OCTOBER 2020

The “China Dream” and the African Reality: The Role of Ideology in PRC-Africa Relations

BY JAMES BARNETT © 2020 Hudson Institute, Inc. All rights reserved.

For more information about obtaining additional copies of this or other Hudson Institute publications, please visit Hudson’s website, www.hudson.org

ABOUT HUDSON INSTITUTE

Hudson Institute is a research organization promoting American leadership and global engagement for a secure, free, and prosperous future.

Founded in 1961 by strategist Herman Kahn, Hudson Institute challenges conventional thinking and helps manage strategic transitions to the future through interdisciplinary studies in defense, international relations, economics, health care, technology, culture, and law.

Hudson seeks to guide public policy makers and global leaders in government and business through a vigorous program of publications, conferences, policy briefings and recommendations.

Visit www.hudson.org for more information.

Hudson Institute 1201 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Fourth Floor Washington, D.C. 20004

+1.202.974.2400 [email protected] www.hudson.org

Cover: A Chinese paramilitary policeman patrols past a memorial to the late South African leader Nelson Mandela outside the South African embassy in Beijing on December 11, 2013. South Africa’s ambassador to China has compared Nelson Mandela to Mao Zedong, the Communist leader whose rule saw tens of millions killed by famine and the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. (Mark Ralston/AFP via Getty Images) OCTOBER 2020

The “China Dream” and the African Reality: The Role of Ideology in PRC-Africa Relations

BY JAMES BARNETT ABOUT THE AUTHOR

James Barnett is an independent researcher and writer specializing in African security issues. He was previously a Public Interest Fellow at the Hudson Institute and an analyst at AEI’s Critical Threats Project. He has also worked with the United States Institute of Peace as lead researcher and writer for the final report of the Senior Study Group on the Red Sea and as a research assistant at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies. He was a 2016-2017 Boren Scholar in Tanzania and has been awarded a Fulbright research grant for Nigeria for 2020-21. He holds a B.A. with Highest Honors in History and Plan II Liberal Arts Honors from the University of Texas at Austin and is currently pursuing an MA in War Studies at King’s College London.

Acknowledgements: The author would like to thank Eric Brown, Nic Cheeseman, Abel Abate Demissie, Ovigwe Eguegu, Iginio Gagliardone, Haggai Kanenga, Ronald Kato, Carl Levan, Joshua Meservey, Justus Nam, Paul Nantulya, Ken Opalo, Abdul-Gafar Tobi Oshodi, Winslow Robertson, Nadège Rolland, and Amb. David Shinn, as well as those who requested not to be named. Any errors are the author’s own. TABLE OF CONTENTS

Executive Summary 6

Introduction 8

Chapter 1. From the Little Red Book to the Checkbook: A Historical Overview of PRC-Africa Relations 10

Chapter 2. The PRC’s Strategic Interests in Africa: Investing in the Future, Securing Support Today 13

Chapter 3. Xi’s Incoherent Totalitarian Dream: Unpacking CCP Ideology 17

Chapter 4. “Natural Allies”: The CCP Touts Its Model in Africa 23

Chapter 5. Illiberal Partners: The Influence and Limits of the CCP’s Model in Africa 27

Conclusion 37

Glossary of Terms 39

Endnotes 40

THE “CHINA DREAM” AND THE AFRICAN REALITY: THE ROLE OF IDEOLOGY IN PRC-AFRICA RELATIONS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) promotes its worldview to engage in various commercial ventures. The PRC is not and political and economic model overseas, particularly in selective in its partnerships; it maintains diplomatic relations with the developing world, albeit in a very different manner than all but one African state, and it has long abandoned support it did in the era of Mao Zedong. Under Mao, who fashioned for revolutionary armed movements. At the same time, as a himself the champion of Third World revolutionary movements, continent of 54 mostly developing countries, Africa is central China exported a comprehensive, proactive, and universal to Xi’s “Community of Common Destiny.” In order to realize this ideology. Today the party’s theorists are struggling to develop vision, the CCP systematically introduces African elites to its a message of similar caliber. What they have produced so far theories, norms, and practices through a variety of avenues, has not translated into a particularly coherent or compelling including party-to-party and military-to-military trainings that “Xi Jinpingism” that appeals across cultures and societies. But augment China’s economic ties with the continent. this has not stopped the PRC from pursuing an ideologically grounded foreign policy. President Xi speaks frequently of The impact of these efforts on African politics is quite varied and a “Community of Common Destiny,” a still-vague vision for a fluid. Many African elites, such as those in Kenya and Nigeria, Sinocentric world order in which the CCP’s model is lauded as appear to see political engagements with the CCP as a cost of a contribution to human civilization, liberal democracy is widely doing business with the world’s second largest economy. They discredited, and the developing world looks to China above all have not meaningfully emulated elements of the CCP “model” others for inspiration. to date and do not appear to have much appetite for such political learning. In contrast, those southern and east African To this end, Beijing seeks to provide developing world countries ruled by former liberation movements have tended to elites with a malleable intellectual and practical program for be more receptive to Beijing’s lessons in illiberal governance. advancing illiberal governance. In the intellectual arena, the Many of the liberation movements received some degree of CCP provides a critique of the existing international order support from China during their armed struggles in the Cold and political and economic liberalism along with a defense of War and drew inspiration from the CCP in notable ways, such developmental authoritarianism. In a more practical sense, the as by adopting Maoist notions of the military as a “people’s CCP disseminates certain governance tools, technologies, and defense force.” These historical and ideological affinities practices—such as organizational techniques for managing a facilitate close cooperation with the CCP today, representing single-party state—in a piecemeal and ad hoc manner in order the clearest example of CCP partnership or mentorship in the to bolster illiberalism where it already exists. In this sense, the realm of African governance. CCP acts as a partner or mentor in illiberal governance rather than as the agenda-setter of a tightly bound ideological coalition. The CCP’s overall impact on African politics should not be overstated, however. Ideological affinities matter, but economic This ideological element is present in China’s approach to Sub- interests play a greater role in pushing African states into Saharan Africa, a region long considered to be primarily if not Beijing’s orbit. African states, the former liberation movements exclusively of economic importance to Beijing. The PRC has included, tend to look to multiple countries for lessons in earned the reputation for being a pragmatic, transactional actor development and governance—particularly to the East Asian in Africa, and for good reason. Since 2000, Chinese lending, “late industrializers”—rather than trying to replicate any single trade, and investment in Africa have all increased dramatically, model offered by China. More importantly, the behavior of while over a million Chinese migrants have moved to Africa Africa’s illiberal regimes is generally best understood as a

6 | HUDSON INSTITUTE product of local and regional politics rather than imported “One China Policy”—but it has not systematically sought to ideologies or practices. In other words, the CCP’s support and force any state to choose between Washington and Beijing. ideas can bolster illiberal regimes, but African ideas and political Unlike the Cold War, US-China competition is not likely to play realities are ultimately what drive these regimes’ behavior. out as a contest between ideologically opposed camps in a divided world so much as it will be a struggle over the norms Even if the CCP were to develop a more exportable ideology and values that each side hopes will guide a globalized world, and push African states to adopt it wholesale, such efforts would Africa included.1 face notable limits. Africa’s authoritarian states generally lack the capacity to achieve anything close to the near-totalitarian To best compete, therefore, the US must first present a positive control that the CCP exercises. Certain authoritarian regimes, vision for liberal values and development rather than adopt a zero- such as Rwanda’s and Tanzania’s, are relatively disciplined and sum mindset that is liable to alienate Africans who understandably efficient, and their relationships with the CCP merit scrutiny. But wish to avoid a repeat of the Cold War. Second, the US must these represent the exception rather than the rule. In the near- be pragmatic and patient in its approach to Africa, recognizing term, it seems likely then that the CCP’s theories, practices, and that it does not have the resources or influence to dramatically technologies will continue to embolden certain illiberal regimes, but reduce China’s footprint on the continent in the near future. This no “Xi Jinpingist” state is likely to emerge in a meaningful sense. will require identifying and prioritizing core strategic interests on the continent that may be at risk while accepting that there are The CCP therefore represents a very different ideological limits to how much any state can shape African geopolitics. challenge than the Soviet Union, the historical analogy that has increasingly been invoked in this era of great power competition. In order to be competitive in Africa in the long-term, the US will Whereas the USSR and Maoist China sought to overthrow ultimately need to focus more on African needs and interests governments and gain satellite states in a zero-sum competition, than on Chinese behavior. Forging stronger ties across Africa, the PRC today is more circumspect in its efforts to build and the world’s fastest growing continent in terms of population, is sustain its influence in Africa. It enforces notable conditions on not simply something that great power competition necessitates. its partnerships with African states—such as adhering to the It is a smart move in its own right.

THE “CHINA DREAM” AND THE AFRICAN REALITY: THE ROLE OF IDEOLOGY IN PRC-AFRICA RELATIONS INTRODUCTION

One of the most important debates in US foreign policy circles According to the dominant narrative, China abandoned its today is the role that the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) revolutionary ambitions in the Third World following Mao’s death ideology plays in China’s foreign policy. After decades of hopeful and now primarily views Africa through a pragmatic economic attempts at constructive engagement, Western policymakers lens. When China has been discussed as a potential “model” for have grown increasingly wary of Beijing’s hegemonic aspirations Africa, it has generally been seen in a depoliticized—and often as well as the draconian domestic policies of President Xi favorable—light, with analysis focusing on Chinese economic Jinping’s regime. National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien took policies as a potential blueprint for industrialization rather such a tone in June 2020 when he stated unequivocally that than on political theories and systems. Many critics of China’s “the Chinese Communist Party is a Marxist-Leninist organization,”2 engagement in Africa have similarly focused on the deleterious a remark that would have met with much eye rolling in the Clinton effects of Chinese investment, highlighting the negative impacts era. Others have downplayed the importance of CCP ideology on local labor conditions, government transparency, and the and framed Beijing’s hegemonic ambitions in traditionally realist environment. A common theme throughout these narratives— terms. But even many of these skeptics have acknowledged that the CCP is more ideological than most analysts previously Photo Caption: A group of performers hold Chinese flags during the appreciated.3 inauguration ceremony of Ivory Coast’s new 60,000-seat Olympic stadium, built with the help of China, in Ebimpe, outside Abidjan, In contrast, discussions of ideology have not featured prominently on October 3, 2020 ahead of 2023 Africa Cup of Nations. (Issouf in most analyses of contemporary China-Africa relations. Sanogo/AFP via Getty Images)

8 | HUDSON INSTITUTE pro-China, China-critical, and neutral—is that China primarily days to a more conservative approach at the end of the Cold acts as a businessman in Africa. War. The second chapter offers a brief summary of the PRC’s primary strategic interests in Africa today, and examines some This narrative of pragmatic China-Africa relations gets a lot of the ways in which China presents itself as a pragmatic partner right. The CCP has indeed abandoned the overtly revolutionary that avoids “interference” in African states. policies of the Mao era, and its immediate interests in Africa have less to do with exporting a political philosophy than with Chapter Three looks at the CCP’s evolving ideology, both the more conventional diplomatic and economic considerations. role it plays at home and the ways in which it underpins a still- African governments, for their part, are primarily interested in ambiguous vision for a new international order. This is not meant Chinese trade and investment rather than CCP ideology. to offer a precise definition of the CCP’s ideology, which remains a matter of scholarly debate. Rather, I attempt to disentangle But ideology nevertheless underpins China’s engagement with some of the threads in the CCP’s theories and rhetoric to show Africa in important ways. The CCP has ambitious aspirations to what type of “model” and international “community” the CCP achieve a form of global hegemony and redefine international purports to offer the world, as well as to show the limits to this norms of governance in the coming decades. Towards this end, model’s appeal. Chapter Four examines the primary avenues Beijing hopes to align more governments, particularly those in that the CCP uses to promote this model to African partners. the developing world, with its political and economic theories and practices. The CCP is laying the groundwork in places such Chapter Five looks at some of the effects of this ideological as Sub-Saharan Africa through its media and official rhetoric as dissemination in Africa. The chapter compares the reactions well as through personal engagements with African elites. of political elites in two loose sets of countries: Kenya and Nigeria, two multiparty democracies that have relatively non- This report examines these avenues through which the CCP ideological, business-oriented relationships with China; and the disseminates its inchoate ideology and its governance practices southern and east African countries ruled by former liberation and assesses some of the notable effects such efforts have had on movements, regimes which, as a whole, enjoy strong historical African politics to date. It is not meant as an exhaustive overview of and ideological ties with the CCP in addition to economic ties. China’s impact on African politics, nor is it meant to comprehensively The CCP clearly sees itself as a mentor in illiberal governance capture African attitudes toward China. The report focuses on to many African regimes, some of which have tangibly emulated African political elites rather than the broader public. This is not elements of the CCP’s political and economic model, but we because African public opinion does not matter—and it is worth should not overstate the CCP’s influence in this regard. This is noting up front that new polling suggests that the US maintains a not to excuse Beijing’s promotion of authoritarianism. Rather, slight edge over China on the continent in the realm of soft power.4 the illiberal behavior of the African regimes in question is best Rather, the CCP focuses its efforts on winning over and mentoring understood by looking at local political realities rather than any African elites, from heads of state to military officials and prominent theories or practices adopted from Beijing. journalists. Hence the importance of studying these relationships. The report concludes by comparing the Cold War in Africa with Chapter One offers an historical overview of the PRC’s today’s contest between the US and China, underscoring some engagement with Africa through the early 21st century, focusing of the notable differences in order to suggest how the US can on the shift from the active export of revolution in the Maoist best compete with China in the long-term.

THE “CHINA DREAM” AND THE AFRICAN REALITY: THE ROLE OF IDEOLOGY IN PRC-AFRICA RELATIONS CHAPTER 1. FROM THE LITTLE RED BOOK TO THE CHECKBOOK: A HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF PRC-AFRICA RELATIONS

The modern era of Sino-African relations began in the 1950s, that revolution should not be dictated by Europeans but should when the newly formed People’s Republic of China (PRC) rather conform to the local social and economic conditions of began cultivating ties with various African independence the pre-industrial world. In contrast to the Bolsheviks’ urban movements during the twilight of European colonialism. Mao Zedong’s interest in Africa grew in the 1960s as a result of the Photo Caption: Zhou Enlai (right), Premier of the People’s Republic of Sino-Soviet split, after which Mao sought to outflank Moscow China, is greeted by President Julius Nyerere (left) of Tanzania as he as the leading force of revolution in the Third World. Maoism arrives at Dar es Salaam Airport for a visit, 8th June 1965. (Keystone/ had natural appeal to African revolutionaries. Mao emphasized Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

10 | HUDSON INSTITUTE roots, Mao’s CCP could claim to be a movement of the rural Nyerere drew inspiration and support from the CCP as he masses. China’s experience with European colonialism, went about hosting these movements. In addition to inviting although quite different from Africa’s, also produced a degree of revolutionary leaders to China for political-military trainings, Chinese-African solidarity.5 the Chinese funneled weapons to several of the movements through Tanzania and helped run training camps in the For an impoverished country, Mao’s PRC was relatively country.9 Many of the liberation movements employed Maoist generous with its assistance to Africa for both ideological and guerrilla tactics to notable effect. Josiah Tongogara, a senior geopolitical reasons. Eager to present China as the granary of commander in ZANU’s military wing, credited his education at the world, the PRC increased its food aid to Africa in 1960 even the PLA’s academy in Nanjing with his shift to population-centric as millions of Chinese starved amid the Great Leap Forward. 6 rural warfare, which proved decisive in ZANU’s eventual victory Across the continent, the PRC distributed translations of Mao’s against Rhodesia’s white minority government.10 Many other Little Red Book, established local radio stations to compete with liberation movement leaders, including Nyerere, praised Mao Soviet propaganda, and dispatched doctors and engineers to for providing the political and military tools needed to achieve support rural development projects. In the first Chinese mega- African independence. China’s popularity across the continent infrastructure project in Africa, thousands of Chinese laborers paid off in 1971, when African votes helped the PRC replace helped build the Tanzania-Zambia Railway in the early 1970s Taiwan at the UN.11 to ensure that landlocked Zambia would not be dependent on Portuguese-controlled Mozambique or white-ruled South Africa Beneath the flowery rhetoric of Sino-African solidarity, however, and Rhodesia for its trade.7 the PRC could be as unscrupulous as any other Cold War power as it navigated the complexities of African politics. At Mao’s CCP invited thousands of African politicians, soldiers, one point or another the PRC backed all three factions in the militants, and students to China on a host of scholarships Angolan Civil War, including concurrently sponsoring the US- and training programs that covered everything from Marxist and South Africa-backed FNLA and UNITA against the Soviet- economics to guerrilla warfare. One of the most consequential and Cuban-backed MPLA (which eventually won power).12 figures to attend these trainings was Tanzania’s founding president Although a few ANC leaders received guerrilla training in Julius Nyerere. Affectionately known as “teacher” by Tanzanians, China, the PRC gave more support to the ANC’s rival, the Pan Nyerere and his Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) party Africanist Congress. Beijing only strengthened ties with the ANC were the lodestars of Pan-Africanism and African socialism in the 1980s once it became apparent that it was the ascendant throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Despite his own peaceful rise to faction among the South African liberation movements. In fact, power, Nyerere supported Pan-African armed movements across the PRC maintained discrete trade ties with South Africa’s southern and eastern Africa that sought to unseat the existing apartheid governments for many years and allegedly supported colonial, minority-rule, or ostensibly neocolonial regimes in their its nuclear program.13 respective countries. These so-called liberation movements included the ANC in South Africa, ZANU in Zimbabwe, MPLA There were limits to the Maoist influence in Africa. Mao’s most in Angola, and FRELIMO in Mozambique. All these movements important partner, Nyerere, drew as much inspiration from British established offices in Dar es Salaam, with numerous young Fabian socialism—a product of his time studying in Edinburgh— African revolutionaries, including future statemen, studying as from anything Chinese.14 Nyerere adopted Maoist aesthetics, leftwing political philosophy at the city’s flagship university.8 from the Mao suit to TANU’s “Green Guards,” and modeled the

