China’s new ambassador to Ghana, Tong Defa, spoke out forcefully this week to condemn the ongoing problem of illegal mining in the country and issued a fresh warning to his compatriots that if they are caught breaking the law, the embassy will not be there to bail them out.
Also, Kenyan President William Ruto traveled to Germany, where he was once again pressed by the media to answer the ridiculous question of whether he preferred Western or Chinese investment.
Eric & Géraud also discuss a recent Congressional hearing in the United States about China’s role in Africa and why the proceedings desperately needed a fact checker.
Show Notes:
- Yen News: China Urges Ghana Government To Arrest And Prosecute Chinese Nationals Involved In Galamsey
- Deutsche Welle: Kenya’s President William Ruto speaks to DW in Berlin by Fatou Ellika Muloshi & Eunice Wanjiru
- U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee: Great Power Competition in Africa
Transcript:
Eric Olander: Hello, and welcome to another edition of the China in Africa Podcast, a proud member of the Sinica Podcast Network. I’m Eric Olander, and, as always, I’m joined by CSGP’s Africa Editor, Geraud Neema, joining us, as always, from the beautiful island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. A very good afternoon to you, Geraud.
Geraud Neema: Good afternoon to you, Eric. You, too, you are on a small island today.
Eric: Yes. We’re doing an island podcast today, so down here in Singapore for the week. And I had a chance to talk with a lot of bankers as one is prone to do in a place like Singapore. Interesting because a lot of the questions that people are asking me here is about FOCAC, the Forum on China Africa Cooperation Summit that we covered in detail over the month of August. A lot of folks are asking, “What does that $51 billion number actually mean?” That is the question that’s been the topic of conversation in a lot of the press coverage since FOCAC. And a lot of people are thinking that it’s loans or they’re thinking that it’s investment. And one of the things that we’ve had to do at CGSP, and you did a great job on this as well in your coverage, is break it down because it’s not loans, it’s not investment — it’s a lot of different things.
Now, the question the bankers have been having is that they’re looking at this from a slightly different perspective than we are in that they have been seeing the financial situation in China encountering quite a few headwinds — employment is having problems, investment is having problems, the banks are having problems. Now listen, it’s not Henny Penny, the sky is falling, everything’s falling apart in China. It’s that China is really facing some very serious headwinds, and that makes them wonder whether or not they’re going to be able to fulfill big pledges like this $51 billion commitment that they made in FOCAC. What are you seeing in terms of the questions that you’re getting from a lot of the international media that you’ve been doing since the end of FOCAC? And how are people looking at this across the continent?
Geraud: I’m getting exactly the same type of concern from media coming in Africa and so in, in Europe where people are trying to wonder to understand if really where we are going in China and Africa relation. The 51 billion, of course, as expected, has become the norm, has become the headlines of China-Africa Forum. When you come out of those kind of forum, people just keep the big dollars numbers and headlines and try to define the whole conversation around it. It was, as you said, it was really important to break it down for many to see where we are going with the 51 billion, what does it mean, and how impactful it can be for Africa in the next few years, given that we still have that demand of $100 billion a year for infrastructure in Africa.
And knowing that China now has moved from that to the small and beautiful, and given last year where we had China resurgence of loan in Africa with $4.3 billion, if I remember correctly. And lots of them going into energy project and ICT, new technology project. We kind of hint where the 51 billion is going to go, especially when you break them down in terms of export, credit lines, investment, humanitarian assistance. And I even gave some criticism around the investment side when we talked about, we even mentioned that last week when we said that 9.9 billion in terms of investment, it’s nothing given China’s input in the mining in certain country like the DRC, the Zimbabwe, the Morocco, we know that that number can really get done and shift quite easy and quite fast, maybe the next one year or two years.
But, overall, when you look at the whole envelope, it’s still quite not as much as people would expect it. And I also made a comment that out of the 51 billion, the reality is it’s not all of the 53 African countries that are going to win. I think that only few countries are. My bet is around 10 to 15 countries, the max, with the top five, top six being the main attraction of those 51 billion in different shape and form. And especially when it comes to FDI, I am expecting much more solid economy like the South Africa and Nigeria, and the Morocco winning the big parts of those financing when it comes to direct investment from China.
Eric: Well, you’re not the only one who was doing these debriefs with the media last week. A lot of Chinese ambassadors across Africa convened press conferences to talk about what happened at FOCAC and to answer the questions of local reporters. And we’re going to start our journey today across the news field in in Africa, in the China-Africa space in Ghana, in Accra, where the relatively new Chinese ambassador, Tong Defa, he convened a very interesting press conference. I was not familiar with Ambassador Tong. He’s relatively new to Accra. I don’t think you’ve seen much from him either, have you?
Geraud: No, no, I haven’t seen much of him either. I followed his appointment. But except that, he didn’t really pop up on the radar as specific actor in a certain way.
Eric: But he’s a guy to watch. He’s a little bit quirky. He’s very charismatic. And quirky, I say that in a complimentary way in that he’s very expressive. And it was very interesting to listen to the discussion that he had with the journalists. Because a lot of Chinese diplomats are very stiff, very conservative. They don’t always speak English very well. But Ambassador Tong, that wasn’t the case. Now, during the press conference, he was also asked a question about the Galamsey. This is an issue we’ve been covering for many, many years here, which is illegal mining in not only in Ghana, but elsewhere. But Galamsey is a Ghanaian word for illegal mining. This has been a real hallmark of the China-Ghana relationship over the past, I’d say 10 to 15 years.
