China's plans reverberate in Africa

Continent closely watching as legislators and advisers in Beijing study blueprint for next five years for continuation of key relationship

Strictly speaking, the ongoing sessions of the 12th National People's Congress, the country's top legislature, and the advisory Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference are domestic events.

However, African countries, especially those that have deepened their links with China during the nation's dizzying, 30-year economic climb, may be excused for showing interest. This is because the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20), which will be sanctioned at the sessions, will define the direction and the pace of China's domestic and international undertakings in the medium term.

The sessions are taking place against a backdrop of a significant change: After some three decades of dramatic growth, China's economic performance has slowed and perhaps peaked. For a generation, the economic climb that made China the world's second-largest economy has pulled resources from the entire globe and sent products to most economies around the world. China's next phase will be different. It will not be driven by exports; it will be fueled by domestic consumption, services and innovation. China has to turn to its middle class to drive the next phase of its development. This is a major shift with its own challenges.

The ongoing sessions indicate that principles such as innovation, coordination, environmental protection, and corporate social responsibility will now be applied to guide production that will be more focused on the domestic market. Reforming the supply side of the economy, while managing a downturn, will feel like the dreaded structural adjustment familiar to many African countries. Annual economic growth of 6 or 7 percent is the best China can expect in the medium term.

Will this shift lead to an abandonment of Chinese investments in some African countries?

Based on the agendas at the two sessions, the shift in the focus of the Chinese economy will be accompanied by sustained efforts to stimulate research and development, promote efficiency, tackle environmental degradation, and generate 50 million jobs in the medium term.

Will the demands of these priorities cause China to turn away from Africa? This is the worry. Clearly some hope that China will downgrade Africa in its work program.

Many African countries strengthened their economic and diplomatic ties to the East, specifically to China, out of pragmatic considerations.

For one, the challenges to development in many African countries resonate with China and other Asian countries. In accounts of the challenges that the Chinese encounter as they transform their society, Africans hear a faint echo of their own challenges. This limited similarity makes African aspirations intelligible to China. It paves the way for engagement based on some similar problems and needs.

Most importantly, China and other Asian and Pacific countries are an alternative to Western development partners.

China would be of less value to Africa if all it provided were an alternative to Western development partnerships. But as Africa has seen in its interaction with China over the last quarter century, partnership with China is qualitatively different from comparable arrangements with the West.

Partnerships with China have few if any hidden agendas. A partnership that exchanges African raw materials for Chinese manufactured products is precisely what it claims to be. No more, no less. There are no attachments, no unstated clauses and no conditions that are intended to make African models of development more Chinese. There is no constant hectoring. The Chinese do not seem to feel that they have failed to honor their values if they do not ram those values down African throats. China does not appear to equate modernity with adopting a Chinese worldview.

Undermining African values in the name of development, even when there is no empirical link between the values and development, does not appear to be a Chinese obsession.

To many Africans, blackmailing countries and people to live particular values - the hallmark feature of Western support for development in Africa - is akin to slaughtering people because their concept of the Creator is different. Based on what Africans have seen over the past 30 years, China is willing to interact with Africa in pursuit of raw materials and markets but is otherwise ready to leave Africans to live their own values and to reassert their place in the world.

Respecting other people's worldview and its manifestations has become the distinguishing quality of a good development partner and China has single-handedly forced this principle on the world stage. China cannot and must not pull back from Africa. The downturn does not threaten China's grip on the second spot among the world's economies.

The author is a former economist at the World Bank. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

(China Daily Africa Weekly 03/11/2016 page10)