New York: Columbia University Press, 2023. US$35.00, paper; US$35.00, ebook. ISBN 9780231210010.
In their second major collaboration, David Shinn and Joshua Eisenman have teamed up to produce a monumental survey of China’s strategic engagement in Africa: 344 pages of text packed with facts and figures, and over 100 pages of notes. Although the book promises to “systematically examine the full scope of contemporary China-Africa political and security engagements,” such a task would have stretched a team of researchers to heroic lengths. Thus, we should not be surprised that the authors quietly limit their scope to a traditional view of politics and security, focused on elite-level diplomatic and political exchanges, public media outreach, military engagement, intelligence gathering and surveillance, and conflict management.
The framework for the book is laid out in the first chapter, which notes that Sino-African political and security relations are “multitiered” (i.e., they are bilateral, global, regional, and subregional) and “Sinocentric” (i.e., hierarchical, with China as the “self-designated superior partner,” 13). The authors visited seven African countries, funded a survey to elicit security concerns of Chinese residents in twelve African countries, and assembled a database of twenty years of meetings between the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and African political parties.
The work is divided into nine substantive chapters. The first two describe a variety of forms of political engagement at bilateral, global, and regional levels, from Sino-African engagement at the United Nations and the Forum on China Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) to bilateral visits, such as the annual January trip by China’s foreign minister to a set of African countries.
This is followed by a chapter on party-to-party relations, and one on efforts to engage African individuals through public diplomacy and media outreach. The following five chapters focus on security, with a general chapter outlining China’s security strategy and interests, followed by a chapter on how Chinese actors protect Chinese interests and manage conflict. The final three substantive chapters focus on security diplomacy (which includes funding and training for humanitarian assistance, laundry lists of arms transfers, policing and counterterrorism activities), maritime security (including construction and investments in ports), and technology and information security (including cybersecurity). Satellites, food security, and critical minerals make appearances, but although the book was written and researched in part during the COVID-19 pandemic, there is little attention to health as a security issue, or climate.
Throughout the book, the authors emphasize the importance of African agency. Small countries like Djibouti and the Seychelles take advantage of their strategic locations to maximize benefits and balance relations with China and other stronger powers. Larger countries like Egypt, South Africa, and Ethiopia leverage their relationship with China to further their own ambitions. Even tiny Benin exercises agency by strategically organizing its bureaucracy and negotiators, pushing the Chinese side to adapt to Beninese regulations and legal norms governing labour and construction. Opportunities are ample, the authors suggest, if Africans will take them.
For the most part, the book relies for its source material on a wide range of excellent primary research by other scholars. The authors’ own original research comes to the fore in discussions of political engagement, and in particular, the ways in which Beijing supports party-to-party ties. Interview-based case studies of Ethiopia, South Africa, and Ghana show how Beijing moves nimbly from warm relations with tightly controlled autocracies like Ethiopia to equally valued ties with multiple parties in electoral democracies like Ghana and South Africa.
This research tackles a contested area of interpretation among analysts of China’s outward engagement. Is Beijing using these outreach programs defensively, to build global acceptance of its own illiberal system, legitimating its domestic model of socialism with Chinese characteristics, or is it actively trying to “purge” the Global South of liberal democratic ideas and Western influence, driving toward an alternative world order formed in China’s image?
The authors contend that they see little difference between the two views. Yet throughout the book, they make bold claims that China is indeed actively trying to spread its autocratic political system, in effect bribing its African partners with financial and material support to “adopt methods of governance similar to the CPC” (78) or affirm “that China’s political system is superior to that of the United States” (332).
These assumptions are in keeping with entrenched beliefs in political discourse in Washington, DC. Yet one hunts in vain for evidence to support these striking statements. African officials interviewed by the authors, including those from multi-party democracies, and the curricula of party-organized training workshops described in the book, do not reflect any explicit effort by Chinese officials to persuade participants that democratic governance is counter to their interests. Participants emphasized the appeal of practical training: how to strengthen party structures, build party discipline, boost youth engagement, enhance grassroots organization, and combat corruption. Most of these topics would not be out of place in an American-sponsored workshop.
This lapse aside, overall the book is a balanced and very useful reference. It surveys the current state of China-Africa engagement over a range of political and security issues. Students and public policy officials will profit from the encyclopedic variety of topics and generally well-informed summaries.
Deborah Bräutigam
Johns Hopkins University, Washington DC