Remember we talked about the Galamsey Queen, Aisha Huang from a couple of years ago. It’s been a chronic problem that they haven’t been able to, to get rid of. And let’s be very clear here — The Chinese are one actor of many in the illegal mining sector in Ghana. By most expert accounts, they’re not even the major actor, but they are certainly an actor. So Ambassador Tong was asked, what is he going to do about it? Let’s play the exchange that he had with local journalists. And I want to get your response, Geraud.
Ambassador Tong Defa: The missions of the embassy, there are two missions. First one is promote bilateral relations. We want to do more things between our two countries, bring our two countries closer. The second way is, of course, we need to safeguard Chinese citizens here, nationals legitimate rights. But there’s one thing for sure, we always request Chinese citizens here to do things legally, to do things according to law and local laws and regulations, and even traditional customs. I know you have a lot of traditional customs. We ask Chinese, that’s our way. I know there are some Chinese, not all Chinese, there are some Chinese involved in this illegal mining. But we discourage them. We discourage them. And I follow because I accompanied President Akufo-Addo to Beijing.
He even mentioned this. When he met our president last time in 2018, our president said to himself that if any Chinese committed any illegal things here in Ghana, you do according to your law. We support you do according to your law. So, we discourage Chinese people doing this illegal mining. But I read the news topic, actually you have a lot of regulations, but not all people, even including Ghanaian people, they’re not abiding the laws. I think Chinese people, they only very tiny, tiny of them doing this. Even in this year, we are taking a lot of matters dealing with these issues. People coming from Guanxi Province, Guanxi Autonomous Region, which is most Ghanaian people coming from that province, they sent three delegations, three governmental delegations dealing with these issues this year. Some even the vice governor level, they’re coming over here. They’re discouraging the people here who, very tiny people, but we attach great importance. So, those tiny people, “Hey you guys, you, you cannot do this. You need to transfer. Either you go back to China or either you do things according to local law.” So that’s our policy.
Eric: Well, we haven’t heard a Chinese official speak that openly on the issue in quite some time. And so I thought it was very interesting to see how expressive he was on the topic. This is, of course, an issue that’s not confined only to Ghana. Illegal Chinese mining is also a very big problem in other countries as well, namely the Democratic Republic of Congo. So, what did you think of Ambassador Tong’s remarks?
Geraud: I’m going to be a bit of devil advocates here if we have to consider China as devil here. Yes, I’m completely agree with him and to agree to his comment to the extent where when you talk about the misbehavior of many Chinese or Chinese in Africa, we tend, even private small individual, we tend always to put them in the same box as the Chinese. China is doing this, Chinese doing that. It’s something that we don’t always do when it comes to other foreigners. We’re going to have French people doing something illegal. We’re going to have Americans, you’re going to have Swiss. You’re going to have different nationalities, but we never say that France is doing that even if it’s an individual.
But when it comes to Chinese individual, we tend somehow to put them all in the same pack. And we pin them all together. And I can feel the frustration in Ambassador Tong’s comments because he was like, yes, we are asking you to take actions against those who are misbehaving about those who are doing illegal stuff here in Ghana. You should be acting upon them. But the reality is, as he somehow mentioned, there are laws, but even the Ghanaians are not respecting laws. They’re not abiding by the laws. And the worst part in this situation is the fact that most of the time, not only in Ghana but elsewhere in different countries in Mali, in the DRC, where you have illegal Chinese gold miners or doing in timber activities, most of them always have accomplices in high levels or with certain mid-level within the administration, within the government.
Eric: That’s right. There’s always local accomplice that are facilitating it.
Geraud: Exactly. There are always local powerful accomplices, not just like any individual, local powerful accomplices that makes those operations possible. So at the end, because us as an African government, as African, somehow we don’t want to act on those local accomplice because they’re powerful. We throw the ball to China court and say, “You China do something against them.” And the end, Ambassador Tong is going to tell you, “What do you want us to do? We can only encourage or discourage them to do whatever they do. We can only tell them, ‘You have to abide by the law. You have to abide by the law.’” But you cannot, for example, China cannot say, “What are you going to Ghana to do?” I’m going to do business. Show me your business plans. It’s not the place for the embassy to do that. But somehow, local government in Africa, in Ghana in this case, are not always following through.
You mentioned Aisha Huang. We’ve been following her stories. And you remember how she got kicked out and how she came back in Ghana. It was like how she came back in Ghana with the legal paper, with the ID from Ghana and everything. Who was helping her, who was protecting her, who made that possible? But somehow when she’s going to behave like this, you’re going to say China, forgetting that there is a local authority or local someone there that made that possible. And I think it’s really important. That’s why I understand why Ambassador Tong got frustrated and say that, no, no, do something. If someone operate illegally here, you have to take action.
Eric: And we’ve heard this in the DRC quite a bit where they’ve basically said, if you are caught illegal mining, you’re on your own. The embassy isn’t here to help you. Now, the one area where I think it’s a little bit frustrating for people is that they often are deported back to China and we never hear from them again. Do you remember that in the, I think it was North Kivu in the eastern DRC a couple of years ago, there was a whole crew of Chinese miners who were arrested and then deported. And then remember they said, and I think Wu Peng, the top diplomat for Africa at the time said, “They were going to face punishment when they get back to China.”
Geraud: We don’t know. We never heard of it.
Eric: Well, we don’t know.
Geraud: We don’t know.
Eric: I mean, did they? We never heard if they found… And that would be something that if they are deported back to China, for the Chinese to come up and say, “Listen, this guy, he committed crimes, he’s going to pay for it and there’s some accountability.” We don’t hear that. But I think to your point as well, just very quickly, I think your point is very well taken that it is not the embassy’s responsibility — any embassy’s responsibility. Not the Chinese embassy, not the French Embassy, not the Russian Embassy, you name it, to be able to enforce laws in other countries of the behavior of their own nationals. That’s just not the way it works. I think putting that burden on the embassy is not reasonable at all. The last point before I hand it back to you is, again, I think this point that we have to emphasize that local governance is the key issue here.
