Three Chinese warships made ports of call in Ghana and Nigeria this month, prompting a new wave of speculation about Beijing’s military ambitions in Africa. The PLA Navy visit followed reports that Chinese miners in the Central African Republic were rescued by a group of Russian mercenaries which also triggered questions as to whether the controversial Wagner Group is now working more closely with Chinese entities on the continent.
All of this is set against a backdrop of increasingly close military-to-military ties between the PLA and their counterparts in Africa.
Paul Nantulya, a research associate at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies in Washington, D.C., is among the foremost experts on Chinese military engagement on the continent. He joins Eric & Cobus to discuss his latest research on the increasingly close ties between Chinese and African militaries for training and education which are also closely linked to increased Chinese weapons sales.
Show Notes:
- U.S. Institute of Peace: Chinese Professional Military Education for Africa: Key Influence and Strategy by Paul Nantulya
- Center for Strategic and International Studies: Personal Ties: Measuring Chinese and U.S. Engagement with African Security Chiefs by Judd Devermont and Marielle Harris
- African Center for Strategic Studies: China’s Policing Models Make Inroads in Africa by Paul Nantulya
About Paul Nantulya:
As a research associate at the Africa Center, Paul Nantulya researches and prepares written analyses on contemporary African security issues. His areas of expertise include Chinese foreign policy, China/Africa relations, African partnerships with Southeast Asian countries, mediation, and peace processes, the Great Lakes region, and East and Southern Africa. Prior to joining the Africa Center, Mr. Nantulya served as a regional technical advisor on South Sudan for Catholic Relief Services (CRS) from 2009 to 2011, where he supported crisis mitigation for the Government of South Sudan including writing policy analyses for the Ministry of Peace and Comprehensive Peace Agreement Implementation. In this role, he worked closely with South Sudan’s external partners, particularly Japan’s International Cooperation Agency, on conflict prevention.
Transcript:
Eric Olander: Hello, and welcome to another edition of the China Global South Podcast, a proud member of the Sinica Podcast Network. I’m Eric Olander, coming to you today from Washington, D.C., and as always, I’m joined by Cobus van Staden, China Global South’s Managing Editor, in Johannesburg, South Africa. A very good afternoon to you, Cobus.
Cobus van Staden: Good afternoon.
Eric: Cobus, before we get into today’s show, I just want to give a very big shout-out and a thank you to the whole team at AidData at William & Mary. They were so gracious to host me last week and to show me around all of the amazing research that they’re working on. We’ve got some very cool things to show you later on in the year when they publish some of their findings, and they’re going to come on the show and share all of the cool things that they’re doing. But it was a lot of fun to go down to Williamsburg and to see Ammar and Brad and the whole AidData team. So, thank you to them.
Today we’re going to be talking about China Africa’s security and military relationships. Now, this is actually really the future in many ways of the China-Africa relationships. Still, in Africa, there’s a perception, what we have tagged as a misperception, that the focus of the China-Africa relationship is still one of extractives and economics. And we don’t see that in part because we see a trading relationship that, for the most part, has flatlined, even though the total number of trade between China and Africa has gone up in recent years, as a percentage of the whole of China’s trade with other countries and regions around the world, African countries are trading flat or going down. But what is not flat or going down is the political-military relationship. And that’s what we’re going to focus on today.
Couple things before we get into our conversation, though, just some headlines I want to bring your attention to, some very interesting movements by the Wagner Group, which is the Russian private contractor, the mercenary group in the Central African Republic. And some photos circulated online last week of Wagner forces coming to the rescue of Chinese miners. And there was a lot of speculation that now that the Russians and the Chinese are teaming up together in the Central African Republic and other places — no evidence whatsoever to support that. But it is the first time that we have seen this type of interaction. Apparently, these Wagner forces went to the aid of some Chinese miners in the Southern CAR, and there was these pictures all over of happy faces and smiling and Russian Wagner forces posing for photos.
At the same time now, we’re getting reports that Wagner forces are leaving the Central African Republic. The presidency in Bangui, they denied that there is an exodus of the troops. They’re calling it a troop rotation, not a departure. So, lots of movement on the Wagner front in the Central African Republic, and some contact with Chinese miners. That’s something we’re going to want to keep an eye on. Also, another big story last week, Cobus, was the ports of call in Ghana and Nigeria by a trio of Chinese warships, something that we haven’t seen much in the Gulf of Guinea and West Africa.