THE “CHINA DREAM” AND THE AFRICAN REALITY: THE ROLE OF IDEOLOGY IN PRC-AFRICA RELATIONS Tanzanian People’s Defence Force (TPDF) on the PLA.15 But his by the mid-1980s, and the CCP benefitted from widespread landmark socialist program of villagization, Ujamaa, was rooted indifference if not sympathy from African governments amid more in a romanticized notion of pre-colonial African “class the international outcry over the 1989 Tiananmen Square harmony” as opposed to the Marxist theories of class conflict massacre.19 But China’s aspirations in Africa at this time seemed that underpinned Mao’s brutal expropriations.16 Likewise, while much humbler than they had been in Mao’s day. many of the other liberation movements had varying degrees of cooperation with China, nearly all drew inspiration if not material With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Africa’s strategic support from a variety of other regimes seen as anti-colonial, importance to the US diminished. Just as the “China Miracle” including the USSR, India, Cuba, and Albania. Mao’s China was narrative was beginning to emerge,20 relative Western a natural partner for African revolutionaries, but it was far from disengagement from Africa offered Beijing an opportunity to the only force shaping Africa’s revolutionary politics. present itself as the partner of choice to African states eager for investment and trade. President Jiang Zemin announced World Revolution No More: his “Going Out” policy in 1999 to stimulate Chinese investment PRC-Africa Relations from overseas, particularly in emerging markets. The Chinese Deng Xiaoping to Hu Jintao considered Africa a “high dividend, high risk” market where Following Mao’s death in 1976, the PRC began adopting a they would face minimal competition from other countries.21 For subtler and more economical approach to Sub-Saharan Africa. their part, African governments welcomed Chinese investment Beijing maintained ties with several African liberation movements, as they faced significant risk premiums in international debt but the CCP no longer spoke loudly of global revolution. Mao’s markets and were happy to secure loans that were not rigidly ideological foreign policy, his paranoid purges of Chinese conditional on the types of economic and governance reforms diplomats, and his support for armed groups fighting post- pushed by western donors.22 colonial African governments had limited the PRC’s ability to make friends on the continent and, indeed, had created multiple Chinese loans to Africa thus increased exponentially, from $129 enemies.17 His successors saw a need to correct this approach. million in 2000 to a high of $29 billion in 2016, while the total The CCP began adopting a more modest foreign policy agenda volume of China-Africa trade also steadily increased.23 Along as it shifted its focus to internal reforms under Deng Xiaoping, with trade and investment came a wave of Chinese migrants reflecting the Sichuan native’s cautious “24-character strategy” to the continent. Between short-term contract workers and for China to “hide its capabilities and bide its time.”18 Africa, traders and small business owners looking to establish new however, remained important for the PRC’s diplomacy: Beijing bases of operation, it is estimated that anywhere between one had earned diplomatic recognition from 44 African countries and two million Chinese presently live in Africa.24

12 | HUDSON INSTITUTE CHAPTER 2. THE PRC’S STRATEGIC INTERESTS IN AFRICA: INVESTING IN THE FUTURE, SECURING SUPPORT TODAY

The PRC’s primary strategic interests in Africa can be loosely • The CCP also seeks to demonstrate to the Chinese categorized as such: people that it is restoring China to global prestige and power by expanding its diplomatic, commercial, and military • Economically the PRC seeks to maintain continued access presence across Africa.25 to African natural resources and markets for its exports while also investing in Africa’s long-term economic potential. The Balance Between Economic and Political Interests • Politically the PRC seeks to maintain support from The predominant narrative of PRC-Africa relations in the 21st African countries in important international fora like the century is one of pragmatic engagement primarily driven UN General Assembly. by economic interests on both sides. There is much truth to the PRC seeks to incorporate East Africa into its • Militarily this. In the near term, the PRC seeks to maintain and expand strategy for projecting power in the Indo-Pacific region and its access to Africa’s natural resources as well as to African also protect Chinese investments and citizens in Africa from local threats. Photo Caption: Chinese President Xi Jinping (C) speaks with South • The CCP seeks to build soft power by presenting itself as a African President Cyril Ramaphosa (L) during the 2018 Forum on responsible global actor through participation in multilateral China-Africa Cooperation, held at the Great Hall of the People on initiatives such as UN peacekeeping operations. September 4, 2018 in Beijing, China. (Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)

THE “CHINA DREAM” AND THE AFRICAN REALITY: THE ROLE OF IDEOLOGY IN PRC-AFRICA RELATIONS markets for exports. The PRC also sees tremendous long- head of the Food and Agriculture Organization.33 Most notably, term economic potential in Africa, which is expected to have many African states have voiced support for China’s most a population of more than two billion by 2050. To this end, egregious human rights abuses: more than 20 African countries the PRC has invested heavily in Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) expressed support for the CCP’s crackdown in Hong Kong and projects in Africa. Analysts have suggested that Chinese firms none have criticized its repressive policies in Xinjiang.34 will increasingly offshore light manufacturing to Africa (as well as to Southeast Asia) as wages in China rise.26 Such a shift would The CCP places a premium on cultivating strong personal not simply be the result of free market forces, and indeed, the relationships with African officials, an emphasis that has its line between public and private economic interests in the PRC is roots in the Confucian concept of Guanxi (often translated blurred.27 Rather, the CCP is making a strategic choice, through as “personal connections” or “social networks”). The most initiatives such as BRI and “Made in China 2025,” to transform prominent venue for such relationship-building is the Forum China from the low-cost manufacturing “factory of the world” on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), which launched in to the global hub of science and technology.28 The growth in 2000 and meets every three years at the summit or ministerial Chinese investment and construction projects in Africa over the level.35 More recently, the PRC held a China-Africa Defense and past two decades, which amounts to over $300 billion dollars, Security Forum in Beijing in 2018, which hosted senior military should be understood in this light.29 and defense officials from 50 African nations, as well as a Peace and Security Forum the following year.36 The People’s Liberation At the same time, Africa’s economic significance to China is Army (PLA) has increased its cooperation with African militaries outweighed by its political significance—at least at present. since 2000 and there has been a similar uptick in engagements African states account for less than 4% of the PRC’s global between the CCP and African political parties under the auspices trade balance but constitute more than a quarter of the UN’s of the CCP’s International Department (ID-CCP), also known membership.30 Whereas most of the oil and other natural as the International Liaison Department or ILD (see Chapter resources China extracts from Africa can be found in other BRI- Four). The PRC maintains active diplomatic representation participating countries, Beijing needs African support within key with every African country besides Eswatini,37 but the CCP international fora to advance its global agenda. does not limit itself to diplomatic engagement. There are 61 Confucius Institutes in Africa according to the organization’s China’s investments in Africa are thus not simply intended to headquarters,38 and thousands of African students study on make money but also to purchase political clout. Beijing has scholarships in China each year. been quite successful in this regard. Fifty-three out of fifty- four African countries now adhere to the “One China policy,” China’s Expanding Security Interests Eswatini being the lone holdout. African countries’ voting As its interests in Africa have grown, the PRC has expanded records within the UN align more closely with China’s than that its military footprint on the continent. In 2007, rebels in eastern of the US.31 A study by the AidData research initiative found Ethiopia attacked a Chinese-run oil field, underscoring the a positive correlation between Chinese aid disbursements vulnerability of Chinese interests in the region.39 Four years later, and African states’ support for Chinese positions in the UN, the chaotic evacuation of thousands of Chinese workers from although ideological sympathies also no doubt play a role in Libya during the NATO intervention reportedly pushed Chinese this regard (see Chapter Five).32 African states have supported officials to accelerate plans for establishing a permanent military Chinese candidates for important UN positions, such as the presence on the continent.40 In 2017, the PRC established

14 | HUDSON INSTITUTE its first overseas military base in Djibouti, located strategically reforms. The PRC speaks of “partnerships” with African states along the Bab al-Mandab just a few miles from the US’s largest rather than “alliances,” the former connoting a more pragmatic base in Africa.41 relationship premised on interests and incentives rather than shared values. The base in Djibouti reflects a strategic investment not only in Africa but in the wider Indo-Pacific region, throughout which The PRC has received its share of international criticism for China aspires to achieve maritime and commercial hegemony. this seemingly ultra-pragmatic approach, particularly with Some analysts have suggested that China is pursuing a “string regards to its relationships with pariah states like Zimbabwe. of pearls” strategy to project power throughout the region Amid the violence in Darfur, the PRC faced mounting criticism via strategically located bases such as the one in Djibouti. in the lead up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics for its support of Consequently, there is much speculation that the PRC seeks a Sudan’s dictator Omar al-Bashir. The CCP has defended its second base in East Africa.42 The PLA may also have an interest unsavory relationships in Africa by suggesting that sovereignty in basing in Walvis Bay, Namibia, which would expand its reach is inviolable and that such issues are “internal” matters, echoing into the Atlantic. Some analysts have suggested that it may the language it employed over issues such as the Tiananmen already be using its satellite tracking station there for military Square massacre and Tibet. purposes.43 The CCP’s claims of “non-interference” in African affairs are The CCP is wary of accusations of neocolonialism and has belied by multiple instances in which the PRC has interfered sought to present its newly established military presence in in domestic politics to bolster its preferred partner. Chinese terms of benign multilateralism. China has contributed to officials have allegedly made cash payments to ruling parties counter-piracy efforts in the Horn of Africa since 2008 and or governments in Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, Somalia, and is a significant contributor of troops to the UN peacekeeping Malawi.45 The CCP bolstered Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party mission in South Sudan.44 Beijing has claimed that its base in with an influx of cash ahead of the 2008 Zimbabwe elections.46 Djibouti is simply a logistics hub for missions such as these. Circumstantial evidence suggests that nine years later the CCP may have given the greenlight to a coup against Mugabe by a The Pragmatic Partner rival faction within ZANU-PF.47 The PRC has managed to secure an impressive degree of influence across Africa over the past 20 years, and not Even when the PRC does not directly meddle in African affairs, simply due to the loans that it has dispensed. It has also there is a natural power asymmetry that allows the CCP to been Beijing’s willingness to work with all varieties of African enforce strict conditions on bilateral relations. According to Eric regimes, from democracies to authoritarian states, left-wing Olander of The China Africa Project, Beijing’s “red lines” include and conservative governments, entrenched regimes and questioning the party line on the Tiananmen Square massacre, those new to power (including those who came to power by the legitimacy of the CCP, Taiwan, Tibet, Hong Kong, and force), that has facilitated smooth Sino-African relations. The Xinjiang.48 The CCP is not averse to coercing African partners, PRC has presented itself publicly as a non-ideological partner either when it feels that its “red lines” are being crossed or willing to do business with any nation under the principle of when it fears that its status as a preferred business partner is “non-interference,” a jab at those Western states that have threatened: After Kenya banned Chinese fish imports in 2018, often made assistance conditional on governance or economic the PRC threatened trade sanctions and a termination of its

THE “CHINA DREAM” AND THE AFRICAN REALITY: THE ROLE OF IDEOLOGY IN PRC-AFRICA RELATIONS funding for Kenya’s landmark Standard Gauge Railway project.49 colonial interventions. The CCP also claims that it has no interest More recently, the PRC’s ambassador to Somalia reportedly in forcing African states to adopt its ideology as opposed to tried to entice and pressure officials in the self-declared Republic Western states that actively, if imperfectly, seek to promote of Somaliland to cease talks over establishing relations with liberal democracy in Africa. Taiwan, although this effort failed.50 The reality, however, is that the PRC is not the non-ideological While such incidents are notable, African states have not actor that it claims to be. The CCP is presently engaged in experienced the same level of Chinese aggression as the PRC’s an unprecedented experiment in authoritarian governance more proximate neighbors in Asia—and Sino-African relations that it believes carries world historical significance. This “third are ultimately stronger for it. The lack of historical baggage has revolution,”51 to use Elizabeth Economy’s term, entails bold if facilitated the PRC’s efforts to promote itself as a more benign still vague aspirations to transform the existing international partner in contrast to those Western powers whose reputations order over the coming decades. Africa, and the developing suffer from the legacies of colonialism and controversial post- world more broadly, play an important role in this vision.

16 | HUDSON INSTITUTE CHAPTER 3. XI’S INCOHERENT TOTALITARIAN DREAM: UNPACKING CCP IDEOLOGY

Ideology has continued to both legitimate and shape the CCP’s society more broadly, has become corrupt, decadent, and governance in the post-Mao era even as the CCP has moved ideologically bankrupt; that party cadres lack the spirit of self- further from its socialist and revolutionary roots. As Jude Blanchette sacrifice necessary for China to achieve greatness; and that notes, “Looking back at the great political swings in China since ideological weakness is an existential threat to the CCP.53 Mao’s death, we see a recurrent pattern whereby seemingly abstruse ideological discussions on topics like alienation, the These fears are most clearly spelled out in the “Communiqué nature of truth, or the definition of socialism are in fact groundwork on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere,” also known for meatier policy debates that begin with references and as Document Number 9, a leaked internal CCP memo reinterpretations of the existing theoretical canon.”52 from 2013 that warns of seven subversive liberal ideas that

Efforts to inculcate ideological fervor in the pursuit of a semi- Photo Caption: Chairman Xi Jinping attends the fifth plenary meeting utopian “China Dream” have been a defining feature of Xi’s of the National People’s Congress at the Great Hall of the People on tenure that began in 2012. Xi fears that the CCP, and Chinese March 15, 2013 in Beijing, China. (Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)

THE “CHINA DREAM” AND THE AFRICAN REALITY: THE ROLE OF IDEOLOGY IN PRC-AFRICA RELATIONS could spell the end of the Party. These include the notion of Totalitarianism, as Hannah Arendt explained, is a system universal values, constitutional democracy, an independent in which politics cease to exist. In such a system, the ruling press, neoliberalism, and “historical nihilism,” meaning any party penetrates so deeply into all aspects of society that the interpretation of the Party’s past or Chinese history not individual has no public space in which to express themself approved by the Party.54 This document reflects a core pillar as an autonomous, thinking being. The totalitarian movement of CCP thinking: that liberal democracy is not a universal good exists ontologically above all else—the individual, the family, and but rather a parochial (and deeply flawed) Western tradition. the state.60 Totalitarian rule is very difficult to achieve in practice. The CCP fears that Western powers are pursuing a sinister In Arendt’s telling, neither Hitler nor Stalin governed as true policy of gradual regime change, labeled “peaceful evolution,” totalitarians for most of their time in power. Similarly, the term through the promotion of such values.55 The CCP sees in this aspiring totalitarian is probably most appropriate for Xi’s CCP,61 a danger as grave as any posed by a foreign military. To quote in part because so many of its surveillance tools are still under Xi, “If the ideological defenses are breached, other defenses development.62 Additionally, politics do indeed exist in Chinese become very difficult to hold.”56 society, albeit within ever-shrinking bounds.63

Xi’s ideological crusade corresponds with a perceptible shift Nevertheless, Xi’s totalitarian aspirations are apparent. The in the nature of the Chinese regime towards an aspirational sociologist Stein Ringen notes that the CCP under Xi clearly totalitarianism. There is debate about how long this shift has employs three of the four mechanisms Arendt associated been in the making and the extent to which Xi represents with totalitarian movements: that rule is upheld by terror; that continuity or an aberration from his predecessors. (Xi certainly rule reaches into the regulation of natural human bonds and claims to represent the former, as laid out in his 2013 “Two private spheres, including the family, and even mindsets; Undeniables” speech synthesizing the Mao and Deng eras.)57 and that governing is exercised via an extensive impersonal Whichever view one takes, Xi clearly enjoys a greater cult of bureaucracy.64 personality than any Chinese leader since Mao, as underscored by the abolition of term limits and introduction of “Xi Jinping Increasingly, the CCP also employs the fourth mechanism Thought” (a vague blueprint for rejuvenating China by expanding of totalitarianism—that the movement justify its rule with an the CCP’s supremacy over all facets of society under Xi’s overarching ideology—although it so far only does so partially. leadership) into both the party and national constitution.58 More Despite Xi’s vocal emphasis on ideology, the Party’s theorists are worryingly, Xi has technology at his disposal that Mao could have still in the process of articulating a coherent theory and vision only dreamed of. The CCP is engaged in a massive AI-driven for post-Mao, post-Deng China. Even defining the Chinese surveillance experiment, including a pilot social credit system, economic system is not straight-forward: The CCP insists that that could give authorities unprecedented control over citizens’ it is in a transition state to socialism under a “socialist market daily lives. China’s “Great Firewall” represents a bold attempt economy,” but most economists describe China’s system as to bifurcate the internet. The dystopian surveillance, interment, some form of authoritarian capitalism, state capitalism, political and forced sterilization of minorities in Xinjiang region—which capitalism, or corporatism.65 some experts believe constitute genocide59—and the sweeping extraterritoriality of the Hong Kong National Security Law cannot The ambiguity of Xi’s theories aside, the CCP today shares be brushed off as conventional authoritarian tactics. Xi’s regime characteristics to varying degrees with traditional Marxism- is without precedent. Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism, and fascism.