I’m sitting in a country of Singapore today, and there’s very little Chinese malfeasance that happens here, and certainly on the local level because you have very strong state capacity. Now, we cannot compare Singapore to Ghana. They’re two very different situations to be sure. But it does demonstrate how we find that the Chinese tend to comply with local laws depending on the capacity of the government. And that is, I think, the big shortcoming in a place like Ghana where corruption is still endemic when it comes to enforcing environmental laws.
Geraud: Exactly. And you really made a valid point on that. And this is where I wanted to get back with two points related to what you mentioned in terms of deportation. First of all, when you talk about deportation, and this is something I think that we don’t always ask, who’s asking for those Chinese national to be sent back to China? Is the embassy asking or it’s our own judicial system? We kind of assume that this is the only way to deal with them. We’re not going to keep them here. We’re going to send them back. And plus, we’ve been seeing recently, a country like Rwanda, for example, a few years back, that sentenced a Chinese to 20 years in prison for mistreating employment in Ghana.
Eric: Yeah, Malawi as well.
Geraud: Malawi as well.
Eric: Malawi gave a very strong jail sentence to-
Geraud: Exactly. Zambia as well, recently in the case of criminal activities led by Chinese and other nationals in Zambia. So yes, when we see those move of Chinese being deported, I’m kind of wonder is China asking them, can you send us back our people, we are going to prosecute them here, or it’s us, African government? We believe that somehow that this is the best way to deal with this situation. We are sending them back. Or it’s because we somehow understand that because there are local accomplices, powerful local accomplices, we don’t want to appear being favoring our own people. So instead, we send them back so China is going to deal with them. Which leads me to the second point in terms of what happens to them when they’re back in China?
I wonder if there is any legal cooperation between China and any African countries in terms of legal procedure or legal cooperation. So far, I haven’t seen any in that regard. So somehow you can be sentenced in Ghana. It doesn’t mean that when you’re going to go back to China, China has to enforce the fact that you were sentenced in Ghana because somehow the two countries do not have any legal cooperation. And I think that can be now a subject of discussion and even cooperation later on to see what legal cooperation that we can put between China and Africa. Because the reality is with the amount of those kind of situations we do have, we cannot allow ourself not to have a legal framework governing the cooperation between the two entities.
Eric: I think one way to discourage illegal Chinese mining is to show publicity campaign of what life is like inside a Congolese jail. I think if you showed what life was like, like this is where you’re going to end up, and man, it is not a place you want to be. If you said, is that gold that you’re taking really worth 20 years of this?
Geraud: But the problem is you have that, you’re going to have that advertisement. On the other hand, you’re going to have a general, a minister telling you, “I’m powerful here, I’m powerful in this country. None of this will happen to you.” So when you see that, you’re like, eh, do I follow a movie or I’m really following the guy who’s coming with 15 bodyguards and with a motorcade with people around him. This one is much more powerful. This one is going to protect me.
Eric: Well, let’s move on with some headlines that happened this week and I’d like to get some of your reaction to these. Listen, a lot of people in Africa use Transsion phones. Those are Techno, Itel, Infinix phones. Well, if you’ve been following the share price of the parent company, Transsion Holdings, it has been on a roller coaster ever since Chinese authorities in Northeast China, these are provincial authorities, arrested the company’s Chief Financial Officer, Xiao Yonghui. And that has thrown the company into a little bit of turmoil. And so this is a company that has been operating at just an amazing, amazing track record over the past 15 years where they have, not only did they capture the first mover advantage in Africa by building a suite of phones that were specifically designed for the continent and for users in Africa, not just hand-me-down Samsung and Apple phones that were designed for other markets that were then brought to Africa.
The Transsion guys really did an amazing job at building devices tailor-made for the African consumer. And they have held onto the top spot for more than a decade. But now, again, there is some reports of financial irregularities inside the company. Provincial investigators, and, again, that is French for just, we think a little bit of corruption may be at play here, and that’s been the issue, suspicion. So, the stock price for Transsion has been all over the place. In South Africa, the higher education minister, Nobuhle Nkabane, she announced on Monday that 100 students would be traveling to China for training in what they’re going to call scarce and critical skills of the future. Not sure if this is tied with some of the training programs that they announced during FOCAC.
But we’ve seen a number of announcements in a variety of African countries this week of students heading over to China for specific training. This sounds like it’s going to be in technology and higher-level training than just going to get an undergraduate degree. And the last news item I want to get your take on, Joe Biden said that he’s going to be heading over to Angola. Now, this was a promise that Joe Biden made at the 2022 U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, where he said in 2023 he was going to make it to Africa. He did not make it to Africa in ’23. But he is going to try and make it, so according to White House sources, sometime between the UN General Assembly meeting in September and the U.S. election in early November. At this point right now, only Angola is on the agenda. So, those three items are what happened this week. Give us your hot take on any of them.
Geraud: I’m going to start by the second one, the training that’s African countries are sending people to China. That’s definitely going to be part of the FOCAC when they’re going to do the check, how much has been done. So yes, definitely that’s going to be part of it. And it’s really interesting for me because, and I think I’ve mentioned that also in the past couple weeks when I was saying that those are the part where China is really starting to shape and getting young Africans in the part of the future, building the new technology, building the training, sharing skills and capabilities. They’re shaping, so they’re moving in the space that many people have left open. So they’re really moving that and really shaping the mind, shaping the heart, shaping the giving, sharing the skills that later on is going to help many young Africans.
