Abstract
Africa cannot be divided neatly or logically into regions as Asia can be. Furthermore, given the fact that China has extended foreign assistance to more countries in Africa than in any of the other geographic regions assessed in this book and that it nearly stopped its aid to countries on the continent in the late 1970s, plus the fact that its financial help to Africa differs so greatly between the two periods, this chapter will cover only China’s aid to African countries during phase one, or the early years. China’s foreign aid to African countries from 1980 to the present, or period two, will be the assessed in the next chapter.
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Notes
See Stuart Schram, The Political Thought of Mao Tse-tung (New York: Praeger, 1966), p. 256.
There has also been speculation that China and the Soviet Union divided Africa into spheres of influence at this time, with China taking East Africa and the Soviet Union West Africa, or at least some of the countries in each region. See John K. Cooley, East Wind over Africa (New York: Walker, 1955), p. 25.
See World Knowledge Handbook (Peking: World Knowledge Publishing Co., 1961), p. 408, and Peter Hann, “Africa: New Target for Peking,” China Factbook (Hong Kong: 1962), cited in John F. Copper, China’s Foreign Aid: An Instrument of Peking’s Foreign Policy (Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath, 1976), p. 88.
In fact, the Chinese Foreign Ministry was reorganized at this time in recognition of its new and broader interest in Africa. The West Asian and African Affairs Department was created to shift the responsibilities for Africa from the West European and African Department. See Joseph Camilleri, Chinese Foreign Policy: The Maoist Era and Its Aftermath (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1980), p. 97.
See Sidney Klein, Politics versus Economics: The Foreign Trade and Aid Policies of China (Hong Kong: International Studies Group, 1968), p. 166
and David H. Shinn and Joshua Eisenman, China and Africa: A Century of Engagement (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), p. 265.
Janos Horvath, Chinese Technical Transfer to the Third World: A Grants Economy Analysis (New York: Praeger, 1976), pp. 40–41.
For an account of this, see Philip Snow, The Star Raft: China’s Encounter with Africa (New York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988), p. 145
and Wei Liang-Tsai, Peking versus Taipei in Africa, 1960–1978 (Taipei: Asia and the World Institute, 1982), pp. 110–11.
Daniel Wolfstone, “Sino-African Economics,” Far Eastern Economic Review, February 14, 1964, and Marshall Goldman, Soviet Foreign Aid (New York: Praeger, 1967), p. 173, both cited in Copper, China’s Foreign Aid, p. 90.
Zhou, accompanied by Foreign Minister Chen Yi, visited the United Arab Republic, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Ghana, Mali, Guinea, Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia. China sought support for the upcoming second Afro-Asian Conference, China’s nuclear test and its view on the test ban treaty, and its principles of foreign aid giving. See Alan Lawrance, China’s Foreign Relations since 1949 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975), p. 171.
John F. Copper, “China’s Military Assistance,” in John F. Copper and Daniel S. Papp (eds.), Communist Nations Military Assistance (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1983), p. 120.
Wolfgang Bartke, China’s Economic Aid (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1975), p. 116.
Agreements of this kind, but more important a treaty of friendship—which China also signed with the government of Guinea—indicated that Chinese leaders viewed Guinea as a friendly, anti-imperialist state. See Harold C. Hinton, China’s Turbulent Quest (New York: Macmillan, 1970), p. 193.
Copper, China’s Foreign Aid in 1979–80 (Baltimore: University of Maryland School of Law, 1981), p. 52. In 1980, a Chinese medical facility was completed.
Alexander Eckstein, Communist China’s Economic Growth and Foreign Trade (New York: McGraw Hill, 1965), p. 232.
Philip Snow, “China and Africa: Consensus and Challenge,” in Thomas W. Robinson and David Shambaugh (eds.), Chinese Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), p. 284.
Ian Taylor, China in Africa: Engagement and Compromise (London: Routledge, 2006), p. 32.
Copper, China’s Foreign Aid, p. 93. China’s premier Zhou Enlai visited several African countries, including Ghana, in December 1963 and January 1964 to drum up support for China’s stance on the conference. See John W. Garver, Foreign Relations of the People’s Republic of China (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993), p. 143 for details. It is uncertain whether Ghana was going to take China’s side on the conference in view of the fact that by the end of 1964 China had provided Ghana with about $40 million in aid compared to $89 million that the Soviet Union had extended and $82 million given by Eastern European nations. See Klein, Politics versus Economics, p. 168.
It was later reported that China had sent military experts to Mali and provided training to Mali military personnel in China, though neither were very large. See Communist Aid Activities in Non-Communist Less Developed Countries 1978 (Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency, 1979), p. 4. The number of Chinese arms technicians was put at 15 and the number trained in China was 50. Another source reports that China provided Mali with military assistance worth around $1 million during the period up to 1976. See Joseph P. Smaldone, “Soviet and Chinese Military and Arms Transfers to Africa: A Contextual Analysis,” in Warren Weinstein and Thomas H. Hendrickson (eds.), Soviet and Chinese Aid to African Nations (New York: Praeger, 1980), p. 105.
See Philip Snow, “China and Africa: Consensus and Camouflage,” in Thomas W. Robinson and David Shambaugh (eds.), Chinese Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), p. 290. The term “America’s second Vietnam” was mentioned in People’s Daily on January 17, 1966.