Typically, when the Chinese Navy comes and does ports of call, they go to Walvis Bay in Namibia, Cape Town, South Africa, quite a bit there, but not so much in West Africa, specifically in Nigeria. So, that got a lot of attention. And what was interesting, Cobus, is that unlike ports of call from other countries, say the French, the Americans, even the Russians, these ports of call sparked a lot of interest in the Nigerian media, and even, to some extent, in the Ghanaian media that it was about more than just military. In fact, there was a lot of speculation in Vanguard Newspaper and others that the Chinese were coming to scope out a new base; they were coming to collect on their debt; they were coming to do all sorts of things — that really had nothing to do with the PR operation that are these ports of call. And so it was a lot of anxiety in the coverage of these warships that arrived for a week in Nigeria and Ghana.
Cobus: My read on this, and we’ve picked this up before, these kind of flurries of anxiety around Chinese presence, and particularly around Chinese lending in Nigeria. And recently, what I’ve started to wonder is A, obviously, this has a lot to do with just how energetic and active the Nigerian press is because they really do cover things, but then also what has also struck me is that I wonder whether these kind of periodic spikes in anxiety in Nigeria, particularly around Chinese debt, which we’ve pointed out repeatedly is a very small percentage of Nigeria’s total debt, whether that has to do with internal opposition politics within Nigeria. Because I’ve seen for a long time that politicians and opposition newspapers have tended to try and link this general anxiety around Chinese debt to lending by the government. So, I assume that this was probably a news hook that kicked off that kind of tendency again.
Eric: Well, just to put that all in context, Chinese debt in Nigeria accounts for about 4% of the total public debt. So, not a big amount. There’s some new debt figures that just came out from the Nigerian debt management office that once again confirm the fact that Chinese are not big lenders in Nigeria. And interestingly, there was a very big factual error in a lot of the coverage, including in Al Jazeera’s coverage as well, that said that Nigeria was a major oil supplier to China, which is not true at all. In fact, Nigeria is not ever in the top 10 of Chinese oil suppliers and not even among the major oil suppliers from Africa, where Angola and the Republic of Congo are significantly larger. So, a lot of factual errors in the coverage about these warships in West Africa.
We’re going to get a perspective on that today on all sorts of military issues and security issues. We’re thrilled to have our old friend back on the show, Paul Nantulya, who’s a research associate at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, also here in Washington, D.C., and joined me this morning from just up the road in Bethesda, Maryland. A very good morning to you, Paul.
Paul Nantulya: Good morning, Eric. It’s great to be on the show again. Cobus, nice to be in touch after many months.
Eric: It’s been a while since we’ve had you on, but there’s a lot to talk about. Let’s first start with these warships and that visit before we get into some of the latest research that you’ve been doing. What was your take on why the Chinese decided to make a visit in West Africa? Again, they don’t go there very often. Sparked a lot of speculation here in Washington about, are the Chinese searching for that Atlantic base, and does it have to do anything more than just a PR routine. Which is what most of these ports of call are really for. They’re public diplomacy, military diplomacy. What was your read on those ports of call?
Paul: Well, the People’s Liberation Army has been trying to expand and consolidate its engagements in West Africa. And if you look at Nigeria, you look at Ghana, you look at Sierra Leone, you look at Liberia, there has been a significant increase in military-to-military cooperation and officers from these countries that are sent over to the People’s Republic of China to various military academies, the National Defence University in Beijing in the past five, six, seven years. So, there’s been an uptick of engagement. There’s been an uptick of security engagement with ECOWAS. The Chinese are in a process of building the new ECOWAS headquarters.
Eric: Can you just remind everybody what is ECOWAS for those who are not familiar with it?
Paul: Yes, the Economic Community of West African States, which is one of the regional economic communities in Africa. So, China has been increasing its engagements at that level, increasing its engagements in the peacekeeping area. There’s a lot of officers from that region that undertake a peacekeeping training at the peacekeeping training center in High Road District in Beijing, which is under the Chinese Ministry of Defence. So, I saw this port call with these warships as part of a larger effort to consolidate and to build security engagements with West Africa.
The other issue that I wanted to raise is there has been a lot of writing off late in the Chinese military press about the Gulf of Guinea and about security issues in the Gulf of Guinea and West Africa more broadly. So, I think that is also an indication as to the sorts of relationships that the People’s Republic of China would like to build with militaries in that part of the world.
Cobus: And Paul, just following up on that, what do some of these discussions around the Gulf of Guinea entail? What are some of the main preoccupations for the Chinese military establishment about that area?
