Africa presents a uniquely complex challenge for China. Political instability — wars, coups, civil unrest — poses challenges that may undermine China’s peaceful rise and compel it to deploy military and security forces to protect its investments and own economic development. Without the stability provided by market capitalism, democracy, and the rules-based order, China faces a choice between failure or neocolonialism.
Ultimately, Chinese leaders may be forced to choose between the risks of using direct intervention to maintain unilateral control over investments and trusting the Western-backed rules-based order to facilitate market access. If China is labeled a neocolonial power, its long-held noninterference policy would be undercut. But the alternative, leaving Chinese companies to invest based on their own risk assessments and essentially returning to the pre-Belt and Road Initiative “Go Out” policy of the late 1990s, would also carry economic and political risks.
No one knows what Beijing will do if faced with this choice. But African leaders would be wise not to wait to find out. In the meantime, they should work to diversify their economic relationships to avoid becoming victims of Chinese neocolonialism.
Background
Currently, Belt and Road Initiative activities in Africa focus primarily on hard infrastructure such as transportation and power. The initiative emphasizes the minerals sector, which is vital for exports intended for China and in this way matches Europe’s history of resource extraction. China recognizes that its development significantly relies on African exports. It seeks to rapidly expand these exports through infrastructure investment to mitigate supply constraints, rising prices, and geopolitical entanglements — for example, with countries like Australia over commodities like iron ore.
China’s involvement was augmented politically in the early 2000s by the creation of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation. However, despite its promises, it hasn’t contributed to African self-determined development, as China sets the agenda. West African countries have a dreadful problem with political stability, leading U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to refer to the Sahel region as Africa’s “coup belt.” Since 2020, nine coups have occurred in the Sahel — Burkina Faso (twice), Chad, Gabon, -, Mali (twice), Niger, and Sudan —all Belt and Road Initiative members, except for Burkina Faso, which has indicated it will join. Africa has experienced the highest number of coups since the 1950s, accounting for 106 of the 214 globally. These upheavals have strained relations between new governments and Western states, particularly former colonial powers like France and the United States, with forces being expelled from Niger in 2023 and 2024 respectively.
China’s post–Cold War interests and Belt and Road Initiative place far less emphasis on good governance — political stability, democracy, and human rights — and instead pursue noninterference as a priority. This has enabled a geopolitical shift toward China that may, unfortunately, enable further coups hindering African development.
From Infrastructure and Noninterference to Security and Indoctrination?
The political instability may also be prompting China to shift its focus to protect its own development. A Compagnie du Trans-Guinéen project to build rail and port infrastructure supporting iron ore exports has been provided US$15 billion as a Belt and Road Initiative–aligned project. However, Africa’s largest mining infrastructure project, Guinea’s Simandou iron ore mine, which was intended to open in 2015, has been repeatedly delayed due to political instability. President Xi Jinping has progressively prioritized peace and security as a foundation for development. In April 2022, he stated: “Infrastructure is the mainstay of … social and economic development,” thus placing infrastructure before security. However, a year later, in March 2023, Xi remarked that “security is the bedrock of development.” During the September 2024 Forum on China-Africa Cooperation summit held in Beijing, China pledged 360 billion yuan (over US$50 billion) over three years in aid to Africa, with a significant portion allocated to security initiatives.
Thus, China appears to recognize that without good governance, economic development is problematic. China’s increased focus on security raises questions about its longstanding policy of noninterference in African states’ internal affairs. As China deepens its involvement in security, it may inevitably find itself drawn into the complex political conflicts that characterize many African states. China’s increasing role in security may also alter its image in Africa, requiring policies and actions to shape its image and influence the perceptions and the powerholders’ beliefs.
The Forum on China-Africa Cooperation summit’s declaration emphasized that China would not interfere in African states’ internal affairs or impose political conditions on its assistance. However, it pledged to invite some 7,500 military, police, young African military personnel, and 1,000 political party elites to train in China over the next three years. This pledge builds upon a long-held commitment since the 1960s by the Chinese Communist Party to enhance party-to-party relations by educating African communist leaders. The Nyerere Leadership School, created in 2022, is the first party school modeled on and supported by the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Party School, reinforcing China’s ideological influence in Africa. The joint project links the Chinese Communist Party to six southern African ruling liberation movements, providing ideological training to cadres from parties that have governed uninterrupted since independence.
