinese Populism in Africa... 1 1.1 Patterns and Variations in African Public Opinion Towards China... 4 1.2 Complementary and Competing Economic Relations... 12 1.3 Regimes and Political Opportunities... 15 Part I Open and Electoral Democratic Regimes 2 King Cobra and the Rise of Anti-Chinese Populism in Zambia... 25 2.1 The Political Landscape... 26 2.2 Chinese Involvement in Zambia... 32 3 The Politics and Economics of Democracy and Anti-Chinese Sentiment in Ghana... 41 3.1 Political Economic Development... 42 3.2 China in Ghana: An Evolution of Interests... 47 3.3 Anti-Chinese Sentiment in Ghana... 50 4 The Contours of Complexity Between China and South Africa... 57 4.1 South Africa s Celebrated Political Evolution... 58 4.2 Chinese Involvement in South Africa... 64 4.3 Popular Reactions to Chinese Engagement... 69 Part II Closed Authoritarian Regimes 5 The Political Staleness of China Ethiopia Relations... 79 5.1 The Political Landscape... 80 5.2 Chinese Involvement in Ethiopia... 85 5.3 Popular Reactions to Chinese Engagement... 92 vii
viii Contents 6 Oil and Authoritarianism: The Sino-Angolan Relationship... 109 6.1 The Political Landscape... 110 6.2 Chinese Involvement in Angola... 115 6.3 Popular Reactions to Chinese Engagement... 122 7 Conclusion: Anti-Chinese Populism and the Emergence of China s Adaptive Engagement with Africa... 133 7.1 Beijing s Foreign Policy in Africa s Changing Political Landscape... 136 7.2 Ghana... 139 7.3 South Africa... 141 7.4 Angola... 144 7.5 Ethiopia... 146 7.6 Zambia... 149 7.7 Concluding Remarks... 152
Abbreviations ANC BRICS CASA CDB CELU CIF CNMC CNOOC COPWE CCP CPP CUD ELF EPLF EPRDF ERP FNLA FOCAC FDD GNPC GIPC HIPC IFIs IFP MEISON MMD MPLA NCP African National Congress Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa Chinese Association of South Africa China Development Bank Confederation of Ethiopian Labor Unions China International Fund China Nonferrous Metal Mining Group China Offshore Oil Corporation Commission for Organizing the Party of the Working People of Ethiopia Chinese Communist Party Convention People s Party Coalition for Unity and Democracy Eritrean Liberal Front Eritrean Popular Liberation Front Ethiopian People s Revolutionary Democratic Front Economic Recovery Program National Liberation Front of Angola Forum on China Africa Cooperation Forum for Democratic Development Ghana National Petroleum Corporation Ghana Investment Promotion Council Heavily Indebted Poor Countries International Financial Institutions Inkatha Freedom Party All-Ethiopia Socialist Movement Movement for Multi-Party Democracy Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola National Congress Party ix
x Abbreviations NDP NDC NPP NP PAC PRC PNDC PP PF PRSP SPLM SSA SOEs SAP SANNC SADC TPLF UEDF UNIP UNITA UGCC UDA UPND UP WPE ZANU-PF ZCTU ZNBC ZDC National Democratic Party National Democratic Congress New Patriotic Party National Party Pan Africanist Congress People s Republic of China Provisional National Defense Council Progress Party Patriotic Front Poverty Relief Strategy Paper Sudan People s Liberation Movement Sub Saharan Africa State Owned Enterprises Structural Adjustment Program South African Native National Congress Southern African Development Community Tigray Popular Liberation Front United Ethiopian Democratic Forces United National Independent Party National Union for the Total Independence of Angola United Gold Coast Convention United Democratic Alliance United Party for National Development United Party Worker s Party of Ethiopia Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front Zambian Congress of Trade Unions Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation Zambia Democratic Congress
List of Figure Fig. 2.1 Proportion of votes cast for the Patriotic Front by province... 30 xi
List of Tables Table 1.1 Mainly positive views of China s influence in African States (%)... 5 Table 1.2 China s policies in the continent are... 6 Table 1.3 Favorable views of China in African States (%)... 6 Table 1.4 Freedom house ratings (selected countries)... 18 Table 3.1 Results of the NDC and NPP in the presidential elections, 1992 2012... 43 Table 3.2 Sector breakdown and investment cost of Chinese projects in Ghana, 2008... 51 Table 4.1 Results of the 1994 national election in South Africa... 62 xiii
Introduction A recent report by the National Intelligence agency projected that one of the most pivotal tectonic shifts in the next two decades will include the rapid transfer of global power in North America and Europe to the developing world, centering on the emergence of China as the world s largest economy by the year 2030. In this post-hegemonic future, the demands of over eight billion people and an expanding global middle class will place strains on the world s limited resources. 1 As reflected in a number of recent publications, one of the most critical questions will be how rising powers such as China negotiate their way through a highly uncertain international environment in their quest to secure the resources needed to sustain their rapid economic expansions. 