Much news has been made this week of President Barack Obama’s trip to Africa – a three-nation tour intended to promote goodwill and show the flag in an area of the world that does not commonly make the headlines in America. Why, might one ask, is the President spending time in Africa when there is so much to do here at home?
An answer to this question may be found in an announcement, nicely timed to coincide with Obama’s trip, by the Chinese government that said China would for the first time be sending combat troops on a peacekeeping mission that might involve said troops actually engaging in combat. The location of the mission? None other than the war-torn country of Mali – where French troops are currently fighting an Islamist insurgency after intervening there this past January.
This posting of Chinese soldiers to Mali is not, however, the first time the Middle Kingdom has sent armed forces abroad on a UN mission. In 2012, for instance, a small infantry detachment was sent to guard Chinese medical and engineering units attached to a peacekeeping mission in South Sudan. The Mali deployment, however, is much larger and will likely see around 500 People’s Liberation Army combat soldiers sent to the North African country as part of a 12,000-man UN peacekeeping contingent.
Why should the United States, which has hundreds of thousands of troops stationed around the world, care that that Beijing is sending a battalion’s worth of men to a dusty African country to fight alongside the French and others? It’s not as if one relatively small, military deployment will seriously challenge America’s. military position in Africa — or the West’s, for that matter.
The dragon in Africa
Washington should be concerned for two reasons – the way China is flexing its military muscles and the context in which it is doing so. To see the importance of the former, one should understand that China’s interest in UN peacekeeping is not entirely new. It dates back to the early part of the last decade when China, on the heels of a decades-long military modernization program, became the largest contributor of peacekeeping forces out of the five permanent members of the UN’s Security Council.
Mostly, these contributions consisted of small-scale units, like the detachment sent to South Sudan in 2012, and non-combat units like medical, engineering, or police forces. In 2009, however, Beijing sponsored a remarkable conference on peacekeeping that examined the question of peacekeeping reform – mostly providing UN missions with more heft and giving them the authority and responsibility to impose peace between warring factions. This was ingenious, because what better way to demonstrate China’s new military might to a Western world fearful of China’s rise than via the UN? Surely, Chinese diplomats might scoff, the mighty U.S. military is not afraid of PLA soldiers wearing UN blue?
China has traditionally been a stalwart upholder of the principle of non-intervention; that this new interest in muscular peacekeeping came as a surprise goes without saying. It should not have been, and to see why one has to look no further than China’s burgeoning economic presence in Africa – which provides the larger context for both China’s interest in peacekeeping reform and this new mission to Mali. China, quite simply, is buying up as much of Africa as it possibly can and doing so on terms that the moribund West simply can’t compete on.
Beating the capitalists at their own game
To see how this works one has to merely examine any one of the many trade and investment deals Beijing has inked in Africa. Typically a prized natural resource, usually oil but also other valuable minerals such as copper, iron ore, or bauxite – the raw base of aluminum – will be discovered. The potential value is huge and firms from around the world will flock to Angola, Mozambique, Guinea or wherever, to woo the local government out of drilling, mining, and development rights.
Where the Chinese advantage comes in is via its finely-honed mercantilist system. Major Chinese companies, in addition to having to generate profits and run efficiently enough to compete globally, are all penetrated, from top to bottom, by Chinese Communist Party cells that take their marching orders from party central in Beijing. Always, the CEO and top leadership of a company like the Chinese National Petroleum Company is a member of the Chinese Communist Party and holds an equivalent high-ranking position in the Chinese government.
Thus most Chinese company executives wear three hats simultaneously – corporate leader, party elder and government bureaucrat. China has, in other words, has not just revolutionized the revolving door between government and business, they’ve eliminated the wall separating them altogether. This allows for incredible concentrations of economic, political and corporate power to be wielded when, as in pursuing economic deals in Africa, Beijing views something to be in its national interest.
CNPC, for instance, can outbid ExxonMobil for oil concessions in, say, Angola because it can draw upon massive amounts of cheap finance from China’s state-run financial sector. No infrastructure present at the oil concession? No worries, because a Chinese construction company, also financed and prodded by the powers-that-be in Beijing, will offer fabulous infrastructure development deals at very reasonable rates. Beijing will even throw in agricultural or industrial development to sweeten the deal. The key here is that the symbiotic nature of China’s profit-driven mega-companies and its authoritarian government allows for unheard-of coordination in China’s mission to acquire natural resources abroad.
A scramble for Africa?
The West does this too, of course, but the size, sophistication, and power of both the Chinese economy and state allows for China to do it very efficiently on a vastly larger – indeed continental – scale and at a much faster pace than is possible for any except possibly the United States to match. Beijing also does all this with no political strings attached – meaning there are no pesky demands for democratic reform to get in the way of concluding a good deal. Beijing, being autocratic, has no problem working with autocrats.
Finally, this system allows the Chinese to venture into territory that even the West fears to tread, such as African manufacturing. The Chinese shoe firm Huajian, a major Chinese exporter, has for instance announced plans to invest up to $2 billion to build a shoe manufacturing hub in Ethiopia which could employ up to 100,000 Ethiopian workers. The plan is a far-sighted one for manufacturing investment in Africa will provide a new pool of cheap labor for Chinese companies to use just as growth in China pushes up wages at home. Ethiopia’s preferential access to Western markets, which several African countries also enjoy, is a great incentive, too.
So China has made economic penetration of Africa a top priority at a time when the moribund West, bogged down in the Middle East and struggling economically at home, cannot really compete. Indeed, China is now Africa’s largest trading partner and its military presence, starting with this deployment of peacekeeping troops to Mali, is a sign of more things to come as China’s economic, diplomatic, and even demographic expansion into Africa continues apace. Who knows, perhaps bases for China’s new ocean-going navy and aircraft carrier will soon follow. Regardless, one thing is clear – the Great Game has resumed and, in Africa, at least, the West is now several moves behind its East Asian competitor.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Mint Press News editorial policy.