Abstract
China’s relations with Africa began almost six centuries ago with a ceremonial exchange of gifts. In 1415, Chinese explorers brought shiploads of Chinese porcelains, silks, pepper and rice to the East African coast, and in return, the Kenyan town of Malindi sent a single giraffe, followed by zebras, lions, frankincense and rare spices.1 Almost six hundred years later, a pair of Kenyan giraffes accompanied President Moi in his 1988 state visit to China, and a Chinese loan of US$13.0 million followed President Moi’s two giraffes.
To commemorate his present visit to China, his second in eight years, President Moi donated to the Chinese government two giraffes ‘as a token gesture to signify a mark of continued goodwill between the peoples of the two countries’.
Daily Nation (Nairobi), 5 October 1988
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Notes
Gao Jinyuan, ‘China and Africa: The Development of Relations Over Many Centuries,’ African Affairs 83 (April 1984) pp. 241-50; Snow, The Star Raft, p. 1.
Alan Hutchison, China’s African Revolution (Boulder, CO,: Westview Press, 1975), p. 206.
Ch’i-Yu T’ang, An Economic Study of Chinese Agriculture 1924 Ph.D. Dissertation, Cornell University (New York: Garland Publishers, 1980).
Karl A. Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957).
On the strong state in China, see, among others, Susan Shirk, The Political Logic of Economic Reform in China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993)
Gordon White (ed.), The Chinese State in the Era of Economic Reform: The Road to Crisis (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1991)
Arthur Lewis Rosenbaum (ed.), State and Society in China: The Consequences of Reform (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992)
Lucian Pye, Asian Power and Politics: Cultural Dimensions of Authority (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1985)
Jack Gray, ‘The Two Roads: Alternative Strategies of Social Change and Economic Growth in China,’ in Stuart R. Schran (ed.), Authority, Participation and Cultural Change in China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973).
For analyses of these costs, see Louis Putterman, Continuity and Change in China’s Rural Development: Collective and Reform Eras in Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993)
David Zweig, Agrarian Radicalism in China, 1968-1981 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989)
William Joseph, Christine P. Wong, and David Zweig (eds.), New Perspectives on the Cultural Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies/Harvard University, 1991)
William L. Parish (ed.), Chinese Rural Development (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1985)
Mark Seiden, The Political Economy of Chinese Development (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1993).
This discussion of policy and programs in Maoist China draws on the following sources: Randolph Barker and Beth Rose (eds), Agriculture and Rural Development in China Today, Cornell International Agriculture Monograph 102 (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University, November, 1983)
John Lossing Buck, Owen L. Dawson, and Yuan-li Wu, Food and Agriculture in Communist China (New York: Praeger, 1966)
Kang Chao, Agricultural Production in Communist China: 1949-1965 (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1970)
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Learning From China: A Report on Agriculture and the Chinese People’s Communes September 9-October 5, 1975, Bangkok: FAO, 1977
Leslie T. C. Kuo, The Technical Transformation of Agriculture in Communist China (New York: Praeger, 1972)
Nicholas Lardy, Agriculture in China’s Modern Economic Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983)
Mao Zedong ‘Reading Notes on the Soviet Text Political Economy,’ in Long Live the Thought of Mao Tsetung (Taipei, 1969)
See Marsh S. Marshall, Jr., ‘Red and Expert at Tachai: A Sources of Growth Analysis,’ World Development v. 7 (1979)
Neville Maxwell, ‘Learning From Tachai,’ World Development v. 3 (July-August 1975).
Daniel Kelliher, Peasant Power in China: The Era of Rural Reform, 1979-1989 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992) p. 10.
See, for example, the speech by Zhou Enlai, 15 January 1964, which outlines China’s early framework for foreign aid. See also Ai Chingchu, ‘China’s Economic and Technical Aid to Other Countries,’ Peking Review 21 August 1964
Chin Yiwu, ‘China’s Economic and Technical Cooperation with Friendly Countries,’ Peking Review 25 October 1974
Li Ke, ‘China’s Aid to Foreign Countries,’ Beijing Review 5 September 1983.