And 15 years, not even 15 years, I think five years from now, many going to tell you that they got the first ICT job or any high-level jobs or technical job because of the training they got when they went to China. And also transfer of norms because when they go there, they don’t only get the training, they also see the Chinese lifestyle. They also see all of it. And they come back with both the Chinese experience and also the knowledge they got from there. And I think this is definitely something to really pay attention to and to really see how it’s going to go and where it’s going to go, and how it’s going to unfold. And the last one will be Joe Biden in Angola. That’s quite interesting given that João Lourenço snubbed FOCAC. I wouldn’t say snub, but he was there in FOCAC.
Eric: Well, we don’t know. Yeah, he wasn’t there. We don’t know if it was a snub. We don’t have any indication as to why he did not go, but it is interesting that that is where Joe Biden is going to go as well. Angola seems to have captured the imagination of the Americans. Of course, this is the place where they are building out the multi-billion dollar Lobito Corridor. Something we talked about on our live CGSP Roundtable show that we posted on YouTube last week. If you’re interested in a very vibrant discussion about supply chain routes in Southern Africa, I encourage you to go to YouTube to check that out. Why do you think Angola is so important to the Americans right now?
Geraud: I think Angola is becoming important to the Americans given that João Lourenço has expressed the willingness to diversify Angola partners. He really moved from dos Santos era where dos Santos really bought head and neck with Chinese. And now Angola is really trying to move and to create a certain leverage. When I see how China is moving in Angola and Angola is moving with the U.S., I see it’s not even like the leverage. We have the feeling that Angola is really switching and moving, leaning more toward the U.S., and that’s really a very interesting move to see how they’re going to push further with that. And of course, with the Lobito Corridor that you’ve mentioned, it’s a very key element that’s going to really anchor U.S. interests, I would say first geoeconomic interest in Africa and plus geopolitic interest.
Let’s not forget that Angola now is becoming much more closer and closer with the U.S. in terms of managing the crisis in the eastern part of the DRC. We’ve seen that how many times the State Department has relied on Angola to really drive that process. So really Angola is becoming that important partner for the U.S. It was there before in the 1970s. And it has always been a key element. And given also that a lot of U.S. companies are pumping oil in Angola, there is a convergence of different interest and I would say mechanism happening there that makes Angola really today more and more interesting for the U.S. And having Joe Biden going there is definitely a big message they’re sending to Africa, and maybe they’re sending a message to China as well. It’s going to be interesting what’s going to happen later.
Eric: Well, let’s cross back across the continent over to East Africa. And Kenyan president William Ruto, he didn’t really take a break in between his trip to China because he bounced and turned right around to go to Germany. Now, there was a little bit of a funny episode that took place online with Raila Odinga, who is one of his political rivals, who posted a bunch of tweets criticizing William Ruto for going to Beijing and said he shouldn’t have gone to Beijing. What a waste of time. Oh no, no, and the reason why this is so funny, this is why it’s so funny is because literally Odinga went to Beijing with the President.
Geraud: Exactly. And Ruto was shopping for him. Ruto was literally shopping and lobbying for him because Odinga is candidate for the chairman position at the Africa AU. When I saw that, I was like, man, come on. What was that? That’s just political move, trying to gain some points to score some point back home, but that’s just ridiculous.
Eric: But it gets weirder because right after Odinga posted those comments on X, then a couple days later, Odinga and Ruto are back on the road again in Germany, together. And you’re just like, now, this was another kind of calamity PR-wise that took place. And again, this isn’t really related to China, but it does go to the governance question. So, Ruto goes on to Deutsche Welle TV, which is the German state broadcaster, and onto X and is saying that Germany is going to take 250,000 Kenyans to work in Germany. And this was a big deal. This was the big headlines. The German foreign ministry comes out underneath his post on X and says, “Nope, that is not true. That is not what we agreed to. We did not agree to any specific numbers. This is something that’s in negotiation.” This is highly unusual in diplomacy where a foreign ministry corrects the statements of a visiting head of state. And it was just shocking to watch.
Geraud: They did not have much of a choice. They had to. Can you imagine a foreign president comes and say, on state media, that you know, your government has agreed to take 250,000 people from my country to come work in your country? Come on. Knowing how much immigration is becoming much, much more divisive now, not only in Germany, but in Europe, the impact of that kind of decision. You cannot just give the hot potato to German government, you wanting to score points back home. Still again, and again, those points, I find them really quite ridiculous — seeing that it’s something to be proud of that you’re going to send 250,000 of your people, skilled labor that you desperately need for your own development. You feel proud to say that German is… Come on. Come on. In both ways, it was just ridiculous. And yes, German foreign affairs had to react to that.
Eric: They had to react. So let’s kind of drop into this interview that Ruto did with Deutsche Welle. Deutsche Welle, of course, again, is the state broadcaster in Germany, the public broadcasters, they might say there. And right off the bat, we’re talking, within a minute or two of the interview starting, not surprisingly, the question came around to China. Let’s take a listen.
Speaker 5: Following your recent meeting with President Xi Jinping and ongoing collaborations with other European nations, how do you see Kenya balance in partnerships with China and Europe?
President William Ruto: Well, the whole world is framed around interests. And we have absolutely no difficulty in pursuing our interest in the West and pursuing our interest in the East. And therefore, when our interests converge, we work together. And we had a wonderful engagement in Beijing together with my other African colleagues. I have had a wonderful engagement here in Germany with my German counterpart. I had an excellent engagement with President Biden when I was in the United States. The challenges that countries face, whether they are in the West or in the East, are common. And therefore there is need for collaboration between all countries to make sure that we configure and we figure out how to deal with the challenges that we have.
