The way forward

China-Africa summit will shape the priorities of the relationship including in manufacturing and infrastructure investment

What next for China-Africa relations? As final preparations were made for the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, there was an air of anticipation in Sandton, the district of Johannesburg often dubbed Africa's richest square mile.

The Convention Centre within the commercial and retail hub is playing host to FOCAC, which is holding its first summit on African soil in its 15-year history on Dec 4 and 5.

Although it is the sixth meeting of FOCAC, the only other previous summit was in Beijing in 2006.

The staging is seen as a major coup for South Africa, reflecting deepening ties between President Jacob Zuma and his ruling African National Congress Party and Beijing.

Attending is Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is set to give an opening address, and meet heads of state and other representatives from the 51 African members of the organization.

Many commentators believe the summit, whose theme is China-Africa Progressing Together: Win-Win Cooperation for Common Development, could define the relationship between the world's second-largest economy and the continent for many years to come.

Tian Xuejun, the Chinese ambassador to South Africa, was in no doubt in an interview with the Johannesburg Star on Nov 26.

"This summit is destined to become a historic grand event, because it is not only the first summit on African soil, but also a summit that will deepen and upgrade China-Africa relations in every respect."

Many in Africa will be looking for pointers as to how important the Africa relationship is for China, now that its slowing economy means it is no longer quite as hungry as it was for Africa's resources.

At the last FOCAC meeting in Beijing in 2012, China announced loans of $20 billion, a doubling of the commitment in Sharm el-Sheikh in 2009. This time, loans could be $40 billion, a figure already hinted at during Premier Li Keqiang's visit to Africa last year.

Security is also set to be one of the key issues, with the landscape having also changed for the worse since the last meeting.

The continent, like Europe, is increasingly at the sharp end of terrorism. In November alone, three Chinese company officials were among the dead in a terrorists attack on the Radisson Blu Hotel in the Malian capital Bamako.

President Xi already committed $100 million in Chinese military assistance to the African Union in a speech to the United Nations in September. Many African governments will be looking for what further China may do in providing peacekeeping training and equipment.

What has changed also since 2012 is that Africa has also come up with its own 50-year action plan with the African Union's Agenda 2063.

There are likely to be many references during the summit about marrying FOCAC's agenda with that of the African Union.

Another major theme this time is also likely to be industrialization and the role China can play in helping African nations develop a larger industrial base.

Although China emerging as the manufacturing workshop of the world is seen as a role model by many African countries, there is some frustration that China does not invest enough in manufacturing in Africa.

Other issues likely to dominate will be infrastructure projects, investment in high-speed rail, China's role in African regional integration, poverty reduction, ecological protection, women empowerment and also the role Africa can play in China's Belt and Road Initiative with Kenya being a staging post in the Maritime Silk Road component of that.

Deborah Brautigam, director of the China Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins University and author of The Dragon's Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa, believes whether China can deliver on investment and not just aid will be one of the summit's key issues.

"The China-Africa relationship has always been couched in terms of mutual benefit. This year's FOCAC is likely to reflect a greater emphasis on the promotion of investment, and less emphasis on pledges of official development aid or loans," she says.

Brautigam, one of the world's leading authorities on the China-Africa relationship, who is attending the summit, says many African leaders will want the Chinese to focus more on industrial investment in Africa.

Apart from high profile investments such as the Huajian shoe factory on the outskirts of Addis Ababa, examples of Chinese manufacturing on the continent tend to be patchy.

"As China's economy continues to restructure, I expect increased concern with ways in which excess Chinese manufacturing capacity can be transferred to Africa. There is likely also to be more concern with ways to add value locally, whether in cotton spinning or mineral processing," she adds.

The headline figure that China will offer in loans and grants will still probably get the most scrutiny.

At Jan Smuts House, the home of the South African Institute of International Affairs on the Witwatersrand Universty campus, Romain Dittgen, one of its senior researchers in foreign policy, wonders whether the slowdown in China's economy will affect the amount offered.

"Will there be a lower amount that is promised? Somehow on such a big platform, I doubt that this will be the case. I think everybody expects it to go up," he says.

Ross Anthony, interim director of the Centre for Chinese Studies at Stellenbosch University, says Africans have to be realistic about the amount China can now pull out of its hat.

"One of the main challenges (for China) is expectation management. Over the years, development assistance amounts from China have grown increasingly at each FOCAC but this can't go on forever, particularly given China's 'new normal'," he says.

Windsor Chan, special project and strategy consultant for Asia Practice at lawyers Hogan Lovells in Johannesburg and a popular figure within the South African business community, says one of the biggest concerns ahead of the summit is whether China's commitment to the continent is as strong as it was.