Bruce Larkin, China and Africa, 1949–1970: The Foreign Policy of the People’s Republic of China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), p. 94, cited in Copper, China’s Foreign Aid, p. 97.
See Helen Kitchen (ed.), A Handbook for Africa (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1963), p. 182, and Larkin, China and Africa, 1949–1970, p. 94, cited in Copper, China’s Foreign Aid, p. 97.
Waldemar A. Nielsen, The Great Powers and Africa (New York: Praeger 1969), p. 230, cited in Copper, China’s Foreign Aid, p. 100. Also, see Klein, The Foreign Trade and Aid Policies of China, p. 172.
George T. Yu, China and Tanzania: A Study in Cooperative Interaction (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), p. 66.
Deborah Brautigam, The Dragon’s Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 34.
China had already provided training to 250 Tanzanian pilots to fly the planes and technicians to repair them. See Daily Telegraph, June 20, 1971, cited in Anne Gilks and Gerald Segal, China and the Arms Trade (London: Croom Helm, 1985), p. 54.
Copper, China’s Foreign Aid, p. 102; Taylor, China and Africa, pp. 164–65. Whether Zambia was actually adopting a socialist system, however, has been questioned. Some say it was state capitalism. China, on the other hand, did not seem to care about this point. See A. Callinicos and J. Rogers, Southern Africa after Soweto (London: Pluto, 1977), cited in Taylor, China and Africa, p. 168.
Xinhua, February 12, 1974, and Carol H. Fogarty, “China’s Economic Relations with the Third World,” in China: A Reassessment of the Economy (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975), both cited in Copper, China’s Foreign Aid, p. 103. Also see Bartke, China’s Economic Aid, p. 200.
The term Tan-Zam (from Tanzania and Zambia) is the official name of the project and the railroad. In East Africa it is more commonly known as the Uhuru (or freedom) Railroad. The term “freedom” was understood to mean that Zambia was freed from depending on export routes to the south while also referring to the drive against the white regimes in Rhodesia and South Africa. See Richard Hall and Hugh Peyman, The Great Uhuru Railway: China’s Showpiece in Africa (London: Victor Gollancz, Ltd., 1976), p. 17.
See Copper, China’s Foreign Aid, pp. 103–5. There has been some disagreement about the cost, one writer putting it at $500 million. See Martyn J. Davies, “Special Economic Zones: China’s Developmental Model Comes to Africa,” in I. Rotberg (ed.), China into Africa: Trade, Aid, and Influence (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2008), p. 147. The discrepancy may have come from valuing the loan in 1976 dollars, when the project was commissioned. Alternatively, the latter figure may have included later costs for locomotive repairs and replacement engines. In any event, the cost in 2008 dollars was near $2 billion.
For details, see George T. Yu, “Chinese Aid to Africa: The Tanzania-Zambia Railway,” in Warren Weinstein (ed.), Chinese and Soviet Aid to Africa (New York: Praeger, 1975), pp. 30–33.
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, 1952–1982 (Saarbrucken, Germany: Verlag Breitenbach, 1984), p. 302.
Sarah Raine, China’s African Challenges (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2009), p. 57.
Colin Legum and Tony Hodges, After Angola: The War over Southern Africa (London: Rex Collings, 1976), p. 50.
Irvin Kaplan (ed.), Zaire: A Country Study (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1978), p. 251.
Joseph P. Smaldone, “Soviet and Chinese Military Aid and Arms Transfers to Africa: A Contextual Analysis,” in Warren Weinstein and Thomas H. Henriksen (eds.), Soviet and Chinese Aid to African Nations (New York: Praeger, 1980), p. 105.
It needs to be noted that not included in China’s efforts to promote liberation wars were efforts to overthrow foreign governments by clandestine means or by instigating coups, etc. For both practical (mainly that the United States and the Soviet Union were more capable in doing this and China could not compete) and ideological reasons, China, as a general rule, did not do this. See Peter VanNess, Revolution and Chinese Foreign Policy: Peking’s Support for Wars of National Liberation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), p. 7. It has to be pointed out also that China supported wars of national liberation anywhere in the Third World, not just in Africa. In terms of the money it spent, China gave much more to Vietnam. On the other hand, in terms of the number of such movements that China supported, the overwhelming majority was in Africa.
Peter VanNess, Revolution and Chinese Foreign Policy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), pp. 112–13.
John Gittings, The World and China, 1922–1972 (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), p. 233.
A. James Gregor, Marxism, China and Development: Reflections on Theory and Reality (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1999), p. 128.
G. W. Choudhury, China in World Affairs: The Foreign Policy of the PRC since 1970 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1982), p. 273.
Arthur Waldron, “Foreword,” in Arthur Waldron (ed.), China in Africa (Washington, DC: Jamestown Foundation, 2008), p. 5.
Dambisa Moyo, Dead Aid: How Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009), p. xix. Comparisons between China’s aid to Africa and elsewhere are provided in the concluding chapter of this volume.
Charles Neuhauser, Third World Politics: China and the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organization, 1957–1967 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968). Also see Copper, China’s Foreign Aid, p. 16.
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Copper, J.F. (2016). China’s Foreign Aid and Investment Diplomacy to African Nations—I. In: China’s Foreign Aid and Investment Diplomacy, Volume III. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137532688_1
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