Is Your Relationship with China Better than Mine?

By Hannah Ryder, Deputy Country Director, United Nations Development Program China

Just a few weeks ago, my sister got married. The wedding was beautiful, her husband is an absolutely wonderful man from Uganda, and my two other sisters and I were bridesmaids. But there was one problem. I found myself comparing her wedding to mine seven years ago. Either thinking “Oh, I wish we had done our flowers like that” or “I wish we had practiced our first dance a bit more”. It was when I turned to my husband to tell him yet another comparison that he reminded me of a famous phrase first coined by Mark Twain in the late 1800’s: “comparison is the death of joy”. And in so many words, he helped me curb my comparative reflection.

But comparison is an easy trap to fall in, whether you’re an individual, group, country – and even a region. Here in China last week, comparison was in the air as the first ever meeting between Chinese government leaders and Ministers of CELAC – a group of 33 Latin American and Caribbean countries formed in 2011 – got underway. The comparison was with another region – Africa.

Translation Tuesday: China’s assistance to Africa is both “Brotherly Loyalty” and an international responsibility

By Zander Rounds

Translator: Zander Rounds
Published on: 10/27/2014

Author: Zhou Fei
Source: Huanqiu.com
Original text (in Chinese): http://mil.huanqiu.com/observation/2014-10/5180243.html

Based on years of conversations with friends, classmates and outspoken taxi drivers in China, it is clear that international aid is a bit of a hard sell here. In following article, the author Zhou Fei directly addresses a common criticism of international assistance: namely, if we still have so many domestic problems, why should we be sending money to far away places? In response, Zhou draws on both realist and constructivist logic: China must provide assistance due to both realist calculations of self-interest (helping others in order to help us) and the normative imperatives of brotherly loyalty and international responsibility. (In my opinion, the mixing of these weakens his argumentation). As China’s role in the world evolves, it is important to track how it presents itself not just to the outside world (here is a link to a piece by the same author on a similar subject) but to a domestic audience.

--- Zander Rounds (Translator)

Helping ourselves by helping Africa

Over the past few months, China has urgently assisted African countries battle Ebola through a series of efforts, including shipping supplies, dispatched experts and building labs. In doing so, China has become the world’s “forerunner” in fighting the disease, winning a bunch of praise in Africa and internationally.

Domestically, some people do not quite understand China’s African assistance policies: “The Guangzhou Dengue fever is still wreaking havoc, why are we running far away to go help Africa?” While this type of thinking may seem reasonable, it in fact is incomplete. Limited Epidemics have no borders—during this round of the Ebola’s violent “terrorist attack”, any one country would have difficulty protecting itself. The appearance of those afflicted by the disease in America and Spain are a testament to this.

Training as if China isn’t a Country

By Hannah Ryder, Deputy Country Director, United Nations Development Program China


One continent, many countries: Credit: 玖巧仔, 2009

Africa isn’t a country.

It’s an obvious statement but a while back, even American Vice President Joe Bidden forgot it when he said: “There's no reason the nation of Africa cannot and should not join the ranks of the world's most prosperous nations”.

Having worked in development for over ten years now, I think recognizing the wealth of diversity across the African continent - different languages, cultures, economics – is key. There is no way you can understand the different problems facing the continent – and required solutions – unless you recognize its wealth of diversity.

But working in China I now have the complete opposite problem: I now have to remind myself that while China is indeed a country, its scale and experience is not like that of any other country.

China is almost a continent.

The Chinese Aid White Paper: Beyond the Numbers (2/2)

Host Winslow Robertson continues his discussion with Ms. Marina Rudyak and Mr. Christian Straube on the Chinese white paper on foreign aid, released on July 10 of this. If you want to find out if Hu Jintao might be purged soon based on a VERY close reading of this document, or if you want to know more about the often opaque world of Chinese aid, this episode is for you!

Recommendations

• Marina Rudyak
• 对外援助管理办法（草案） by Ministry of Commerce of the People's Republic of China
• Capital Spirits Bar and Distillery Beijing
• Christian Straube
• Digital Archive for Chinese Studies by Heidelberg University
• Analysis of a social situation in modern Zululand by Max Gluckman

Brought to you by:

African Development Jobs

Mighty Mike

Producer:

Eliana Goldsher

The Same, but Different

By Hannah Ryder, Deputy Country Director, United Nations Development Program China



How to get a McDonalds in Beijing?  Get on a bike!
Credit: Augapfel, 2007

I’m entering into my fourth week here in Beijing, and one of the experiments I tried last weekend was to order a takeaway. I was tired from a very hectic week of meetings – that was my excuse anyway! But it turns out the process of getting a takeaway in Beijing is quite different from getting a takeaway in London or Nairobi – two other big cities I’ve lived in. In London or Nairobi in order to get a takeaway you usually need to phone the restaurant directly, and if they don’t offer a takeaway service then you either have to collect the food yourself or you have to try another restaurant. In contrast, here in Beijing, restaurants don’t generally offer takeaway services themselves. Instead, customers need to phone – and pay – a special company set up simply for the purpose of takeaway to pick up the order and deliver it to your home. That’s right in the language of economists Chinese restaurants effectively “outsource” their takeaway services.