Speaker 5: China and Europe, which one do you think is a better partner for Africa right now?
William Ruto: There is a measure of finding out who is better than the other. Because, as I said before, many people try to frame us into are you facing East or are we facing West? We are facing forward because that is where opportunity is. That is where our interests are. And therefore there are things that we can do with the West, there are things that we can do with the East, there are things that are common that we can do both with the east and the West, and I’ll give you an example. To deal with the challenge of the serious economic issues in our continent, for example, we’ve asked the U.S. to enhance their IDA Concessional funding window to the multilateral development banks. We’ve done the same to Europe. We’ve done the same to China. Because we are all one global family. And China is making as much a contribution as Europe is, and as much as the U.S. is. That way, we can work towards the good of humanity.
Eric: Now, if Ruto answer sounds a little familiar, listeners of this program may recognize it from back in May when the president appeared on CNN and was asked a question by host Richard Quest that generated a very similar answer.
Richard Quest: You’ll forgive me if I just put it straightforward, in good blunt terms — if a choice is made between investment by China and investment by the United States and companies, which would you prefer?
William Ruto: Let me tell you, Quest, many people want to pull us into a conversation as to whether we are facing East or we are facing West. Let me tell you, we are neither facing West nor facing East, we are facing forward because that is where the opportunities are. And we are working in a manner to make sure that our assets, what Africa has, what Kenya has, we have, for example, in Kenya, 90% of our grid is green. It is the reason why we are working with Microsoft to put together the first ever 1 gigawatt data center. So we are looking at where our opportunities are and we are working with those who can help us unlock those opportunities, make them into investments, create jobs, create wealth, and take Kenya to the next level as we take Africa in the same direction.
Eric: Geraud, it is absolutely clear that both the Deutsche Welle journalist and Richard Quest at CNN are struggling with the concept that a country like Kenya, and pretty much any middle power country can have productive relations with China and the U.S. and Europe and Japan and be multi-aligned. I mean, again, you wouldn’t ask this question if you genuinely thought it was a stupid question.
Geraud: Exactly. Yeah.
Eric: And I think they’re really grappling with it, and I think they desperately want him to say, “We would prefer to work with the U.S. and Europe. We have to work with the Chinese, but we’d prefer to wink, wink, nod, nod.” Because this narrative is so reductive and it’s so moronic. I’m baffled why it keeps coming up again. And again, and here’s the other thing, last point, I know you want to get in on this, they would not ask the president of Belgium, or they would not ask the president of pick your G7 country, do you want to work with China or do you want to work with the West? And it’s a BS line of questioning because we know full well that the G7 abundantly with the Chinese on all sorts of different levels.
Geraud: You took the word out of my mouth. Those questions are becoming just ridiculous, totally ridiculous. It’s rich coming from countries that have active relationship, economic and trade relationship with China. Deutsche Welle asking that as if Olaf Scholz was not in China a few months back, signing deals and defending China. Come on. Those questions are really becoming ridiculous. They’re condescending without even noticing it. It’s like us as the adults, we can talk with each other, but you, as the kids, we have to ask you who you prefer between mommy and daddy. That’s stupid. That’s definitely a kind of stupid line of questioning. It’s like not understanding that you coming from a country where you do have much more deep, active economic political security relationship with China, and you find it somehow surprising that developing countries in the global south has the ability to work with you and to work with China in the same time as they don’t have the capability to understand that our interests are this and that. And we are going to pick any other country that we want to help us move forward in that direction.
And it’s ridiculous to, every time, asking us those questions, who are you choosing? Who do you pick? Who do you pick? Come on. That doesn’t make sense. I mean, I think he kept his calm. He was way calmer than I am now to really giving the, I’m telling you, the diplomatic answer. His answers was much more diplomatic than you’d remember President Tshisekedi from the DRC, a few months back in Paris, when they ask him between Russia, China, and he said, “Yes, Russia and China, they’re doing much better work in Africa than the Europe is doing.” Ruto was much more diplomatic.
Eric: That’s right.
Geraud: Tshisekedi said that, yeah, they’re doing much better. And I think that he said that just to get back to him. If you’re asking me a stupid question, I’m going to give you a stupid answer, but I say, yeah, they’re doing much better. So go with it, run with it, and be mad with it. But yeah.
Eric: What I found interesting is in that interview that Tshisekedi did with a very prominent French broadcaster was how little attention on the French media that got. They posted it up, it was done on LCI, the TV network. They posted it up, they had subtitles on it, and very little engagement, very little sharing. Nobody really wanted to talk about it. But I promise you, I promise you, if he said, “I want to deal with the French more than I want to deal with the Chinese,” they would have shared that thing everywhere. They would’ve done that.
Geraud: Headlines. Headlines, yeah. I’m telling you headlines of all newspapers that yes, France is better than China. Because he said that, no I prefer China and Russia, saying, yeah, we’d rather not talk about it. We’re rather making it a non-event for now. And which they did. And I think that journalists now… I’m mentioning journalists because I realize how my journalists in the West are shaping the narrative between China and Africa, African and the rest of the world, by asking those line of questioning, by choosing those kind of headlines that keep on fueling stupid debate that are supposed to be dead by now. But journalists somehow they like the sensational, they like the buzzword. They like those answer that… the click baits, those are going to go to… They want the viral moments. And they come over and over and over and over asking those stupid question, I would say. So yeah, it doesn’t make sense.