18 | HUDSON INSTITUTE Marxism-Leninism at the 20th Party Congress in 1956 that laid the groundwork for It may seem laughable that men like Bo Xilai, the former Party the USSR’s collapse, the implication being that Khrushchev was Secretary in Chongqing accused of embezzling millions of guilty of undermining Party cohesion if not of being insufficiently dollars, have the audacity to claim the mantle of communism.66 totalitarian himself. Xi reiterated this line shortly after his ascent But such cognitive dissonance should not obscure the fact that to power when he explained the Soviets’ demise in a speech the CCP’s Marxist-Leninist roots continue to shape its behavior by stating, “to repudiate Lenin, to repudiate Stalin was to wreck in genuine, if complicated, ways. Marxism-Leninism can be best chaos in Soviet ideology and engage in historical nihilism.”70 understood by disentangling the two components. Karl Marx posited an ostensibly scientific theory of economics and history. Stalin was the crucial intermediary through which Marxism- Vladimir Lenin put this theory into action through an ideology Leninism reached China in the first half of the 20th century. Mao, and practical program of revolutionary politics. Marxism remains and later Xi, revered Stalin because he succeeded in sustaining an important rhetorical and theoretical tool for justifying the a revolution whereas Lenin had only to begin one. Stalin is thus CCP’s policies, particularly its positivist claims to have deduced a source of practical lessons for Xi, who, like the late Georgian “the laws of history” via dialectical materialism.67 Some analysts “Man of Steel,” has to justify the party’s rule at a time when the have also suggested that Xi shares Marxist critiques of Western promised utopia is as distant as ever.71 Repression becomes political economy. the principle means of doing so. Xi’s fear of sabotage within the party, his purges, and his desire to achieve totalitarian Leninism, however, is more relevant to the CCP today. The control over ordinary citizens more broadly have strong Stalinist party’s structure, and indeed its raison d’etre as a “vanguard,” overtones. To quote Francis Fukuyama, Xi’s vision “borrows is thoroughly Leninist, as are many of the theories that underpin more from Stalin’s Soviet Union than it does from anything in its authoritarianism: for example, the theory of “democratic earlier Chinese history.”72 centralism,” which states that the Party leadership’s vote on a decision is ultimate and binding for every member, thus Maoism rendering internal dissent a form of criminal sabotage.68 Lenin In his biography of Russia’s revolutionary leader, Victor Sebestyen was also one of the most notable advocates of the belief that writes, “Lenin’s tomb once symoblised an internationalist material conditions rather than political rights are the benchmark ideology, world Communism. It has since become an altar of of progress, which is at the heart of the CCP’s worldview. And resurgent Russian nationalism.”73 We might say the same of while one does not find much theoretical support in traditional Mao’s mausoleum in the Chinese context today. Marxist exegesis for the argument that markets, if they are to exist, must fall under the control of the party, such thinking has Xi has leaned into the CCP’s Maoist roots more than any of some precedent in Lenin’s New Economic Policy.69 his predecessors, reviving the late Chairman as a towering figure of Chinese greatness while eschewing his economic Stalinism policies and global revolutionary ambitions. Xi, who seems The CCP never subscribed to the “End of History” hypothesis. The to be personally nostalgic for the Mao era, has resurrected Party’s official position is that the USSR collapsed not because elements of Mao’s political strategy in an effort to correct the liberal capitalism triumphed over authoritarian communism or corruption and decadence he fears could destroy the Party. even because Glasnost and Perestroika represented too abrupt These include criticism and self-criticism sessions, the “mass a reformation. Rather, it was Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin line” approach of improving party relations with the public, the

THE “CHINA DREAM” AND THE AFRICAN REALITY: THE ROLE OF IDEOLOGY IN PRC-AFRICA RELATIONS cult of personality embodied by the canonization of Xi Jinping of this dynastic system, in which those who are dethroned are Thought, even down to the revival of Red Guard songs from not simply out of power but erased from history, that drives the the Cultural Revolution.74 The true Neo-Maoist activists, those paranoia of the CCP.77 Lingering resentment from the “century who share not just Mao’s chauvinism and authoritarianism but of humiliation” and a sense of civilizational exceptionalism have also his leftist economics, have proven useful allies of Xi in his similarly shaped the PRC’s foreign policy since its inception. Xi attacks on “historical nihilism” in Chinese society, resulting in the and his allies are careful to present the CCP as the natural heir banning of books and termination of professors for questioning to traditional Chinese civilization and culture (with “traditional” the wisdom of the CCP’s founding father.75 being defined by the Party), including by appropriating elements of Confucianism.78 Fascism The “China Dream” is one of the most consistent threads in The Community of Common Destiny: Xi’s narratives. This appears to be a vision of ultra-nationalism The CCP Envisions a New Global Order and totalitarianism in which the individual forfeits their autonomy Xi’s vision does not stop at China’s borders. Whereas Hu to be subsumed into a semi-spiritual, mythologized civilization- Jintao laid out the CCP’s vision for international relations with state. A 2013 Beijing Daily front-page article—quoted by the phrase “Harmonious World,” Xi speaks of a “Community of Ringen, who identifies multiple fascistic trends in the CCP— Common Destiny,” implying a more integrated world in which describes the China Dream as one in which: the PRC is preeminent.79 Xi and his comrades do not export this ideology in a Maoist manner, but they have begun to openly “the future and destiny of every person is inseparably promote their vision as one with global relevance. linked to the future and destiny of the country and nation… patriotism is the nucleus of the national In the post-Mao era, CCP officials began speaking more spirit… [and] soul of a powerful and invigorated critically of the existing international order in the fallout of country which joins minds and gathers strength, and the 2007-2008 global financial crisis, suggesting that the as the spiritual force which strengthens and unites “Washington Consensus” of neoliberalism had failed and that the Chinese people… realizing the China Dream fatal shortcomings of liberal democracy had been exposed.80 requires the consolidation of Chinese power… the This trend accelerated once Xi took office. Xi has publicly placed China Dream is the dream of the nation, and is also more emphasis on foreign affairs than any of his predecessors,81 the dream of every Chinese person.”76 repeatedly arguing in his speeches that the current international order is inequitable and not reflective of the interests of a rising Chinese emperors may have claimed divine mandates and been Global South. The implication is that China is best suited to prone to despotism, and needless to say Chiang Kai-shek was lead the world towards a new order and should be considered a harsh authoritarian, but no Chinese regime ever demanded so the standard bearer of developing countries looking to develop much from its citizens in such Völkisch terms. At the same time, alternative governance models. nationalism has always coexisted alongside Marxism-Leninism within the CCP. As John Garnaut remarked, “Marxism-Leninism In his speech during the pivotal 19th Party Congress in 2017, did not enjoy an immaculate conception in China. Rather, it Xi declared that China is “blazing a trail for other developing was grafted onto an existing ideological system – the classical countries to achieve modernization. [Our example] offers a new Chinese dynastic system.” Garnaut argues that it is the legacy option for other countries and nations who want to speed up

20 | HUDSON INSTITUTE their development while preserving their independence.”82 Xi adopt the political and economic tools and theories that Beijing has painted a bleak picture of liberal governance, claiming that exemplifies. This is a world in which liberal democracy is not “since the end of the Cold War countries affected by Western simply repressed within China, but discredited by much of the values have been torn apart by war or afflicted with chaos.”83 globe—left on the “ash heap of history” (as Ronald Reagan had What is needed, Xi argued in a June 2018 speech, is reform it, with Marxism-Leninism his target). of the international system under the leadership of the CCP.84 The CCP is uniquely suited to this task, as Xi has explained, A Difficult Ideology to Export because China’s party-state model is “a great contribution to Bold as Xi’s vision appears, his ideological project suffers the political civilization of humanity.”85 Echoing this sentiment from significant shortcomings. For starters, The China Dream of exceptionalism, Foreign Minister Wang Yi stressed the is ambiguous, full of contradictions (chief among them the importance in a July 2020 speech of “conduct[ing] active contrast between Marxist-Leninist theory and a capitalist international exchanges to better inform other countries and reality), and lacking in the revolutionary appeal of Maoism. Xi peoples of the world of the scientific and advanced nature of Xi is himself a far less powerful speaker and writer than the late Jinping Thought on Diplomacy.”86 Chairman. Xi’s language is proceduralist and technical, the rhetoric of a “company man” rather than a revolutionary, to It should be no surprise that as Xi has sought to revitalize quote James Palmer.90 ideology within the Party, he has spoken more openly about the superiority of the Chinese system on the international stage. In the global arena, the primary shortcoming of the “Community There is an interplay between foreign and domestic politics in of Common Destiny” is that Xi has yet to fully articulate this any country, but history suggests that totalitarian movements “community” as a proactive vision for a new world order. especially lay claim to a form of global preponderance to justify What this vision entails, apart from greater Chinese overseas their rule at home. The CCP’s pronouncements on foreign affairs investment via BRI, is not entirely clear. Rather, the CCP offers thus always have a domestic audience as well as a foreign one. an anti-ideology, to use Nadège Rolland’s phrase.91 This vision The classical Chinese tribute system offers a precedent here: is defined almost exclusively by what it opposes: a Western-led while not always economically sound, the elaborate processes international order rooted, in aspiration if often not in practice, in of receiving foreign tribute endowed the emperor with a prestige the promotion of liberal values. Jiang Shigong, a prominent Party- that bolstered his legitimacy among his subjects.87 aligned scholar fond of the German theorist and Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt, encapsulates this anti-ideology when he writes that, Nothing the CCP has said suggests that it intends to compel “[the world order] faces three great unsolvable problems: the other countries to adopt its system by force (Taiwan is ever-increasing inequality created by the liberal economy; state the obvious exception, as the CCP does not recognize its failure, political decline, and ineffective governance caused sovereignty) or “rule the world” in a classically imperialist by political liberalism; and decadence and nihilism created by fashion. Chinese officials have criticized the US for its idealistic cultural liberalism.”92 93 [emphasis mine] interventions in the Middle East and suggested that such adventurism is anachronistic in the modern world.88 Rather, These attacks on the status quo resonate with many around the CCP seeks a “partial, loose, and malleable” hegemony89 the globe. Anti-liberal critiques have gained traction in the in which other nations, particularly developing, non-Western US and Europe in recent years in response to persistent nations, recognize the CCP’s accomplishments and willingly inequality, political gridlock, polarization, and social unrest. In

THE “CHINA DREAM” AND THE AFRICAN REALITY: THE ROLE OF IDEOLOGY IN PRC-AFRICA RELATIONS the developing world the CCP hopes this message will resonate state religion. Ian Buruma summed up this dilemma pithily: even more under the assumption that elites in such countries “Uniqueness cannot be exported.”95 are resentful of a Western-dominated global order and desire rapid modernization without political liberalization. This ethos In short, while many political elites in the developing world was captured by Former Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing when he sympathize with Beijing’s anti-ideology, it is not clear that defended China’s investments in African nations with records of this is sufficient for Xi to achieve the new international order human rights abuses: “Do you know what the meaning of human he seeks, vague as it is. There are two other important rights is? The basic meaning of human rights is survival—and constraints on Beijing’s ability to promote its vision. First, the development.”94 demographics, geography, culture, and history that laid the groundwork for China’s rise are unique to China, suggesting But Xi’s vision of a global community stops there, with a critique that a comprehensive “Beijing Model” is not applicable to most of the status quo and a vague defense of developmental countries. China is not unique, however, in achieving high authoritarianism. He lays no claims to universal truths or a rates of growth and modernization since the 1980s. Many common pursuit towards a higher cause of the sort that of its neighbors have achieved similarly impressive growth in animated traditional Marxism-Leninism or Maoism. This is a recent decades, hence the “Asian Tigers” moniker.96 Developing crucial source of tension within Xi’s vision: The CCP claims not to countries are therefore liable to pick and choose specific believe in universal values, but moral relativism is not strong glue elements of the CCP’s political and economic model, as well as for an international order. The CCP may yet refine its vision into those of other economies that have rapidly developed, rather something more proactive, specific, and compelling. But for now, than adopt a single blueprint from Beijing. the most coherent element of Xi’s vision is the ultra-nationalism of the China Dream, which has no intrinsic appeal to non-Chinese. The CCP’s engagement with Africa reflects this reality, as the next It is telling that CCP officials have taken interest in studying the two chapters will explain. Beijing no longer exports a coherent, demise of Japan’s imperial project during the Second World War. universal ideology in a comprehensive manner, nor does it set Japan failed to win the support of the populations it colonized for the agenda of a tightly bound coalition of ideologically aligned a variety of reasons such as the brutality of its occupation forces, movements like the Stalin-era COMINTERN. Rather, the CCP but also because its imperial ideology was fascistic, premised promotes its model and evolving worldview to African states in on the superiority of Japanese civilization and its Kokka Shinto a subtle, piecemeal, and ad hoc manner.

