 Welcome to the U.S. Naval War College, the Navy's home of thought. NWC Talks features our world-class experts examining national security matters. We hope you enjoy the conversation. In 2013, when Xi Jinping became president of China, his first trip abroad was to four countries. Xi Jinping went to Russia, Tanzania, South Africa, and the Republic of Congo. Think about that. He went to four countries, three quarters of which were in Africa. Last year, China pledged $60 billion in financing for projects in Africa. In the past 20 years, China's footprint in Africa has grown considerably in politics, economics, and security. China matters a lot across Africa. Any African country you go to, you will see a substantial Chinese presence. You'll see Chinese construction. You'll see Chinese goods. You'll see Chinese involvement at a diplomatic level. China has a sizable presence now across Africa. And Africa appears to be pretty important to China. The question is why? What is China doing in Africa? Why? And how should the U.S. best respond? I'm Professor Noni Halseng. We're talking about China in Africa, and this is NWC Talks. So first off, what is China doing in Africa? Over the last two decades, China has quickly become a major economic presence in Africa. For example, China's trade to and from the African continent is at least three times that of the United States in 2017. It's a lot harder to get information on aid and investment, in part because the Chinese government treats some of these figures as matters of national security. But our best estimates are that China appears to be giving more aid economically than the United States. And like I said, in 2018, Premier Xi Jinping pledged $60 billion in new financing for projects across the continent. Now, these are pledges, not actual money disbursed. And in fact, China's record is that it gives out around a third as much as it promises. But still, $20 billion is a huge amount of money to go from China to Africa. China has deepened its political ties with African countries as well. In 10 years, China's most senior political leaders have visited the African continent 79 times. These visits have touched every region across the continent. In fact, in those 10 years, Chinese leaders have visited 34 countries across Africa. They've skipped only nine. By contrast, Africa is the continent least visited by U.S. presidents. Most African countries have never had a sitting American president on their soil. China has also been increasing engagement on security in Africa. China's only overseas base is in Djibouti. China has been increasing security sector cooperation with African militaries. They sell them equipment and arms. They engage in training and education. In Tanzania, they have Chinese instructors at the Tanzanian War College. And in Ghana, the Chinese built a whole new Ministry of Defense building for the Ghanans. Think about that. Imagine this. It's a Pentagon complex, smaller than the Pentagon, for the Ghanans built entirely by the Chinese. So why is China doing this? What is China up to? So one interpretation here is that China is trying to build an empire that extends its hegemony around the world using debt rather than conquest. Building infrastructure in Africa gives them control over vital infrastructure that they can use to ensure that they have access to both resources and, in case of war, they can use themselves and deny it to the United States. This is a particular concern when the Chinese build ports. Are these ports going to get turned into Chinese naval bases if the debt is too much for the African countries to be able to pay off? There's a second interpretation here, and that's one which involves a political logic. China began its outreach to African countries back even before most of these countries were independent. They offered economic aid to Africa even when China was extremely poor. And so this commitment is ideological in nature. It's part of their commitment to help other developing countries, which they see as partners. In addition, China has long sought prestige and respect from other countries. And by giving aid to African countries, it's given them a good deal of diplomatic support in the UN General Assembly, and it puts China in a position where it's seen as a worldwide leader. There's a third possible explanation for what China's doing. And this is that China's investments across Africa are largely driven by domestic politics. From this perspective, China's spending overseas to maintain high levels of domestic employment, not for external reasons at all. China's already developed most of its domestic infrastructure. And they built infrastructure throughout Asia. So now it's got a problem. The Chinese government wants to maintain high domestic employment, because this is very important for regime stability. And the government has surplus foreign currency that they can invest. In short, they have money to burn, and they have people they want to employ. So they build lots of projects across Africa. From this perspective, China is not deliberately engaging in debt trap diplomacy. Instead, the Chinese government is simply making a lot of bad loans. In fact, if you look at all of the projects that the Chinese have done, they've rarely done only once, in fact, what the notion of debt trap diplomacy suggests, which is they've offered a bad loan, and then when the host country couldn't pay, they've taken