China-Africa Economic and Trade Cooperation White Paper

I've been getting calls these days from journalists who want to discuss "China-Africa Economic and Trade Cooperation," the new white paper produced by the Chinese government. Some say they find it fascinating. For anyone who has been following these issues closely, there is little new in the paper, which serves as a progress report on trade, investment, and aid. The report refers regularly to "China" and "Africa" as though these are two separate states (sometimes it mentions "African countries"). I sympathize with this; it's all too easy to slip into discussions of China and Africa as though the continent and the country are two equal partners.

The report does contain two new pieces of data from the notoriously untransparent Chinese government:

(1) Chinese FDI in African manufacturing. The report carries the first official statistics on the distribution of Chinese investment in Africa by sector that I have seen since about 2000 (see the chart that accompanies this article). Data on Chinese FDI needs to be viewed with some skepticism. I pointed out why in an earlier blog posting here. However, data is far more likely to be under-reported than over. Keeping this in mind, the report notes that by the end of 2009, accumulated manufacturing investment in Africa came to 22% of the total. This would make it $2 billion, at a minimum. Clearly, Chinese manufacturers are interested in investing in Africa. This data fits well with what I have seen, and the arguments I have made in The Dragon's Gift and "'Flying Geese' or 'Hidden Dragon'?

(2) Debt cancellation. Between 2000 and 2009, the Chinese government has canceled an accumulated 18.96 billion RMB yuan (about $2.8 billion at an exchange rate of 6.8 RMB to the dollar) of debt for 35 African countries. This is interesting to me, as it shows a slowdown in debt cancellations over time. It reinforces my conclusion that the debt cancellations were only (as announced by the Chinese) about the old, overdue, zero-interest foreign aid loans, and not the new concessional and/or market-rate loans provided by the China Eximbank. As far as I've seen none of those loans has been canceled.

The report provides data on African investment in China, which, it says, amounts to an accumulated $9.93 billion. Although African entrepreneurs in South Africa, Mauritius, and elsewhere have been investing in China, this relatively large figure includes investment that transits through the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, which hosts a popular offshore financial center. This FDI, which is then labeled as coming from Africa via "Mauritius" is more likely to be from Chinese domestic investors who are "round-tripping" in order to take advantage of incentives for foreign investment. A similar dynamic has made "Mauritius" appear to be the largest foreign investor in India.

On a minor note, the report shows that Chinese translators are not immune to mistakes common in the Western media. For example, at several points the report's translators mistakenly substituted "Libya" for "Liberia" as in the discussion of a Chinese vocational technical center being provided for "post-war Libya". In fact, the Chinese are building a Liberian vocational training center on the outskirts of Monrovia at Gardinersville, on the site of the previous MVTC.