22 | HUDSON INSTITUTE CHAPTER 4. “NATURAL ALLIES”: THE CCP TOUTS ITS MODEL IN AFRICA

The best way to understand the CCP’s role in shaping African seek to spy on their citizens and/or desire greater regulation governance is as a partner or a mentor in illiberal governance. or censorship of the internet. As it attempts to develop a To this end, the CCP provides certain theories as well as panopticon-like surveillance regimen at home and achieve practical tools, mechanisms, and technologies to bolster such AI supremacy by 2030, China has also become the world’s governance where it already exists—with varying success, as leading seller of AI-powered surveillance equipment globally.98 the next chapter will explain—but it does not attempt to create These technology transactions are thus part of an ideological regimes in its exact image. project, albeit one that looks very different from conventional Marxist proselytizing. Take the issue of surveillance technology: Chinese firms are far from the only ones selling such technology to repressive Keeping in mind that these are developing trends, we can regimes—Israeli, German, and American companies have nonetheless identify some of the vectors through which the all done so.97 China’s exportation of surveillance technology is not merely driven by commercial interests, however. The Photo Caption: A Chinese engineer poses with construction workers CCP is methodically attempting to shape international norms from Mozambique for a photo on September 27, 2015 in Beira, of cyberspace and privacy by appealing to regimes that Mozambique. (Thomas Trutschel/Photothek via Getty Images)

THE “CHINA DREAM” AND THE AFRICAN REALITY: THE ROLE OF IDEOLOGY IN PRC-AFRICA RELATIONS CCP attempts to promote its inchoate ideology and diffuse the CCP single-party model and suggesting that Tanzania’s elements of its political and economic model in Africa. ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party (the successor to TANU) should revert to the single-party system of Nyerere’s “Stability Comes First”: Shifting day in order to foster development and peace.103 In May 2020, Rhetoric in Sino-African Relations a Kenyan writer penned an op-ed in Global Times praising The past decade has seen a notable shift in China-Africa China’s COVID response and imploring Africans to learn from relations as CCP officials have begun more openly suggesting the CCP’s political philosophy; African politics are corrupt and that African governments can learn from China’s success. ethnocentric, the author argued, whereas the CCP is strong Whereas the PRC’s first whitepaper on Africa policy, released because it is ideologically grounded. 104 105 in 2006, emphasizes the importance of African states forging their own development paths, the 2015 whitepaper claims Experience-Sharing in Practice: that “the development strategies of China and Africa are highly Beijing’s Bilateral Trainings compatible.”99 The document lists a litany of grievances against The most notable efforts to promote and diffuse elements of the existing international order before noting that the PRC is the CCP model occur behind closed doors under the auspices particularly suited towards partnerships with the Global South in of party-to-party, military-to-military, or other professional areas such as media, law enforcement, and the judicial process. trainings. The CCP’s International Department (ID-CCP) plays In a 2018 speech, Foreign Minister Wang Yi stated that China a crucial role in these efforts, bolstering the CCP’s relationships and Africa were “natural allies” given shared grievances over the with foreign political parties and elites. The ID-CCP’s external international order and similar experiences with colonialism.100 engagements, not simply in Africa but globally, have increased And in contrast to earlier summits, the 2018 FOCAC echoed the under Xi as part of a larger centralization of power that has CCP’s emerging “anti-ideology” in the form of the “Five No’s,” weakened the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.106 The ID-CCP has which include a commitment to no-strings-attached economic several advantages over the MFA: whereas the latter is bound assistance, a clear jibe at the traditional international financial by tight diplomatic protocol, the ID-CCP has more flexibility to institutions like the World Bank and IMF.101 engage with a variety of foreign political actors, including party powerbrokers or rising stars within who do not hold official Chinese state media outlets have also suggested that the CCP ministerial positions. offers an alternative model to liberal democracy in Africa. These outlets have often run op-eds by Africans praising the CCP so ID-CCP engagements with foreign political parties often take as to avoid the impression that the Party is overtly exporting place in China, allowing the CCP to carefully showcase the fruits its ideology. To take a few examples: During the violent 2007- of its system and attempt to dispel criticisms. In November 2019, 2008 Kenyan election crisis, an editorial in People’s Daily for example, the ID-CCP sponsored a Potemkin village-like tour entitled “Stability comes first in country’s development,” of Xinjiang intended to show how the CPP’s policies foster claimed that “transplanted Western democracy could not “ethnic harmony.”107 Party-to-party trainings also serve as a form take hold in Africa… The post-election crisis in Kenya is a of “authoritarian diffusion,” to quote Christine Hackenesch and product of democracy bequeathed by Western hegemony; Julia Bader, as they allow the CCP to provide lessons in specific and a manifestation of values clashing when democracy is authoritarian governance practices and socialize partners into transplanted onto disagreeable land.”102 In 2017, People’s CCP ideology.108 These lessons can cover everything from Daily published an op-ed by a Tanzanian journalist praising the abstract such as Marxist political theory and development

24 | HUDSON INSTITUTE economics to more practical lessons on managing party cadre they emerge: the ID was quick to host officials from Tanzania’s inspections or developing multimedia strategies. While the semi-autonomous Zanzibar archipelago after a national unity trainings are couched in the language of “cooperation” and government was formed in 2010, having previously ignored the “exchanges,” there is a clear pedagogical dynamic in which CCP opposition component of the unity government.113 officials are teachers and Africans are students. The PLA’s trainings of African militaries are another vector for The trainings are a prime vector for cultivating Guanxi as well the CCP to disseminate its ideology, namely the PLA’s “party- as for collecting intelligence. African officials seem to respond army” model. Each year the PLA trains thousands of African positively to the engagements. By all accounts, the CCP acts a officers and NCOs in China,114 through which African soldiers are gracious host to African officials, rolling out the red carpet and exposed to a theory of civil-military relations that is fundamentally offering high-level access to Chinese policymakers. The ID-CCP incompatible with constitutional democracy. Rather than being clearly views Africa as a priority region: seven of the 20 parties subordinate to elected authorities, the PLA is inextricably part of with the most engagements with the ID-CCP between 2002 and the CCP. Its paramount purpose is to ensure the survival of the 2017 were African, according to data collected by Hackenesch CCP regime. It was founded as the armed wing of an insurgent and Bader.109 In 2019, the ID-CCP reported 24 engagements movement whose leader believed that “political power comes with African parties according to reports collected from its from the barrel of the gun.”115 As explained in the next chapter, website and also held a virtual seminar with South Africa’s ANC several African liberation movements that adopted Maoist in June 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic.110 models in their insurgent days have since imposed party-army models on their countries. The CCP is pragmatic in its engagements with African parties, seeking to maintain relationships with the dominant political Finally, the Chinese disseminate unique ideas and practices in party in a given country rather than cultivating insurgent upstarts. a variety of professional fields, from journalism to engineering, Consequently, the ID-CCP engages almost exclusively with ruling through a host of government-sponsored scholarships and parties and their coalition partners in Africa. For example, the ID- training programs designed for African professionals. As with CCP meets frequently with South Africa’s ANC and its smaller the ID-CCP’s political engagements, these programs reflect coalition partner, SACP, but not the Economic Freedom Fighters the CCP’s perception of “Africans-as-consumers of Chinese (EFF), a left-wing rival of the ANC that shares many of the CCP’s knowledge and not experts” in their own right, to quote Lina critiques of Western hegemony and neoliberal economics.111 Benabdallah.116 Despite the rhetorical emphasis on South- Similarly, the African party with which the ID-CCP held the South cooperation, the CCP clearly views itself as a mentor to most engagements between 2002 and 2017 was the National African elites rather than as their equal. Congress Party (NCP), Sudan’s now defunct ruling party.112 One would not think that the Leninist CCP has much in common with The PRC is not alone, of course, in promoting its values and an Islamist party, but there is a clear logic to such engagements: interests in Africa through party-to-party or military-to-military China has made major investments in Sudan’s oil sector over engagements and the like. The US and Europe remain popular the past two decades, and party-to-party trainings are one way destinations for military education for African officers, and a for the CCP to remain close to its business partners, especially variety of democracy promotion organizations, such as the when those partners are fellow authoritarians like the NCP. The US’s National Endowment for Democracy and the German CCP is also opportunistic, identifying potential partnerships as Stiftungen, are active in Africa. What distinguishes the PRC is

THE “CHINA DREAM” AND THE AFRICAN REALITY: THE ROLE OF IDEOLOGY IN PRC-AFRICA RELATIONS that it is the only country engaged in a relatively systematic effort institutionalized an approach to disseminating an authoritarian across the continent to promote distinctly illiberal ideas, norms, political model on the continent.117 But while China is the most and political practices. Russia and Saudi Arabia are authoritarian significant global advocate of authoritarian governance, the states and are increasingly involved in African affairs—often effects of Beijing’s engagement on African politics to date are in a destabilizing manner—but neither has established as less clear-cut.

26 | HUDSON INSTITUTE CHAPTER 5. ILLIBERAL PARTNERS: THE INFLUENCE AND LIMITS OF THE CCP’S MODEL IN AFRICA

The variations across Africa’s political landscape and the Admiring the “China Miracle” from evolving nature of Beijing’s engagements with the continent Afar: African Interest in the Chinese preclude a succinct assessment of the PRC’s impact on Economic Model African politics. Nevertheless, it is possible to draw some There is an understandable interest among African elites in general conclusions about how African political elites view learning from China’s development success. In 1960, most China’s economic and political models (as many Africans African states enjoyed similar or higher GDPs per-capita than distinguish between the two), the extent to which the CCP’s China.118 In the decades since, more than 850 million Chinese “anti-ideology” resonates with African elites, and the ways in which African parties have employed some of the authoritarian Photo Caption: Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni (R) and China’s governance practices that the CCP promotes. We can also third vice prime minister, Wang Yang (2nd L) cut a red ribbon during the predict, with caveats, how China will continue to try to shape inauguration ceremony of the Chinese-funded 51-kilometer expressway African governance moving forward and what this will mean linking the capital city and the international airport in Entebbe, Uganda, for the continent. on June 15, 2018. (Sumy Sadurni / AFP via Getty Images)

THE “CHINA DREAM” AND THE AFRICAN REALITY: THE ROLE OF IDEOLOGY IN PRC-AFRICA RELATIONS have lifted themselves out of poverty while most African are apparent to many African elites. As one Zanzibari politician economies have fared much less impressively.119 This lends noted to the author, an ID-CCP-sponsored trip to China left itself to a natural sense of admiration for China’s economic members of his party split on the question of the “Beijing model as well as a belief that similar growth could be achievable Consensus”: Those who had minimal experience in business in Africa with the right policies. Unsurprisingly, discussions of or economic planning were thoroughly impressed and sought economic policy and development programs often feature to implement the CCP’s development advice, while those with prominently on the agenda in the CCP’s exchanges with a stronger understanding of economics were skeptical that African ruling parties. Additionally, many African governments China could offer many lessons to a small archipelago with a appear to share some of the CCP’s criticisms of the institutional population of a little over a million.125 architecture of the international economic order. In July 2019, for example, the African Group of the World Trade Organization African leaders therefore tend to experiment with different facets (WTO) joined China en masse in opposing the US’s veto power of the various economic models of the East Asian powerhouses, over appointments to the body’s trade court.120 China among them. Certain Chinese promoted policies, such as special economic zones (SEZs), agricultural co-ops, and However, it is not only China but the East Asian economies more agro-processing facilities, have become popular with economic broadly that serve as economic lodestars to the developing planners in countries like Uganda, Rwanda, South Africa, and world. The extent to which a government sees China as the Ethiopia, in part because these programs are often supported best model as opposed to one of its neighbors varies a great with Chinese capital.126 China’s economic relationship with Africa deal across the continent. Since the 1990s, Ethiopia has cannot be reduced to pure statistics: with Chinese investment sought to emulate the state-led development model of China, and trade come certain ideas, norms, and practices related to but also has shown an interest in the Chaebol conglomerate business and development that are liable to shape the political system of South Korea. Economic planners in Kenya have economy of the country in question. But no African government traditionally been more interested in learning from Singapore has yet implemented what we might consider a “Beijing model” and Malaysia.121 Similarly, the Rwandan regime of Paul Kagame of growth in a wholesale fashion. has drawn many comparisons to Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore due to Kagame’s efforts to rapidly develop his small nation Business First: Kenyan and under a highly centralized and authoritarian regime.122 Nigerian Elites Engage the CCP Given China’s economic importance to Africa, we must consider There are vast political, demographic, and economic differences whether African politicos genuinely seek to emulate China’s between China and Africa that prevent any African country from political model or instead see participation in ID-CCP trainings adopting the “Beijing Consensus” in toto.123 As David Shinn and the like as merely the cost of doing business with Beijing. and Joshua Eisenmann note, China’s economic success was Kenya and Nigeria, economic heavyweights in their respective contingent on numerous factors—such as internal market wings of the continent, are two instructive examples of a integration, developed state institutions, and a high national pragmatic relationship with China in which ideology appears to savings rate—that most African countries lack.124 Additionally, play a minimal role. Both countries are multiparty democracies, the influx of foreign capital and technology was a sine qua non Kenya since 1992 and Nigeria since 1999, and both were of the “China Miracle.” Foreign investors have so far not shown generally aligned with the West during the Cold War. Both faced the same appetite for Africa, however. These crucial differences their share of violence in the post-independence period, Nigeria

28 | HUDSON INSTITUTE particularly during a bloody civil war in the late 1960s, but no by another country (many African governments, for example, Maoist-inspired insurgency ever took power in either country. have mimicked Western language on counterterrorism to justify repressive policies). There are also limits to the application of the Kenyan and Nigerian politics are highly neopatrimonial and are CCP’s practices and technologies in countries like Nigeria and shaped by strong ethnic and regional divisions. The dominant Kenya where bureaucratic and social norms are very different political parties in each country are not organized around than in China. For example, Chinese surveillance technologies ideological lines so much as they serve as vehicles during have so far proven ineffective in Kenya, where the installation of elections for different cross-sections of the elite to secure votes. Huawei “safe city” systems had no notable effect on crime rates Unsurprisingly, these coalitions can be incredibly volatile. For in Nairobi and Mombasa.132 example, Nigeria’s current ruling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), was formed ahead of the 2015 elections with Given the fractiousness of the APC and Jubilee, it is hard to the sole purpose of unseating the sitting People’s Democratic imagine that either party will become more CCP-like in a Party (PDP) and was assisted by the defection of a PDP splinter meaningful sense. There is no common vision or experience faction.127 Ahead of the 2020 elections, many APC senators then such as a revolutionary struggle that could bind the party defected back to PDP, although APC candidate Muhammadu cadres together into a “vanguard” party.133 There are incentives Buhari secured enough votes to secure reelection.128 The APC is for each party to seek to retain power extra-legally, which is why a large, fractious coalition with frequent disagreements between President Kenyatta’s appointment of senior military officials to state-level committees and the party’s national body. Similarly, traditionally civilian positions is troubling.134 But it seems unlikely Kenya’s ruling Jubilee party was founded in 2016 ahead of that either country will abandon the multiparty system any time national elections. By early 2019, the party was already showing soon. The current system serves the political elites well enough: signs of breaking up as a faction loyal to the current President, there is ample opportunity for self-enrichment, and defecting Uhuru Kenyatta, began seeking to sabotage the chances of his from the ruling party remains an enticing option for those deputy, William Ruto, ahead of the 2022 elections.129 dissatisfied with their share of the spoils, assuming onecan build a coalition with enough powerbrokers to be competitive. Both Jubilee and the APC have had high-level engagements In neither country has a single party managed to unify the most with the ID-CCP in recent years, which has raised concerns important ethnic constituencies in a sustained manner, which that the CCP is helping these parties adopt more authoritarian would seem to be a necessary precondition of one-party rule. practices.130 These concerns are not invalid, since nothing is There is no indication that will change anytime soon—Kenya in preventing Beijing from trying to export authoritarian techniques particular looks set to experience another round of ethnically and technologies to democracies. But the troubling trends charged elections in 2022. Additionally, both countries have in each country are driven more by local political logics and relatively robust civil societies that could serve as potential incentives than by any governance philosophy Beijing has bulwarks against a slide into one-party rule. exported. The CCP can provide an empirical justification for illiberal policies in these countries, such as when Nigerian first It therefore seems unlikely that either APC or Jubilee is trying lady Aisha Buhari cited China’s social media restrictions to to transform itself into a vanguard party a la the CCP. Jubilee defend controversial hate speech legislation.131 But in this sense has sometimes spoken of itself as such, but the behavior of the CCP’s illiberalism need only serve a functional role for those senior party members indicates that they are more interested predisposed to authoritarianism; such a role could easily be filled in edging out their rivals within the existing multiparty system