Translation Tuesday: Chinese Medical Teams: 51 Years in Africa

By Laiyin Yuan

Author: Yang Zhenglian, Guo Linghe
Translator: Laiyin Yuan
Published on: 08/24/2014
Source: Guangming Daily
Original text (in Chinese): http://news.gmw.cn/2014-08/24/content_12734600.htm
Excerpt from (in Chinese): http://www.chinanews.com/gj/2012/04-20/3834799.shtml

In order to control the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, China recently sent out two teams of medical experts to Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and other countries to help improve local health capacity. Since the first Chinese medical teams sent to Africa in 1963, Chinese doctors who work in foreign lands have always maintained visibility. For 51 years, these respected, wonderful people travelled across land and sea, and treating many patients in 51 African countries. Healthcare has no borders, and love has no boundaries. These Chinese medical teams not only brought health to receiving countries, but also left extremely positive impressions of the Chinese nation.
--- Laiyin Yuan (translator)

A member of a Chinese medical team is teaching local doctors acupuncture. The teams promote Chinese traditional medical techniques to the outside world while providing treatment, and leave behind a tremendous healthcare legacy after they go back to China. 

The Chinese Aid White Paper: Beyond the Numbers (1/2)

The latest Chinese white paper on foreign aid was released on July 10. Looking at Chinese foreign assistance from 2010 to 2012, the paper reveals that China has given a cumulative total of $14.4 billion, half of which went to Africa. To get some more context on the white paper itself as well as the rhetoric behind the white paper, host Winslow Robertson asked Ms. Marina Rudyak and Mr. Christian Straube to come on the pod. Ms. Rudyak holds an M.A. in Modern and Classical Chinese Studies and Public Law from the University of Heidelberg. After graduating in 2009 with a thesis on the People’s Republic of China’s energy security policy in Central Asia she worked in the Beijing office of the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ). In April 2014, she re-joined the Institute of Chinese studies as an assistant to pursue her PhD on Chinese foreign aid and China’s role in international development. Christian Straube is a PhD candidate at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Germany. Mr. Straube runs the website http://www.christianstrau.be/ which looks at China's relations with copperbelt African countries. He also translates Chinese documents into English. They are lending their expertise to look carefully at the text of the white paper itself and its significance beyond the numbers.

Brought to you by:

African Development Jobs

Mighty Mike

Producer:

Eliana Goldsher

MOFCOM issues the draft "Measures for the Administration of Foreign Aid"

By Marina Rudyak

On April 18 2014, Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) of the People's Republic of China released on its webpage the "Measures for the Administration of Foreign Aid (Draft)" (对外援助管理办法（草案)).

Consisting of 51 articles, the Measures are the first comprehensive legal document with the character of a law to regulate Chinese government's foreign aid. Interestingly, following a practice already applied in preparation to the last Five Year Plan, MOFCOM was seeking comments and suggestions from the Chinese public. A reason for this might be the report by the Central Inspection Group (中央巡视组) which earlier this year stated that there is a big potential for corruption in China's foreign aid system, and violations among Chinese companies which implement Chinese aid are severe.

The Measures include provisions on aid policy planning, aid funds, aid modes, forms of aid projects, initiation, implementation and management of aid projects, management of foreign aid personnel and legal responsibilities. They do not cover humanitarian emergency relief and military aid.
For those following the transparency of Chinese development finance flows, Article 8 might be of special interest: it stipulates that MOFCOM shall set up a foreign aid statistics system ( 商务部建立中国政府对外援助统计制度，收集、汇总和编制对外援助统计资料).

There is also a new emphasis on impact and aid effectiveness (Chapter 6). This is something that hasn't been present in such an explicit way in previous aid-related legal documents like the two White Papers (2011 and 2014) or implementation guidelines for specific kinds of projects. Before initiating new projects, MOFCOM shall conduct feasibility studies and assess policy conformity, technical feasibility and the use of funds. This might hint to a learning process within the Chinese aid system and a silent rapprochement to some of the OECD DAC aid standards.

