China-Africa Ties in Historical Context

 Oxford Scholarship Online has reprinted my chapter titled "China-Africa  Ties in Historical Context" contained in the book China-Africa and an Economic Transformation (2019) edited by Arkebe Oqubay and Justin Yifu Lin.  

China Provides Another $20 Billion to Africa

At the opening of the 5th Forum on China Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in Beijing on 19 July 2012, President Hu Jintao announced that over the next three years China will provide $20 billion in credits to African countries to assist them in developing infrastructure, agriculture, manufacturing and small- and medium-sized enterprises.

The BBC asked me to comment on the announcement. I noted that this has become a traditional announcement at the triennial FOCAC summit, although the amount this year was double the amount of three years ago. Most of the money will probably be used for loans that are attractive by commercial standards but will not necessarily be equivalent to those offered by the International Development Association of the World Bank. If the past is any indication, much of the money will be used for large infrastructure projects desired by African leaders in resource-rich countries that can afford to pay back the loans by sending oil and/or minerals to China. Chinese companies will almost certainly build the projects and some of them will include a significant component of Chinese labor. This formula has worked well for China in the past but has also permitted African governments to meet their infrastructure needs at a time when private Western companies have had difficulty finding funding.

Quote in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (English Frankfurt General Newspaper) quoted me in its article, "Unilateral economies in Africa are losers in the crisis." If you want to read the original article, you can find it here. If you prefer the English page via Google Translate, you can access it here. Here's the quote (the slightly awkward quotes are due to the translation):

David Shinn, former U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia, is convinced that China is thinking long term and still wants to secure raw material sources. "They are not easy to reverse strategy," he says. An indication of this is the just completed trip to the Chinese State and Party leaders Hu Jintao through parts of West and East Africa. Unlike his trip two years ago, this is no country on the itinerary, in which China increased raw material and commercial interests. A sudden withdrawal would have been so surprising, because the trade volume between China and Africa in the last eight years to more than 100 billion U.S. $ has increased tenfold. China's most important partner in Africa, Angola remains. In addition, include Nigeria, Sudan and Ethiopia to be the preferred investment countries. You can the African-Chinese economic relations do not have a uniform, warns Shinn. In some states and markets, there is the crisis but in fact "tactical withdrawals."

The photo comes from the original article.

China's role in Africa, Worldfocus.org radio discussion

In the wake of Chinese President Hu Jintao's tour of four African nations this week, I participated in a Worldfocus.org radio show that examined the roots of the China-Africa relationship. The podcast is available on Huffington Post. You can learn more about the show here.