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It has always been an important cornerstone of China’s independent foreign policy of peace and one of China’s long-term and firm strategic choices to strengthen the unity and cooperation with African countries. No matter how the international vicissitude changes, China always stands wholeheartedly by the side of African countries and join hands together with them to keep pushing China-Africa relationship into a new depth.
Working Together to Overcome the Present Difficulties
Since 2020, due to the rapid expansion of COVID-19, huge reduction in the price of bulk commodities, acceleration in the reconstruction of international industrial chains and other factors, the economic and social development in Africa has encountered many challenges and China-Africa economic and trade cooperation has also been affected. In face of the dire situation, China and African countries have been walking shoulders by shoulders to face up to the difficulties which have led to new achievements yielded in the pragmatic cooperation between China and Africa.
First, China and Africa remain committed in fighting against COVID-19 together. When China was in the hardest moment in its fight against COVID-19, African countries offered their valuable support. When the pandemic erupted in Africa, China was the first to reach out its hand by providing urgent anti-pandemic supplies in nearly 120 times to almost all African countries and African Union, dispatching medical teams to 16 African countries, organizing 6 anti-pandemic video conferences between Chinese and African medical experts and building counterpart cooperation mechanisms with 46 hospitals in 42 countries. Moreover, Chinese companies and 46 Chinese medical teams in Africa have actively participated in the local fight against the pandemic. The construction of the China-aided Africa CDC headquarter is now underway. China has also promised to make Africa and other developing countries first when it has finished the research and development of the COVID-19 vaccine and put it into use.
Chinese President Xi Jinping exchanged opinions and reached consensus with national leaders in Africa on supporting Africa’s efforts in fighting against COVID-19 and deepening China-Africa and international anti-pandemic cooperation at the Extraordinary China-Africa Summit on Solidarity Against COVID-19, demonstrating the brotherhood between China and Africa in weal and woe once again and fully reflecting the strong determination of China and Africa in working together to fight against COVID-19 and overcome difficulties, setting up a new model for international anti-pandemic cooperation.
Second, China will promptly implement the Eight Major Initiatives. To implement the Eight Major Initiatives of the FOCAC Beijing Summit serves as the mainline and major task for China and Africa to overcome the current negative influence of COVID-19 and carry out pragmatic cooperation. In fact, China and Africa have conducted coordination and collaboration closely by adjusting programs in a scientific, problem- and result-oriented manner and have made good achievements in the implementation. For example, the first China-Africa Economic and Trade Expo was successfully held, a number of key projects have been completed or are steadily moving ahead, a series of face-to-face events between Chinese and African brands have been organized, several Luban Workshops have been put into operation in Africa and 70% of the USD60 billion counterpart funds have been used or arranged.
In December 2020, the 14th Senior Officials Meeting of the FOCAC was successfully held during which the Chinese and African sides jointly reviewed the implementation of the Beijing Summit outcomes and unanimously thought that the Eight Major Initiatives and other outcomes have been put into action efficiently and cooperation in various fields have reached positive progress, injecting strong momentum into the development of China-Africa relations.
Third, a combination of measures have been applied to deepen cooperation. The first three quarters in 2020 have witnessed global trade contracting for more than 10%. Both the foreign trade and export volumes in Africa have decreased for nearly 30%. As Africa’s major trading partner, China is among one of the countries whose trade with and import from Africa have decreased for the smallest degrees. In this sense, China has adopted positive measures and taken the initiative to expand its import from Africa. By inviting 65 enterprises from 31 African countries to China to attend the Third China International Import Expo, USD30 million worth of trade has been reached. By supporting online recommendation, live commerce and other new models of trading, China has helped superior goods of African countries enter the Chinese market. By speeding up the access review and approval procedures of agricultural products, forage sorghum in Nigeria, fresh blueberry in Zambia, soybean in Tanzania and other products have been approved to access the Chinese market.
Chinese companies continue to be optimistic about the prospects of the African market. In the first three quarters of 2020, direct investment in Africa has maintained stable, newly-signed engineering contracts have increased by over 35%. China attaches great importance to the challenges caused by COVID-19 to African countries and is actively implementing the G20 Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI). At present, China ranks first among G20 member countries who have carried out DSSI by suspending USD1353 million worth of debt service payments from 23 countries, including USD817 million from 15 African countries. China takes Tanzania’s debt fragility issue resulted by COVID-19 into account seriously. The two sides have successfully signed the DSSI agreement for 2020 and are now positively discussing the debt service suspension by June 2021.