Eric: And again, what’s interesting is that sitting out here in Southeast Asia, I cannot imagine a journalist from any broadcasters, Deutsche Welle or anybody, asking the Vietnamese prime minister, “Do you think that China is better than the U.S.?” And presenting that type of option. And I think this is something that we see much more in Africa. And I think to your point, there’s a certain condescension about it all. I mean, there’s just no other thing. I think it happens a little bit in Latin America, but I think there is the same type of condescension from the U.S. to Latin America as there is from Europe to Africa.
Geraud: As if we don’t have agency, as if we are not mature enough, adult enough to think of like, ooh, we want to choose. It just reminds me another line of questioning that I heard last week in the U.S. about China Great competition.
Eric: Hold on. No, no, no, you can’t go there because we’re just about to get to what happened in the U.S. House of Representatives. So, I don’t want you to steal my thunder here today because I’ve gone to great lengths to prepare a lot of sound bites here. Let’s bring you now to Washington, where last week it was China Week in Washington, and that is not that they were celebrating mid auto moon festival or that they were enjoying Chinese calligraphy and dumplings at this time of year as one is want to do. It was basically a gathering on Capitol Hill, various committees to kind of say how crappy and terrible everything that China’s doing.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee, they convened a hearing specifically focused on Great Power Competition in Africa. And so it featured only one witness. Normally they have quite a few, but in this particular case it was only one, John Bass, who’s the undersecretary of state for political affairs. Here’s what I’m going to do, Geraud, because I have a, a bunch of comments to get through, I just randomly picked some of the comments and just to give everybody a flavor of the type of discourse that was happening. Let me run through a bunch of these first and then we’ll get to your take on it. So first, we’re going to hear the opening remarks from John Bass. Again, he’s the undersecretary of state for political affairs at the State Department.
John Bass: The region, as you’ve noted, is also of acute interest to our strategic competitors who are coaxing or compelling African countries into trajectories of debt, negative growth, and exploitive security relationships. China has established a one-way trade relationship with Africa, dumping goods at below-market prices while the United States, in contrast, has four years promoted African exports to the United States through the African Growth and Opportunity Act. And the PRC is also working to expand its military presence and relationships in Africa.
Eric: Let’s now move on to representative Michael McCaul. He is from Texas. He’s a Republican. And he’s also Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. So he’s a rather important guy. And he’s also chairman of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. So he’s been a very outspoken critic of China going back now for a couple of years. And this issue of Africa also caught his attention.
Michael McCaul: We find ourselves in admit, a great power competition. The failure of leadership from the Biden-Harris administration has led to a world in chaos and a rise in adversaries around the globe, none more threatening than China. And the African continent is ground zero for the CCP with its manipulative Belt and Road Initiative crippling debt trap diplomacy. Keep in mind, many CCP-funded projects are dual-use, and can be used by China’s military, including potential naval bases in strategic locations such as their port in Djibouti.
Eric: That question of security came up quite a bit in the hearings, and it’s obviously the United States tends to think a lot of things through that security prism. And Republican representative from Michigan, John James, also addressed the concerns that he’s got about China’s role in Africa as it implies for American security.
John James: China continues to export its model of party-over-state authoritarianism governance across the continent and continues to pursue an Atlantic Ocean military base. Last week in Beijing at the forum for China Africa Cooperation Summit, President Xi Jinping pledged 51 billion in new financial commitments to the continent, the majority of which will be loans that will enable Beijing to continue its strategy of debt trap diplomacy to gain leverage of African leaders and control over-critical mineral supply chains. It is these crucial mistakes over security and supply chains, two things I know as a combat veteran and as a logistics, as a logistician, that are most danger to our national security right here at home, not just on the African continent.
The PRC continues to put export controls on critical minerals most recently antimony. Anybody know what antimony is? Well, you should or you will. It’s essential for our ammunitions as we’re running short on our own supply. This could starve our own industrial supply base of the resources we need in the event that we come into direct conflict with our adversaries.
Eric: Let’s just do a quick little fact check here along the way. I know we’re going to do fact-checking down the road, but number one, the $51 billion that we’ve talked about ad nauseam on this show is not loans. So very important there. Again, there is no public evidence that we know of or anybody else knows of that the Chinese are actively seeking a military base. This is on the West Coast of Africa. This is something that the U.S. is convinced is happening. It may be happening in terms of discussions that are happening in various embassies, but there has been no movement on this issue for years despite what we keep hearing coming out of both U.S. media and the U.S. Capitol in that respect. And so just two factors, now just to point out that those were Republicans. This is a truly bipartisan issue. So let’s take a listen now from a representative, Ami Bera, who’s a Democrat from Northern California, and you’re not going to really hear much distinction in the tone and the rhetoric.
Rep. Ami Bera: I’m very concerned that we are losing ground in Africa not because of lack of regard, but when I look at surveys of Africa, China now is more popular than the United States. And when I think about how China approaches the continents, I think the number I’ve heard is for every dollar that they provide an investment, they saddle many of these low and middle income countries with $9 of debt. I was in Kenya last summer, saw a beautiful train from Nairobi to Mombasa. I had never actually saw any trains on there, and I don’t think anyone’s using that train, but they’re now saddled with a real challenge.
Eric: Okay, so just to be clear here, that he was referencing the Standard Gauge Railway that China financed and built. Last year, Geraud, passenger traffic on the SGR increased 18% to 2.73 million people, so a million passengers. So he didn’t see any, but it’s being used quite a bit. And again, what we see here is just a level of ignorance. And again, it’s hard to tell. Okay, so hold on, hold on, hold on, and we’re going to get into this, we have this debate, whether it’s… never assign conspiracy when mediocrity will do. These guys have been saying this for a long time. This is nothing new. It’s really a reflection of the sclerotic nature of the U.S. political system that it’s having a difficult time or an unwillingness to accept new information into the body politic.
