HAVANA TIMES - When there in 2007, the United Nations General Assembly voted for a resolution on the history of human rights violations in North Korea, only 10 of the 56 African countries voted with the Western coalition led by the United States.
The overwhelming majority followed China, either with a vote against or with an abstention on the resolution.
This had not always been the case.Three decades earlier, the consequent vote of the General Assembly to replace the Republic of China (Taiwan) with the People's Republic of China, which was the international recognition of the government of the Communist Party of Beijing, met with resistance from the United States.
Although the resolution was passed, the African countries did not respect any side.
Over those three decades, China became one of the most formidable economic and military powers in the world, surpassed the United States as Africa's largest trading partner and financed more than 3,000 major basic infrastructure projects on the continent.
More than 10,000 Chinese firms operate in Africa and dominate almost 50 percent of the internationally contracted construction market in Africa.
China moved from the global provider of cheap labor to one of the main funders of the developing South, with the aim of building bridges, both figuratively and literally, through economic cooperation.
Its main foreign policy project, the Strip and Road Initiative for international cooperation, which some call the new silk route, has already connected 152 countries on all continents and has facilitated more than 1.3 billion (millions of dollars) in trade.
However, seen from the West, and in particular from Washington, the rise of China represents an authoritarian challenge for the liberal international system.
In a speech on foreign policy in December, United States National Security adviser John Bolton warned that China has been "deliberately and aggressively" undermining the interests of the United States, calling it "predatory practices."
"China uses bribes, opaque agreements and the strategic use of debt to keep the states in Africa captive to Beijing's wishes and demands," said Bolton, one of the most prominent "hawks" of the Trump administration."Such predatory actions are subcomponents of broader Chinese strategic initiatives ... with the ultimate goal of promoting Chinese global dominance," he added.
Although Washington is increasingly alert about Africa, Beijing devised its own strategy for Africa long before the 21st century.
Shortly after the proclamation of the People's Republic of China, in 1949, much of the developing world continued to fight against anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism. The then Chinese Prime Minister, Zhou Enlai, saw this as an opportunity to position China, a country that considered itself a winner in the same struggle, as the leader of the developing world.
"Africa has always been important to China since the 1950s," said Stanley Rosen, a professor of political science at the United States-China Institute at the University of Southern California.
"In the previous period, under Mao Zedong, it was due to the number of countries in Africa that had votes in the United Nations and the fact that China was promoting revolutionary movements, so it is very political," he told IPS in a interview.
"Shortly after reforms began in China in 1979, Africa became more economically important," Rosen added.
In the 1990s, then President Jiang Zemin, under the thesis of "triple representativeness", launched a program aimed at encouraging the presence of his businessmen abroad.
With that strategy, the Chinese-African trade grew 700 percent. With the help of low-interest loans from the state Export and Import Bank of China, companies such as Huawei led the search for a new generation of overseas markets.
Rosen said that China now seeks to build mutually beneficial relations with resource-rich countries, regardless of their internal political situation.
In September last year, Chinese President Xi Jinping promised that China will provide an additional $ 60 billion in financial support to Africa during a summit in Beijing of the Forum for Cooperation between China and Africa (Focac), which drives investment foreign direct and credits for infrastructure development.
Perhaps more revealing of China's attraction to the continent is the fact that more African countries attended the FOCAC than the United Nations General Assembly, held in the same month in New York.
Xi Llama defines Bejing's foreign policy as "the diplomacy of an important country with Chinese characteristics," a doctrine that prioritizes peaceful cooperation rather than the domination of single power, he says.
However, regardless of Xi's intentions, China's investment has fueled African economic growth and gained political influence over willing African leaders who need technical assistance and infrastructure development.
Most importantly, China has shown that the dominant development model in the West, characterized by neoliberal economic policies and democratic political principles is not the only way. In doing so, China is shifting its gaze from world affairs eastward, to Beijing.
In June, 43 African countries drafted a statement to oppose the veto power of the United States on the appointment of the members of the Appellate Body of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the most important trade court in the world. Once again, they sided with China.
China has urged the WTO to oppose the veto power of the United States since the beginning of 2018. Zhang Xiangchen, China's ambassador to the WTO, based in Geneva, said the international trading system is facing "serious challenges", in reference to the commercial policy of US President Donald Trump.
"The most urgent question that the WTO has to answer now is how to answer unilateralism and protectionism," said Zhang. "What is most dangerous and devastating is that the United States is systematically challenging the fundamental guiding principles by blocking the selection process of the Appellate Body members," he added.
Zhang believed that Washington's strategy was responsible for fatally leading the WTO to "paralysis."
China's challenge to the dominant world order, led by the United States, is not limited to the WTO. China has established international institutions such as the New Development Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which further consolidate its leading position as a financial actor in the developing South.
Some, especially in Washington, have seen these institutions as potential rivals of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), while others are more cautious and presuppose that China is trying to change the international order, although there is a lack of clarity in its implementation processes. of their strategies and policies.
Yuen Yuen Ang, associate professor of political science at the University of Michigan, argued in that regard to IPS that China's intentions "are not verifiable."
"Observers are free to speculate on China's intentions," Ang said, but "what we should and can know for sure is that there is a persistent gap between policy formulation and implementation."
For this academic, the implementation of the new Chinese international cooperation route has been "fragmented and uncoordinated", causing confusion for international partners and participating companies and blurring Beijing's strategic vision.
Despite its shortcomings, however, the Strip and Road Initiative is showing the world the Chinese way.
On the 95th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi announced to an audience of thousands of people that the Chinese people "have full confidence in offering a Chinese solution to the search for better social systems by humanity."
As China continues to form alliances in Africa and throughout the world, those who hold power in the West will soon have to admit, whether they want to or not, the forecast of Xi.
https://havanatimesenespanol.org/mundo/como-la-alianza-de-china-con-africa-esta-cambiando-el-orden-mundial/