Profound Accumulation for Sound and Steady Development
China and Africa have long been in the inseparable and shared community of interests and future. Since the beginning of the 21st century, together with the establishment and improvement of the FOCAC mechanism, China-Africa relations has developed from the new type of partnership to the new type of strategic partnership and to comprehensive strategic and cooperative partnership. A series of pragmatic measures announced at previous conferences have pushed forward the China-Africa economic and trade cooperation to develop by leaps and bounds which have benefited people in both China and Africa.
First, the level of trade has improved significantly. During the past 20 years, China-Africa trade has increased by 20 times. In 2019, the total trade volume in goods and foreign trade in Africa have both contracted by about 3% while the trade volume between China and Africa has reached USD208.7 billion, up by 2.2% against the general trend, ranking first among Africa’s main trading partners. China has been Africa’s largest trading partner for 11 consecutive years and the trade volume between China and Africa against Africa’s total foreign trade has been keeping increasing for years and has reached 8.4% in 2019.
During the past 3 years, China’s import of agricultural goods from Africa has been increasing at an annual average rate of 14%. At present, China has become Africa’s second largest importer of agricultural goods and more than 350 types of agricultural goods and food can now be imported into China. Second, fruitful results have been made in project cooperation. Within the framework of previous FOCAC conferences, China has arranged a total of over USD85 billion credit capitals to Africa which have helped Africa build more 6000 km of railways and highways respectively, nearly 20 ports, over 80 large-scale electricity facilities, over 130 medical institutions, 45 stadiums and over 170 schools, bringing remarkable changes to the economic and social development in Africa. Meanwhile, Chinese companies in Africa continue to improve their localization level by hiring a large number of local employees in project construction and operation, which has created more than 4.5 million job opportunities for Africa.
According to the Africa Construction Trends Report by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, China has become the leading infrastructure partner in Africa. From statistical year 2016 to 2019, the number of projects with Chinese financing has increased from 12.6% to 20.4% among all the infrastructure projects under construction in Africa. The percentage point of projects implemented by Chinese companies has increased from 22.4% to 31%.
Third, industrial investment has been further integrated. Since 2003 when official data is available, China’s direct investment in Africa has been increasing at an annual average rate of over 25%. According to the World Investment Report 2020 by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, from 2014 to 2018, China’s stock of investment in Africa has been increasing by over 40% while other main investment partners of Africa have all witnessed contraction. To further guide and encourage companies to invest in Africa, China has specifically set up the China-Africa Development Fund and China-Africa Fund for Industrial Cooperation with a total scale of USD20 billion. By the end of 2019, China has set up more than 3800 companies of various types in Africa with a total stock of investment of USD44.4 billion, which has offered great help to Africa in improving its industrialization level, industrial supporting capacity and the capacity to earn foreign exchange through exports.
In recent years, the economic and trade cooperation zones in Africa built with investment from Chinese companies have increasingly shown their combined industrial effects and have become the new highlights in China-Africa industrial cooperation and an important platform to promote Africa’s industrialization. Currently, 25 economic and trade cooperation zones in Africa recorded with the Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China have received more than 580 enterprises with a total investment of about USD7.3 billion and taxation of USD1.45 billion.
The world today is going through changes of a kind unseen in a century with COVID-19 accelerating the changes. Against this background, China is actively establishing a “dual circulation” development pattern in which domestic economic cycle plays a leading role while international economic cycle remains its extension and supplement and will unswervingly expand opening-up to spur the common rejuvenation of the world with its own to benefit all countries in the world with Africa included. At the same time, the integration of African countries is speeding up significantly with economic diversity speeding up, emerging industries flourishing in full blossom and China-Africa cooperation facing broad development prospects.
In 2021, FOCAC is going to hold another conference when China and African countries will meet once again to discuss China-Africa cooperation in the new period of time and to propose new measures for pragmatic cooperation. In this respect, China will adhere to the principles of sincerity, practical results, affinity and good faith and uphold the values of friendship, justice and shared interests to promote the greater integration of China’s second centenary goal, Agenda 2063 of the African Union and the development strategies of African countries. On the one hand, China will draw a blueprint for China-Africa cooperation from a strategic and long-term perspective with a view to solidifying the foundation for cooperation, taping into the cooperation potentials and joining all the forces to improve the level of cooperation. On the other hand, China will unswervingly push forward China-Africa cooperation, support the development of Africa and to build together with Africa an even stronger China-Africa community with a shared future.
