China is not stupid; it needs a democratic Africa

What you need to know:

  • Cheques. When arrogant African leaders and their spokesmen ridicule the (sometimes critical) West and brag that they have China waiting with bundles of blank cheques, they may be talking blindly about a China that will not exist tomorrow.

Assume that China’s leaders do not have a long-term strategy of establishing an imperial superstructure over huge chunks of Africa’s territories, complete with surveillance and battlefield outfits to protect their interests on the continent.

That is a generous assumption, and possibly dubious.
Another assumption: China is not run by idiots.
If I am not misinformed, the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa was a gift built by China. With its vast natural resources, and all the hype about Africa proudly solving its problems, Africa could not put together a financing plan so that China – or any other power – dared not think of building the AU complex as a gift.

I suspect Chinese officials in Addis Ababa sometimes watch the presidential jets flying in, follow stories of the billions of dollars African despots steal every year, then glance at the AU complex and marvel how hopeless African leaders can be. Just as President Museveni used to think 33 years ago!

Now, I started with two premises. The dubious one, that China has no imperialist designs on Africa. And two, that China is not stupid. I believe that if such a China (like any other country) wants to invest in Africa, it would want an Africa stable enough to keep its investments safe and repay her debts.

A China that is not stupid must have observed that many African countries with coercive civilian or military dictatorships are only stable in appearance; they are controlled by raw force, with huge energies seething under the surface. That is why change in Africa is often expressed in destructive emotional extremes.
Smart Chinese officials can see that African states with their tribal and religious baggage are far less homogenous than China.

They also know that no African state has had such a long and dedicated programme of indoctrination and ideological policing as that established by China’s Communist Party. An unyielding grip similar to the Communist Party’s may, therefore, be impossible to replicate in African states without the ruling elites themselves going mad and ultimately losing control.
So, a smart China realises that there is a paradox here: What is (so far) good for China is not necessarily the best recipe for Africa.

If you pay sufficient attention, you may have noticed that Chinese officials do not attack Western democracy. They will attack Western foreign policy; Western aggression or interference abroad. They will defend the Chinese system of repressive state control; they will justify China’s own aggression and regional imperialism. But they will not assert that liberal democracy is bad for the West, or for any other region where it works.

To avoid being accused of hypocrisy at home and at the UN, China will not openly task African states to pursue a democratic path to achieve greater stability and sustained development.
But privately, reluctantly, a smart China must already see that Africa’s dictators pump disproportionately huge amounts of money and other resources in militarised self-preservation, repression, methodical incompetence, patronage and corruption.

With higher levels of democratic practice and accountability, these negative features might at least be partly mitigated. This would render relationships with China more predictable and more secure.
When arrogant African leaders and their spokesmen ridicule the (sometimes critical) West and brag that they have China waiting with bundles of blank cheques, they may be talking blindly about a China that will not exist tomorrow. Unless of course China wants Africa to collapse in its debt trap so that the dragon can collect the spoils of its generosity!

Mr Tacca is a novelist, socio-political commentator.
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