Paul: Well, the one issue is the safety and security of Chinese personnel, quite large concentrations of Chinese security personnel in that part of Africa. And we have seen in other parts of the continent, and indeed other parts of the world, that safety and security issues involving Chinese personnel, involving state-owned enterprises, has become one of the major drivers of Chinese military engagements around the world. So, West Africa is no different. The second is the testing and fielding of new hardware, right? So, there’s very few places around the world where the People’s Liberation Army can actually test equipment, test military capabilities, make improvements as needed.
But the waters of Africa provide China with a fairly permissive environment. I mean if you look at these capabilities that China has been deploying as part of its anti-piracy operations and other operations in African waters, these are very advanced platforms, right? These are new platforms, newer classes of warships, and other naval assets that the Chinese are deploying in those areas. I think that is the other motivation. It allows them to test that equipment. It allows them to see the effectiveness of that equipment. And lastly, it allows them to market that equipment and to build its customer base in West Africa. And that customer base has been growing.
Eric: And specifically in Nigeria, that’s been growing quite a bit. They’ve been buying both ships and land base weapons in larger numbers from the Chinese.
Paul: That is correct. And actually, the PLA has been part of this strategic defense package that China has been providing to Nigeria, part of its counterinsurgency effort against Boko Haram. China has been the main partner as far as kitting out the Nigerian army and the Nigerian Navy is concerned. So, there’s definitely that side to it as well. China is interested in marketing its hardware, and I think that becomes even more important in the context of the sanctions that have been imposed on Russia and Russian defense companies because Russia remains the number one supplier. But China might close that gap as a result of these sanctions on the Russian Federation.
Eric: Well, let’s stay in the Gulf of Guinea before we get onto your research. Just, we got to get this out of the way because it’s the topic that’s on a lot of people’s minds, especially here in Washington, is this question of an Atlantic base. Part of the justification and the rationale for the base in Djibouti was to combat piracy off the coast of Somalia. It was not the only rationale, but it was part of the rationale. China’s been involved in anti-piracy operations with the UN and in a multinational task force for going on 15 years now. The Gulf of Guinea today is now the most pirated body of water anywhere in the world. And so, piracy is a huge problem in the Gulf of Guinea. Some have said, “Well, that might be part of the rationale for the Chinese to build an Atlantic base.” I am one of the few naysayers on this.
I think you might be there, but I’m not sure, and this is what we’d like to get your take on this. We have tried to figure this out. General Townsend, who was the former AFRICOM chief, he went before Congress over and over again and warned Congress about the prospects of a Chinese base in the Atlantic. General Michael Langley, who replaced General Townsend, has picked up the mantle and is saying the same thing. Do you think that these visits and that the Chinese are preparing to build either a submarine base or a proper naval installation on the west coast of Africa? And let me just put one other thought before I get your answer. One of the rationales that I heard, speaking with some high-level defense officials here was that China will close in on a 600-vessel Navy now, this year or early next year, a fleet that is far larger than it needs to defend its coastlines in the East China Seas and the South China Seas, and to patrol even the Indian Ocean.
So, the logical kind of conclusion is that the Chinese want a blue-water navy that will extend far beyond Asia in the Indian Ocean, into places like the Atlantic, and even the South Atlantic. To me, that’s speculation, but this is what the thinking is here in town, which you know very well. Give us your take on the latest thinking on this Atlantic base issue.
Paul: Yeah, thank you. Now, that’s an important question, and it is an issue that is going to continue to come up again and again in discussions about Chinese military engagement in Africa. My own take is if one looks at the Chinese record of behavior on the military side in Africa and one looks at the precedent that has been established with the PLA naval base in Djibouti, one can make some deductions and some assumptions. I think the first one is certainly, over the next 10, 15 to 20 years, it is very likely that China will establish a second, or should I say, will establish more military facilities of that nature, not just in Africa, but other parts of the global south.
I think it’s fair to make that kind of assessment. As to where that facility will be based, I think this one is much harder. If one looks at Equatorial Guinea, for instance, it definitely has a strong relationship with China. There’s no question about that. It has strong party-to-party ties, it has historical relationships with the Chinese Communist Party, and so on. All the indicators that you find in countries that have strong military ties with China are also present in Equatorial Guinea — economic, political, ideological, and so on. However, there are certain things that Equatorial Guinea lacks as far as Chinese-basing behavior, certainly Chinese-basing behavior over the past seven to 10 years is concerned.
