China's Ancient & Modern Relationship with Africa
Exploitation or Trade?
China & the Africa Union. Both have populations of over 1.4B people.
China’s economy is ~$18T while Africa’s economy is almost ~$3T. If we just look at Sub-Saharan Africa, from 1960 to the mid 1990s, Sub-Saharan Africa had higher per capita GDP. Since 1995, China surpassed Sub-Saharan Africa and now has over 7.5x their incomes.
This will be a series on China & Africa. At the heart of the relationship is one concept summed up by Economist Dambisa Moyo:
“They’ve got what we want, and we’ve got what they need.”
China needs resources to grow its economy. South Africa sells ~$25B platinum per year, Algeria sells $14B in natural gas, Botswana sells $7B in diamonds, Zimbabwe sells $4B in gold, and Morocco sells $2B in calcium phosphate just to name a few. China uses these resources to make electronics, precision manufacturing, food fertilizer, electricity, and etc. China is rich by African standards, but poor by Western standards. As of 2023, China is an upper-middle income country, it is not yet a high income nation. Chinese average incomes are more similar to Turkey or Mexico than Britain or America. Places like Hong Kong have incomes as rich as France, Beijing, Shanghai, and Jiangsu are as rich as Saudi Arabia, Portugal or Greece. The poorest places like Gansu, Tibet, and Guangxi are around the same level as South Africa, Thailand, or Brazil.
Most people think of China’s relationship with Africa only starting in the 2010s when China was lending money to Africa, but the relationship is far deeper, before the era of nation-states. In the Qin Dynasty (220 BC to 220AD), Ptolemy of Roman Egypt knew of China. In the Tang Dynasty (618 AD to 907 AD), the Chinese Poet Duan Chengshi wrote of slavery in Somalia. In the Song Dynasty era (960-1279), the Moroccan Moor Ibn Battuta has traveled to China and the Somali Sa’id of Mogadishu has traveled and traded with China during the Mongol-lead Yuan dynasty. But let’s go deeper in China and African trade, when the Han Chinese ruled China again in the following dynasty, the Ming Dynasty.
Ming China’s relationship with the Swahili Coast
By 600 AD, Arabs & Persians began mingling with Bantu Africans in coastal areas from Kenya to Tanzania, developing trade stations with Persia, India, and the Arab world. The fusion of East African Bantu, Persian and Arab culture brought Islam and created the Swahili language, people, and culture. In fact, Swahili is a Bantu language where 40% of its vocabulary comes from Arabic loan words, spread initially by Arab traders. Swahili itself comes from the Arab word سَوَاحِلي sawāḥilī, which means “of the coasts”. Eventually Persians from Iran controlled the coasts of East Africa for 500 years from around 1000 AD to 1500 AD, this rule was called the Kilwa Sultanate, where the leader was a half East African, half Persian named Ali ibn al-Hassan Shirazi. From 600 AD to 1500 AD, the entire world trade was centered around goods from China, which at the time was the most advanced society and biggest economy on earth at the time.
Ming China & the Swahili Coast
In the 1400s, in East Africa there were city states known as the Swahili Coast. The three city states: Lamu, Malindi, and Mombasa traded with Arabia, India, & Ming Dynasty China. Ming China sent admiral Zheng He (Jeng Huh) to do voyages for trade. They visited Mombasa and Malindi, where the Swahili people got giraffes, gold, silver, porcelain, and silk and the Chinese received ostriches, zebras, camels, and ivory.
China is trying to rebuild its economic dominance with the Belt & Road Initiative which has been dubbed the “New Silk Road”.
Qing China and Isolationism
The Ming dynasty died in 1644 by rebels and was split into separate states until China reunified under the Qing Dynasty in the 17th century. Qing was more focused on internal politics and expansion in Tibet and Manchuria until, the “Century of Humiliation”, the most pivotal moment of Chinese history, when Western powers and Japan industrialized and had the power to subjugate China through war and military power.
In the 1840s, Britain smashed China in the first Opium war and took Hong Kong.
In the 1850s, UK, France and America slapped China in the second Opium war, which expanded British’s colony of Hong Kong, also Russia used this opportunity to take Outer Manchuria from China.
In the 1880s, France declared war on China, and France took Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from China’s overlordship.
In 1895, Japan declared war on China and smashed China. Japan took Korea from Chinese overlordship and took Taiwan and Penghu Islands .
Then America, Austria-Hungary, Russia, Japan, Italy, Germany, France, and Britain made the Eight-Nation Alliance to carve up China, the same way Europeans carved up Africa.