over the project in order to control the port. China's behavior here is much more like subprime lending than a sinister plan to take over the world. This last perspective that China's behavior here is being driven by a domestic political calculus is much more common amongst academics and think tanks, but not yet in policy circles. So how should the US respond? Now the US should respond depends on whether one believes that China's behavior is a threat to the United States and its interests, and if so, what kind of threat? So if the US does believe that we're in an era of great power competition, and our greatest threat is from China, and that China's spending across the world is part of a plan to give them imperial control of Africa and perhaps other regions, then the proper response would be for the United States to match Chinese investments dollar for dollar. If the Chinese are building roads in Africa and the US thinks that this is going to damage the US strategically, the US should build roads as well. The Chinese are building ports. The US should offer funding to build ports as well. There are two problems here, though. The first is that Africa is not nearly as important to the United States as other regions. The Middle East, the Pacific, and Europe are all ranked much higher than Africa, and that has consequences in terms of the availability of resources. Secondly, the United States has important needs to develop its own domestic infrastructure. A lot of projects that were first built in the 1950s are in bad shape, and right now there's no domestic political appetite to invest in building roads and ports in Africa when there need to upgrade roads and ports in the United States. So that's not likely to happen. A second approach is this. If China is making a series of bad investments through a combination of poor planning and surplus cash, maybe the best thing for the United States to do is to simply let them. Each dollar spent on roads and railways in Africa is a dollar less spelt by the Chinese on military modernization. And if China ends up creating unsustainable debt in African countries, this is going to make the Chinese very unpopular as well. So that'll benefit the US. The problem here is that no one ever gets promoted by counseling strategic patients. There's always a pressure in Washington to do something. The problem is that a strategy which is long on lecturing Africans, that China's bad, you shouldn't take Chinese money, but which doesn't come with any additional African money, is likely to backfire. For one thing, the Chinese have already positioned themselves to say that the US is patronizing and paternalistic towards Africans. And by simply lecturing the Africans, we're playing into their hands. In addition, if we're not offering any loans and the Chinese are offering loans at some market, at some market prices, at the end of the day, African leaders are still going to take Chinese money. If we're not going to offer any additional money, we're not going to do anything other than make African leaders feel like the United States is being paternalistic. So if policymakers want to do something, but they're unwilling to match China's $60 billion pledge or even a $20 billion pledge, what options do they have? Well, instead of trying to match Chinese spending dollar for dollar, the United States could focus on what America does much better than the Chinese, namely soft power. Right now, China is seen primarily as a friend to African governments. And the United States could position itself as a friend to African citizens. The United States should expand its aid in two sectors where it can do the most good, health and education. Health is already a success story for the United States and Africa. The United States has saved over 17 million lives in Africa by fighting HIV AIDS alone. So the United States should continue to expand its investment in health spending, because this is a very good way to demonstrate our commitment to the lives of average Africans. In addition, we should expand our investment in education, both in the continent and in the United States. Right now, however, the United States is going in the wrong direction. The Chinese admit roughly 50,000 Africans a year, and they're increasing the number of African students who can study in China. The US had been admitting 40,000, and it's decreasing the number of foreign students they're letting in. If the Chinese are increasing their enrollments at a time when the US is cutting the number of foreign students, this is bad strategically. It's extremely short-sighted. The US is likely to lose influence if we fail to engage with the best and brightest young minds on the continent. If we want to gain the respect and trust of Africans, we have to earn it. And we cannot do that if we shut our doors. So my suggestion is this. Let the Chinese spend their money on African infrastructure. Let them build roads, bridges, dams, ports. Maybe this will benefit Africa, but it will largely make them, it will largely build ties between the Chinese government and African rulers. The United States can compete for influence by investing in the African people to build connections to tomorrow's leaders. This strategy will cost less money, and it may leave the United States much better off in the long term. Thank you for spending a few minutes with me today. I'm Nani Holseng. This has been NWC Talks, China and Africa.