The first is that it doesn’t have a large military. It doesn’t have a large military. And when you establish a base, one of the things you’re going to look at is a force protection, right? Because it takes quite a significant number of troops to actually protect a facility like a naval base. If the military of the host nation is not large enough or capable enough or experienced enough, that means that you have to have a larger footprint. And so far, the PLA has shown an aversion to maintaining a large conspicuous military presence, military footprint in Africa. That is something that we’ve seen since the 1960s. So, that’s the one element that I think about. The other element is that in Equatorial Guinea, you don’t have, unlike Djibouti… I mean, there are many countries that have bases in Djibouti.
And so when the Chinese established theirs, on the face of it, it was not controversial. It did not generate as much controversy. In fact, there was very little discussion about the Chinese base in Africa, in the African media, in African security discussions. Very little discussion of the PLA base. And one of the reasons is because the PLA has so many neighbors, so many neighbors in Djibouti. Equatorial Guinea does not provide, right? So, that is a major issue. If China was to establish a base over there, it would really stand out. It would be very, very conspicuous. So, I think that’s the second issue that we need to talk about. The third issue is China, for ideological and propaganda reasons, tends to frame its military presence in Africa within the context of multilateral peacekeeping, peace enforcement operations, supporting the African Union.
China tends to work with countries that punch way above their weight on the African continent on these matters. Equatorial Guinea is not even within the top 40 troop contributors to UN and multilateral missions. So that is the other element. It’ll be very, very difficult for China to make that case that its operations in Equatorial Guinea are simply there for multilateral emissions or to support the African Union or to support the peace and security architecture. It’ll be very difficult to make that political argument in Equatorial Guinea. So, for those three reasons, one would say it is not certain at all that a base would necessarily be established in Equatorial Guinea. It just doesn’t have the types of advantages that other countries like say Namibia or Tanzania or Kenya or Ghana or even Nigeria would provide.
That’s my take on the issue. But there’s no question that over the next 10, 15 to 20 years, China will definitely be looking for other opportunities to establish basing arrangements in Africa and perhaps even in other parts of the world.
Cobus: So, just to follow up on that issue, the concern that we’ve also seen raised in some Western defense circles is around the dual nature of Chinese port building. So, making the argument that a lot of ports that the Chinese companies are building could also function as kind of dual commercial military areas or facilities then. I was wondering then, does that mean that China doesn’t necessarily have to build a formal base; that some of the commercial port facilities its building could also fulfill that role in the context of a friendly government-to-government relationship. What would be the importance of building a base per se compared to having access for military ships to other forms of port facilities?
Paul: That’s a great question. The Chinese doctrine of basing is, so far, the Chinese have shown an attraction to dual-use facilities. These are facilities that are commercial in design. We saw this in Djibouti. That military facility started out as a commercial port development that was then upgraded to serve a dual military civilian purposes. And I think that model, if you look at the Chinese military writings, the PLA believes that model has worked quite well, and would certainly be keen because the PLA a is all about precedent, precedent, precedent. So that is definitely a model that the PLA would be keen to expand into other parts of Africa. I think it’ll be important to note that the PLA deliberately, for political and ideological reasons, and perhaps even for military reasons as well, does not want to copy and paste the U.S. model, the French model, or the British model.
I mean, these are large heavy footprints. These are serious facilities. When one looks at the base in Djibouti and, say, try to compare that with the massive base that the British have in Kenya, there’s absolutely no comparison, right? So, China is very fine with this dual use basing, very, very attractive. It’s a small footprint, it’s a light footprint. It mixes military, commercial, and political interests together. And it does not create; importantly, it does not create the impression of permanence. And I think this is a term that one finds in the Chinese military literature. The idea of permanence is something that the PLA shies away from. Now, the PLA also believes, I mean, if one looks at the writings, that they don’t really have the logistical footprint, the power projection experience, and capabilities that the United States, for instance, has. They still see themselves as lagging far behind, right?
So, certainly, looking over the horizon over the next 20 years, this idea of dual use basing is going to continue to be prioritized by the Chinese. It might change in future, we don’t know, but for now, those civilian port developments can be upgraded to serve military purposes. This is where things are going. And I believe right now, I wrote a report about this some months ago, there are about 40 Chinese port developments around Africa, and quite a number of those actually have the capacity to birth major Chinese service combatants. As to whether those will be converted over the next five years, that’s anyone’s guess. I tend to look from a long-term perspective.
