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While globalisation draws blame for inequality, China and African countries are determined to forge ahead and build an example of inclusive cooperation in which no participants will be left behind.
In a few days’ time, the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) Summit slated for September 3-4 in Beijing will be “an important accelerator” to promote China-Africa cooperation.
China and Africa are facing both opportunities and development challenges and all leaders are keen to discuss ways to promote the Sino-Africa relations.
Observers consider it a milestone event that will further cement the relations between a world’s major economy that rose to success over the past decades and a continent with rapid growth and great potential.
Through closer ties, the two sides can work together to put forward a solution to tackle the challenge of uneven and insufficient development facing all countries.
It is widely acknowledged that a gulf still exists between rich and underdeveloped countries, known as the North-South gap. Also, development levels vary within the same region.
But the plight will hopefully be eased in Africa. As investment and trade surge, China is effectively sharing capital, experience, technology and talent with African countries. With roads and factories built, the continent is fostering a stronger endogenous capacity to pursue a green and prosperous future. More jobs are now available for locals, and a better quality of life is on the horizon as poverty reduces steadily.
Industrialisation should be the premise of inclusive and the sustainable development of Africa. Chinese leaders have reiterated that the country will not follow the colonial ways of the past, and Africa’s development will not be at the cost of the environment or long-term interests.
With high-standard, win-win cooperation, the two sides will jointly push globalisation toward a more inclusive path that allows even the least developed countries to get involved in international division of labour and enjoy the benefits.
As underscored by the upcoming summit, there is no denying that a great deal has changed in Sino-African relations since the first FOCAC summit in 2000.
During the intervening years, China has gone from being a rather new and relatively marginal actor in Africa with a volume of trade worth only a little more than $10 billion in 2000 to the continent’s biggest economic partner with the total value of exports to the continent and imports from it amounting to more than $170 billion in 2017, a figure that represents an increase of 14 percent from the year before during a period when the commodity price index rose only a modest 7 percent (after having slumped in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis).
The commercial links are reinforced with extensive diplomatic as well as military engagements. Since it first deployed units as part of the United Nations peacekeeping force in 2003 in Liberia, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has grown to be the biggest contributor among the five permanent members of the Security Council to blue-helmeted missions in Africa.
In addition, since late 2008, the PLA Navy has maintained a continual presence off the continent’s eastern littoral as part of the international effort against Somali piracy; the current three-ship task force (two frigates and a supply ship) is the 29th to be deployed. These expeditionary forces have provided the rationale for the construction of China’s first overseas military base anywhere, a logistical facility that opened last year in Djibouti, whose proximity to the largest US installation in Africa has already created tensions.
While the external manifestations of China’s presence in Africa have increased in quantity and quality, the internal strategic motivation behind these engagements have also undergone an evolution.
Under former Chinese president Jiang Zemin (1993-2003), who hosted the first FOCAC summit, China launched a national strategy of “going out” (zouchuqu zhanlue) which encouraged investments abroad to secure access to stable supplies of natural resources for which the growing demand could no longer be met by domestic production.
Under Jiang’s successor, Hu Jintao (2003-2013), the policy concept became that of China’s “peaceful rise” (heping jueqi) to political and economic “great power” status which, of course, required not only natural resources, but also diplomatic and commercial access—the latter to export the goods which Chinese factories, using the imported energy and primary resources from Africa and elsewhere, turned out at ever-increasing volumes and speed. to the development of China-Africa relations. – Xinhua
Online Reporter