The conservative Heritage Foundation’s Senior Policy Analyst for Africa and the Middle East, Joshua Meservey, commented on Friday about the U.S. Defense Department report that included the allegation that China is considering at least four countries in Africa to build new military outposts.
Meservey wrote in a six-part thread how the base issue meshes with China’s broader geopolitical objectives in Africa. The following is a lightly-edited transcript of Meservey’s six-part Twitter thread:
(The) report says China is trying to get access in Africa to all the bodies of water it borders: “As a means of creating numerous options, the PRC is attempting to develop access in multiple African countries on the continent’s Atlantic, Indian Ocean, Red Sea, and Mediterranean coasts.”
Also, China seeks to “match or surpass U.S. global influence and power, displace U.S. alliances and security partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region, and revise the international order to be more advantageous to Beijing’s authoritarian system and national interests.”
(The) last point about revising the international order is where Africa is especially important to China’s ambitions.
The continent is probably Beijing’s most important supporter of its foreign policy goals, most notably at the UN.
African countries shield China from human rights criticism, help it weather international criticism over issues like the Tiananmen Square massacre and its cover-up of the COVID-19 pandemic, support its candidates to lead important international agencies, and assist it as it tries to set regulatory and other norms that will privilege Chinese companies.