And the problem is, is that so much of what they were saying is simply not accurate. If African presidents and prime ministers were listening to this, which I know they’re not, because they are not going to subject themselves to the torture that I did by actually listening to the whole thing, they would, I think, have the same reaction that you do. That this is kind of a joke.
Geraud: Exactly.
Eric: It’s just not serious.
Geraud: I’m so tired. I’m so tired at this point. If it was a video recording that we were going to make, I was going to use this meme that we have on the internet with
José Mourinho, just removing the headset, he’s like, “Come on, let’s stop this stupid question.” Every comments they make, you had debt trap, debt trap diplomacy, debt trap narrative, all of it, guys, did you fact check your own comments before making them? And I’m sorry, I do believe it’s not ignorance. They are engaging in pure and active disinformation and misinformation. At this point, after so many years of viability of the data that’s out there, engaging in those kind of conversation in 2024, September 2024, now that’s not ignorance anymore. That’s pure disinformation. Come on.
Because when you have the data in front of you and you keep on saying things like that, you’re like, what are you trying to achieve here? Because, as you said, people in Africa, when they listen to that, “My friend, what are you talking about? What are you making up to here?” You didn’t even use another sound bite, but similar comment were made about another representative saying something similar that teaching Africans about what they need to know about China. I was like, come on guys, come on.
Eric: Well, you heard that tone a little bit in John Bass’s comments where he was saying they’re coaxing African governments into debt. And I’m just trying to think, how do you coax a government into debt? I mean, what that implies is that the African government who is sitting down across from the negotiating table doesn’t really understand what they’re doing and the Chinese are manipulating them or coaxing them into… That word coaxing, again, it’s that paternalism that we continue to hear in the discourse coming from places like the State Department, which it’s frustrating because you and I, we know a lot of very talented State Department diplomats. I mean, there are a lot of people who are there. The problem is, is that guys like John Bass, who sit up at the very high levels of the State Department, are getting very bad information, or, okay, okay, let me give you your side, or it’s intentional.
Now, I’ve been thinking a lot about this misinformation question quite a bit. And I was watching CNN this week. And, obviously, in the United States right now, there’s this whole discussion about Haitian migrants in Middleton, Ohio eating cats and dogs. And you think, how ridiculous is this? And then you start to Kind of, what is the point here? Misinformation and disinformation now is absolutely a core part of our discourse domestically. And there was a discussion on CNN with University of Virginia political scientist, Professor Larry Sabato. Now, for those of you who don’t follow U.S., American politics that carefully, Larry Sabato, he’s been around for decades. He’s very, very famous.
And he was asked to explain how is it that this disinformation continues to survive in the American discourse even though it’s been disproven over and over again? And it got me thinking about our discussions that we have about the debt trap. So, I’d like to play some sound from Larry Sabato in this interview on CNN. And then I want to see if you also think that there’s a parallel with the debt trap.
Larry Sabato: We live, partly because of Trump, we live in the post-factual error in which facts no longer matter, Fred, they don’t matter. Whatever you can say, whatever people want to take in, even if you present them with volumes of evidence that it isn’t true or it was made up, it’s okay because it serves a larger partisan purpose. It supports the candidate they want to win, and the end justifies the means. Boy, we’ve made a lot of progress in human history, but we haven’t made any progress at all.
Eric: When I heard that, it really got me thinking about this question of the way that U.S. stakeholders talk about the Chinese and Africa as it relates to the debt trap and some of these issues of labor and things that have been debunked over and over again. And to your point, maybe the intention is the fact that it is not true. They know full well it’s not true, but it serves a larger purpose as Larry Sabato said.
Geraud: Definitely, yeah. It serves a larger purpose, it serves a larger agenda that they want to protect, they want to push. Because at this point, as I say, with so many data information out there, data available on the first three research result that you make, you go on Google, those are the top three result that you find. But you’re still peddling those kind of narrative. No, there is a need of engaging, of entertaining, of maintaining, and then fueling a fake narrative — A fake narrative that many in the global south that started to use that stopped using it. But somehow in the U.S., there’s still an active, I don’t know, core of people who are really walking into maintaining that alive. And which I think it’s really stupid.
Because we’ve said it a couple of couple times already that from an African perspective, when we hear you talking like this, knowing exactly what’s happened on the ground, knowing how we do things, we just understand that you really don’t care about the issue. We just understand that no, you guys don’t want to find solution to any problem that we might have. You just want to score points. You just want to score political points. And we don’t take you seriously. We come to you, we’re going to be polite. Yes, yes. But you’re going to keep on doing what we need to do for our own interest. And you’re going to keep on complaining, but it doesn’t make sense. It won’t get you anywhere anyway. I really don’t know if really they wanted to engage in a very fruitful constructive discussion to say, “How are we going to engage with Africa or whatever?”
But definitely they’re not on that path. They’re much more in the smearing campaign path. And I think it’s not really useful to even the U.S.-Africa relation. It doesn’t help at all.
Eric: Now, I’m going to put a disclaimer out here, and I don’t know if anybody by this time in the show who disagrees with us is going to continue to listen to us, I want to make it abundantly clear that the United States is by no means alone in propagating disinformation, and the Chinese are as active, if not in many cases, more active. And we have a lot of evidence of Chinese engaging in mis and disinformation, particularly as it relates to the Americans. This is now a tool of state craft that a lot of governments are using. What we are doing here by critiquing the United States is that they position themselves as better than the Chinese, as above this. And the frustrating part is that when we see them engaging in the same level of discourse and using the same tactics in many cases as what Chinese have been doing on Twitter, on Facebook, and we, again, I know we’re going to have a lot of people angry at us from both sides on this kind of topic.
