Should the West fear China’s growing influence on the African
continent? While there is no question that China and Chinese companies
are changing the way African politicians seek aid and investment, the
relationship between the two sides is far more complicated than simple
narratives about “democracy or dictatorship” or “trade not aid”
suggest. Veteran journalistHoward W. French explores this complexity
in his book, “China’s Second Continent: How a Million Migrants are
Building a New Empire in Africa.” He graciously took the time to
answer my questions about the book and China’s role in Africa.
LS: Much of the discourse in American politics is that the U.S. should
be afraid of China’s role in Africa because China is undemocratic or
“trying to take over.” Is this a fair approach? Why or why not?
HF: I’m afraid the American discourse on China and Africa is very
confused and generally not very insightful. Part of that is driven by
the recent, still startled realization in this society of just how
serious a competitor China is becoming, and part of that reflects the
baggage of very old and nearly immutable American attitudes toward
Africa, which are bound up in paternalism and in using Africa as a
kind of vanity mirror to help us brighten our own self-image and feel
better about ourselves.
Make no mistake, China is competing with the United States, and an
important element of that is going where its major rival, namely us,
is thinly represented on the ground, lightly engaged in terms of
political, economic and policymaking resources — in other words,
places where the United States has been coasting or has simply not
brought its “A Game.” This background has a lot to do with why China
has made such a big and concerted push into Africa in the last 10 to
15 years, and why, not coincidentally, the United States didn’t really
sit up and pay attention until fairly recently. Even with that, we are
stuck with old policy paradigms in Africa that hark back to the
Clinton administration, of favoring selected autocrats who can keep
order locally in their regions, cooperate with the United States in
its extra-African policy priorities, especially those related to
radical Islam and the “war on terror,” and we do so, furthermore, in
the naive conviction that the autocrats also offer a better chance at
generating and sustaining economic growth. This is how, for example,
Barack Obama came to announce Ethiopia as the political highlight of
his coming, near-end-of-presidency visit to the continent, and adding
a visit by the leader of democratic Nigeria, an immensely important
country, only as an apparent afterthought and in response to a certain
outcry.
In the final analysis, though, the reason to pay attention to Africa
is not China. We need to get over the idea that one needs an excuse to
pay attention to Africa. That, too, is a holdover from the Clinton
era, when they came up with out-migration and the threat of epidemic
diseases as an excuse to have a look in on the continent, perhaps as a
response to Robert Kaplan. The best reasons to pay attention to Africa
are inherent to Africa itself. They go to extraordinary demographics,
with an upside at least as full of opportunity as the downside is full
of risk. They go to the immense opportunity for both Africans and
Americans represented by economic growth on the continent, which needs
to be enhanced and broadened. They go to urbanization. And, finally,
they go to matters of universal interest related to the environment,
in other words, helping ensure that Africa, which is a late-starter in
many economic processes, can both maximize its potential and get
things right environmentally. As long as we cast our interest in
Africa in negative frames, of security, or rivalry with China, we’ll
continue to miss this hugely important big picture. Similarly, as long
as we continue to play small ball, politically, calling an Africa
policy the occasional gathering of “young entrepreneurs,” hosting four
or five African leaders together at once for a photo op at the White
House, and making a mere one or two visits to the continent at the
presidential level per term, we’ll be failing to engage the
continent’s potential and simply missing out.
LS: Most of what we are used to seeing in reporting on China’s
involvement on the African continent focuses on Chinese state-owned
enterprises and large corporations engaged in massive infrastructure
projects. You cover these, but the picture you paint in “China’s
Second Continent” is far more nuanced than the usual narrative, with
much of the discussion focused on individual Chinese who moved to the
continent to farm or engage in petty trading in places like Mozambique
or Senegal. Other than a shared nationality, it’s not clear that the
ordinary Chinese who are permanently migrating to Africa have a lot in
common with the multinational corporation executives working there.
Does it make sense to focus on “China in Africa” as a theme, or should
social scientists be analyzing it as many phenomena?
HF: There is no question that one must try to disaggregate more when
dealing with this topic. One of my starting goals in undertaking this
project was simply trying to unravel the mystery of how so many
Chinese ended up in Africa in such a relatively short period of time.