Due to Boxer rebellion, China avoided the fate of a “Scramble of China” and colonialism, which unfortunately took place in Africa. In the Boxer Rebellion, China was able to drive out the imperial invasion of Eight Nations. China also understands the humiliation of European subjugation and routinely talks about their empathy with Africans in Sino-African conferences.
Xi Jinping in 2021: “This year marks the 65th anniversary of the start of diplomatic relations between China and African countries. Over the past 65 years, China and Africa have forged unbreakable fraternity in our struggle against imperialism and colonialism, and embarked on a distinct path of cooperation in our journey toward development and revitalization. Together, we have written a splendid chapter of mutual assistance amidst complex changes, and set a shining example for building a new type of international relations.”
Kuomintang “Nationalist” era (Republic of China) (1912-1949)
After the Boxer rebellion, was the Xinhai Revolution which ended Chinese monarchy and made China the Republic of China ruled under Sun Yat-sen in 1912. Republic of China was an ineffectual regime that had to deal with warlords, communists, corruption, and Japanese imperialism mostly simultaneously.
After WW2 ended in 1945, the Soviet Union returned Japanese occupied territory in Manchuria to the communists and gave them weapons to drive the nationalists to Taiwan. Mao ZeDong of the communists now ruled China.
Communist China & Africa
Mao Zedong’s Relationship with Africa (1949-1976)
By 1949
Initially, Mao Zedong was allied with the Soviet Union since Stalin helped China defeat Japan, and returned Japanese occupied territory to the communists during the Chinese Civil War between the Communists and the Nationalists. In 1950, Mao and Stalin signed the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance.
However, After Stalin died, Nikita Khrushchev lead to the Soviet Union, and Mao hated Khruschev and the Post Stalin USSR for the following reasons:
Khrushchev pursued a “De-Stalinization strategy” and argued for “peaceful coexistence” with the West while back then Mao wanted to destroy “imperialist nations” which he defined as the Western World and the United States
Khrushchev gave weapons to India while India and China were having a border war in 1962
In 1968, when Czechoslovakia wanted to liberalize, the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia. This made Mao think “Oh no, the Soviet Union might invade me too if I don’t toe the line”.
In 1969, along the poorly defined border between the USSR and China - the Ussuri River, the the two sides shot each other, leading to a border skirmish. The border skirmish between the USSR and China almost lead to an all out war. Moscow was contemplating a nuclear first strike on China.
This led to China making its own geopolitical position instead of aiding the Soviet Union. Mao came up with the idea of “third world”. Mao defined 1st as NATO, the 2nd world as the Warsaw Pact, and the third world is all the oppressed nations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Post 1969, Mao’s China tried to compete with the Soviet Union and United States for influence around the world.
One of Mao’s biggest problem is that although he won the civil war, America called the Island of Taiwan, the Republic of China to be China, and America called mainland China, the People’s Republic of China, to be a “rouge state”. As a result, Taipei had the UN security council seat for a while instead of Beijing.
Despite the fact that Mao conquered a larger landmass of territory, Mao needed to do a “charm offensive” so his China can be recognized as China. Starting under Mao, he was able to persuade African leaders to recognize his nation as official China, and Mao rewarded African countries with financial support. Even though China was poor (even poorer per capita incomes than most African countries at the time), Mao felt it was important to provide financial assistance to Africa, as his own nation was starving. By 1971, with the exception of Eswatini, all African countries recognize Communist China is the sovereign country instead of Taiwan..
China helped Tanzania and Zambia build the Tazara Railway. Landlocked Zambia was dependent on economic assistance from the Apartheid states of Rhodesia (modern day Zimbabwe) and Apartheid South Africa. Zambia was already denied the loan by the World Bank, so Mao provided this railway so Zambia can transport copper through the Indian Ocean without having to transit through the apartheid governments. China financed the railway for $406M.
By 1976, Chairman Mao died. Deng Xiaopeng took over and introduced some market policies to transform China, and that affected China’s politics with Africa.
In Conclusion:
- China wants resources to become rich and Africa has them
- China is recreating the trade routes that made it rich
- Africa gets a new buyer its resources
- Africa gets a new partner to build infrastructure
China almost became carved up like Africa but escaped it thru the Boxer Rebellion. China can sympathize with Africa’s hatred of its oppressed imperial past.
Next Time we Will Speak More on China & Africa After Mao’s death
We will discuss the following:
China’s growth in the 1990s making it hungry for African Commodities
Jiang Zemin’s “Go Out” Strategy
China’s Commodity Based Lending