Changing Contexts and the Future of China—Africa Relations

Abstract

These two extracts from speeches delivered on the African continent by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the UK Prime Minister David Cameron thrust the nature of China’s involvement in Africa into the global media spotlight again. Criticizing both China’s domestic and overseas capitalist practices, these western politicians reiterated the inability of the Chinese political and economic model to meet the global norms around good governance and the demands of its citizens. The comments also reconfirm our introductory statements that popular perceptions of China-Africa relations are still very much presented from the perspective of western powers and interests. Despite this apparent continuity in discourses around China things have changed, particularly our understanding of how China’s domestic agendas shape its interventions in Africa and how the mediation of such interventions by African actors conditions the impacts on the ground.

We are however concerned that China’s foreign assistance and investment practices in Africa have not always been consistent with generally accepted international norms of transparency and good governance, and that it has not always utilized the talents of the African people in pursuing its business interests

Hillary Clinton, 11 June 2011, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

I believe the model of authoritarian capitalism [in China] we are seeing will fall short in the long term … When people get economically richer they make legitimate demands for political freedoms to match their economic freedoms. This model is unable to respond.

David Cameron, 20 July 2011, Lagos, Nigeria