THE “CHINA DREAM” AND THE AFRICAN REALITY: THE ROLE OF IDEOLOGY IN PRC-AFRICA RELATIONS than in building a durable coalition to transform Kenyan politics. Working from a Strong Foundation: The As new parties, the APC and Jubilee may appreciate certain Liberation Movements and the CCP lessons the ID-CCP offers in areas such as developing a party The eastern and southern African countries ruled by former newspaper or messaging strategy. But the relevance of the liberation movements, as a whole, have been more receptive CCP’s political model is limited to narrow practices such as to Beijing’s political model and worldview than most other those. As one Nigerian observer told the author, “the APC is African regimes. These movements include the former liberation focused on getting votes in strategic areas; the CCP has never movements of southern Africa, which form a loose regional had to run in an election.”135 A former Kenyan government coalition and enjoy close party-to-party cooperation. These are: official similarly noted that “Kenyan political parties are not ideological… [Jubilee] officials see no need for the type of • Tanzania’s CCM theorizing that the CCP does.”136 Furthermore, there are strong • South Africa’s ANC capitalist streaks in both countries that suggest that there is Zimbabwe’s ZANU-PF limited interest in learning from the CCP’s development model. • • Mozambique’s FRELIMO Jubilee and APC officials likely see party-to-party trainings • Angola’s MPLA primarily as a means of staying in the good graces of one of • Namibia’s SWAPO their country’s most important economic partners rather than as avenues for genuine political or economic learning. Former These also include the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic APC chairman Adams Oshiomhole, for example, was highly Front (EPRDF) which seized power in 1991 but has since rebranded critical of China before coming into office.137 He subsequently as the Prosperity Party (see below); the Eritrean People’s Liberation shifted his tone,138 which presumably does not reflect an Front (EPLF) now the People’s Front for Democracy and Justice; ideological transformation so much as it underscores how and Uganda’s National Resistance Movement (NRM) and the China can serve as a political punching bag of sorts in African Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), two movements with intertwined democracies: When out of power, politicians can criticize the histories that took power in 1986 and 1994, respectively.140 government for selling out their national interests to China, but once in power, praising the CCP seems like a reasonable The liberation movements do not share a single coherent price to pay for doing business with the world’s second largest philosophy. Each movement has evolved since the days of economy. (A similar dynamic has been apparent in Zambian armed struggle (the exception being Tanzania’s CCM, which was politics over the past decade139). never an insurgent movement) as they have faced the complex realities of governing. Despite their interconnected histories, the This is not to say that China’s engagements with Nigeria movements have not always remained on friendly terms: the and Kenya will not impact those countries’ politics. Indeed, late 1990s saw former comrades-in-arms turn on each other in lessons on seemingly innocuous topics like party messaging separate Ugandan-Rwandan and Ethiopian-Eritrean conflicts. can advance illiberal norms and practices, given that the CCP does not distinguish between state and party media. But the That said, the liberation movements have shared roots in the in cases of Kenya and Nigeria underscore the limits of what China Pan-African and anti-colonial struggles of the late 20th century can “export” to countries that do not already share important that make them more amenable to the CCP’s party model and political characteristics with the PRC. ideology than most other African regimes. As noted in chapter

30 | HUDSON INSTITUTE one, many of the liberation movements drew inspiration from with IMF- and World Bank-led structural adjustment programs. Maoist China—as well as other Asian anti-colonial movements, The theoretical framework for these economic agendas remains the USSR, Albania, and Cuba—during their insurgent rooted in a materialist view of human rights in which economic days. Socialist and Leninist ideas, rhetoric, institutions, and development rather than civil liberties or political participation practices have continued to influence how these movements are the standard of progress, similar to Beijing’s “right to have governed in the post-Cold War era, albeit in complex development.”145 Tanzanian President John Magufuli’s quip that and varied ways. As Harry Verhoeven writes, the legacies of “We should put Tanzania first and politics later—Tanzanians the left-wing guerrilla struggle have “helped [the liberation need development”146 or Paul Kagame’s suggestion that political movements] resolve, for at least a generation, their post- liberties are a product of rather than a precursor to development 1989 dilemma of balancing their need for Western aid and the and state-building are reflective of such thinking.147 A Leninist- discrediting of command economies with still wanting to retain Stalinist view of ethnicity has also influenced how many liberation their leftist commitment to autonomy from foreign interference movements have governed their heterogenous societies, and embedding the market.”141 Leaving aside notable policy particularly in Ethiopia. Such thinking posits that material differences among them, the liberation regimes have shared advances will eventually eradicate ethnic cleavages in favor of a a commitment to “illiberal state-building,” to use Verhoeven’s national revolutionary consciousness, but that a degree of ethnic term, within a Marxist-Leninist-inspired framework.142 autonomy should be tolerated in the interim.148

The liberation movements still speak of themselves as vanguard Finally, the liberation movements share a strong skepticism of if parties in the Leninist tradition of mass mobilization. The not outright hostility to US hegemony and Western interventions movements all preside over de facto one-party or dominant-party in Africa. This has often been underappreciated in American systems, although what this means in practice varies greatly: commentary, in part because US officials welcomed many of the Eritrea and Rwanda are highly repressive authoritarian regimes liberation leaders as a “new generation” of African statesmen at whereas Namibia and South Africa are constitutional democracies the end of the Cold War149 and because many of these regimes in which the ruling party remains dominant through the benefits of have played Western policy to their advantage. Ugandan incumbency and the prestige of the liberation struggle rather than President Yoweri Museveni, for example, has benefited as much coercion. The concept of democratic centralism, popularized as any African leader from Western security policy in Africa, first by Lenin and later Deng Xiaoping, has been central to the positioning Uganda as a peacekeeping and counterterrorism decision-making of the liberation movements.143 And just as partner of choice. Yet the former guerilla leader has not hesitated Beijing speaks of alternative governance models, many liberation to accuse the US and Europe of neocolonialism, such as when movement leaders have rejected the premise of universal values aid was withheld in response to his government’s repressive and argued that liberal systems are a uniquely Western tradition, laws targeting homosexuals. There is no doubt an element of such as when former South African President Jacob Zuma domestic political theater at play in such comments, but there lamented that his country’s legal framework was not the “African is also every reason to believe that he genuinely views Western way” but the “white man’s way.”144 states’ ability to leverage aid in promotion of certain values to be a form of “social imperialism.”150 Economically, the liberation movements have sought to maintain strong state-led development agendas even as some, such as Given these ideological commonalities, when the CCP engages Uganda, have implemented certain neoliberal policies in line with the liberation movements, as it does more than any other

THE “CHINA DREAM” AND THE AFRICAN REALITY: THE ROLE OF IDEOLOGY IN PRC-AFRICA RELATIONS set of parties in Africa, it is pushing on an open door in a sense. College and will train civilian and military officials form the six More so than Kenya and Nigeria, the liberation movements former liberation movements of southern Africa once opened.154 represent the clearest examples of parties to which the CCP has diffused certain ideas and governance practices in support Military training is a bedrock of the CCP’s ties with the liberation of illiberal state-building projects. movements. The PLA tailored its academy in Nanjing to train African liberation movements in the Cold War and to this day, The CCP’s party structure has served as a model for several hundreds of officers and NCOs from these movements as well liberation movements. The policymaking process of South as “militants,” armed party members with no formal military title, Africa’s ANC, for example, closely mirrors that of the CCP’s: the attend PLA academies in China annually.155 These trainings ANC’s “clusters,” similar to the CCP’s “leading small groups,” include political education centered around the party-army work on discussion documents on various aspects of policy model, in addition to instruction in the nuts and bolts of military which are then transmitted to the National Executive Committee organization and warfighting. and, once approved, diffused through various government ministries. Policies are revised and refined at the party’s Policy The politicization of the military is not a phenomenon unique to the Conference, which is held at intervals between the National liberation movements, but nowhere else in Africa is the party-army Conference, another similarity to the CCP.151 model as apparent. While this model has strong historical and ideological roots in the liberation struggles, it also serves a practical Cadre training is one of the most important areas of engagement function of bolstering regime security.156 Zimbabwe’s ZANU-PF between the CCP and the liberation movements. Topics like blurs the lines between military and political authority in a Maoist discipline and loyalty inspections, cadre recruitment strategies, fashion, with the powerful Political Commissariat traditionally and the organization of youth leagues and women’s leagues being staffed by generals.157 The Ethiopian, Tanzanian, and feature prominently in ID-CCP engagements with these Ugandan militaries maintain political commissar systems despite parties. Cadre loyalty and discipline is crucial to the liberation their ostensible subordination to constitutional oversight.158 Yoweri movements’ succession strategies as the generation that Museveni modeled the Ugandan People’s Defence Force (UPDF) waged the liberation struggle ages and younger cadres who after Nyerere’s TPDF, which itself drew inspiration from the PLA.159 are not bound by the same sacrificial experiences rise through Namibia’s SWAPO and the ANC have also adopted politico- the party. The CCP’s longevity is therefore much admired, as military schools similar to those of the PLA.160 While the South are Xi’s anti-corruption and party discipline crusades. Senior African National Defence Force (SANDF) remains a European- ANC officials including Cyril Ramaphosa (now South Africa’s style military in many regards and has avoided the same degree President), among others, have praised the CCP for the lessons of politicization as other African militaries, it is notable that every it has offered in these areas.152 SANDF chief since the end of Apartheid has come from the ranks of the ANC’s armed wing, uMkhonto weSizwe (MK).161 The CCP has funded and helped organize party schools within Africa, such as the ANC’s Political School and Policy Institute The ERPDF as a Case Study: and the EPRDF’s Central Policy School.153 In 2018, ID-CCP Adopting the CCP’s Lessons chief Song Tao joined President Magufuli in laying the foundation “with Ethiopian Characteristics” stone of the Mwalimu Nyerere Leadership School outside Dar es For centuries Ethiopian monarchs have sought to prevent Salaam. The academy is modeled on the CCP’s Pudong Cadre internal disorder and external invasion by looking abroad for

32 | HUDSON INSTITUTE technologies, ideas, and models to modernize their society.162 in which regional offices correspond with specific ethnic groups) When the multi-ethnic rebel coalition known as the EPRDF came to organizing its women’s league. The EPRDF even sent railway to power in 1991, it continued this tradition to notable effect. operators to China for lessons in everything from ticketing procedures to track maintenance.168 At the same time, China The architect of the new Ethiopian state was Meles Zenawi, an has made major investments in Ethiopian infrastructure: Chinese ethnic Tigrayan rebel-statesman who served as prime minister firms built the Addis Ababa-Djibouti standard gauge railroad, a until his death in 2012 and whose Tigray People’s Liberation major BRI project, and Ethiopia’s national telecommunications Front (TPLF) dominated the EPRDF regime until recently. Meles network was mostly built by ZTE under the largest telecomms came from a Hoxhaist background but moved away from the agreement in African history.169 Albanian model once in power, looking east instead.163 Meles’ theory of “revolutionary democracy” drew heavily on Mao’s Ethiopia has been undergoing a fundamental political shift New Democracy that explicitly rejected parliamentarianism as since Abiy Ahmed’s ascent to the premiership in 2018. Abiy bourgeois and Western.164 Meles took inspiration from Deng’s is very much a product of the EPRDF, having joined the armed economic reforms as well as those of South Korea, where struggle as a teenager, but he is from a younger generation the state maintained a strong role in the economy. Cognizant than Meles and hails from a long-marginalized community.170 that Ethiopia’s unique character—including its significant He has diverged from the late Prime Minister on everything ethnic heterogeneity and long history of imperial conquest— from economics to ethnic federalism, taking the country in a limited the applicability of imported ideas, Meles was careful more neoliberal direction while rebranding and restructuring the not to rely too much on any single foreign model. He was an EPRDF, now the Prosperity Party, in a way that reduces the original thinker—exceptionally sharp in theoretical matters, power of many traditional party elites.171 Abiy’s ideology is vague equipped with practical political acumen, and possessing and it is not apparent to what extent internal party mechanics, the creative sensibility necessary to meld various foreign and cadre education and the like have changed in line with the indigenous intellectual frameworks into a coherent, though Prime Minister’s reforms. Abiy does not appear to have the highly controversial, ideology of Ethiopian developmentalism same instinctive sympathy for the CCP’s worldview that Meles and ethnic federalism. Yet in practical matters of managing his did, which could well lead to a decrease in engagements and party-state, the CCP was an undeniably important partner. tangible policy diffusion between Abiy’s party and the ID-CCP.

EPRDF-CCP ties grew after Meles’ crackdown on protests Abiy’s politics notwithstanding, China is likely to maintain during the 2005 elections, an inflection point that underscored strong ties with Ethiopia in the near future even if there is less the party’s authoritarian nature.165 Eager to find non-Western party-to-party engagement. Ethiopia hosts the African Union donors that would not look askance at his repression, Meles headquarters and is a geopolitical heavyweight in the Horn found a willing partner in Beijing. On the CCP’s advice, the of Africa, incentivizing Beijing to stay close to whoever is in ERPDF launched a massive recruitment drive that quintupled power in Addis Ababa. Abiy is pragmatic and will likely seek to party membership after 2005.166 In 2010, the two parties signed maintain Ethiopia’s lucrative partnership with China even as he an MoU at the ERPDF’s request pledging to increase party-to- seeks to attract greater Western investment. He has also shown party cooperation.167 Since then the CCP has offered the EPRDF more authoritarian proclivities than many had initially hoped, advice on everything from managing relations between central suggesting that he may have an interest in at least some of the and regional party offices (which is crucial in a fractious society illiberal governance practices that the CCP promotes, such as

THE “CHINA DREAM” AND THE AFRICAN REALITY: THE ROLE OF IDEOLOGY IN PRC-AFRICA RELATIONS restrictions on the internet. Predicting the future of China-Ethiopia due to COVID-19. The promotion of the CCP governance relations is ultimately complicated by the turbulence of Ethiopia’s model is only one element of the PRC’s foreign policy in Africa— ongoing political transition as well as the heightened geopolitical the ability and willingness of the PRC to continue investing in competition in the Horn of Africa, both of which could combine Africa will have a far greater role in determining China-Africa to significantly destabilize the country in the near future. relations. Similarly, the attractiveness of the “China model” is inextricably tied to China’s continued economic success. Some The case of Meles and the EPRDF underscores an important analysts—such as Dexter Roberts, who warns in The Myth of caveat to the discussion of the CCP’s relationship with the Chinese Capitalism that “Stagnation or something much worse liberation movements, which is that the latter are not passively happening in China is bad for the world,”174—have suggested receiving and replicating Chinese ideas and practices. The CCP that BRI and China’s economic outlook in general are extremely has not fully “exported” an ideology in recent years in the same precarious. Others, such as Irene Yuan Sun of McKinsey, way it did in the Maoist era. (It seems unlikely that Magufuli suggest that an economic slowdown would in fact accelerate has perused his CCP-gifted copy of Xi’s Governance of China the offshoring of Chinese firms to places like Africa.175 The with the same excitement that Nyerere read Mao’s Little Red question of debt will also play a major role in shaping China- Book.) One cannot speak of “Xi Jinpingist” regimes the same Africa relations moving forward, and there is growing concern way one could say that many of the liberation movements of an impending wave of African defaults on Chinese loans.176 were Maoist in their guerrilla stages, even if they were never full Chinese proxies. Rather, as former left-wing revolutionaries Nevertheless, we can expect the CCP to continue promoting its attempting to modernize in a world in which free markets and model and philosophies in Africa through the avenues described liberal democracies are touted as the pinnacle of progress, the in the previous chapter. In an era of increasing competition liberation movements see the CCP as something of a fellow with the US and its allies, China will continue to see significant traveler and a source of practical lessons in successful illiberal, political value in maintaining strong ties with Africa regardless single-party governance.172 of the continent’s economic significance to Beijing at any given moment. A primary means of maintaining these ties, in addition Still, the liberation parties are ultimately products of their to distributing largesse, is to continue trying to build sympathy environments more than anything else. To take one example: for the CCP’s worldview and garner admiration for its political in the 1990s the new NRM, RPF, EPRDF, and EPLF regimes and economic model. Xi and the party theorists will no doubt redefined the geopolitics of eastern and central Africa through a continue to develop and refine their ideology in the hopes of series of horrific conflicts in the Congo and along the Ethiopian- formulating a more compelling justification for totalitarian rule Eritrean border. It was not abstract theories imported from abroad at home and creating the conditions for a China-centric order but rather the hyper-militarized mentalities that these movements’ abroad. If they succeed in conceptualizing a more coherent and cadres had developed over the years in the bush that drove their universal ideology, they may well seek to export it in a more hawkish foreign policies.173 In short, the CCP’s ideas and support pronounced and comprehensive manner. matter, but African ideas and political realities matter more. What this means for Africa is less certain, but suffice it to say Looking to the Future that there are clear limits to how much Beijing can shape African Predicting the future of China-Africa relations is exceedingly politics. Democracies across Africa are vulnerable, but the threat difficult when the health of the global economy is so uncertain does not principally come from CCP-like Leninist movements.

