46
CHAPTER FOUR
China’s historical relations with Angola and DRC 4.1. Introduction
This chapter discusses China's foreign policy towards Angola and DRC within a historical and broader context of China's Africa policy. The study follows the sequential presentation in terms of China-Angola relations and China DRC relations. A discussion on China- Africa relations is also important as China interrelates with Africa at the continental level. However, this will be preceded by a discussion on how China has interrelated with the two individual countries historically. The focus on China-Africa relations gives an outline of how China rose in Africa and what motivated China’s rise in Africa. This is followed by a general continental observation on China’s Africa policy particularly in the twenty-first century; with a special look into the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC). A synoptic highlight of various FOCAC conferences is also done to explore how China engages with Africa and/or individual African nation-states in the twenty- first century.
47
(UNITA), and People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) with arms and other resources to counter colonialism in Africa (Khodadadzadeh, 2017).
China did support the FNLA even when it faced its internal cultural revolution (1966- 1969) ambivalent of the Cold War. Immediately after receiving military training in China, Jonas Savimbi publicly endorsed “Maoism”2 which categorically meant full support to Mao Zedong (Founder and Former Chairman of the Chinese Community Party) and Zhou Enlai (Former Chinese premier) (Campos & Vines 2008: 02; Chi-Yu 1990). In certainty, the Angolan liberation movements were supported by different global major powers. This made Chinese support to Angola to pause because of the various ideological conflicts that existed by then (Wekesa 2021, interview). Although still supported by UNITA led by Savimbi who used different military, weaponry, arms training and other necessary resources (Aidoo, 2013), the MPLA had considerable support from the Cubans and Russians; and Angola was declared independent in the year 1975 from the Portuguese.
Despite its victory to power, MPLA did not receive an immediate endorsement and recognition from China as the power politics played a significant role between Russia and China, of which the former supported MPLA. It is important to indicate that China did come to the diplomatic table in the year 1983 and signed a comprehensive trade and economic commission with Angola in the year 1988 (Campos & Vines 2008).
Regrettably, more like alternative post-independent African nation-states, Angola had suffered a brutal civil war that lasted for 27 years (1975-2002) between its liberation movements because of the various convoluted and/or impenetrable socio-economic issues (SAHO 2015: online). The long-lasting civil war ceased in the year 2002 when both MPLA and UNITA concluded a peaceful settlement. This is the very same year that marked a brand-new shift towards means of peace, security and defence of Angola to economic win-win with international major powers like China who intended to trade with Angola on oil for different infrastructural loans (Corkin, 2008).
2 Maoism is a form of communism developed by Mao Tse Tung. It is a doctrine to capture State power through a combination of armed insurgency, mass mobilization and strategic alliances
48
This was observed when China credited Angola with an estimated US$2 billion-dollar oil-backed loan for Angola’s development of infrastructure that was dilapidated during the period of the civil war (Khodadadzadeh, 2017). The year 2004 also marked a brand new period of reconstructive plans to enhance brand-new cooperation that was to focus centrally on different implementation of social, cultural, political, diplomatic and economic deals that would generally drive China-Angola relations into the future.
Equally, Angola had transmuted into China’s treasured African country when it comes to the trade of oil for China’s economic feed (Khodadadzadeh, 2017). Angola is certainly an African petro state and it remains the African second-biggest exporter of oil through its Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) membership with a Growth Domestic Product (GDP) that is oil-sector led (Le-Pere, 2006). Angola is not only oil-rich but has infinite natural resources that include phosphate, iron and diamonds even though most of the people remain poor due to corruption, demolished infrastructure, and gross mismanagement including the strained economy (Al Jazeera, 2012).
It is within this context that the Former Angolan President Dos Santos once argued that “China needs natural resources and Angola wants development” (Hanson, 2008).
Scholars and practioners in international relations need to be aware that China-Angola relations became more appealing and multifaceted post-2002 when both countries started to prioritise different economic components such as loans, trade, ventures, and economic deals including various strategic mechanisms to expand their relations (Grion, 2006). This included the various deployment of Chinese State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) to the African country to bid for different Angolan oil and construction deals to predominate the significant resource concessions handed out by Angola (Atlamazoglou, 2016). Consequently, in 2008, China then became Angola’s largest trading partner and the third-biggest oil exporter to China in the year 2016 (Khodadadzadeh, 2017).
China’s presence in Angola is a reflection of an interesting case of China’s oil-driven international engagement with the oil-rich African nation-states. This has resulted in a complex interplay of challenges and benefits that might occur and should be taken into consideration. It is this study’s well-considered view that the presence of China in Angola is one of the modest ways parallel to that of the Western oil drilling companies
49
found historically and contemporarily in the continent. Undoubtedly, the share of the stake percentage of the loans of China for oil deals with Angola showcases an increasing reach and point of innumerable unembodied implications (Corkin, 2011).
This is due to African nation-states slowly starting to opt for these alternative attractive loans than those of the presumed west international financial institutions that can have democracy advancement strings attached to them. It is also this study’s submission that the global economic policy of China is predominantly resource-driven and goal- orientated; and that being so, its non-interference policy can then oppose and/or dispute Western nation-states’ hopes of domestic encroachment in Angola (Zhao, 2011).
A significant question that ought to be attended to relates to the moral responsibility issue partly related to the equation of whether oil deals are important business transactions or not (one trade to another). The second one relates to the type of balance that is gratified amongst the economic development objectives and economic growth of Angola. There is little doubt that the Angolan GDP increase is required for the increase of its standard of living for its general population but the substitute oil-rich countries such as Saudi Arabia and Oman are under-going “windfall gains from oil and will need time for adjustment” (Zhao, 2011: 6). Thomas L Friedman’s “First Law of Petropolitics” reminds us of the unenthusiastic interrelations between crude oil and the face of freedom (Friedman, 2006). As such, China is supplying the government in Luanda (Angola’s capital and administrative hub of government) with the much needed infrastructural loans at the cost of sensible transparency and eradication of corruption often required for IMF help. Quoted directly, Ian Taylor (well-known IR scholar) strongly comprehend that Angolan government elites are “deeply appreciative of China’s non-interference stance” (Zhao, 2011: 6).
In turn, China’s non-interference stance makes the flow of condition-free, low-interest and infrastructure friendly Chinese loans to remain appealing to the government of Angola. Although in the year 2011, Angola’s largest challenge was to diversify its economy beyond oil, having China basing its relations with Angola on oil is still a sustained important feature for the coming decades. It is also significant to avoid over- emphasising that the presence of China in Angola is conclusively on oil as it is also
50
based on alternative mineral resources as Chinese National Oil Companies (NOC) activities are evident in Angola (Whitehouse, 2020). The neo-colonial viewpoints and/or principal agents within the bilateral relations of both China and Angola have overlooked the two-way process. The Angolan government’s policy is that their relations with China within its global economic cooperation and the long-term development agenda is based on oil exploration. Also, China has always sought to re- look into larger stakes in the oil sector of Angola including that both countries are currently favouring the infrastructure for oil quid-quo3 disposition contemporarily (Corkin, 2008).