Eric: I have so many other questions on these basing issues, but we’re running out of time, and I want to make sure we get to some of your latest research. You recently published a fascinating article that was published with the United States Institute of Peace — Chinese Professional Military Education for Africa: Key Influence and Strategy. And it’s interesting because Cobus and I have been looking at the issue of Chinese influence operations in Africa for many years. And the junkets that they use and the relationship-building, these tours that they use with journalists and academics have proven to be extraordinarily effective. And what you’re saying here in this new paper with USIP is that the military to military engagements and junkets and education and these tours to China have also been very effective. Talk to us a little bit about what you’re calling PME, Professional Military Education, between China and Africa.
Paul: Yes, my report finds that PME is, by far, the most significant area of military-to-military engagement between China and its African partners. It outweighs military exercises by far. It outweighs other military-to-military engagements such as the African participation in Chinese anti-piracy operations, and it also outweighs technical military cooperation because China has quite a number of technical military cooperation engagements with, say Nigeria, Ghana, and other places. So, it is a very significant area of engagement.
Eric: I’m sorry, can you just explain what a technical military engagement is so that we understand what that means?
Paul: Yes. These are agreements that China negotiates with African militaries to upgrade their technical competence, right? Things like maintenance of equipment, things like training African militaries to operate Chinese equipment, supporting things like communications, military communications, things of that nature. This is what I mean when I talk about technical cooperation. And China has quite a number of those with various defense industries like Norinco and others, right? Have been able to make a lot of headway in these areas — UAVs, for instance, and things of that nature. And even supporting coastguards. So, this is what one would define as technical military cooperation agreements. And these, China has about 30 to 35 agreements with different African countries. But professional military education outweighs even those activities to be a major, major component of Chinese military engagement.
Cobus: So, you write in your report that one should see the importance of this training exchanges as fitting into what you call three warfares. There’s kind of a People’s Liberation Army conception of different kinds of war and conflict or different fronts of potential conflict, as well as in the parties, the Chinese Communist Party’s larger search for discourse power. I wonder if you could unpack those for us. What are these three warfares, and how does the training fit into that? And how does the training also fit into this search for discourse power?
Paul: Yes. The Chinese professional military education, it fits within a structure, an organ within the Central Military Commission. This is the Party structure that supervises and manages the PLA. I think it’s important to remember, and I point this out in the report, that the PLA is a party army. It is an organ of the Communist Party of China, and it listens to the commands, the directives, and the wishes of the Communist Party of China. So, it’s a political instrument. Because it is a political instrument, it implements political party guidance. So, the PME itself is part of what the Communist Party of China calls military political work. And this is using the military instrument in order to achieve political and ideological objectives.
So, you look at the three warfares. The three warfares are public opinion warfare and discourse power. And this is definitely, if one looks at what is taught in Chinese military academies, this is definitely one of the key elements. The other element is psychological, which is psychological warfare — the demonstration of Chinese marshal competencies, demonstration of Chinese influence operations. It is included within the package of PME. And the third element is legal warfare. And that is efforts that the PLA tries to engage in efforts that can shape the international legal environment in which it operates. So, these three warfares are folded into military-political work, of which professional military education is one subset.
So, if you look at the exposure that African military officers, and I interviewed quite a number for this report, they will be exposed, for instance, the teaching, right? The subjects, the military subjects, you’re going to have political work, you’re going to have ideology, and things of that nature in addition to technical subjects, in addition to strictly military subjects. And in every military academy, and on every course, you are going to have political staff, you’re going to have a commissar, like a political commissar, and then you’re going to have the military instructors. And these are of co-equal rank and authority. So, the PLA also has political academies, right? That African officers have been attending since the 1960s. That has not changed.
African officers are also exposed to political organizations like the National People’s Congress, different organs within the Chinese Communist Party. They also train, they also interact with these officers, and expose these officers to the Chinese way of doing things, essentially Chinese PME with so-called Chinese characteristics. So, it is part of a larger package. And I think it’s important to note that as far as the PLA is concerned, military, politics, political warfare, political influence are all part of the same framework. These are not distinct areas of activity. These are fused together and make the Chinese PME fundamentally different in design and focus than, say, American or British, or French professional military education. So these are distinct differences.
And as I mentioned earlier, and as I mentioned in the report, it is anchored in the type of PME, professional military education, that the Chinese were doing in the ’60s. In the ’60s, in the ’70s, some of that which is based on the African continent, but a lot of it which occurs in Chinese military academies. So, there’s that history that the PLA is trying to develop in order to make itself an attractive partner, and a partner that African countries look up to as a mentor and as an ideological friend. These are the sorts of ways in which African officers define their relationships with the PLA.
