China and Africa

Abstract

A random selection of New China News Agency (NCNA) dispatches' from or about Africa, taken at the end of last year, revealed a Somali basketball team in Canton, a Chinese acrobatic troupe doing the "lion dance" in Sierra Leone, Nouakchott's soccer eleven playing in Shenyang, an exhibition of Chinese handicrafts in Dakar, a People's Liberation Army goodwill mission in Zanzibar, an insurance delegation in Dar es Salaam and a group of Zairean journalists1 touring press installations in Peking. In addition to recording these temporary activities NCNA also reported progress on the on-going projects which China has initiated throughout the continent: the £ 170 million Tanzam railway, nearing its final destination at the Zambian town of Kapiri Mposhi; work on roads in Somalia, Zambia and Sudan; construction of dams in Ghana, Tanzania and Somalia; progress with factories in CongoBrazzaville and Guinea; rice schemes in Zanzibar, Senegal, Uganda and Sierra Leone; teams of "barefoot doctors" virtually throughout the continent. Chinese publications do not give details of China's trade, but from statistics supplied by her African trading partners it can be inferred that last year China was the major supplier to Tanzania and Congo-Brazzaville; that she was the most important single customer for cotton from Egypt, Sudan, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania; that she bought substantial quantities of sisal from Tanzania and Kenya; that she bought at least 24,000 tons of copper from Zambia and that trade with the continent as a whole represented about 6 °/o of China's total trade with the world. China's involvement with Africa, where the People's1 Republic is recognised by over 40 nations, is considerable. It includes sizeable aid commitments; an increasing two-way trade; agreements covering sport, culture, education, broadcasting, shipping, insurance and military training; an understanding in the United Nations and other international organisations and a friendship based, according to Chinese spokesmen, on present poverty and a shared past of suffering under imperialism. It is also a friendship which has been subject to a great deal of misunderstanding, much of it from the West, but which has also undergone its own strains, notably during the period of China's cultural revolution. But by any standards China's African policies have been spectacularly successful. It is just 20 years since a handclasp between Premier Chou En-lai and Gamul Nasser at the Bandung Conference of Afro-Asian nations initiated Communist China's interest in Africa. In that time the PRC has established herself, in the eyes of most African nations, as a credible and generous alternative friend to both the Western powers and to the Soviet Union; built up a useful trading position; gained entry to the United Nations thanks to the African vote and completely outmanoeuvred the Soviet Union in African diplomacy. For the Chinese themselves this last point would be the most important. The Sino-Soviet dispute continues to dominate all of China's foreign policy decisions,