34 | HUDSON INSTITUTE To reiterate, Kenyan and Nigerian political elites seem like surveillance: the RPF has long maintained an extensive human implausible candidates for a revolutionary vanguard. The ANC, surveillance network that has increasingly been augmented despite its structural similarities to the CCP and sympathy for with sophisticated technological tools.180 Whereas Chinese Beijing’s “anti-ideology,” operates within a relatively robust surveillance systems have often proven ineffective in countries constitutional framework and must contend with a strong civil like Kenya, Rwanda appears to have the existing internal society, including powerful trade unions that have often served security architecture to utilize such systems efficiently. The as a counterweight to the party. In other words, regardless of similarities between the RPF and CCP regimes are, of course, what type of political system ANC leaders would like to operate limited, the former being rooted in a minority ethnic group in—and some have certainly implied that they would prefer for starters. But in terms of countries where something like a China’s—they are constrained for the time being by social and CCP-style “controlocracy” (to use Stein Ringen’s phrase) could political realities that are not necessarily of their choosing. conceivably emerge, Rwanda is one of the strongest candidates in Africa. More broadly, African states tend to lack the capacity to achieve anything resembling totalitarian control. Geography Tanzania’s CCM is another Beijing-friendly party that has and colonialism, among other factors, have produced states demonstrated notable longevity and discipline as well as an whose power is generally limited outside the urban center.177 unsubtle desire to return to formal one-party rule. The party has Authoritarian states abound, some of them quite brutal, but their won every national election since the first multiparty contest in brutality is often rooted in weakness rather than strength. The 1995, but its popularity has decreased in recent years, primarily Sudanese regime of Omar al Bashir is a telling example. While due to frustrations with corruption. President Magufuli’s response sometimes labeled a totalitarian state in the Western press over has been similar to Xi’s campaigns to target graft and promote concerns about genocide in Darfur, Bashir’s crimes against ideological vigor, albeit Magufuli’s approach is slightly more humanity were in fact the product of a deeply insecure regime erratic. Magufuli has sought to rekindle the spirit of Nyerere’s constantly battling insurgencies in the country’s peripheries. one-party state in order to strive towards national development, In notable contrast to the PRC, Ethiopia’s EPRDF, though a process that is simultaneously, “radical, reactionary, and authoritarian, adopted an ethnic federal system in response to progressive” in the words of Dan Paget.181 Magufuli’s party centuries of what Meles and his ilk viewed as failed attempts has waged controversial “morality” campaigns in reaction to at overly personalized and centralized state-building.178 To take “liberal values” being pushed by ostensibly hostile Westerners another example, Uganda, despite Museveni’s wishes, hosts a and has stepped up the harassment of opposition figures.182 far more vocal and popular opposition than anything the CCP Assuming Magufuli wins the election set for late October, as he has had to face. is widely expected to, it is likely that a constitutional amendment removing term limits will follow. Given their close historical and There are notable exceptions to this trend of fragile ideological affinities, CCM is liable to seek further material authoritarianism. Kagame’s Rwanda is closer to a totalitarian support, inspiration, and instruction from the CCP as it seeks to state than any of its neighbors. His highly disciplined and undermine the country’s remaining checks on its power. secretive RPF regime is suspected of several assassinations of dissidents well beyond the country’s borders.179 The CCP’s While the cases of Rwanda and Tanzania are particularly engagements with the RPF are therefore particularly concerning concerning, the overall picture suggests that few African states given the latter’s authoritarian capacity. Take the issue of will tangibly and comprehensively emulate the CCP’s model

THE “CHINA DREAM” AND THE AFRICAN REALITY: THE ROLE OF IDEOLOGY IN PRC-AFRICA RELATIONS much more than they already have. Rather, the CCP is likely to can prove deleterious to African societies in areas spanning from continue emboldening illiberalism in the subtler ways described journalism to civil-military relations and because they represent throughout this report, both by providing a theoretical and part of a growing challenge to the larger international order. empirical defense of developmental authoritarianism, and by But these efforts are different in nature and require a different disseminating illiberal norms, practices, and technologies in a response than the ideological contest that is most familiar to the piecemeal, ad hoc manner. These efforts are significant, as they US foreign policy community: that of the Cold War.

36 | HUDSON INSTITUTE CONCLUSION

Ideology and Geopolitical more circumspect in building influence in Africa. Beijing enforces Competition in Africa notable preconditions on its bilateral relations—downgrading As talk of a new Cold War has grown in recent years, there has ties with Taiwan, not questioning the official stance on Xinjiang, been no shortage of commentary highlighting the differences etc.—but it has not waged a zero-sum competition with the US to between the Soviet and Chinese challenges. Whereas the USSR date. Ethiopia, for example, has reaped the benefits of significant was peripheral to the global economy, China is increasingly at its Chinese investment and CCP engagement while also positioning center, complicating any efforts at decoupling, merited though itself as a key US partner in the War on Terror. The CCP has shown they may be. The Cold War followed on the heels of stunning no interest in directly overthrowing democracies or working with Soviet military expansion in Europe, whereas the PLA has not revolutionary armed movements, of which there are far fewer today fought a major conflict since its bungled invasion of Vietnam in than during the Cold War. It has a natural affinity for authoritarian 1979.183 Ultimately, the competition between the US and China states, but no China-centered alliance of authoritarians has is not one between rival ideological blocs in a divided world emerged in Africa, where the US and its Western partners also but rather a struggle over the norms and values that each side maintain ties with authoritarian regimes. Beijing promotes its hopes will guide a highly globalized world (it is also very much an economic contest between the world’s two richest countries). Photo Caption: The Chinese People’s Liberation Army personnel attending the opening ceremony of China’s new military base in Djibouti The differences are quite apparent in the context of Africa. The on August 1, 2017. China has deployed troops to its first overseas Soviets and Maoist China sought to overthrow regimes and gain naval base in Djibouti, a major step forward for the country’s expansion proxies across the continent. In contrast, the CCP today is far of its military presence abroad. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

THE “CHINA DREAM” AND THE AFRICAN REALITY: THE ROLE OF IDEOLOGY IN PRC-AFRICA RELATIONS model opportunistically, but it has yet to develop a “Xi Jinpingism” treated as peripheral to broader global affairs. Actions ultimately that can cut across cultures and rally the masses in the way that speak louder than words. To take one example, continued Marxism-Leninism or Maoism could. It seeks at minimum to make support for Sudan’s democratic transition, precarious as it may the world more amenable to authoritarianism. But this poses a be, is far more representative of the US’s commitment to its very different ideological challenge than that of the Soviet Union, ideals than any rhetoric about universal values. as authoritarianism is not itself an ideology. Second, while there are certainly ideological stakes to this To this end, the US must be thoughtful in its messaging towards competition, the US will need to temper its idealistic ambitions Africa as it competes with China. The US should proudly with a dose of pragmatism and patience. African leaders will highlight the impressive work it has done and continues to do naturally try to play US-China competition to their advantage on the continent, such as the millions of lives it has saved by the by maximizing what they can gain from each side. There are PEPFAR program.184 But a dose of intellectual humility is also many low-cost efforts the US can take to make itself a more called for. The years heralded as the End of History were anything competitive partner in the near term,185 but there is little the US but that in Africa: the 1990s saw numerous wars, genocide, and can do to stop China from continuing to build infrastructure, continued authoritarian repression across much of the continent mentor African political parties, or train African militaries in the that was often met with international indifference and occasionally near future. The US must find a balance between promoting tacit support. The US and its partners made notable advances liberal values and avoiding overly moralistic rhetoric. Washington in shifting towards a more proactive promotion of democracy will not win many friends by painting every Chinese loan as a blow towards the end the Cold War, principally by attaching greater against good governance. Africans will see this as paternalistic importance to governance reforms when conditioning aid. scolding, particularly in the absence of a serious counter- But the record has been far from perfect. Multiple Ugandan offer. The US should identify core strategic interests in Africa, observers, for example, noted to the author that while there mitigate against any threat China poses to them, and respond was widespread anger amid revelations that Huawei had helped to any unacceptable Chinese behavior when appropriate; but it Museveni’s government hack the phones of opposition figures, must also tolerate a level of Chinese influence on the continent many Ugandans saw this as little different than the US and moving forward. Senior US defense officials acknowledged this European countries equipping Museveni’s military. much in a recent conference when they said, “The expectation is that China will be in Africa for a long time.”186 This is not to suggest moral equivalency between the US and the CCP as, needless to say, the two countries represent vastly The challenge moving forward for the US and its allies will be to different political models, values, and foreign policies. This defend and promote the values that are being contested by the is simply to note two things. First, the US needs to present CCP while recognizing the limits of any state’s ability to order a a positive vision of liberal values and their relationship to chaotic world. The emerging contest between the US and China development. A zero-sum approach to Africa based on Cold will undoubtedly affect Africa’s trajectory, for better or worse. But War paradigms of “us vs. them” or the “free world vs. tyranny” an exclusive focus on great power competition overlooks the is liable to alienate African elites who have no desire to revisit tremendous complexity of African politics and is liable to produce the havoc that that contest wrought on the continent. Vague significant shortcomings, at best, in any US strategy towards exhortations to preserve an international order will not resonate Africa. At the end of the day, we would do well to recognize that the strongly on a continent that Western policymakers have often continent’s future is not in either Washington’s or Beijing’s hands.

38 | HUDSON INSTITUTE GLOSSARY OF TERMS

ANC: African National Congress MPLA: People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola

BRI: Belt and Road Initiative NCP: National Congress Party (former ruling party of Sudan)

CCP: Chinese Communist Party NRM: National Resistance Movement (ruling party of Uganda)

EPLF: Eritrean People’s Liberation Front PLA: People’s Liberation Army

EPRDF: Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front RPF: Rwandan Patriotic Front

FNLA: National Liberation Front of Angola SANDF: South African National Defence Force

FOCAC: Forum on China-Africa Cooperation SWAPO: South West Africa People’s Organization (ruling party of Namibia) FRELIMO: Mozambique Liberation Front TANU: Tanganyika African National Union (later renamed ID-CCP: International Department of the CCP (also known as Chama Cha Mapinduzi or CCM) the International Liaison Department or ILD) TPDF: Tanzania People’s Defence Force IMF: International Monetary Fund UNITA: National Union for the Total Independence of Angola MFA: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China UPDF: Uganda People’s Defence Force

MK: uMkhonto we Sizwe (former ANC armed wing) ZANU-PF: Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front

THE “CHINA DREAM” AND THE AFRICAN REALITY: THE ROLE OF IDEOLOGY IN PRC-AFRICA RELATIONS ENDNOTES

1 Daniel Tobin, “How Xi Jinping’s ‘New Era’ Should Have End- on-chinas-nuclear-and-missile-exports/. ed U.S. Debate on Beijing’s Ambitions,” Testimony Before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, March 14 Paul Bjerk, Julius Nyerere, Ohio Short Stories of Africa (Athens: 13, 2020, https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/testimonies/ Ohio University Press, 2017), 38. SFR%20for%20USCC%20TobinD%2020200313.pdf. 15 Lovel, Maoism, 200-202; and Verhoeven, “party and the gun.” 2 “Remarks: The Chinese Communist Party’s Ideology and Global Ambitions,” The White House, June 26, 2020, https://www.white- 16 Nic Cheeseman, Democracy in Africa: Successes, Failures, and house.gov/briefings-statements/chinese-communist-partys-ideol- the Struggle for Political Reform (New York: Cambridge Univer- ogy-global-ambitions/. sity Press, 2015), 41-42; and Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism 3 See for example Elbridge Colby and Robert D. Kaplan, “The Ide- (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018), 12. ology Delusion,” Foreign Affairs, September 4, 2020, https://www. foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2020-09-04/ideology-delu- 17 Lina Benabdallah, Shaping the Future of Power: Knowledge sion. Production and Network-Building in China-Africa Relations (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2020), 29. 4 A new poll of 18 African countries conducted by Afrobarometer shows that more respondents (32%) see the US as a devel- 18 Aaron L. Friedberg, “Competing with China,” Survival: Global opment model for their country than China (23%). At the same Politics and Strategy 60, no. 3 (May 2018): 7-64. time 59% of respondents had positive views of China’s influence on their country compared to 58% vis-a-vis the US. See Edem 19 Yun Sun, “China’s Aid to Africa: Monster or Messiah?” Brookings Selormey, “African’s perceptions about China: A sneak peek from Institute, February 7, 2014, https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/ 18 countries,” Afrobarometer, September 8, 2020, http://afroba- chinas-aid-to-africa-monster-or-messiah/; and Shinn and Eisen- rometer.org/media-briefings/afrobarometer-voicesafrica-china-af- man, China and Africa, 45-46. rica-engagement-webinar-presentation. 20 A Google Books Ngram Viewer search for the term “China 5 Julia Lovell, Maoism: A Global History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, miracle” shows a marked increase in frequency beginning in the 2019), 125-150. 1990s.

6 Ibid., 134. 21 Phillip Carter, Raymond Gilpin, and Paul Nantulya, ”China in Africa: Opportunities, Challenges, and Options,” in China’s 7 Ibid., 193; and Raymond Ndhlovu, “Mwalimu Nyerere Lead- Global Influence: Perspectives and Recommendations, ed. Scott ership School,” Southern Africa Research and Documentation McDonald and Michael Burgoyne (Honolulu: Daniel K. Inouye Centre, October 2, 2018, https://www.sardc.net/en/southern-afri- Asia-Pacific Center for Security, 2019), 110. can-news-features/mwalimu-nyerere-leadership-school/. 22 Elliot Smith, “’We are on our own’: Experts call for overhaul of 8 Harry Verhoeven, “The party and the gun: African liberation, Asian African investment post-coronavirus,” CNBC, July 28, 2020, comrades and socialist political technologies,” Third World Quar- https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/28/we-are-on-our-own-experts- terly, published online July 25, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1080/014 call-for-overhaul-of-african-investment.html. 36597.2020.1791069. 23 Data drawn from the SAIS China-Africa Research Initiative avail- 9 Paul Nantulya, Testimony Before the U.S.-China Economic and able at https://chinaafricaloandata.org/ and http://www.sais-cari. Security Review Commission Hearing on China’s Strategic Aims org/data-china-africa-trade. in Africa, May 20, 2020, https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/ Nantulya_Testimony.pdf. 24 For more on Chinese migrants in Africa, see Howard French, China’s Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a 10 Lovell, Maoism, 216-218. New Empire in Africa (New York: Penguin Random House, 2015); see also Yan Hairong, “The truth about Chinese migrants in Africa 11 “General Assembly, 26th Session: 1976th plenary meeting,” and their self-segregation,” Quartz Africa, June 4, 2020, https:// United Nations Digital Library, https://digitallibrary.un.org/re- qz.com/africa/1865111/chinese-migrant-workers-in-africa-and- cord/735611?ln=en. myths-of-self-segregation/.

12 David Shinn and Joshua Eisenman, China and Africa: A Century 25 Joshua Meservey, Testimony before the U.S.-China Economic of Engagement (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, and Security Review Commission on China’s Strategic Aims in 2012), 338-340. Africa, May 8, 2020, https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/ Meservey_Testimony.pdf. 13 Ibid., 343-352; and Gary Milhollin and Gerard White, “Bombs from Beijing: A Report on China’s Nuclear and Missile Exports,” 26 Stephen Gelb and Linda Calabrese, “Chinese light manufactur- The Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, May 1, 1991, ing and outward foreign direct investment into Africa and Asia,” https://www.wisconsinproject.org/bombs-from-beijing-a-report- Supporting Economic Transformation, October 2017, https://

40 | HUDSON INSTITUTE set.odi.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/SET-Summary_Chi- 35 “About FOCAC,” Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, http:// na-light-manufacturing.pdf. www.focac.org/eng/ltjj_3/ltjz/.

