Clever communist capitalists

Posted By Stephen M. Walt Friday, January 9, 2009 - 10:50 PM Share

Remember the lurid warnings suggesting that China was on the march in Africa, busy providing foreign aid and long-term contracts designed to corner the market in strategic commodities?

As Jeffrey Herbst and Greg Mills show here, such concerns appear to have been misplaced. Not only has the recent economic downturn been a disaster for African states dependent on commodity exports, it has also produced a rapid retrenchment on the part of Chinese investors. Money quote:

The market, not grand strategy, is the Chinese motivation in Africa."

Assuming China continues to develop economically, realist theory would lead us to expect the United States and China to become serious competitors at some point in the future. See here. But let's not jump the gun, or assume that everything they do reflects some nefarious desire to gain the upper hand.

EXPLORE:TRADE AND DEVELOPMENT, AFRICA, CHINA, TRADE, WINNERS & LOSERS

(3)

HIDE COMMENTS LOGIN OR REGISTER REPORT ABUSE

DANI K. NEDAL

11:46 PM ET

January 9, 2009

Power and Market - Why can't it be both?

Prof. Walt,

There is no a priori reason to believe that China's innuendos in Africa, as well as in the Middle East and in Latin America and the Caribbean, can't be motivated by both power calculations and economic incentives. These two types of interests have largely coincided in most of the cases. At times when the two have in fact collided, the winner was not always the market. The fact that China has been more conscious of its money than, say, the US, does not mean that they are not willing to burn a few bucks to extend or maintain their political clout. This is more obvious in the domestic environment (just look at China's price control and subsidy policies), but also visible in its foreign policy, such as the decision not to radically devalue to Renminbi in 1997-1998, or the use of dollar diplomacy to undermine diplomatic support to Taiwan.

Investments in Africa have in fact declined over the past few months, but won't probably subside anytime soon. Senegal just got a 41-million-euro loan to finance public works.

All in all, it is indeed improbable that China and the US will find themselves competing over Africa, due to the lack of American interest in the continent.

PS: Keep up the good work with the blog.

POET

4:55 AM ET

January 10, 2009

please: more about africa and asia.

realist assessments re: iran, south asia, and africa.

desperately sought.

WRITE ABOUT PAKISTAN.

GRAND SEN-OR

8:20 AM ET

January 10, 2009

Power of an SPEE

Stephen,

If your "realist theory" lead you a conclusions about an SPEE based on one element of their identity - the economic power only, then I suggest you look for, invent some more effective/useful theory before you get misled/carried away from reality by it. I suggest consider in addition to economic resources other elements of the SPEE like population, leadership, culture, laws (especially laws) and national composition and resources (especially in the case of China, I mean race and language compositions, suppressed law structures and distribution of other resources among them etc.) While you are taking into account all that about China, don't forget to do the same for the USA;-) What I mean is don't ignore the underlaying multiplicity just because there is a superimposed pseudo-monolithic law structure.

BTW, can you supply us the axioms of your "realist theory" please to understand your hypothesis based on "it" better.
Thanks,

Grand Sen~or