China’s embrace of Africa has produced some stunning statistics. The numbers look great across the board, from trade volumes to foreign investment to the growing popularity of Chinese ministerial junkets. But those numbers don’t tell the whole story. While money, goods and services are flowing back and forth at unprecedented levels, a deeper question persists: how well do Chinese and African people actually know each other? For some, the question may seem trivial. After all, if the checks cash, who cares.
Unfortunately, it’s unlikely that money alone will determine China’s longterm success in Africa. In fact, what they’ve accomplished over the past 5 years is really just the easy part. Throwing piles of cash around the continent is a sure way to buy companionship, but friendship and trust, especially in Africa, require more than just money.
Already, there have been hints of what’s to come if Beijing underestimates the importance of developing an effective soft-power agenda in Africa. Anti-Chinese policies introduced in Namibia earlier this year and rising hostility to Chinese immigrants in Angola are now but two points on a graph, but could quickly transform into a trend if left unattended. It will be critical for Beijing to help Africans and Chinese at every level of society get to know one another.
A model of what that kind of engagement looks like can be found in Cape Town, South Africa, in the offices Fahamu. This non-profit pan-African organization recently led a small group of African journalists on a trip to Beijing to learn more about China and the Chinese. Fahamu’s Emerging Powers Program Research Director, Sanusha Naidu, led the team on their visit to China where they met with students, intellectuals and other journalists. Naidu said that although the delegation was overwhelmed with China’s development and how much the country had achieved in such a short time, not all were convinced that China and Africa’s long term interests are aligned. ”There was a cautious optimism,” she said.
China still has time to ease those apprehensions, but it must get to work right away.
Listen to what else Sanusha Naidu had to say
China and Africa: Getting to Know Each Other
(Right click on the link and select save as to download the audio file.)
Eric Olander
Eric began his Chinese studies when he was 15 years old as a high school freshman back in 1985. The same year he started studying Mandarin, he also embarked on his broadcast career as a DJ at his school’s low-power radio station. Since then, Eric has combined his love of Chinese affairs with broadcasting and media production. He has worked on both sides of the Pacific with many of the world’s leading media companies including the BBC Chinese World Service, CNN, the Associated Press, CNBC Asia and most recently as the Vice President of News and Production at the largest Chinese language television station in the United States, KSCI TV LA 18. For more information about Eric and samples of his work in media and in China, please see his online portfolio available at www.ericolander.com.
Eric was among the few foreigners who had the opportunity to live in China in the late 80s when Beijing was a city still dominated by bicycles, clothes came in three colors: brown, grey or black and foreigners were truly, well, foreign. While on assignment for the BBC in 1994, Eric spent almost an entire year reporting from the Chinese countryside on the profound changes transforming both society and the people. Those, and many other early experiences in China as a teenage student and later as a young foreign correspondent serve as an important benchmark for Eric to measure how far contemporary China has traveled in such a short period of time. In terms of his overall perspective on China, Eric is of two minds, neither optimist nor pessimist. On the one hand, he sees China as the definitive power of the 21st century yet also recognizes the enormous and seemingly unprecedented challenges that confront this country. Anyone who claims to understand China, he contends, or offers simple solutions is either lying, ignorant or both.
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