JOHANNESBURG—China’s leader Xi Jinping has upped the ante in his efforts to enlist the Global South in his anti-West “New World Order.”
Xi is promising almost $51 billion in financing to African countries over the next three years, and pledging to put them at the forefront of a global “renewable energy revolution.”
The Chinese leader also promised to help “create at least 1 million jobs for Africa” and deliver $141 million in grants for military assistance, saying Beijing would “provide training for 6,000 military personnel and 1,000 police and law enforcement officers from Africa.”
But in between all the pledges and promises, in Xi’s private meetings with several African leaders, he stressed the importance of Africa allying with China against “Western hegemony.”
In a joint statement, Xi and African leaders including Cyril Ramaphosa, president of the continent’s largest economy, South Africa, agreed to “work together to build an equal and orderly multipolar world and universally beneficial and inclusive economic globalization.”
Michael Schuman, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub, told The Epoch Times this is “diplomatic code for saying the world [is] unequal and disorderly because of Western dominance and it’s time for Chinese-led alternatives.”
Using its global development program, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China has showered Africa for more than a decade with multibillion-dollar infrastructure projects, which have also left many nations heavily indebted to Beijing.
According to data released by Boston University, China has loaned $182 billion to 49 African governments since 2000.
But China’s economy has slowed in recent years, with Beijing scaling down on financing megaprojects while simultaneously demanding loan repayments that often result in African countries cutting spending on vital public services such as health care.
Kenya, East Africa’s biggest economy, alone owes China $8 billion.
Li Hangwei, a senior researcher at the German Institute of Development and Sustainability, told The Epoch Times that China has become “very wary” of criticism of its activities in Africa.
“For many years we’ve heard of the so-called ‘debt trap’ that China is allegedly setting for developing countries, and we’ve heard how China is mining African minerals and precious metals and taking them back home for its own benefit, with very little value added in Africa,” she said.
“At FOCAC the signs were clear that China wants to move away from this. Going forward, it’s likely that it funds a lot of smaller projects, like beautifying African cities, boosting agriculture, and reducing poverty.
“It’s still going to give Africa a lot of money, but the money’s going to [be] spread around a lot.”
The International Monetary Fund said around 20 percent of the region’s exports now go to China and about 16 percent of Africa’s imports come from China, amounting to a record $282 billion in total trade volume in 2023.
Metals, mineral products, and fuel represent about three-fifths of Africa’s exports to China, while it mostly imports Chinese manufactured goods, electronics, and machinery.
“Xi and before him, Hu Jintao, were the first global leaders to recognize how important Africa’s minerals, metals, and fuels are going to be in the future,” said Cobus van Staden, head of the China-Africa Project at South Africa’s Wits University.
Rare-earth minerals, such as cobalt and lithium, are critical to the manufacture of modern-day technologies including computers, cell phones, and renewable energy components such as batteries for electric vehicles and wind turbines.
Sub-Saharan Africa holds the greatest concentration of these minerals and metals, with China already dominating the region’s processing and supply.
“Xi has also been very clever in exploiting the geopolitical frustrations of African countries, who feel excluded from real decision-making in international forums like the United Nations, and unfairly treated economically by the IMF and World Bank,” Van Staden told The Epoch Times.
“Xi is offering the Global South a chance to take another path and break away from so-called Western hegemony by joining an anti-Western rebellion of sorts to exert more influence over world affairs,” he added.
“If this happens, China is also strengthened economically and politically, of course.”
A quayside bridge loads cargo for the China-africa liner Shengli Grace in Yantai Port, East China’s Shandong province, on Dec. 21, 2021. (Tang Ke/Costfoto/Future Publishing via Getty Images)Over the past two years, Xi’s approach to the developing world has undergone a significant change, said Eric Olander, director of the China-Global South Project, a non-profit based in New York that explores China’s engagement with Africa.
“Xi, and of course the Chinese Communist Party as a whole, are fixated on geopolitical competition with the United States and its allies and partners,” he told The Epoch Times.
This shift, said Olander, will have major consequences for Beijing’s relations with Africa and the Global South as a whole.
Schuman said the anti-Americanism that now characterized Xi’s foreign policy risks undermining his development efforts in Africa.
Rifts With Beijing
Van Staden said while African leaders were “all smiles” at this week’s FOCAC gathering, rifts with Beijing are appearing across the continent.“Big economic powers like South Africa, Nigeria, and Kenya have made it clear that they want ties with the West and with China, and that they’re not willing to have exclusive relationships,” said Van Staden.
Ahead of the summit, Angola, one of Africa’s major oil producers, indicated it would favor more trade with Europe, a region that had recently provided it with more financing to grow and diversify its economy, rather than with China.
Schuman said the motivations for Xi’s policy toward the Global South are to protect China’s security and promote Chinese global interests in an environment of heightened competition with the United States.
He added that Beijing’s agenda to recruit Global South leaders into a “wide anti-American movement” is most apparent in Xi’s influence over the BRICS group of developing nations.
The bloc’s original members are Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
In 2023, Xi successfully pushed for an expansion of the group’s membership.
The bloc approved the inclusion of Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
“What these countries have in common is that China has economic or diplomatic leverage over them, or it wants to entice them into tighter partnerships,” Schuman said.
“Egypt and Ethiopia have close political ties to China, and are heavily indebted to Chinese lenders. Beijing is even helping Egypt build an entirely new capital city.”
Like Russia, said Schuman, Iran is under Western sanctions and thus reliant on Chinese diplomatic and economic support.
At the time of the BRICS expansion, Argentina was avoiding a default on loans from the International Monetary Fund by utilizing funds from China’s central bank.
Schuman said Beijing wants the Saudis and Emiratis as partners in the Middle East.
“Xi most likely intends for them to support Chinese foreign policy goals and interests, not only within BRICS, but also in other forums and initiatives,” he said.
The BRICS expansion, and China’s efforts at the FOCAC summit this week, said Schuman, are designed to build a multinational movement that will “potentially support Xi’s anti-American agenda and help him turn that group and others into alternatives to the G7 and other U.S.-influenced international forums.”
“What Wang is saying here is that developing nations must oppose American policies that Beijing stands against,” said Van Staden.
Schuman said that the more Xi’s “anti-Americanism drives his policies, the more Beijing’s relations with the developing world could come under strain.”
“Beijing is inherently and openly pressuring governments of the Global South to take sides against the United States,” he said.
‘Backfire’
Professor William Gumede, head of the School of Governance at Johannesburg’s Wits University, told The Epoch Times China’s attempts to force African political elites to side with it against the West, and the United States in particular, “could backfire to a degree.”“African countries aren’t alienated from the West, like Russia and Iran [are]. Much of Africa benefits immensely from ties with America and Europe. They shouldn’t be expected to risk weakening those ties,” he said.
Gumede added that behind all the “backslapping and bonhomie” at FOCAC, African leaders “don’t like being used as tools in China’s geopolitical war with America.”
He said this represents an opportunity for Washington to “move closer to Africa, exactly at a time when China is trying to drive a wedge” between Africa and the United States.
“Joe Biden has been clear that he wants Africa to have a louder voice in world affairs, by for example giving an African country a permanent seat on the (U.N.) Security Council,” Gumede said.
Africa is the only region without a permanent seat, despite representing 54 of the 193 members of the U.N. and almost 20 percent of the global population.
Schuman said, “Giving Africa more power in the governance of the current world order could go a long way toward countering a China that has become more intent to enlist [Africa] in a campaign against that order.”