Eric: I’m so glad that you brought up the political hierarchy of the PLA and how it’s fundamentally different than in almost every other major country where the military works for the state. And a lot of people don’t realize that Xi Jinping has three titles, very important titles, among many, but the three most important are he’s president, he’s the head of the Central Military Commission, and he’s the General Secretary of the Communist Party. The president title is actually the weakest title of those. The number one is the General Secretary, and number two is the Central Military Commission head. And the PLA reports into those, not into the state role. So, I think that’s a very important distinction that you brought out, and I think it changes the relationship that the PLA has with African countries. Let’s try and put what the Chinese are doing in context, though.
Back in August 2021, when Judd Devermont was at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, before he went on to run Africa policy in the White House, he wrote a report, Measuring Chinese and U.S. Engagement With African Security Chiefs. He did that also with Marielle Harris, who I want to give credit to. One of the things that he noted was that, and this is a quote, “Beijing’s observable interactions with current and former African Security chiefs pale in comparison to equivalent U.S. engagements.” Now, you wrote in your report that knowledgeable African officers say China’s programs are on a scale and scope that is unmatched by other foreign partners. Help us understand some of the subtleties there in terms of measuring Chinese engagement in African militaries compared to, say, of that of the United States, and even the French or other partners.
Paul: Yes, great question. Look, it’s a multifaceted engagement. And what Judd and his colleagues at CSIS did, and I was roped into that project to comment on their findings, and it’s a very important piece of work. But what Judd was looking at, what that CSIS report, very important report was looking at were the interactions, right? The interactions between Chinese defense leaders and their African counterparts. That’s what they were measuring, right? They were not measuring, and this is one of the issues that I pointed out, they were not measuring the PME quarters, right? The PME quarters, the training, the professional military training that African countries participate in in the People’s Republic of China. And this was the focus of my work was precisely on that.
And when you look at the quarters, for instance, right? So, Nigeria, for instance, had 165. Botswana so far has trained about 400 officers in different Chinese academies. The Kenyans also have a very large quarter. And basically what the officers were saying, and this was very, very interesting, and I quote some of who say, listen, by and large, African countries, a typical African military attaches a lot of value to sending… one officer said, “We love to send our guys to Sandhurst. We love to send our guys to West Point and Saint-Cyr in France. Because when they come back from there, it’s no questions asked. These are basically the top cream of our officer corps. However, if colleagues from Nanjing Military Academy, coming on board, and are offering 10, 15, 20 slots, right? Then that’s where you’re going to send your offices, right?”
And I think this is something the PLA has understood very well. Just the sheer number of training opportunities, fully funded, fully subsidized training opportunities they’re able to provide African countries is very significant. And if you look at the poll within which those training opportunities are offered, before COVID, China provided 100,000 training slots to African countries over three years, right? Now, that obvious, that dropped precipitously because of COVID. So, these 100 slots are divided. So, about 60,000 for students, maybe 10,000 for local government workers, and so on. China has a huge pool of fully funded slots that it is able to provide African countries.
And as a result of that has been very attractive. Now, African countries rate Western military education, they rate it much higher. It’s relevant, it’s very up-to-date, it’s very attractive. It allows you to, after retirement, to go and work as an advisor on peacekeeping operations and stuff like that, right? They still rate it very high. But in terms of numbers, in terms of sheer numbers, in terms of volume, in terms of the predictability, you know that every year you’re going to have 50 slots, 60 slots, right? Some countries don’t even have the capacity to fill those slots. And that is where China has been able to gain an edge, certainly in terms of what African officers are saying. So, I think this is the major difference between this report that has been published by USIP and the CSIS report.
I was looking at the PME opportunities and all the officers that I spoke with, regardless of the sorts of… some militaries tend to have closer relations with the PLA than others, but all were in agreement that they have many more opportunities to send officers for training in China than they do with the U.S. and Western militaries. But having said that, Western militaries conduct way more PME programs on the African continent than does China, right? So, when you look at curriculum development, when you look at support to African military academies, when you look at PME trainers, cadets from West Point, for instance, going to Africa, cadets from different military institutions, Western militaries are doing a lot more than China. That’s where the nuance comes in.
Cobus: So, just following up on that, and I realize this is a tricky question because the range of training programs is so wide, but are there fundamental differences in the kinds of training that happens between Chinese and Western, kind of outreach to African armies? Particularly in relation to the actual, in addition to the ideological issues and so on that you raised before, are African soldiers being taught different ways of fighting war by Western trainers versus Chinese trainers? What is the kind of percentage of overlap in terms of the content of the curriculum?