The Chinese Communist Party is buttressing its foreign policy through its International Department of the Central Committee rather than relying solely on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. For example, Vice Minister Li Mingxiang of the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China visited Uganda in March 2023 to celebrate the National Resistance Movement party that has ruled since 1986 in the “one-man’s-family” format. Thus, China’s deepening involvement in peacekeeping, security training, and military aid could complicate its neutral stance, especially in states facing political upheavals, potentially necessitating targeted political education.
Thus, there is a growing apprehension among analysts that China is becoming a neocolonial power in Africa because it exhibits similar political and economic patterns of interaction as the departed Europeans. A plantation/resource extraction form of colony has been identified based on the above activities and other similar interactions. Mark Langan, for example, remarked, “Chinese interventions are seen to perpetuate (neo)colonial trade and production patterns and to denude the exercise of empirical sovereignty.” Ian Taylor calls China’s engagements with Africa “oil diplomacy,” where Beijing aims to gain access to critical raw materials.
Similarly, there is also the basis for asserting that trading fort and dependency models are emerging. Providing security and military forces is a historical attribute of colonizers to their dependencies. Africa’s security is of such importance that China now wants to integrate its security engagements with the continent into its Global Security Initiative, a strategy that Chinese leaders see as a new and enhanced approach to global security. China is also a key exporter of arms to the continent as well as a military aid giver. Under the auspices of the U.N. Security Council, nearly all the over 2,500 Chinese peacekeepers are deployed on the African continent with resource-rich countries such as South Sudan. In 2017, China opened its first overseas military base in Djibouti and has since been eyeing a second one on the continent. The base is strategically located on the Suez Canal trade route to ward off piracy and other disruptors to its essential imports such as oil.
China has mostly been absent from open participation in security. However, Beijing’s indirect support of local state actors in countering the rise of anti-Chinese sentiments in recent years may draw it into a more assertive role. Over the past decades, rising resentment against Chinese businesses has resulted in political protests being quashed by China-backed authorities. As early as 2017, Ugandans in Kampala protested against unfair competition, with the mayor labeling the protesters xenophobic rather than addressing their concerns. More recently, in 2023, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni ordered the military to guard Chinese businesses that were at risk of being destroyed, but the recent opening of China Town supermarket in Kampala was still met with protests. In August 2023, over 1,000 Kenyan traders took to the streets to protest the advance of Chinese traders in the market, which they say has caused unfair competition. Thus, in areas of localized instability, China may be forced to go beyond economic engagement, resorting to direct military involvement and increasing political control to protect its citizens’ interests, such as in the gradual development of European dependency colonies. China, however, has repeatedly rejected the neocolonial assertions and instead continues to promote itself as pursuing “win-win” cooperation and common development with the continent, and while it doesn’t presently have formal overseas colonies, other than military facilities such as in Bejucal, Cuba, or Djibouti, its policies and behavior in Tibet and Xinjiang have been labeled as colonizing, as might the dual civilian/military use facilities such as Ream, Cambodia, or Gwadar, Pakistan.
Conclusion
China’s increasingly neocolonial approach may ultimately undermine its noninterference policy, a cornerstone of diplomacy in Africa and globally. As China becomes more entangled in the continent’s security challenges, it will struggle to balance its proclaimed noninterference principles with the realities of political instability and its desire to mitigate these threats. In order to maintain its control on resources, will China be willing to instigate coups, fund rebel groups, or deploy?
Rather than wait to find out, African states could diversify their partnerships and explore new funding avenues. Relying on China risks leaving them vulnerable to shifting priorities in Beijing. By fostering functional relationships with each other, implementing domestic market-based reforms, and seeking external support from states prioritizing good governance, African states can take greater control of their development paths.
Dr Jonathan Ping is an associate professor in the field of political economy at Bond University, Australia. His research focus is on middle power and great power statecraft theory, and theory of the nature of hegemony in and from Asia. He is a director of the East Asia Security Centre. Twitter @drjhping and Linkedin.
Joel Odota holds a master of politics and international relations from the Australian National University, Australia, and a master of Chinese politics and international relations from Peking University, China. His research focuses on China-Africa relations, the geopolitical competition between China and the United States, and African agency within the global political landscape. Twitter @odotajoel and LinkedIn.
Image: The Forum on China–Africa Cooperation
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