27 As of 2016, the CCP had party cells embedded within 68% of 36 “China-Africa security forum concludes in Beijing,” Africa Times, China’s private enterprises. See Zhang Lin, “Chinese Communist July 11, 2018, https://africatimes.com/2018/07/11/china-africa-se- Party needs to curtail its presence in private businesses,” South curity-forum-concludes-in-beijing/; and “1st China-Africa peace, China Morning Post, November 25, 2018, https://www.scmp. security forum opens in Beijing,” Xinhua, July 15, 2019, http:// com/economy/china-economy/article/2174811/chinese-commu- www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-07/15/c_138228749.htm. nist-party-needs-curtail-its-presence-private. 37 Yun Sun, Testimony Before the U.S.-China Economic and Secu- 28 Elsa B. Kania, “Made in China 2025, Explained,” The Diplomat, rity Review Commission, May 8, 2020, https://www.uscc.gov/ February 1, 2019, https://thediplomat.com/2019/02/made-in- sites/default/files/2020-05/Sun_Testimony.pdf. china-2025-explained/; and Nadège Rolland, “A Concise Guide to the Belt and Road Initiative,” The National Bureau of Asian 38 “About Confucius Institute/Classroom,” Hanban, http://english. Research, April 11, 2019, https://www.nbr.org/publication/a- hanban.org/node_10971.htm. guide-to-the-belt-and-road-initiative/. 39 Jeffrey Gettleman, “Ethiopian Rebels Kill 70 at Chinese-Run Oil 29 The total value of Chinese investment and construction projects Field,” The New York Times, April 25, 2007, https://www.nytimes. in Sub-Saharan Africa between 2005 and 2020 is $304 billion. com/2007/04/25/world/africa/25ethiopia.html. Data drawn from the American Enterprise Institute’s “China Global Investment Tracker” https://www.aei.org/china-global-invest- 40 Matthieu Duchatel, Richard Gowan, and Manuel Lafont Rap- ment-tracker/. nouil, “Into Africa: China’s Global Security Shift,” European Council on Foreign Relations, June 14, 2016, https://www.ecfr. 30 Eric Olander, “China’s New Priorities in Africa,” The China Africa eu/page/-/Into_Africa_China%E2%80%99s_global_security_ Project, July 6, 2020, https://chinaafricaproject.com/analysis/chi- shift_PDF_1135.pdf; and Judd Devermont, Testimony Before the nas-new-priorities-in-africa/. U.S.-China Economic Security Review Commission on China’s Strategic Aims in Africa, May 8, 2020, https://www.uscc.gov/ 31 To quote Amb. David Shinn, “In recent years, the voting pattern sites/default/files/Devermont_Testimony.pdf. of the three rotating African countries on the UN Security Council has aligned more closely with that of China than that of the United 41 Tyler Headley, “China’s Djibouti Base: A One Year Update,” The States… African alignment with China has been even closer in the Diplomat, December 4, 2018, https://thediplomat.com/2018/12/ General Assembly. In a ranking of 192 countries that compared chinas-djibouti-base-a-one-year-update/. their votes with China’s votes from 1992 to 2017, nine African countries appeared in the top twenty with voting agreement of 81 42 The possibility of basing in Tanzania has been discussed semi-of- percent or more. No African country fell among the twenty coun- ficially within China: a 2014 study from China’s Naval Research tries in least agreement with China.” See David Shinn, Testimony Institute suggested Dar es Salaam as a potential site. See Monica Before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commis- Wang, “China’s Strategy in Djibouti: Mixing Commercial and Mili- sion Hearing on China’s Strategic Aims in Africa, May 8, 2020, tary Interests,” Asia Unbound, Council on Foreign Relations, April https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/Shinn_Testimony.pdf. 13, 2018, https://www.cfr.org/blog/chinas-strategy-djibouti-mix- ing-commercial-and-military-interests. 32 Will Green, Leyton Nelson, and Brittney Washington, “China’s Engagement with Africa: Foundations for an Alternative Gover- 43 Meservey, “China’s Strategic Aims.” nance Regime,” U.S.-China Economic and Security Commis- sion Review, May 1, 2020, https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/ 44 Jerome Henry, “China’s Military Deployments in the Gulf of Aden: files/2020-05/Chinas_Engagement_Africa.pdf. Anti-Piracy and Beyond,” Institut Francais des Relations Interna- tionales, November 2016, https://www.ifri.org/sites/default/files/ 33 “Wang Yi: Thank African Countries for Supporting the Chinese atoms/files/chinas_military_deployments_in_the_gulf_of_aden_ Candidate’s Election as Director-General of the World Food and anti-piracy_and_beyond_0.pdf; and “UNMISS Fact Sheet,” United Agriculture Organization (FAO),” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Nations Peacekeeping, https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/mission/ People’s Republic of China, June 25, 2019, https://www.fmprc. unmiss. gov.cn/mfa_eng/zxxx_662805/t1676251.shtml. 45 Joshua Meservey, “China’s Palace Diplomacy in Africa,” War on 34 Dave Lawler, “The 53 countries supporting China’s crackdown on the Rocks, June 25, 2020, https://warontherocks.com/2020/06/ Hong Kong,” Axios, July 3, 2020, https://www.axios.com/coun- chinas-palace-diplomacy-in-africa/. tries-supporting-china-hong-kong-law-0ec9bc6c-3aeb-4af0- 8031-aa0f01a46a7c.html; and Dave Lawler, “Brutal dictatorships 46 Shinn and Eisenman, China and Africa, 365. defend China’s mass detentions of Uighur Muslims,” Axios, July 15, 2019, https://www.axios.com/china-xinjiang-uighur-muslims- 47 Lily Kuo, “There’s legitimate suspicion that China approved of un-criticism-letter-11662c7b-7bed-4881-bdb0-39b5482469a5. Zimbabwe’s coup,” Quartz Africa, November 17, 2017, https:// html. qz.com/africa/1132281/did-china-approve-of-zimbabwes-coup/.

THE “CHINA DREAM” AND THE AFRICAN REALITY: THE ROLE OF IDEOLOGY IN PRC-AFRICA RELATIONS 48 Eric Olander, “4THKXJ,” The China Africa Project, July 22, 2020, 62 Francis Fukuyama, “What Kind of Regime Does China Have?” The https://chinaafricaproject.com/analysis/4thkxj/. American Interest, May 18, 2020, https://www.the-american-inter- est.com/2020/05/18/what-kind-of-regime-does-china-have/ 49 Mark Mwithaga, “China Threatens Kenya over SGR Loan,” Kenyans, October 31, 2018, https://www.kenyans.co.ke/ 63 Blanchette, China’s New Red Guards, 13. news/34416-china-threatens-kenya-over-sgr-loan. 64 Stein Ringen, The Perfect Dictatorship: China in the 21st Century 50 Thomas J. Shattuck, “China-Taiwan Competition over So- (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2016), 139-143. maliland and Implications for Small Countries,” Foreign Policy Research Institute, August 28, 2020, https://www.fpri.org/arti- 65 See for example Branko Milanovic, Capitalism Alone: The Future cle/2020/08/china-taiwan-competition-over-somaliland-and-im- of the System that Rules the World (Cambridge: Harvard Univer- plications-for-small-countries/; and Keoni Everington, “Somalil- sity Press, 2019); and Reza Hasmath, “The Century of Chinese and president rejects China’s deal to drop Taiwan,” Taiwan Corporatism,” American Affairs 4, no. 1 (Spring 2020): 136-148. News, August 6, 2020, https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/ news/3981722. 66 “Bo Xilai found guilty of corruption by Chinese court,” BBC, September 22, 2013, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia- 51 See Elizabeth Economy, The Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the china-24170726. New Chinese State (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018). 67 Tanner Greer, “The Theory of History that Guides Xi Jinping,” Pal- 52 Jude Blanchette, China’s New Red Guards: The Return of ladium, July 8, 2020, https://palladiummag.com/2020/07/08/the- Radicalism and the Rebirth of Mao Zedong (New York: Oxford theory-of-history-that-guides-xi-jinping/; and Tobin, “Xi Jinping’s University Press, 2019), 14-15. ‘New Era’.”

53 Tanner Greer, “Xi Jinping in Translation: China’s Guiding Ide- 68 Wang Chuanzhi, “Democratic Centralism: The Core Mechanism in ology,” Palladium, May 31, 2019, https://palladiummag. China’s Political System,” Quishi 5, no. 4 (October 2013): http:// com/2019/05/31/xi-jinping-in-translation-chinas-guiding-ideolo- english.qstheory.cn/politics/201311/t20131113_290377.htm; gy/. and Richard Dagger, “Democratic centralism” in The Encyclo- pedia Britannica, accessed online: https://www.britannica.com/ 54 “Document 9: A ChinaFile Translation,” ChinaFile, November 8, topic/democratic-centralism. 2013, https://www.chinafile.com/document-9-chinafile-transla- tion. 69 This analogy only goes so far, however, as the NEP was a tem- porary effort to stabilize the Russian economy after the Russian 55 Hal Brands, “Democracy vs Authoritarianism: How Ideology Civil War. One can be forgiven, on the other hand, for questioning Shapes Great-Power Conflict,” Survival: Global Politics and Strat- what sort of socialism Xi’s coterie envision when they speak of egy 60, no. 5 (2018): 61-114. capitalism’s eventual demise as an historical inevitability. See Victor Sebestyen, Lenin: The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of 56 Economy, Third Revolution, 42. Terror (New York: Vintage Books, 2017), 483-485.

57 Ibid, 43. 70 Greer, “Xi Jinping in Translation.”

58 “China to enshrine Xi’s thought into state constitution amid 71 John Garnaut, “Engineers of the Soul: Ideology in Xi Jinping’s Chi- national fervor,” Reuters, January 19, 2018, https://www.reuters. na,” reprinted in Sinocism, January 16, 2019, https://sinocism. com/article/us-china-politics/china-to-enshrine-xis-thought-in- com/p/engineers-of-the-soul-ideology-in. to-state-constitution-amid-national-fervor-idUSKBN1F812P; and Chris Buckley and Steven Lee Myers, “China’s Legislature Bless- 72 Fukuyama, “What Kind of Regime.” es Xi’s Indefinite Rule. It Was 2,958 to 2.” The New York Times, March 11, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/11/world/ 73 Victor Sebestyen, Lenin: The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of asia/china-xi-constitution-term-limits.html. Terror (New York: Vintage Books, 2017), 1.

59 “China Suppression of Uighur Minorities Meets U.N. Definition of 74 Economy, The Third Revolution, 36-37; Lovell, Maoism, 421; and Genocide, Report Says,” NPR, July 4, 2020, https://www.npr. Fukuyama, “What Kind of Regime.” org/2020/07/04/887239225/china-suppression-of-uighur-minori- ties-meets-u-n-definition-of-genocide-report-s. 75 The relationship between the Neo-Maoists and Xi’s CCP is com- plicated. The CCP has shown no indication of returning to Mao’s 60 See Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: socialist economics, and Xi has great reason to fear a Cultural Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1994). Revolution-style uprising. As Jude Blanchette summed up the dilemma facing Xi: “Crush the neo-Maoists and risk laying bare 61 This caveat applies to the majority of Chinese society but unfor- the Party’s abandonment of its socialist sympathies; allow them tunately not to the Uighurs, who face an unimaginable level of to operate untethered and risk a populist revolt.” Quoted in Lovell, intrusive control and terror at the hands of the CCP. Maoism, 438.

42 | HUDSON INSTITUTE 76 Ringen, The Perfect Dictatorship, 176. the China Dream, https://www.readingthechinadream.com/jiang- shigong-empire-and-world-order.html. 77 Garnaut, “Engineers of the Soul.” 93 Perhaps unsurprisingly, Shigong believes empires rather than 78 Economy, The Third Revolution, 43. nation-states to be the natural building blocks of global order.

79 Tobin, “Xi Jinping’s ‘New Era’.” 94 Rukmini Callimachi, “China woos Africa with aid,” AP, January 5, 2007, https://poststar.com/business/local/china-woos-africa- 80 Brands, “Democracy vs Authoritarianism.” with-aid/article_ff488169-5512-5e15-8fc9-2a5a791600f2.html.

81 Xi has delivered more speeches on foreign affairs and defense 95 Ian Buruma, Inventing Japan: 1853-1964 (New York: Modern issues than any PRC leader before. See Tanina Zappone, “Trans- Library, 2004), 122. lating Xi Jinping’s speeches: China’s search for discursive power between ‘political correctness’ and ‘external propaganda’,” 96 For more see Joe Studwell, How Asia Works: Success and Fail- Kervan: International Journal of Afro-Asiatic Studies, 22 (2018); ure in the World’s Most Dynamic Region (New York: Grove Press, 253-271. 2013).

82 Tanner Greer, “China’s Plans to Win Control of the Global Order,” 97 Steven Feldstein, “The Global Expansion of AI Surveillance,” Tablet, May 17, 2020, https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/ Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, September 17, news/articles/china-plans-global-order. 2019, https://carnegieendowment.org/2019/09/17/global-expan- sion-of-ai-surveillance-pub-79847. 83 Ibid. 98 Paul Mozur, “Inside China’s Dystopian Dreams; A.I., Shame and 84 “Xi urges breaking new ground in major country diplomacy with Lots of Cameras,” The New York Times, July 8, 2018, https:// Chinese characteristics,” Xinhua, June 24, 2018, http://www. www.nytimes.com/2018/07/08/business/china-surveillance-tech- xinhuanet.com/english/2018-06/24/c_137276269.htm. nology.html; and Ross Andersen, “The Panopticon Is Already Here,” The Atlantic, September 2020, https://www.theatlantic. 85 “China’s party system is great contribution to political civilization: com/magazine/archive/2020/09/china-ai-surveillance/614197/. Xi,” Xinhua, March 5, 2018, http://www.xinhuanet.com/en- glish/2018-03/05/c_137015955.htm. 99 “China’s second Africa policy paper,” Xinhua, December 5, 2015, http://www.china.org.cn/world/2015-12/05/content_37241677. 86 “Study and Implement Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy Consci- htm. entiously and Break New Ground in Major-County Diplomacy with Chinese Characteristics,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Peo- 100 Oki Nagai, “China pledges another $60bn to Africa in bid to win ple’s Republic of China, July 20, 2020, https://www.fmprc.gov. allies,” Nikkei Asian Review, September 4, 2018, https://asia. cn/mfa_eng/wjb_663304/wjbz_663308/2461_663310/t1799305. nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/China-pledges-another- shtml. 60bn-to-Africa-in-bid-to-win-allies.

87 Howard French, Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past 101 “China’s ‘five-no’ approach demonstrates real friendship toward Helps Shape China’s Push for Global Power (New York: Alfred A. Africa: Kenyan analyst,” Xinhua, September 6, 2018, http://www. Knopf, 2017), 7. xinhuanet.com/english/2018-09/06/c_137447556.htm.

88 Greer, “Theory of History.” 102 “Stability comes first in country’s development,” Peo- ple’s Daily Online, January 14, 2008, http://en.people. 89 Nadège Rolland, “China’s Vision for a New World Order,” The cn/90001/90780/91343/6337848.html. National Bureau of Asian Research, January 2020, 6. Available at: https://www.nbr.org/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/publications/ 103 Makwaia Wa Kuhenga, “The Alliance between Tanzania’s CCM sr83_chinasvision_jan2020.pdf. and China’s CCP,” People’s Daily Online, March 23, 2017, http:// en.people.cn/n3/2017/0323/c90000-9194259.html. 90 James Palmer, “In Xi’s Little Red Article, the Monotony is the Point,” Foreign Policy, July 17, 2020, https://foreignpolicy. 104 Mark Kapchanga, “Africa may learn from China’s political path com/2020/07/17/china-xi-mao-quishi-party/. to revitalize its own development plans,” Global Times, May 25, 2020, https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1189460.shtml. 91 Nadège Rolland, “A World Order Modeled by China,” Testimony Before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Com- 105 The CCP seems to follow this practice of outsourcing promotion mission, March 13, 2020, https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/ of its model in multiple domains. For example, while CCP officials files/testimonies/USCC%20China%20Model%20Testimony%20 generally remain quiet about the applicability of Chinese surveil- March%202020_NR_FINAL_justified_paginated.pdf. lance technology abroad, Huawei and ZTE promotional mate- rials frequently boast about the effectiveness of their systems 92 Jiang Shigong, “Empire and World Order,” translated in Reading in foreign environments. See Iginio Gagliardone, “The impact of

THE “CHINA DREAM” AND THE AFRICAN REALITY: THE ROLE OF IDEOLOGY IN PRC-AFRICA RELATIONS Chinese tech provision on civil liberties in Africa,” South African al Saudi Religious Project (New York: Columbia Global Reports, Institute of International Affairs. 2020); and “Russian Disinformation Campaigns: An Interview with Dr. Shelby Grossman,” Africa Center for Strategic Studies, 106 Sung Jing, “Growing Diplomacy, Retreating Diplomats—How the February 18, 2020, https://africacenter.org/spotlight/russian-dis- Chinese Foreign Ministry Has Been Marginalized in Foreign Pol- information-campaigns-target-africa-interview-shelby-grossman/. icymaking,” Journal of Contemporary China 26, no. 105 (2017): 419-433; and Frank Lavin, “The Problem with Friendship,” The 118 David Himbara, “In 1960, China Was Poorer Than Most African American Interest, June 17, 2020, https://www.the-american-in- Countries. But Here is China Bankrolling Africa,” Medium, Sep- terest.com/2020/06/17/the-problem-with-friendship/. tember 10, 2018, https://medium.com/@david.himbara_27884/ in-1960-china-was-poorer-than-most-african-countries-but-here- 107 “China Focus: Ethnic harmony, economic progress in Xinjiang im- is-china-bankrolling-africa-b7b0b10f41ba; and data drawn from press foreign political parties,” International Department – Central the World Bank, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP. Committee of CPC, February 28, 2019, https://www.idcpc.org. PCAP.CD?locations=CN-ZG. cn/english/news/201903/t20190301_99580.html. 119 “Overview: China,” The World Bank, https://www.worldbank.org/ 108 Christine Hackenesch and Julia Bader, “The Struggle for Minds and en/country/china/overview. Influence: The Chinese Communist Party’s Global Outreach,” Inter- national Studies Quarterly 64, no. 3 (September 2020): 723-733. 120 Tom Miles, “African nations join majority in opposing U.S. block- age at WTO,” Reuters, June 26, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/ 109 Ibid. article/us-usa-trade-wto-africa/african-nations-join-majority-in-op- posing-u-s-blockage-at-wto-idUSKCN1TR1WH. 110 Data drawn from the website of the ID-CCP, https://www.idcpc. org.cn/english. 121 Elsje Fourie, “New Maps for Africa? Contextualizing the ‘Chinese Model’ within Ethiopian and Kenyan Paradigms of Development,” 111 For his part, EFF founder Julius Malema has criticized Chinese PhD diss., (University of Trento, 2012), 3. foreign policy in South Africa, accusing Beijing of neocolonialism. The extent to which this anti-China sentiment is driven by Pan-Af- 122 Christian Caryl, “Africa’s Singapore Dream,” Foreign Policy, April ricanist ideology as opposed to bitterness towards Beijing for its 2, 2015, https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/04/02/africas-singapore- support of the ANC is unclear. dream-rwanda-kagame-lee-kuan-yew/.