Paul: Yeah, there’s a little bit of overlap because militaries tend to think alike when it comes to war-fighting. So, there’s a little bit of overlap. However, with regard to the PLA, I think there are some fundamental difference. One is a lot of the PLA activities in this space are conducted by… the PLA has its own united front work organization, right? United Front work organizations are… these are organizations that were created by the Communist Party of China to influence, to mobilize groups of people outside the Communist Party itself, both inside and outside China, who can support Chinese narratives, advance Chinese interest, and build solidarity with Chinese perspectives, right? So, the United Front Work organization is very, very active in Africa. The PLA has its own united front organizations, united front work organizations that have been operating in Africa since the 1960s.
So, that is one fundamental difference. And then, of course, you have other party organs, state organs like the Chinese Academy of Social Science. All these different forums that have been established under the Forum for China-Africa Cooperation that are also part of those programs. So, essentially, African countries, African officers are exposed not just to the military side of things, but also to the political — political organization and things of that nature. The other element is Chinese military-to-military engagements with African countries, there’s a very strong correlation with strong party-to-party ties. So, the countries that have the most robust military engagements and which send officers to China in larger numbers also happen to be the countries that have the most intensive and frequent, and robust interactions with the Chinese Communist Party.
As I mentioned before, it’s part of a larger package. In terms of warfare, so the Chinese have got a different approach to warfare, and one of the purposes of a professional military education is to work with foreign militaries to engender or to foster or to reinforce similar security concepts, right? For instance, you have the Global Security Initiative, you have the security dimensions of the Belt & Road, you have the so-called political architecture of defense building, right? You have all these different elements that are part of an effort by the Chinese military to influence the security concepts in Africa. Well, actually, quite a number of officers that I spoke with actually mentioned this, and they were looking at, for instance, they were saying, “Our approach to security is inward. It is inward. It’s inwardly focused. Our national security concepts are inward-looking, which is something that we share with the PLA.”
And so when it comes to things like the use of special forces in difficult terrain and things of that nature, there are some affinities that the PLA tries to build. And if you look at the type of exposure that African countries have when they go to China, there’s that commonality of approach that the PLA has understood very, very well, and which it tries to perpetuate in its training. So, there’s some overlap in some areas, but I think the Chinese model of securities is quite specific. It’s very specific to the Chinese context. And there are some affinities that the PLA has been able to build with different African militaries. Some countries have a history of party supervision of military forces.
So, they’re able to speak a common language, if you will, with the PLA. And so, I think that is one key difference where ideology is always at the spear tip of Chinese military engagement.
Eric: The article is Chinese Professional Military Education for Africa: Key Influence and Strategy. You can read it on the United States Institute of Peace website. We’re going to put the article in the show notes for you. Also on the website, we’re going to put some links to some of Paul’s other writings related to police cooperation. This is an absolutely fascinating aspect — very, very little-known aspect of the China-Africa relationship. There’s a lot more police operations going on than PLA operations in Africa. And it’s something that we just, again, don’t have time to talk about. It is the problem of having Paul Nantulya on the show is that we always want to talk about far more than we have time for. So Paul, thank you so much for taking the time to join us. You’re also very active on Twitter these days. Maybe one day you’ll be on Threads. Have you got your Threads account going yet?
Paul: No, I don’t even know what that is.
Eric: Oh, you are one of the very few people that doesn’t know what Threads is. This is the new Facebook-Twitter competitor that’s come out that they’ve signed up like 70 million people on. They think that this time will be the Twitter killer. But for now, you’re on Twitter. Where can people find you on Twitter?
Paul: People can find me @PNantulya. Yeah, that Twitter handle, I discuss mostly China and Southeast Asia, Africa issues. So, yeah.
Eric: Fantastic. We’ll put a link to that. Go out and get your Threads account right now, and then next time we’ll have you on the show, we’ll put your Threads name up there. So, Paul Nantulya, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it.
Paul: Thank you. Thank you very much. And thanks, Cobus.
Eric: Cobus, one of the key takeaways for me was this idea that Paul raised that the quality of the education in China may not be as good as what they’re getting in the U.S. or in Europe, but the opportunity’s there. And it reminds me of the educational situation as well, where a lot of young Africans would prefer to go to the United States or Europe, but they simply can’t get the scholarships, they can’t get the visas, and China opens its doors, or at least it has for the past 10, 15 years. So, the numbers are just astronomical. And I was surprised when he said how many — 100,000 in three years is very, very large and very robust. And it was interesting to compare and contrast with what the U.S. is doing.