2 In the present, we can begin to observe this process playing out on in the region of sub-saharan Africa. It is here that China, the standard bearer of rising powers emerging from the developing world, has begun to make inroads in its effort to secure strategic natural resources in a region traditionally dominated by the status quo powers of the West. Consequently, China s accelerating economic and political engagement with sub-saharan Africa has gained growing attention in political and academic circles as a topic of both praise and derision. Extending offers of aid, investment and trade to Africa s partners without strings or conditions attached, Beijing has promoted a brand of noninterference. 3 Beijing s approach challenges 1 National Intelligence Council, Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds, December 10, 2012, http://www.dni.gov/index.php/carousel-items/778-global-trends-2030-alternative-worldsavailable-for-download (accessed December 14, 2012). 2 Michael Klare, Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet (New York: Holt, 2008); Charles Kupchan, No One s World: The West, The Rising Rest and the Coming Global Turn (Oxford University Press, 2012). 3 Steve Hess and Richard Aidoo, Beyond the Rhetoric: Noninterference in China s African Policy, African and Asian Studies 9 (2010): 356 383; Wen Jiabao, Carrying Forward the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence in the Promotion of Peace and Development (Speech by Wen Jiabao, Premier of the State Council of the People s Republic of China, at Rally Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of The Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, June 28, 2004), http://www. mfa.gov.cn/eng/topics/seminaronfiveprinciples/t140777.htm (accessed November 25, 2011). xv
xvi Introduction the neoliberal position taken by traditional donors, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Western countries. Importantly, the competitive dynamic emerging between Western and Chinese interests in SSA may well foreshadow one of the potential traditional rising power tensions that will define the mid-to-late twenty-first century. In general, Beijing s approach seems to have worked quite well. China s rhetoric of noninterference and its emergence as an alternative source of aid and investment have been warmly received by many of Africa s national leaders. 4 Despite the warm welcome extended by many African leaders, many Western officials, commentators, and academics have been extremely suspicious of China s growing role on the continent. Citing the egregious labor conditions, low wages, and general mistreatment of African workers as well as the corrupt business practices of Chinese enterprises, writer Peter Hitchens has gone so far as to suggest, China has created a new slave empire in Africa. 5 High-profile academic think tanks such as the Council on Foreign Relations and leading Western officials, such as former US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, have warned that the PRC s involvement is likely bolstering pariah states, such as the Sudan and Zimbabwe, flooding African markets with cheap goods and weakening local manufacturing, and undermining international efforts to promote good governance. 6 When asked about China and other emerging players in Africa, Clinton responded, It is easy and we saw that during colonial times to come in, take out natural resources, pay off leaders, and leave We don t want to see a new colonialism in Africa. 7 To the present, while China s growing role in Africa has received increasing attention in popular and academic circles, much writing has tended towards oversimplified dragon in the bush analogies. As noted by Daniel Large (2008), The effect is often emotively to describe China s rise in Africa in terms of a monolithic Chinese dragon in an un-variegated African bush stripped of historical and political content. 8 In this vein, skeptics have highlighted the more exploitative aspects of Chinese engagement while optimists have emphasized the opportunities presented by it. As a consequence, relatively little attention has been paid to the important question of how the mass publics of Africa s diverse countries have perceived and reacted to Chinese engagement in divergent ways. And secondly, there has been 4 Adama Gaye, China in Africa: After the Gun and the Bible A West African Perspective, in China Returns to Africa: A Rising Power and a Continent Embrace, eds. Chris Alden, Daniel Large, and Ricardo Soares de Oliveira (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008): 135 137. 5 Peter Hitchens, How China has created a new slave empire in Africa, September 28, 2008, Daily Mail, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1063198/peter-hitchens-how-chinacreated-new-slave-empire-africa.html (accessed November 23, 2011). 6 Anthony Lake, Christine Todd Whitman, et al, More than Humanitarianism: A Strategic Humanitarian Approach to Africa, Council on Foreign Relations, Independent Task Force Report No. 56 (2006): 40 54; Hillary Clinton, Interview on Africa 360, Lusaka, Zambia, June 11, 2011, http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2011/06/165941.htm (accessed November 23, 2011). 7 Clinton (2011). 8 Daniel Large, Beyond Dragon in the Bush: the Study of China-Africa Relations, African Affairs 107:426 (2008): 46.