He believes President Xi's recent high profile visits to the United States and to the UK could be indicative of Africa now having a lower priority.

"I think there is a lot of concern about China losing interest in Africa. China is now very much on the global stage playing with the big boys, which was not the case when FOCAC came into being in 2000," he says.

"There is also the question as to whether Africa is a good place to invest at the moment, not just for China but other players, too. We have had Ebola, the increasing terrorism risks and, of course, the recent Mali story."

Chan, however, believes that on balance there is still sufficient commercial logic in the China-Africa relationship.

"I think many will be looking to President Xi to make this commitment clear, however."

At Standard Bank's magnificent office complex in the Rosebank district of Johannesburg, Sim Tshabalala, chief executive officer of what is Africa's largest bank, knows about the importance of Chinese investment.

In what remains China's biggest foreign investment deal, Chinese state-owned bank ICBC bought a 20 percent stake in the bank for $5.5 billion in 2007.

He says many in the South African business community are looking to the FOCAC summit to give a clear direction to China-Africa relations.

"FOCAC is important in that it is going to reestablish and also reset Sino-African relations and also China's relationship with South Africa," he says.

He believes there are a number of issues that need to be addressed at the summit.

"There needs to be attention focused on what are the barriers to trade on both sides of the trade relationship such as what are the tariff barriers and what laws and regulations are an impediment," he says.

"From the South African standpoint, a focus on what do we need to do to improve the business environment and to encourage more Chinese corporate investment is needed."

John Tambourlas, chief operating officer of China Construction Bank Johannesburg Branch, says a top priority should be Chinese manufacturing investment on the continent.

He hopes Chinese truck and car manufacturer FAW's new plant at the Coega Industrial Development Zone in the Eastern Cape, which was partly financed by the China-Africa Devlopment Fund, will lead to other such investments.

"I hope when the leaders sit together they will see the benefits of more manufacturing investment," he says.

"It is good for the local economy, creates jobs and adds a lot of value. I think these sorts of investments are coming into play. They have perhaps been slow coming but they are starting to happen."

There will be inevitable comparisons at FOCAC 2015 with the 2006 Beijing summit with its colorful processions in front of the Great Hall of the People, drawing the world's attention to the new geopolitical relationship between China and Africa for the first time.

Harry Verhoeven, a lecturer at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service in Qatar, believes the Johannesburg FOCAC will try to play down expectations.

"In Beijing they deployed almost the 19th century imagery of Africa and, quite frankly, China. We have clearly gone beyond that. FOCACs have become more streamlined and also more professional," he says.

"I think there will be a number of announcements about debt relief, trade and about scholarships. I fail to see any crucial area in which something radically new will be announced."

David Shinn, a former US ambassador to Ethiopia and Burkina Faso, has been a keen observer of FOCAC meetings.

"At every one of these meetings, they come up with a three-year action plan and I have read them all. There tends to be a lot of repetition, however, where the same issues are regurgitated," he says.

Shinn, also adjunct professor of international affairs at the George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, does believe security, particularly after recent events, will be high on the agenda.

"How that is ultimately going to play out, I don't know. There will be announcements of initiatives. There always are but trying to guess precisely what they are going to do is probably a fool's errand."

Yu-Shan Wu, a researcher at South African Institute of International Affairs, believes it is the detail that matters.

She says that industrialization along with infrastructure and China's role in Africa's regional integration will be among the big themes but it is important to look for the substance.

"From a research perspective it depends on what some of the detail is in some of these issues. To what extent will the debate simply be a recognition that these issues exist or whether there is going to be any detailed discussion about how to address them," she says.

Alex Vines, head of the Africa program at Chatham House, the London-based foreign policy think tank, says what many will be asking after Johannesburg draws to a close will be whether anything is actually different in the relationship.

"This can be difficult. This is the sixth meeting so we are considerably down the road and so it is increasingly difficult to see where each FOCAC fits in," he says.

"With all the statements I have seen so far I am still a bit unclear on this. From the discourses I have had with Chinese officials, I don't expect anything particularly new."

Wu at South African Institute of International Affairs, who is a South African of Chinese descent, believes FOCAC 2015 could be when the China-Africa relationship moves from high diplomacy to more people-to-people exchanges.

She says this might build on the spirit of 2015 being "China's Year in South Africa", which has consisted of a whole series of events that have been popular with the general public.

"You have a China-Africa relationship that is at the high diplomatic level and one at the people level," she says.

"I think this FOCAC could be about bringing these two levels closer together so that the relationship gets closer to the people themselves, both Chinese and African."

andrewmoody@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily European Weekly 12/04/2015 page8)