It’s important to note that as we look at the China-Africa military relationship, the U.S.-Africa relationship remains quite robust as well. Again, always keeping in mind that context is really important. So, it’s not just that we’re looking at what the Chinese are doing in absence of everything else, but nonetheless, very interesting to compare the military education with civilian education.
Cobus: Yeah, it was also very interesting for me, in his report, Paul quoted an African defense official saying that yes, frequently, the education that they get in the U.S. and Europe tends to be more technologically advanced, more up-to-date with the newest information, and particularly technological information, but then a lot of them don’t necessarily have that equipment at home. It was this interesting kind of situation where the training on Chinese side factors into this kind of south-south logic, where it might not be the same level, but then, at the same time, the applicability of it in an African context is higher. So, it’s a very interesting… Yeah, it’s kind of like litmus test of where we are in China as a global soft country.
Eric: Now, let’s also bring up this point that he raised, which is these professional military education opportunities also prevent senior African military leaders to look at the latest in Chinese military technology and hardware. So, in many ways, it’s a sales tour as much as anything else. And one of the things that I’ve noticed in the past year in our daily coverage is how frequent now we’re seeing announcements of Chinese weapon sales to African countries. So, mostly in the drone space. So, the Congolese have purchased four Wing Loong attack drones. The Ethiopians used Chinese-made Wing Loong attack drones in the Tigrayan conflict that were loaned from the United Emirates.
The Wing Loong drones also are in action in Nigeria. They were used in Libya. And I think it’s Morocco or Algeria just bought a batch of them as well. And so it gives a chance for military leaders to go and see the testing and training facilities for technology for weapons, small weapons, advanced weapons. And one of the challenges that a lot of African militaries will say when trying to deal with the West is that they put a lot of export controls on their weapons. And so they simply cannot use a lot of the U.S. or European armaments under contract because they have restrictions on how they can be deployed, and the Chinese don’t have any of those restrictions. So, it’s easier and often more affordable to deal with the Chinese. But that’s another part of this professional military education, I think, that we should take into account that he raised in his paper is this idea of the weapons trade.
Cobus: Absolutely. And so weapons sales is one part of this, but I think it’s moving even further. We recently reported that Algeria is going to start manufacturing Chinese-designed weapons under license from Norinco. Algeria is actually moving into the production of Chinese weapons, which is a very interesting shift. Algeria, of course, is a big weapons maker and also a big weapons buyer. And it’ll be interesting to see whether other weapons makers in the African space, where South Africa is particularly a big player too, whether they’ll start exploring this kind of licensing manufacturing agreement as well. That could shift the conversation quite significantly, I think.
Eric: And it’s not unprecedented that the Chinese manufacture weapons overseas. Pakistan, of course, has a factory to produce JF-17 Thunder fighter jets that are trying to be sold around the world. So, not unprecedented that the Chinese are manufacturing arms abroad. But very interesting trends. So much to digest here on the basing issues, on weapons, on education. I think the key takeaway, though, is that the China-Africa military relationship is strong and getting stronger. And it goes back to my earlier comments at the top of the show that this in, at least my view, Cobus, I think you’re on the same point here and aligned here that the political-military relationship is the long-term future of the China-Africa relationship. And so focusing on this military ties is absolutely critical to understanding the broader trends and the direction that the China-Africa relationship writ large is going in.
Let’s leave the conversation there. Cobus and I will be back again next week with another edition of the China Global South Podcast. Today we did an Africa-focused podcast in the China Global South Feed. We have our Friday show. If you are just listening to the Global South feed and you’re interested in China-Africa issues, you can find us everywhere you get your podcast. We do a weekly Africa show. We have some great shows planned for the next few weeks. I’m very excited to bring those to you. And of course, if you would like to follow the work that Cobus, myself, and the rest of the team are doing every day and would like to support independent journalism about China’s engagement in the global south, then go to chinaglobalsouth.com/subscribe.
Try a monthly or an annual subscription out, free for 30 days. We also have student discount rates, so if you’re a student or a faculty, a teacher, send me an email eric@chinaglobalsouth.com, and I’m going to send you, right away back, the discount links for a half-off subscription. And again, that too comes with a 30-day trial. We would love to have you part of our growing reader community around the world. So, Cobus and I will be back again next week with another episode of the China Global South Podcast. Until then, thank you so much for listening.