Introduction xvii relatively little discussion as to how political entrepreneurs in certain national contexts have been able to tap into public perceptions of China s presence to mobilize supporters and achieve their political goals. In general, there has been little examination of how or why hostility towards China has emerged as a salient political force in certain countries but not others. In Charting the Roots of Anti-Chinese Populism in Africa, we explain that interpreting popular reactions of Chinese engagement through the reigning Chinaskeptic China-optimist dichotomy has become increasingly problematic. As reflected in available cross-national opinion surveys, it is clear that Chinese engagement has been perceived positively in many countries. However, with Michael Sata s victory in Zambia s presidential election in September 2011, it is also clear that in certain contexts entrepreneurial politicians can use anti-chinese sentiment to successfully mobilize supporters against Beijing s influence and achieve electoral success. 9 This variation in outcome certainly requires explanation. In the book, we outline a new, alternative framework for understanding the varied popular reactions to Chinese engagement in SSA. This approach suggests that it is not the scope or the nature of Chinese involvement in African states that inspires opposition but rather the shape of specific political institutional contexts that creates opportunities for antiforeign populism. This approach suggests that in transitional regimes, such as Zambia s, 10 the opening of political systems in flux as well as the varied and manifold nature of Chinese involvement in African societies presents political entrepreneurs with a unique opportunity. These elites can unite diverse coalitions of societal actors around a common frame of opposition against a presumably monolithic China that allegedly colludes with incumbent regimes in carrying out nefarious activities, such as exploiting and mistreating domestic citizens. Meanwhile, in politically closed regimes, such as Ethiopia or Sudan, tight restrictions on political activism have restricted the opportunity for opposition politicians to play the China card in 9 While African views of Chinese engagement have generally been much more favorable than not, these perceptions have varied on a country-by-country basis. Pew (2007) surveys have found extremely favorable views of China in Ivory Coast (92 %), Mali (92 %), Kenya (81 %), Senegal (81 %), Ghana (75 %), and Nigeria (75 %) but fewer positive responses in Uganda (45 %) and South Africa, the latter being the only where negative views (47 %) have outnumbered positive ones (44 %). A 2009 BBC survey that included only two African countries, Ghana and Nigeria, found 75 % and 72 % of respondents respectively to have mainly positive views of China. In a more recent BBC (2011) poll, large numbers of respondents in Nigeria (82 %), Kenya (77 %), and Ghana (62 %) viewed China s growing economic power as positive, whereas a slim majority (52 %) in South Africa shared this sentiment. Barry Sautman and Yan Hairong, African Perspectives on China-Africa Links, China Quarterly 199 (September 2009): 728 759; Pew Global Attitudes Project, Global Unease with Major World Powers, Pew Research Center, June 27, 2007: 39; BBC World Service, Views of China and Russia Decline in Global Poll, February 6, 2009: 7; BBC World Service, Rising Concern about China s Increasing Power: Global Poll, March 27, 2011: 12; Ian T. Brown and Tao Wu, China and the U.S.: Competing for Political Influence, Gallup, May 22, 2009, http://www.gallup.com/poll/118591/china-competing- Political-Influence.aspx (accessed December 1, 2011). 10 Gero Erdmann and Matthias Basedau, The Puzzle of African Party Systems, German Institute of Global and Area Studies Working Paper 40 (January 2007): 11.
xviii Introduction mobilizing regime opposition. While grievances might be commonplace, opposition activists are unable to place them on the political agenda. On the other hand, in open regimes with institutionalized multiparty competition, such as Ghana, normalized leadership turnover diminishes the appeal of mobilizing anti-chinese populism. In such as context, opposition politicians perceive a real likelihood of winning control of the government in free and fair elections and consequently are thus unwilling to position themselves against a foreign partner, such as China, that they will need to depend upon for support and investment once in office. To assess the power of this framework, we conduct a series of case studies focused on SSA countries: Zambia, Ghana, South Africa, Ethiopia, and Angola. Each of these states has forged extensive links to China since the 2000s, in terms of aid, investment, and trade. Each has seen the appearance of visible resentment against unwanted Chinese competition from various sectors of society, such as domestic manufacturers, small-time business entrepreneurs, and laborers. But only in a few select countries, such as Zambia, has public opinion of China shifted in a more negative direction and contributed to the politicization of anti-chinese sentiments. This study aims to take a novel approach that pulls the literature away from a binary opportunity versus exploitation understanding of Sino-African relations towards one that takes account of the uneven geographic distribution of Chinese involvement in SSA and the diverse political institutional contexts through which Beijing s engagement is understood and pressed onto the political agenda. The book proceeds as follows. Chapter 1 introduces China s emergence as an outside player in SSA over the last several decades and briefly reviews the literature s current understanding of the impact of Beijing s growing presence on the continent. It also lays out in more detail a theoretical framework that connects the rise of anti-chinese populism a driver of high-level skepticism towards China to the opportunities presented by the increasingly diversified political regimes of sub- Saharan Africa. Chapter 2 focuses on the case of Zambia, where opposition candidate, Michael Sata, tapped into anti-chinese grievances to stake out a successful platform for winning the presidency in 2011. Chapter 3 explores Ghana, an open democracy that has seen intense two-party competition for the last few decades. There, public approval of Chinese engagement has remained high, despite some serious economic challenges to indigenous manufacturing posed by an influx of cheap Chinese goods and a more recent backlash against illegal Chinese artisanal gold miners. Chapter 4 looks at South Africa, a democratic state dominated by a single party, the African National Congress (ANC), that has seen a high level of public skepticism towards China, both as a model for development and as an economic partner. Chapters 5 and 6 explore Ethiopia and Angola, cases with closed authoritarian systems where China s public favorability has remained particularly high. Chapter 7 reviews the findings in the preceding case studies, suggests how these insights might indicate emerging patterns in Sino-African relations, and reflects on their policy implications.