Abstract
This chapter offers a historical review of Chinese agricultural development cooperation with Africa since the late 1950s. It goes through the three historical phases—respectively the earlier period in the 1960–1970s, the transition period during the 1980–1990s, and the current period from the 2000s until the present time—which are characterized by different motives, modalities and institutional structures. It also gives a special focus on China’s foreign aid reforms starting from the 1980s, which have significantly informed the practice of China’s contemporary external development cooperation.
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- 1.
The ‘Third World’ here is used in the sense of Mao Zedong’s Three Worlds theory, indicating the majority of African, Asian (except for Japan, including China itself) and Latin American countries during the period of Cold War, whereas the First World referring to the Soviet Union and United States—the superpowers at the time, and Second World then secondary powers including European countries, Canada, Australia, Japan (MOFA of the PRC, n.d.). This usages is different from some other Western tradition of categorizing, for instance, that regards the United States and its NATO allies as the First World, the Soviet Union and its communist allies (including China) as the Second World, and those unaligned, often with colonial pasts, such as many of the African, Latin American, Asian and Oceanian countries as the Third World (see e.g. Sauvy 1952). The latter usage is also adopted in the following section of this chapter (2.2).
- 2.
Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Congo-Brazzaville, Tanzania, Zambia and Somalia.
- 3.
Sierra Leone, Ruanda, Ghana, Togo, Congo-Kinshasa, Senegal, Benin, Gambia, Chad, Mauritius, Gabon, Nigeria, Niger, Madagascar, Central Africa, Liberia, Botswana, Burkina Faso.
- 4.
‘Complete project’ is a term used by Chinese government to refer to the type of foreign aid project that involves project engineering and construction, equipment and facilities provision, and post-construction service (MOC of the PRC 2015). China started to include complete projects into its development cooperation portfolio since 1954; before that, the mostly adopted aid modalities were donation (both in cash and in kind) and technical assistance (see CAITEC 2018, 12).
- 5.
Zhou Enlai proposed eight principles for external economic and technical assistance in 1963–1964 during his visit to a dozen of Asian and African countries, which established the foundation for China’s development cooperation (and foreign aid more generally) until now. Non-conditionality is one of the eight principles. For the full content of the eight principles, see Bräutigam (2009, 313).
- 6.
According to the authors’ interviews with several Chinese elderly diplomats in Africa, the long-held ‘non-conditionality’ principle is deeply rooted in Chinese government’s respect for the UN Chapter and the Bandung Spirit in terms of respecting other countries’ sovereignty. Apart from that, the unpleasant experience with Soviet Union trying to intervene Chinese domestic affairs in the late 1950s did not only directly lead to the ‘breakup’ of the two countries but also reconfirm the ‘non-interference’ principle in PRC’s diplomatic thinking and practice (Niu 2010).
- 7.
This is also related to the prevailing ideology of proletarian internationalism in China at the time.
- 8.
It is worth noting that this ‘non-sustainability’ problem was not only seen in Chinese agro-aid projects in Africa, but indeed a common problem that was also widely observed in other Western countries’ aid efforts in African agricultural sector (Eicher 2003).
- 9.
The ‘Third World’ here, different from that in the context of Mao’s ‘Three Worlds’ theory (Sect. 2.1), is used in the Western tradition of categorizing that regards the United States and its NATO allies as the First World, the Soviet Union and its communist allies (including China) as the Second World, and those unaligned, often with colonial pasts, such as many of the African, Latin American, Asian and Oceanian countries as the Third World (e.g. see Sauvy 1952).
- 10.
Here, the ‘profitability’ refers mostly to the ability of the aid projects to bring economic benefits to the African locals, which is different from the more self-interested profit-seeking motive as growingly seen in the Chinese aid practice later on (particularly from the 1990s on) after the foreign aid reform.
- 11.
This is largely due to tremendous capital investment required to recover the national economy after the ten years of political turmoil caused by the ‘cultural revolution’.
- 12.
- 13.
The ‘contract and responsibility system’ was first adopted in the rural reforms of China since the late 1970s and later gradually extended to other areas of the Reform.
- 14.
Apart from the fact that political (rather than economic) development was deemed more urgent in China’s foreign strategy at the time, the relatively backward economic development status on both China and Africa also limited the space for profound and profitable economic cooperation—beyond the unilateral ‘pure aid’ from the former to the latter—to take place.
- 15.
Include ‘equality and reciprocal benefits’, ‘pursuing actual effects’, ‘diversity of cooperation forms’ and ‘mutual development’. For more details, see Bräutigam (2009, 314).
- 16.
For more details about this company and the relevant projects, see Sect. 4.1.2.
- 17.
CLETC is short for China Light Industrial Corporation for Foreign Economic and Technical Co-operation, which was established in 1983 and from then started to take over the agro-aid projects in Mali that had used to be undertaken by the then China’s Ministry of Light Industry in the 1960–1970s.
- 18.
This latter change was a more progressive process. That is to say, the change of implementing agencies did not immediately bring about the change of motivations, for the former was a more direct reflection of the functional separation of government agencies and enterprises as required by the domestic market-oriented reforms, but the latter grew more evidently only as the reforms deepened and thus the companies, especially those state-owned enterprises, truly gained more autonomy and discretion over company operation matters rather than acting merely as a government instrument.
- 19.
COMPLANT is short for China National Complete Plant Import & Export Corporation, which was established in 1959 and had since played a predominant role in implementing Chinese government aid projects abroad.
- 20.
In 2001 the ‘Going Out’ strategy was formally proposed and written into the country’s 10th Five-year Plan of the National Economy and Social Development, which was further enriched in the 11th and 12th Five-year Plans in 2006 and 2011, respectively (People’s Congress of the PRC 2001, 2006, 2011). Specifically, by promoting the ‘Going Out’ strategy, the Chinese government actively encourages and supports the Chinese enterprises to conduct foreign project contracting and labour services cooperation; exploit foreign resources that are domestically lacked; conduct processing and trade abroad, create international marketing networks and brands; set up overseas Research & Development (R&D) agencies and design centres; conduct transnational operation and develop towards transnational companies. The core objectives of the ‘Going Out’ strategy, therefore, are largely to gain access to foreign resources, markets and technology through primarily conducting FDI but also other modalities.
- 21.
Compared, for instance, to that between some of the agriculture-based advanced countries from Europe, Oceania, or North America, and Africa.
- 22.
That said, Chinese scholars have clearly realized that the success story and experiences cannot be simply copied by African states without proper adjustment and localization process due to the latter’s distinct historical, cultural and policy environments, among other factors (Li et al. 2013).
- 23.
For instance, to alleviate the agricultural resource bottleneck, upgrade China’s domestic agro-industry, climb up the global agribusiness value chain and cultivate competitive agricultural multinational corporations, among others.
- 24.
The ministry was renamed Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (MOARA) since March 2018. To avoid confusion, this book still refers to it as MOA uniformly.
- 25.
For a discussion on the sustainability issue of Chinese decades-long programme of agro-expert dispatch, see Lu et al. (2015).
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Jiang, L. (2020). Tracing the Root of China’s Contemporary Agro-Development Cooperation with Africa: A Historical Review. In: Beyond Official Development Assistance. Governing China in the 21st Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9507-0_2
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