That’s the way it is. Okay, fine, whatever. But the fact is, is that, again, disinformation is a part of state craft today. I don’t want anybody to think that because we’re criticizing the United States, we’re kind of somehow saying the Chinese are pure and good and doing everything right. That is not at all what we’re saying. The United States also has an extra burden because their hearings are open. We can hear what their representatives are saying. We don’t get to hear what Chinese representatives get to say. We don’t get to hear what inside the National People’s Congress, what they’re saying, the same types of committees that are happening where they get to think about these issues inside Xi Jinping circle and what Wang Yi is doing. So the fact is that the United States invites more criticism because of its transparency in its political system.
I want to put that out there. Okay, so we’ve covered a lot of ground today. A little bit of a weird show, starting off, but there was a lot of things going on, a lot of post FOCAC. As you’re looking ahead through the end of the year now, what do you think people should be thinking about in terms of where the China-Africa relationship is going? Are you going to start seeing quickly the FOCAC implementations, or is that something we should wait for next year? What are you looking at now going forward into the end of the year?
Geraud: I think it’s already started, the FOCAC implementation. The training, they’re going to be a part of the FOCAC later on in 2027. And me, I’m looking forward to much more into the agreements that China is going to sign with African countries in space of cooperation, in terms of economic cooperation because Xi Jinping mentioned that in his keynote speech as well as in the action plan. And I think there is something in the likes of Europe-Africa-Caribbean relation economic trade partnership that we might see now happening with China and Africa. And for me it’s something I’m starting to follow closely, how it’s going to unfold. I think that China-Africa relation has entered a new phase, and the phase where we don’t focus on the 50 billion anymore. I think that we should be focused more on the things that are not sexy for the media, not sexy for the geopolitics, but those things where it really touches people’s life, where really the real shaping, the real influence are starting given especially that just before FOCAC, we had that survey coming from the Ichikowitz Family, surveying 16 countries. Saying that youth are seeing China influence in Africa being positive by 82%, ahead of the U.S.
Eric: That’s what the representative was referring to, that popularity poll.
Geraud: Exactly. So, those popularity poll are telling you that something’s happening on the ground. I know people are going to say it’s only 16 countries, but you also had the Gallup surveys in April 2024. So we have about a range of survey out there that are telling us that the needle is moving and it’s moving in a direction where many in the West are not prepared for. So this is why if they want to really follow what China is doing in Africa, it’s moving away from those big headlines to now pay attention to those small issues where really China is trying to put its imprint there.
Eric: One of the things that we’ve been doing on the site at chinaglobalsouth.com is tracking the post FOCAC deals that have been signed. None of us at CGSP are that excited about the $51 billion announcement. And as you’ve heard from Geraud, eh, whatever, that they’re going to do that. We have no visibility and no transparency as to whether or not they’re going to follow through on that. A lot of times they make a promise that they don’t live up to. But again, since we don’t have any ability to see whether or not they live up to their promises, eh, who cares. What is more important in many respects are these deals that are being signed on the sidelines and afterwards. These are business deals. And we have seen at least a dozen that I can count in the post FOCAC era for very tangible, practical things. I’ll put a link to it in our show notes for some of these deals and these signings. This is to what Geraud was talking about. These are the types of signings that actually have an impact.
And that’s where I would focus more attention. Also a lot of focus at FOCAC was on agriculture and imports. I think you’re going to see pretty quick uptake of that, particularly coming from countries like South Africa that have a really robust infrastructure. So we’ll probably see more agricultural imports, more avocados, more blueberries, and things like that, heading to China pretty quickly within the next six to nine months. That’s something that they can implement rather expeditiously. So, I think that’s what I would keep my eye on. And these training centers that they talked about. So, the increasing, those agriculture training centers and security also, that too can probably be implemented pretty quickly. I think within the next year, we’ll see some of that, but that’s not the big money items. Those are some of the more hands-on items.
Geraud: Yeah, especially when you look, for example, last year in terms of China investment in new energy, you have like small hydropower in different countries. I think it was in Angola and also in Cote d’ivoire. Those kind of small projects are going to have much more impact on everyday life. That’s part of the small and beautiful they have now.
Eric: That is it. Okay, that’s a great space for us to say goodbye for this week. Geraud and I will be back again next week. Cobus is in Argentina this week. He’ll be back with us next week. So we’ll get a full debrief of the academic conference that he went to in Buenos Aires. If you would like to join the conversation that we’re having every single day on this, I mean, we have a lot of fun putting this stuff together. This is what we do and we’re just so passionate about it, and we’d love for you to join our reader community. Go to chinaglobalsouth.com/subscribe. We offer half off discount rates for students and teachers.
We’ve intentionally tried to keep the subscription rate low to make it accessible for everybody to subscribe. I know $199 is still a lot of money for a lot of people, but at the same time, the work that we do takes a lot of time, a lot of effort, and we need to keep the lights on. And your support really helps. We also want to thank our Patreons and all of our donors as well on our site. And you want to donate to us, you can go right onto the website, there’s a big yellow button. And we appreciate all that support as well. So for Geraud Neema in Mauritius, I’m Eric Olander coming to you today from Singapore, we’ll be back again next week with another edition of the China in Africa Podcast. Thanks so much for listening.
Outro: The discussion continues online. Tag us on Twitter @ChinaGSProject and visit us at chinaglobalsouth.com. If you speak French, check out our full coverage projetafriquechine.com and AfrikChine on Twitter. That’s Afrik, with a K, and you’ll also find links to our sites and social media channels in Arabic.