I learned very quickly that almost none of this could be explained in
authoritarian, command economy terms, where the state, at some central
level, drew up a master plan that said “By year X, we need to have a
million Chinese in Africa,” and set about rounding them up for
resettlement here and there. The working title I proposed for my book,
in fact, was “Haphazard Empire,” and that is because I quickly learned
that for all of the planning and ambition of the Chinese state, lots
of things quickly began to unfold in these relationships that had
little or nothing to do with any set scheme or blueprint. Personally,
one of the richest veins in my reporting was to discover how
vigorously Chinese from different parts of that country compete with
each other and regard each other with suspicion, stereotypes and
resentment, and beyond that I was surprised to learn just how common
it is for Chinese on the ground in Africa to look askance at their own
state.
LS: You discuss many of the complaints I’ve also heard from African
friends about China’s activities in their countries, issues like low
wages, environmental devastation and supporting corrupt leaders, as
well as overt racism. Should ordinary Africans be concerned about
China’s growing influence in their countries?
HF: There are several cases of small or low-density countries, where
the numbers of Chinese have ballooned suddenly, where Chinese
influence on the ground has grown very quickly, and where it is not
too soon to begin thinking about the risk of state capture. Namibia,
which I explore in the book, comes to mind. In general, though, I feel
a fair amount of optimism on this topic. What I learned is that
African civil societies are pretty robust and sophisticated, and they
are not about to roll over for anyone. This has presented the Chinese
newcomers with a steep learning curve in many places, because they
disembark with certain feelings of superiority, whether economic or
cultural, and discover that in many ways, the Africans are more
politically sophisticated than they are.
LS: Is China’s influence bad for Africans who want their countries to
be more democratic? Is the “China is propping up dictators” narrative
we often see in the Western media fair?
HF: China, unsurprisingly, is looking out for China, seeking
opportunity wherever it can find it. That said, Beijing is wary about
a risk to its image of getting too comfortably and blatantly in bed
with the most egregious despots on the continent. I think that Guinea
under Dadis Camara was a big lesson for China, which was sorely
tempted to float his regime as a way of wedging itself into the game
for its immense natural resources, only to see him ejected from power.
It has also been interesting to watch the growing caution China has
shown with Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. At a certain point, making
friends with leaders means making enemies of the people, and China has
gradually become a more astute reader of that balance. Of course, it
is on Africans to get their houses in order, politically, and to send
the right kinds of signals to outsiders, from whatever quarter, about
the kinds of relationships that can be tolerated.
LS: “China’s Second Continent” is a very personal, reflective work
framed by your many years working as a journalist in China and all
over the African continent. Did you draw on any academic research when
researching and writing the book? Who’s getting it mostly right in
terms of analysis, and which approaches are misguided?
HF: I have a great deal of respect for academics. This stems, in part,
from a transformative discovery I made as an Africa correspondent
early in the Internet age, when I stumbled upon discussion groups like
H(umanities)-Africa, which I began to follow avidly and learn so much
from. I continued this practice as I moved from one region of the
world to another, to the point where I now follow academic discussions
pretty much every day on three or four different parts of the world.
It takes a lot of time and can leave your head swimming, but this has
come to constitute a really important part of how I engage with the
world intellectually.
For this book, of course I read the literature. However, this project
could be said to be a response at some level to what I found most
lacking in the academic takes on the subject. When I set out, far too
much of the literature was written at the 30,000-foot level, with
big-picture analyses and lots of abstraction. For my taste, far too
many people were setting out from a seemingly pre-fixed perspective
ideologically, often poorly acknowledged, of whether China was good or
bad for Africa, which struck me as sterile and unsatisfying. To begin
with, the world doesn’t usually work in such stark binaries as this.
My biggest dissatisfaction, though, was that there were so few voices
of what we call “real people” in my business. Shockingly few Africans
of any description could be heard from discussing how they lived and
experienced this new reality, of a burgeoning Chinese presence and
engagement with the continent. Chinese voices were scarce, too, except
for officials and people from semiofficial think tanks and
universities in China, who tended to speak in stilted, predictable
ways that didn’t seem to me to cast a lot of light on things. These
observations slowly came together to guide my sense of what I should
do: wander the terrain and encounter people; take the time to really
hear them out; eschew theory and dwell in the moment; try to convey as
true a picture of the world I encountered as I could. No discipline
offers fully satisfactory answers to any important question, but
journalists needn’t be shy about what we can do with our methods, even
as we are conscious of their limitations.
Howard W. French is an associate professor at the Columbia University
Graduate School of Journalism, where he has taught both journalism and
photography since 2008. He is a veteran foreign correspondent who
worked in over 100 countries on five continents as a senior writer for
the New York Times for nearly 23 years. He is a frequent contributor
to the Atlantic and the New York Review of Books.
Received on Fri Jul 03 2015 - 21:37:02 EDT