Beijing summit to spotlight China’s engagements with resource-rich Africa

By Riyaz ul Khaliq

ISTANBUL (AA) - Beijing is set to host the biggest diplomatic gathering to deliberate the future trajectory of China-Africa ties.

Hundreds of officials, bureaucrats, business people, policymakers and thought leaders from China and 48 African nations have converged on Beijing for the three-day 9th Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC).

Chinese leader Xi Jinping will deliver a keynote address Thursday, themed, “Joining Hands to Advance Modernization and Build a High-Level China-Africa Community with a Shared Future.”

Participants will attend four high-level meetings discussing state governance, industrialization and agricultural modernization, peace and security, and cooperation under China’s trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative, in addition to side events.

The summit is expected to adopt two documents on Friday -- the declaration and the action plan.

The documents aim to build “major consensus between the two sides and chart a path for implementing high-quality China-Africa cooperation in the next three years,” according to Chinese officials.

- ‘China lacks resources’

China’s historic engagements with Africa have been overshadowed by Beijing’s financial and infrastructure lending.

According to Boston University Global Development Policy Center database, Chinese lenders provided 1,306 loans amounting to $182.28 billion to 49 African governments and seven regional borrowers from 2000 to 2.

Since 2000, when FOCAC was established, China has built 100,000 kilometers (62,138 miles) of highways and 10,000 kilometers of railways in Africa.

Beijing has also built more than 200 schools, over 130 hospitals, nearly 100 ports as well as 50 stadiums on the continent.

“China has markets, manufacturing, and IP, it lacks only resources,” Beijing-based analyst Einar Tangen told Anadolu.

The world’s second-largest economy “believes multilateral cooperation depends on countries being secure and able to determine their own path to prosperity,” Einar replied as he referred to China positing itself as a “friend of poor countries.”

In recent decades, China has emerged as Africa’s largest trade partner -- a position it has held for 15 consecutive years as trade between the two sides climbed to a record $282.1 billion last year.

"Unlike the colonial powers that came before it, China is helping African countries climb the value chain by providing processing machinery and joint research and development," said Einar. "China and Africa supported each other in their struggles against colonial domination physically and in the halls of the UN."

- ‘Critical minerals incredibly vital’

Dr. Ammar A. Malik, international development practitioner, told Anadolu that China has emerged as the single-largest provider of development financing -- aid and loans -- to low- and middle-income countries, including in Africa.

“But the bulk of Chinese financing, including in Africa, has been committed through other official flows, which are mostly loans that are designed to finance development projects such as those related to physical infrastructure necessary for development,” said Malik, who is based in Washington and associated with the Gates Foundation.

He said Chinese financing has taken the “form of transport, infrastructure and mining projects” in Africa. “China’s planners have identified a series of critical minerals that are being incredibly vital to the success of Beijing's domination in new technologies essential for the green energy revolution.”

Minerals such as copper, cobalt, nickel and lithium are all essential for building solar photovoltaics and electric vehicle batteries.

“For copper and cobalt,” Malik said, “China's state-owned financiers and mining companies are actively involved in countries like the Congo, which hold dominant shares of this sector.”

He added that a majority of China's financing commitments to Africa between 2000-2021 have been focused on quintessential infrastructure sectors including energy (24.1%), transport (21.3%), and industry, mining, and construction (13.7%).

It is because, Malik argued, “African leaders … clearly prioritized infrastructure over human development sectors as the former are revenue generation in nature and thus more economically viable.”

Besides, he added, China has also provided a balance of support payments to African nations through short-term loans and debt swaps “designed to prop up large borrower governments and enable them to remain able to repay loans.”