112 Hackenesch and Bader, “Struggle for Minds.” 123 Many Chinese scholars and officials have traditionally appreciated this fact, but as the CCP has begun speaking more openly of 113 Author interview with Zanzibari politician, July 2020. its vision for a new international order, so too have CCP officials begun to suggest that a “Beijing model” will spur African growth. 114 The PLA has also begun conducting more joint exercises with African militaries, such as a Chinese, Russian, South African naval 124 Shinn and Eisenman, China and Africa, 53-54. exercise outside Cape Town in November 2019. Ankit Panda, “Chinese, Russian, South African Navies Conduct Trilateral Naval 125 Interview with Zanzibari politician. Exercises,” The Diplomat, November 27, 2019, https://thedip- lomat.com/2019/11/chinese-russian-south-african-navies-con- 126 See for example Pippa Morgan, “Ethiopia’s China-Inspired duct-trilateral-naval-exercises/. Agro-Processing Strategy,” The China Africa Project, March 13, 2020, https://chinaafricaproject.com/analysis/ethiopias-china-in- 115 See chapter four of Richard McGregor, The Party: The Secret spired-agro-processing-strategy/; “Uganda adopts China’s indus- World of China’s Communist Rulers (New York: Harper Perennial, trial park model to fast track dev’t,” Xinhua, September 23, 2018, 2012), 104-134. http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-09/23/c_137486811. htm; and “Chinese Special Economic Zones: Lessons for Afri- 116 Benabdallah, Shaping the Future, 114. ca,” African Development Bank Group, September 13, 2016, https://www.afdb.org/en/documents/document/africa-eco- 117 This is not to suggest that these regimes do not export elements nomic-brief-chinese-special-economic-zones-lessons-for-afri- of their ideology in other ways. Saudi government-linked NGOs ca-91559. have a long history of promoting the Kingdom’s ultra-conservative Wahhabi Islam in African Muslim communities. Similarly, Krem- 127 For more on the 2015 Nigerian elections see Carl Levan, Con- lin-linked operatives have engaged in disinformation operations in temporary Nigerian Politics: Competition in a Time of Transition various spots in Africa over the past two years. Since 2018, Rus- and Terror (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019). sia has expressed its intention to bolster political, economic, and military ties across Africa and could conceivably end up adopting 128 Lagun Akinloye, “Defections and deflections: Who now holds a systematic CCP-style approach to disseminating its ideology the balance of power in Nigeria?” African Arguments, August and political model. It has not yet done so, however, and there is 2, 2018, https://africanarguments.org/2018/08/02/defec- good reason to believe that Russia lacks to resources to pull off tions-who-holds-balance-power-nigeria/; and “Nigeria: Wide- such an endeavor. See Krithika Varagur, The Call: Inside the Glob- spread Violence Ushers in President’s New Term,” Human Rights

44 | HUDSON INSTITUTE Watch, June 10, 2019, https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/06/10/ 143 The EPRDF in particular was vocal in its emphasis on democratic nigeria-widespread-violence-ushers-presidents-new-term. centralism during the period of TPLF dominance. See Tefera Ne- gash Gebregziabher, “Ideology and power in TPLF’s Ethiopia: A 129 Patrick Lang’at, “David Murathe resigns from Jubilee over bid historic reversal in the making?,” African Affairs 118, no. 472 (July against Ruto,” Nation, January 6, 2019, https://nation.africa/ 2019): 463-484. news/politics/David-Murathe-resigns-from-Jubilee/1064- 4923642-b14pyz/index.html. 144 “Zuma says South Africa needs traditional courts,” BBC, Novem- ber 2, 2012, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-20178992. 130 Data drawn from ID-CCP website. 145 Malin Oud, “Harmonic Convergence: China and the Right to De- 131 “’China controls its 1.3bn people’—Aisha Buhari backs regulation velopment,” in An Emerging China-Centric Order: China’s Vision of social media,” The Cable, November 30, 2019, https://www. for a New World Order in Practice, ed. Nadège Rolland (Seattle: thecable.ng/china-controls-its-1-3bn-people-aisha-buhari-backs- National Bureau of Asian Research, 2020), 69-84. regulation-of-social-media. 146 Dan Paget, “Again, making Tanzania great: Magufuli’s restoration- 132 Jonathan Hillman and Maesea McCalpin, “Watching Huawei’s ist developmental nationalism,” Democratization, 27, no. 7 (2020), ‘Safe Cities’,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1240-1260. November 4, 2019, https://www.csis.org/analysis/watching-hua- weis-safe-cities. 147 Verhoeven, “party and the gun.”

133 This is not to suggest that the CCP suffers no internal divisions. 148 In practice, the degree of autonomy Ethiopia’s ethnic groups have But political infighting within the vanguard party of a totalitarian enjoyed under the EPRDF has varied considerably. See Asnake movement takes on fundamentally different characteristics than in Kefale, Federalism and Ethnic Conflict in Ethiopia: A Comparative a multiparty democracy. Regional Study (New York: Routledge, 2013), 23-38; and Mah- mood Mamdani, “The Trouble with Ethiopia’s Ethnic Federalism,” 134 Carey Baraka, “Kenya’s Road to Dictatorship Runs Through Nai- The New York Times, January 3, 2019, https://www.nytimes. robi County,” Foreign Policy, June 26, 2020, https://foreignpolicy. com/2019/01/03/opinion/ethiopia-abiy-ahmed-reforms-eth- com/2020/06/26/kenya-road-dictatorship-nairobi-county-mili- nic-conflict-ethnic-federalism.html. tary-metropolitan-services-uhuru-kenyatta/. 149 James C. McKinley Jr., “CLINTON IN AFRICA: THE REGION; A 135 Author interview with Nigerian academic, July 2020. New Model for Africa: Good Leaders Above All,” The New York Times, March 25, 1998, https://www.nytimes.com/1998/03/25/ 136 Author interview with former Kenyan government official, July world/clinton-in-africa-the-region-a-new-model-for-africa-good- 2020. leaders-above-all.html.

137 Interview with Nigerian academic. 150 Elias Biryabarema, “Ugandan president signs anti-gay bill, defying the West,” Reuters, February 24, 2014, https://www.reuters.com/ 138 To take one example, Oshiomhole led an APC delegation on article/us-uganda-gaybill/ugandan-president-signs-anti-gay-bill- an ID-CCP sponsored trip to Beijing in December 2019, during defying-the-west-idUSBREA1N05S20140224. which he praised China’s development progress and thanked the CCP for its support of Nigeria, according to CCP readouts. See 151 Anele Mtwesi, “Understanding the ANC’s policy formation “Song Tao Meets with APC Delegation,” International Department process,” PoliticsWeb, June 7, 2017, https://www.politicsweb. – Central Committee of the CPC, December 3, 2019, https:// co.za/news-and-analysis/understanding-the-ancs-policy-formula- www.idcpc.org.cn/english/news/201912/t20191218_121207. tion-process; “African National Congress Parliamentary Caucus,” html. https://ancparliament.org.za/clusters-main; Alice Miller, “The CCP Central Committee’s Leading Small Groups,” China Leadership 139 “Love & Hate: Michael Sata’s Complex Relationship with China,” Monitor, September 2, 2008, https://www.hoover.org/sites/ ChinaFile, November 6, 2014, https://www.chinafile.com/library/ default/files/uploads/documents/CLM26AM.pdf; and author china-africa-project/love-hate-michael-satas-complex-relation- interview with Paul Nantulya, Africa Center for Strategic Studies, ship-china. August 2020.

140 Multiple other movements throughout Africa’s colonial and 152 “We can learn a lot from China -- Ramphosa,” News24, August post-colonial history could be considered liberation movements. 12, 2015, https://www.news24.com/News24/We-can-learn- This list is selective for the purposes of examining the regimes a-lot-from-China-Ramaphosa-20150812 ; and Green et. al., currently in power on which the CCP has had the most tangible “China’s Engagement with Africa.” influence. 153 Verhoeven, “party and the gun.” 141 Verhoeven, “party and the gun.” 154 Ndhlovu, “Mwalimu Nyerere Leadership School”; and Paul 142 Ibid. Nantulya, “China Promotes Its Party-Army Model in Africa,” Africa

THE “CHINA DREAM” AND THE AFRICAN REALITY: THE ROLE OF IDEOLOGY IN PRC-AFRICA RELATIONS Center for Strategic Studies, July 28, 2020, https://africacenter. com/2020/01/21/will-abiy-ahmed-eprdf-bet-ethiopia-political-fu- org/spotlight/china-promotes-its-party-army-model-in-africa/. ture-pay-off/.

155 Nantulya, “Party-Army Model.” 172 It must also be stressed that the liberation movements’ ties with Beijing vary in degree. The MPLA, for example, has strong diplo- 156 This model is not without its downsides, however. As the Novem- matic, military, and economic ties with China (the latter centered ber 2017 Zimbabwe coup made clear, the party-army model can around Angolan oil) but has had relatively few engagements facilitate the efforts of one party faction to oust another. with the ILD. This may indicate that it continues to harbor some resentment against the PRC over Beijing’s backing of its rivals 157 A popular motto within ZANU-PF, “politics shall always lead the during the civil war even as the two regimes maintain close co- gun,” is an adaption of Mao’s famous phrase. See Paul Nantulya, operation in many practical domains. See Christine Hackenesch, “China Promotes Its Party-Army Model in Africa,” Africa Center for The EU and China in African Authoritarian Regimes: Domestic Strategic Studies, July 28, 2020, https://africacenter.org/spot- Politics and Governance Reforms (Bonn: German Development light/china-promotes-its-party-army-model-in-africa/ Institute, 2018), 183-185.

158 Nantulya, “China’s Strategic Aims”; “Oliver Reginald Tambo 173 For more see Jonathan Fisher, East Africa After Liberation: leadership school in Uganda,” SABC News, November 10, 2015, Conflict, Security and the State Since the 1980s (Cambridge: YouTube video, 2:56, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx- Cambridge University Press, 2020). BYNhdJshg; Abillah Omari, “Civil-military relations in Tanzania,” ISS Africa, 2003, https://oldsite.issafrica.org/uploads/OUR- 174 Dexter Roberts, The Myth of Chinese Capitalism (New York: St. SELVESOMARI.PDF; and interview with Paul Nantulya. Martin’s Press, 2020), 190.

159 Verhoeven, “party and the gun.” 175 See Irene Yuan Sun, The Next Factory of the World: How Chinese Investment is Reshaping Africa (Boston: Harvard Business Re- 160 Nantulya, “Party-Army Model.” view Press, 2017).

161 Interview with Paul Nantulya. 176 Alonso Soto and Matthew Hill, “Africa Starts to Have Second Thoughts About That Chinese Money,” Bloomberg, July 22, 162 Bahru Zewde, A History of Modern Ethiopia: 1855-1991 (Athens: 2020, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-22/ Ohio University Press, 2001), 270-271. chinese-credit-fuels-debt-crisis-in-africa.

163 Christopher Clapham, “The Ethiopian developmental state,” Third 177 Cheeseman, Democracy in Africa, 17. World Quarterly 39, no. 6 (2017): 1151-1165; and Fourie, “New Maps,” 118. 178 The Stalinist regime that the EPRDF overthrew in 1991, the Derg, had struggled to expand its reach into much of the countryside, 164 Romain Dittgen and Abel Abate Demissie, “Own Ways of Doing: underscoring the limits on totalitarian rule in Ethiopia. National Pride, Power and China’s Political Calculus in Ethiopia,” South African Institute of International Affairs, January 2017, 11. 179 Gabriel Gatehouse, “Patrick Karegeya: Mysterious death of a Rwandan exile,” BBC, March 26, 2014, https://www.bbc.com/ 165 Christine Hackenesch, The EU and China in African Authoritarian news/world-africa-26752838. Regimes: Domestic Politics and Governance Reforms (Bonn: German Development Institute, 2018), 117-118. 180 “The chilling tale of mass surveillance and spying in Rwan- da,” Global Voices, August 6, 2020, https://globalvoices. 166 Verhoeven, “party and the gun.” org/2020/08/06/the-chilling-tale-of-mass-surveillance-and-spy- ing-in-rwanda/. 167 Hackenesch, The EU and China, 136. 181 Paget, “making Tanzania great.” 168 Clapham, “developmental state.” 182 Ibid.; Constantine Manda, “It’s not just a rapper’s arrest that 169 Iginio Gagliardone, China, Africa, and the Future of the Internet should raise alarms about authoritarianism in Tanzania,” The (London: Zed Books, 2019), 78-79; and “Letter from Africa: ‘I Washington Post, March 29, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost. gave up on catching the train in Ethiopia’,” BBC, September 8, com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/03/29/its-not-just-a-rappers- 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-49580863. arrest-that-should-raise-alarms-about-authoritarianism-in-tanza- nia/. 170 Dawit Endeshaw, “The rise of Abiy ‘Abiyot’ Ahmed,” The Report- er, March 31, 2018, https://www.thereporterethiopia.com/article/ 183 Timothy R. Heath, “China’s Military Has No Combat Experience: rise-abiy-abiyot-ahmed. Does It Matter?” RAND Corporation, November 27, 2018, https:// www.rand.org/blog/2018/11/chinas-military-has-no-combat-ex- 171 Tom Gardner, “Will Abiy Ahmed’s Bet on Ethiopia’s Political Future perience-does-it-matter.html. Pay Off?” Foreign Policy, January 21, 2020, https://foreignpolicy.

46 | HUDSON INSTITUTE 184 “U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief – 2019,” U.S. 186 C. Todd Lopez, “China’s Africa Investments Could Benefit All If In- Department of State, https://www.state.gov/wp-content/up- ternational Rules Are Obeyed,” DOD News, September 10, 2020, loads/2019/11/PEPFAR-Overview-Fact-Sheet-2019.pdf. https://www.defense.gov/Explore/News/Article/Article/2341985/ chinas-africa-investments-could-benefit-all-if-internation- 185 For some realistic policy recommendations, see Judd Devermont, al-rules-are-obeyed/. “A New U.S. Policy Framework for the African Century,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, August 7, 2020, https:// www.csis.org/analysis/new-us-policy-framework-african-century.

THE “CHINA DREAM” AND THE AFRICAN REALITY: THE ROLE OF IDEOLOGY IN PRC-AFRICA RELATIONS Hudson Institute 1201 Pennsylvania Avenue, Fourth Floor, Washington, D.C. 20004 +1.202.974.2400 www.hudson.org