It remains clear, however, that the "Eight Principles of Foreign Aid" (1963) and the "Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence" (1954) are still valid, especially when it comes to aspect which is criticized in the Western development discourse on China: the mutual non-interference on domestic affairs (Article 5) ( 互不干涉内政 ).

The Measures, at least for the moment, give end to the speculations on whether the Chinese government might transfer foreign aid to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or create a specialized aid ministry or aid agency: according to Article 6,

MOFCOM is the designated body to implement foreign aid on behalf of the Chinese government. When the number provided on BBC Chinese Edition website are true, this is not surprising: 82% (21,1 Mrd. RMB) of MOFCOM's overall budget for 2014 (25,7 Mrd. RMB) are funds allocated for foreign aid. In a way, citing Chinese netizens, one could say that MOFCOM has already become the Aid Ministry.

So far, it is not clear whether the Measures are already effective and there is a possibility that their might be still some changes after the autumn party congress.

If you're interested in the detailed text, enjoy the translation I did for my research. Feel free to use and quote it for your work - but I would appreciate it if you would cite where it came from.
(And, also, if you have any suggestions for a better translation, please don't hesitate to write me).

This post first appeared on the China Aid Blog, Marina Rudyak’s exciting new blog that looks at China's internal debates on foreign aid.

Wait, so Structural Adjustment WORKED for Africa?

Katherine Kidder, writing on Tom Ricks' excellent blog, points to the importance of private rather than state-led investment into Africa (with a nice mention of Xiaofang Shen's recent talk at SAIS). She mentioned something of particular interest to me:

Link of the Day: Sweet and Sour: China in Africa, Beyond the Headlines

Sino-Africa scholar Deborah Brautigam has an interview with the University of Melbourne's Up Close program about her research. This caught my eye:

ERIC VAN BEMMEL
Yes, you’ve written about these infrastructure projects, promised but not delivered and they are getting beyond the memorandum of understanding, it's not always an easy thing. (Emphasis mine)
DEBORAH BRAUTIGAM
Exactly. Now, I would caution though about calling these promises or pledges. What we are talking about is a long series of negotiations for any kind of project, whether it's an investment or something that will be financed by a Chinese bank. So there's an initial memorandum of understanding and one expert who works on these issues, not just with regard to China but in Africa more generally, says that only about 3 per cent of any memorandum of understanding ever reach completion and actually become a project. So we are talking about a lot of companies, a lot of banks going around and having initial discussions about something and saying, yes, we are interested, but then getting to the final point where something actually happens is very difficult. One of the reasons is that these products demand feasibility studies. The Chinese bank doesn’t want to actually put the money up until it sees whether or not the project can repay the loan. So this has happened over and over again, the Chinese do a feasibility study and then they go, hmm, this product doesn’t look quite as profitable as it did in the beginning and we don’t think we are going to finance it or we don’t think we are going to invest in it and that's natural. That actually happens all the time and it happens all the time with western companies but it just doesn’t get the headlines because nobody is tracking western interest the way they are tracking Chinese interest. So it seems as though the Chinese are making promises and then not following up but I think it is much more realistic to look at this as the natural progression of negotiations on any kind of project. (Emphasis mine)
ERIC VAN BEMMEL
The lesson to be drawn here is we need to be sceptical about such agreements actually turning into projects. (Emphasis mine)
DEBORAH BRAUTIGAM
Yes, and that's not a new thing. It's not a new thing for the Chinese. It's not a new thing for us but we can't take a headline as an actual project and that's a point I would like to drive home. (Emphasis mine)

Also, if you are on twitter, I heartily recommend following Anne Sherman (@annesher07) who took some great photos of Guangzhou and it's African population and put them up on her instagram. Sherman is a Sino-Africa expert in her own right and the Social Media Manager for the The China Africa Project.

South-South Cooperation Part 1

Here are two stories that made me think of 'South-South Cooperation,' I phrase and idea of which I am deeply skeptical, but that is a tale for another day.

• Kathleen McLaughlin has been doing phenomenal work over at the Pulitzer Center looking at Chinese foreign health aid to Africa. I urge you to read every piece on the site. She looks at a very complicated set of issues with nuance and gets gets some great quotes from actors on the ground, exemplified in "Malaria: The Core of Every Ugandan Pharmacist's Business." I loved this piece for how it turned the narrative away from simply 'fake Chinese drugs' vs 'real wholesome (probably American) drugs' and instead tried to look at the issue of malaria more holistically. I mused a few days ago whether McLaughlin thinks China would respond to some of the fake drug criticism, and she herself answered me by linking to a piece she wrote which demonstrated Chinese officials are definitely thinking about the problem. As she says "Perhaps acknowledgement of the problem by official China, even in the form of defensiveness and denials, could lead to some changes. At the very least, we know they're talking about it." Agreed. One of the things I admire about China's interaction with African peoples is that they acknowledge (though not admit, necessarily) when things could be better. 

