2024-09-05 10:06:33
China and Africa continue their idyll this Thursday in Beijing. Chinese President Xi Jinping has launched a macro-conference in the capital of the Asian giant that brings together leaders from more than 50 African countries for three days. Ties between the two are experiencing “the best period in their history,” Xi said at the start of a speech in which he proposed his country’s modernization drive as an example to follow and criticized the West’s traditional approach to countries. – developing language. “You have caused great suffering.” At the conference, the ninth meeting of heads of state and government called the Forum for Cooperation between China and Africa, Xi announced financial aid of nearly 46 billion euros to support the big plan to be implemented in three years. involving activation. of the Asian giant in almost all sectors, from the training of political leaders to military cooperation.
Beyond the figures – they are never reliable, they are often a reconstruction of old things – the event represents an opportunity for Beijing to compare its interests with a continent with which it accounts for a third of the Earth’s population. China sees Africa as a political partner on the world stage, as well as a major source of important resources and another market for its green exports, against which much of the West is raising a tariff wall these days. . For Africans, the event offers a forum in which to ask for investments that improve their prosperity, their infrastructure, and increase the added value of the agricultural and industrial sector, in In addition to the technological moves that require innovation, the promise is not just words taken away.
Xi’s stance as he spoke from the podium of the Great Hall of the People, a large building in Tiananmen Square reserved for important political events, included the words of thanks to China that many African leaders had given after also, has shown Beijing’s influence center. as the spiritual leader of the so-called Global South. The Asian leader has proposed that the relations between China and all African countries are promoted to the level of “strategic relations”, and that the relations between China and Africa are considered, following the language gathered in Beijing, ” area that opposes all kinds of “climates with a shared future for a new era”, one of the highest departments for the Chinese Government
The UN Secretary General, António Guterres, has praised the Beijing model. “China’s remarkable development record, including poverty alleviation, provides a wealth of experience and knowledge,” he said in his speech, nearing the end of the opening day. “The partnership between China and Africa can drive the renewable energy revolution. “It can be a catalyst for key changes in food systems and digital connectivity.” Guterres has confirmed that this partnership is “the first pillar of South-South cooperation”, and he has requested, like many African leaders, changes to correct “some historical injustices” in the world governance system. “It is terrible, for example, that the African continent still does not have a permanent seat on the Security Council.” He has also warned about the imbalances in the international financial system and the inadequate access of African countries to debt relief. “This situation is unsustainable and a recipe for social unrest.”
With the United States and the European Union embroiled in wars in Ukraine and Gaza, already dealing with their own demons, Beijing is seeking to be seen as a player who understands, from its own experience, the African interests and inconsistency. “Since the middle of the 20th century, we have been fighting shoulder to shoulder against imperialism, colonialism and hegemonism, and progressing hand in hand on the path of development, modernization and modernization,” the Chinese president said during a banquet for guests. soak. on Wednesday night.
The relationship is in any case in the repair process. Already Africa’s largest lender, investor and bilateral trade partner, China has continued to support projects and infrastructure. Its loans reached their peak in 2016, the high point of China’s New Silk Road, a mega-system with Beijing seeking to connect to the world; They have declined rapidly since then, although they rebounded slightly last year, largely due to a disproportionate increase in aid to Africa’s financial sector. At the Center for Global Development Policy, an institute at Boston University that monitors China’s loans around the world, they interpreted it as a possible risk reduction to avoid exposing Beijing to the debt problems of African states.
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The official policy of the Chinese Government to finance programs and projects has been summarized from 2023 with the slogan “Small, but beautiful”, which perfectly fits with a period in which the great Chinese locomotive has slowed down growth. it, and with the turn that the Communist authorities decided for their exports of products linked to ecological change and the digital economy, the axes of the new Chinese economic model.
Reversing this direction will not be easy. Analysts show that Africa is still concerned about its large trade deficit with China, which will grow by 36% in 2023, to 64,000 million dollars (57,935 euros). Beijing, moreover, has reached this meeting without fulfilling the commitment of the last one, held in 2021 in Dakar, to buy African products worth 300,000 million dollars (about 271,400 euros).
Many African countries demand that China open its markets. Among them, complaints are also heard about them dumping (unfair competition) and power overload. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa reminded Xi Jinping on Monday during a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the summit: “We would like to reduce the trade deficit and address the structure of our trade,” according to an official statement from the South African government. It has also urged you to commit to more sustainable investments in the manufacturing sector, and it provides jobs.
Xi has promised a greater opening of his market and has announced that China will grant a group of least developed countries – a category that includes 33 African states – tariff exemptions. It has been one of a long list of measures outlined for the next three years: the creation of 25 study centers on China and Africa; inviting thousands of members of African political parties to China; the launch of 20 heritage projects and 30 other link infrastructure projects; sending two thousand doctors; creating agricultural innovation zones; promoting business investments that create a million jobs in Africa; 30 clean energy projects, aiming to promote professional training and even cooperation in lunar exploration programs.
There has also been a hand in the field of security, a field in which China has made progress as a pawn in Africa. The second power on earth has given the continent 127 million euros in grants for military aid, the training of 6,000 soldiers and 1,000 policemen, and an invitation to 500 “young military officers” to visit China. Both sides, Xi has assured, will conduct joint exercises, training and patrols.
For China, the main goal of the conference is to build “political alliances,” said Cobus van Staden, one of the editors of China-Global South Project and the war podcast China in Africa. In his opinion, China is positioning itself as “a kind of moral and political speaker for the Global South, and in Africa this is the key,” he explained in a recent online speech to the press. Meanwhile, “no one pays attention to Africa in Washington,” added Eric Olander, his colleague China-Global South y China in Africa. “Europe is destroyed by the wars in Gaza and Russia,” to which we add the ups and downs of national politics and immigration. Olander noted almost a return to the year 2000, when the first Chinese arrived in Africa and the first meeting of the conference took place, while the United States and Europe stopped taking it into account. “The Chinese have a chance, if they support these figures [de ayudas comprometidas en la cumbre]to establish deep relationships and lasting collaborations in the region that we are currently neglecting.”
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