China has always said to anyone who cared to listen that it is only interested in doing business in and with Africa. “China will continue to offer, as always, necessary assistance to Africa with no political strings attached,” Chinese President Xi Jinping, said on his first overseas trip to Africa as head of state in 2013. That statement, delivered at a Chinese-funded conference centre in Dar es Salaam Tanzania worked well as an applause line. However, there is an obvious exemption to the political strings, and that is Taiwan–the incredibly rich Island state which China considers a renegade territory under its sovereignty. “No dealing with Taiwan” is China’s commandment to African states, a code that is backed by the carrot/stick of huge financial investment.
This week, China reiterated its commitment to the “Don’t deal with Taiwan” code and showcased the sweetness of its carrot (or some would say, the weight of its stick) when it successfully got Nigeria to relocate Taiwan’s liaison office, from the Federal Capital Territory to Lagos State. “The foreign ministry seriously objects and condemns the unreasonable actions by the Nigerian government,” Taiwan cried. But the $40 billion that China promised to invest in Nigeria had already deafened the Federal Government.
When the Nigerian Government spoke, it was just the right tune that China had paid for. “Taiwan will stop enjoying any privileges because it is not a country that is recognised under international law and under the position we have taken internationally we recognise the people of China,” said Onyema, Nigeria’s foreign minister. “Taiwan will not have any diplomatic representation in Nigeria and also they will be moving to Lagos to the extent that they function as a trade mission with a skeletal staff,” he added. The Chinese Foreign Ministry hailed the Nigerian government for eliminating “a political obstacle that interfered with the healthy development of bilateral relations,” conveniently forgetting its much-popularised principle that politics should never be an obstacle to business.
Beyond Nigeria, China has always seen any Africa-Taiwan deals as a political obstacle to business. Taiwan has only two formal allies in Africa, namely Burkina Faso and Swaziland. Last month, a third, Sao Tome and Principe, defected to China, a move that Taiwan blamed on the country’s excessive financial difficulties and jostle for more Chinese cash. When, in the same month, the Mayor of South Africa’s Pretoria province, Solly Msimanga, a member of the country’s main opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) party, visited Taiwan to woo investors, the ruling African National Congress put a strong statement scolding the mayor and his political party for “undermining our foreign policy” while calling on the Foreign Ministry to confiscate the official and diplomatic passports of the officials involved. The DA fired back, stating that “neither the ANC nor the national government it runs can dictate who DA mayors meet with in order to obtain job-creating investment,” but it was apparent that it wasn’t as much the South African national government calling the shots, as it was the Chinese.
The problem with China’s coercion of African countries with regards to Taiwan isn’t about the right of the latter to self-determination. Rather, it is about the right of African countries to form their own national and foreign policies independent of external influence. China has in the past proclaimed itself an advocate of these very rights in its criticisms of western influence in African politics. To now involve itself in those very same forms of external persuasion—via threats of divestments and lures of greater investment—is not only hypocritical but also raises doubts about how much African countries should trust this darling friend with lots of cash to give away.
The former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Lamido Sanusi Lamido, already warned of the above in his widely read 2013 article in the Financial Times, in which he states that “[China’s] relationship [with Africa] carries with it a whiff of colonialism.” That charge was vehemently rebutted by the Chinese government, but the coercion of African countries to dump Taiwan adds more credence to the former Governor’s statement.