• As I was reading Bill Bishop's Sinocism newsletter today, I came across a delightfully lurid corruption story that caught my attention by Amy Li. It was not the rather banal act of entrapping an official (state or otherwise) by bribing them with sex, videotaping it, and blackmailing them, which at this point is old hat. No, rather it was this quote that I found fascinating:

The scandal involves US-listed technology company Agilent Technologies, which had been accused of bribing Zhang with sex service provided by male sex workers in a high-end Beijing club, said media reports. Some of the escorts were reported to be African.

In my experience, it is rather rare for a Chinese woman to enter into romantic relationships with black Africans. Out of the subset of Chinese women even willing to date a foreigner, which itself is rather small (no matter what some Fenqinq might say), there is but a tiny fraction of women who would even consider being with a black man, let alone a black African without the perks of an American or British passport. Obviously I am only speaking from anecdotal evidence, so feel free to correct me if I am wrong. So when I read that this woman was being tempted with sexual services from Africans, I felt that this was probably the most progressive instance of South-South Cooperation I was going to read for a while. That, or it was racialized slut-shaming.

With Friends Like These...

There was an interesting connection I noticed when reading over my tweeter feed today.

Tarila Marclint Ebiede, a PhD candidate in the political science department at KU Lueven, linked to this Reuters article about South Sudan wanting international support for a new airline and airport. There was a passage that caught my eye:

The new country will also need to bring in experts to help set up the airline, he said. He did not say how long it might take to get the airline running or name any of the potential investors.
The biggest carriers in the region include companies like Kenya Airways (KQNA.NR) and Ethiopian Airlines. South Sudan said last week China would provide a $158 million loan to help finish a new airport in Juba.
The work will be done by Chinese companies and supervised by South Sudan's transport ministry, Malek said.
"Once we're satisfied, we tell the minister of finance ... to tell the Chinese Axim Bank that this part of work has been done, you pay that company," he said.

That sounds like a really great deal for South Sudan, China, and the Chinese Exim Bank. If an American NGO wants to gain traction with African governments, perhaps the Enough Project should have chipped in some money. China did a masterful job of improving the, at times quite acrimonious, relationships with the people of Sudan and South Sudan.

I then came across a set of juicy quotes from the recent video interview with Malawian president Joyce Banda:

"China doesn't keep us waiting for two years. China will decide today and will go ahead. The next day you sign, and work starts … so, the choice for Africa is: do I want to have a road next year, or do I want to stay for two years discussing about human rights and governance before we can even talk about the road?"

These were broadcast by Tolu Ogunlesi, a first-rate journalist and a prolific tweeter. The video interview was made by Lucy Lamble, Nick Francis and Marc Francis, the latter two famous in Sino-Africa circles for their documentary "When China Met Africa." President Banda has a good relationship with the U.S., so for her to make such a blunt assessment of the difficulties in dealing with the U.S. and Europe when it comes to infrastructure projects is significant. 

The U.S. knows all too well that China offers very attractive aid and trade packages, it just stings when another leader acknowledges it. In the span of a week, China is agreeing to finance the completion of an airport in a country which does not hold the highest regard for the Chinese, and the president of a country friendly to the U.S. is pointing out just how the Americans are failing said country. I still believe the U.S. and China operate quite similarly in the African continent, but my view is not what matters. What President Banda thinks is what matters.

Reading: The Dragon's Gift

UPDATE: I finished finished reading Deborah Brautigam's The Dragon's Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa. I wrote an earlier post describing some of my initial thoughts and I just finished something a little more substantive.

Prof. Deborah Brautigam has written a text that should be on the shelf of anyone interested in Sino-African relations, plain and simple. Professor and Director of the International Development Program at Johns Hopkins University/School of Advanced International Studies, Brautigam has more than three decades of experience studying development, specifically African development, and she is one of the world's foremost experts on Sino-African relations, having been interested in Chinese aid projects to Africa since the 1980s. Looking primarily to debunk some of the more excessive stories being written about China's presence in Africa, she succeeds in that mission. However, she also either ignores or does not deal with evidence that contradicts her thesis, and she does both in a way that made me wary of her overall research. However, even with that said, her research and arguments are compelling enough to make up for those problems.