Xinhua, 6 February 1964, cited in Yu Fai Law, Chinese Foreign Aid: A Study of its Nature and Goals with Particular Reference to the Foreign Policy and World View of the People’s Republic of China, 1950-1982 (Fort Lauderdale: Breitenbach, 1984) pp. 47-8.
Deng Xiaoping echoed this approach in his 1974 speech to the United Nations: ‘self-reliance is primary, foreign aid is secondary.’ Deng Xiaoping, ‘Speech at the United Nations, 1974,’ in Peking Review, no. 15 (12 April 1974).
George T. Yu, ‘Africa in Chinese Foreign Policy,’ Asian Survey, vol. 28, no. 8 (August 1988) p. 854.
Xie Yixian, ‘China’s Foreign Policy: A 1980s Tune-Up,’ Beijing Review, 13-26 February 1989, p. 16.
Xie Yixian, ‘China’s Foreign Policy,’ Beijing Review, 13-26 February 1989.
Wang Shu, ‘The Road of Third World Development,’ Beijing Review 22-8 May 1989, p. 17.
Zhen Bingxi, International Studies issue no. 3, 1988.
See, for example, George T. Yu and David J. Longenecker, ‘The Beijing-Taipei Struggle for International Recognition: From the Niger Affair to the U.N.,’ Asian Survey v. 34, n. 5 (May 1994).
Robert Boardman, Post-Socialist World Orders: Russia, China and the UN System (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994).
People’s Republic of China, ‘Eight Principles Guiding China’s Economic and Technical Aid to Other Countries,’ Beijing, 1964 (mimeo).
Xinhua, 19 May 1990; 3 August 1990; 30 August 1990; China Aktuell, January 1989, p. 55/1; May 1990, p. 400/1 and August 1990, pp. 671/1-672/2. The figure for Cameroon is from Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Handbook of Economic Statistics, 1991 (Washington, DC: CIA, 1991).
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), ‘The Aid Programme of China,’ W. 2196D/Arch. 0792D, Paris, March 1987 (mimeo).
Roger Murray, ‘Africa and China,’ New African (December 1985) p. 61.
Li Ke provided the 1950 date in ‘China’s Aid to Foreign Countries,’ Beijing Review, 5 September 1983, p. 16
John Franklin Copper, China’s Foreign Aid: An Instrument of Peking’s Foreign Policy (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1976) p. 25.
Elliot J. Berg, Rethinking Technical Cooperation: Reforms for Capacity Building in Africa (New York: Regional Bureau for Africa, United Nations Development Programme, 1993) p. 244.
Zhu Peirong, ‘Continuous Development of Economic and Technological Cooperation with Foreign Countries in the Field of Agriculture,’ Zhongguo nongye nianjian (Chinese Agricultural Yearbook) Beijing, 1985, pp. 297-9. Abidjan Domestic Service in French, 14 May 1988, in FBIS-AFR, 17 May 1988, p. 21.
Li Peng, ‘Build up in Overseas Work,’ Beijing Review, 20-6 March 1989, p. 42.
Joel Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States: State-Society Relation and State Capabilities in the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988).
As an indication of the confusion surrounding the actual amount of the loans, Liberian sources stated that the Chinese gave loans of $5.9 million in 1985, $15 million in 1984, and $2.1 million in 1982, although these figures probably refer to disbursements instead of commitments. OECD states that a 1978 loan of $23.5 million was followed by another loan of $50 million in 1985. OECD, ‘Aid Programme of China,’ p. 18. The Chinese embassy in Monrovia stated that China offered two loans of rmb 40 million each (given prevailing rates of exchange in 1978, this would equal $23.8 million; in 1985, $13.6 million). China does not publish official figures for its loan programs.
Economist Intelligence Unit, Country Report: Liberia, Sierra Leone, Quarterly Report No. 1, 1989, p. 37.
Permanent Secretary, MEPID, ‘Circular on Implementation of Loan from the People’s Republic of China,’ Banjul, The Gambia, 2 May 1975.
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© 1998 Deborah Bräutigam
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Bräutigam, D. (1998). Chinese Aid in Africa. In: Chinese Aid and African Development. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230374300_3
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