China is more than just a land grab in Africa

China has plenty to gain from lending a hand to its friends battling the coronavirus in Africa. Contrary to some perceptions, that won’t mean opportunistic grabs in oil, copper or arable land. The biggest prize for Beijing is political capital.
Sub-Saharan Africa faces its first recession in 25 years, and the continent as a whole is also grappling with the oil price crash and weakened currencies that have devastated state budgets. As a result of the Ebola outbreak that began in 2014, nations are better prepared than before. Still, health services are sorely inadequate, built around global financing and donor interests rather than coherent domestic policy, says Osman Dar, medical consultant and project director with Chatham House’s Global Health Programme. Barely a fifth of countries in Africa have free, universal care. The Central African Republic had three ventilators for a population of 5 million before the crisis; a handful of nations had none.
China is Africa’s largest trading partner and creditor, and Beijing moved swiftly to provide aid as the virus spread. It delivered tests, protective equipment and ventilators, assisted by the foundation of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd co-founder Jack Ma. More remarkably, China endorsed a temporary freeze on debt payments agreed upon by the Group of 20 economies — unusual for a country that tends to prefer bilateral efforts. The scale and breadth of the current shock may have played a part in that decision, according to Lauren Johnston of the China Institute at SOAS University of London.
The soft-power push hasn’t gone smoothly. Parts of the continent’s civil society are still seething after videos circulated on social media this month showing discrimination against Africans in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou. They have been forcibly tested, barred from restaurants and even evicted from homes, causing public outrage back home. The heavy-handed measures to tackle a cluster of coronavirus cases in Guangzhou, which has a significant population of African traders and students, fed an underlying distrust and risked undoing the gains of mask diplomacy.
Beijing can still take advantage and obtain what matters to China: political allies in the United Nations, where Africa accounts for more than a quarter of member states, and clout that in turn influences its relations with great powers. Efforts have already paid off relative to far more expensive gambits, like its rapprochement with Pakistan. Given the pandemic, collapsing oil, a disinterested US and a distracted Europe, it can do so more cheaply than ever.
To be clear, mineral riches and mercantile interests do matter. China’s companies are eyeing a young, growing population of 1.3 billion consumers. Shenzhen Transsion Holdings Co, a mobile-phone maker focussed on Africa, priced its 2019 initial public offering in Shanghai at a price-earnings valuation twice that of Apple Inc. Telecom equipment maker Huawei Technologies Co does brisk business there.
Even so, Africa represents less than 5% of Beijing’s $4 trillion of annual global trade. The real great game is about securing a Chinese candidate at the head of the Food and Agriculture Organization; getting a friendly one at the World Health Organization; and landing the country’s first overseas military base.
—Bloomberg