The 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China concluded its third plenary session in Beijing last week, which brought together the party's top leadership.
CGTN Radio's China Africa Talk (CAT) interviewed Professors Charles Onunaiju (CO) director of the Centre for China Studies in Nigeria and Liu Baocheng (LB) director of Centre of International Business Ethics, University of International Business and Economics, on the importance of the session's resolutions to Africa.
CAT: Why is this year's third plenum important to Africa?
CO: Africa has quite an extensive economic cooperation with China. Africa can leverage the opportunity of more diversified ownership.
The communiqué of the plenary session consolidated on the more diversified ownership of the means of production, providing level playing field for all manner of ownership.
Africa is growing middle-scale manufacturing. China is opening more market-related reforms, in which all tiers of ownership can play an important role. It offers Africa access to engage more robustly and efficiently in Chinese market with broad institutional incentive for development.
It is a boon for Africa, like Africa has just had the largest trading platform AfCFTA-African free continent trade.
The Chinese market, the single largest market of any country in the world, offers complementarity to the existence of AfCFTA, and the plenary session has consolidated on the efficiency and outlined critical incentives.
China has committed to opening up and deepening reforms, which means a greater opportunity for the world and for Africa, for whom the global market is an important aspect of building a high economy. It is my hope that African countries should leverage this opportunity. African countries will be gathering in Beijing for the Summit of the China-Africa Cooperation Forum. I believe there will be more outlines on cooperation prospects.
If you combine the cooperation prospects with what had been offered at the third plenum of the 20th Central Committee of the CPC, it means a greater opportunity for Africa to engage more robustly to boost their national aggregates.
Opportunities offered by China's deepening reforms and modernisation can only be leveraged by conscious efforts on the part of Africa to embrace the opportunity. So, it is my hope that Africa paid due attention to that process and made significant, takeaways from its outcome.
LB: Both in the communiqué and resolution, China has renewed its commitment to the Belt and Road Initiative. China is committed to bringing a balance between the landmark projects versus small and beautiful projects in Africa. So, for the last 15 years, China has been the largest trading partner of Africa by invigorating the Chinese market economy, reducing tariff barriers, and unifying the standard of the Chinese domestic market.
China is also stepping up a number of funds like China-Africa Development Fund and Silk Road Funds. They are there to enhance capacity building for Africa, in which the traditional collaboration in the mining industry, and also in the agricultural industry will be further expanded to a digital collaboration and also low carbon collaboration.
In the coming FOCAC this year, we are going to see a lot more positive activities take place between China and Africa.
CAT: What does China's opening up mean to Africa?
CO: China's opening up has been an ongoing process in the whole course of our reform since the last 45 years or more.
China has filled an important historic gap in African engagement with international partners.
Since the early 2000s, China has also generated a lot of opportunities for Africa. We are seeing gradual re-industrialisation of Africa and modernisation of African agriculture courtesy of China.
LB: The Chinese business community and the Chinese government are enthused in helping Africa. The Chinese business community is interested in dealing with trade, investment and capacity building.
But Africa should create a conducive environment in terms of peace and security. Over the past 70 years, there has been more geopolitical confrontation, such as civil war, and that can be disturbing to investors and traders.
The Chinese business community look up to the continental free trade agreement. Hopefully, they can streamline some policies of those more than 15 members. Because without a transparent and coherent policy to attract investment, to deal with trade; both in terms of tariff and non-tariff barriers, people will not have high commitment in engaging and working with Africa.
The other one is agility. So, the African business community must be agile to capture opportunities like the Chinese telephone market, or the e-vehicles. They must be able to take more initiative in dialogue with Chinese business partners in making the right type of proposals. So, they can capture some of the opportunities that are present to the development, both in Africa and China.
CAT: How does China's determination to shift to green energy affect the African continent, especially the economic dynamics?
LB: Under this new era, a balance between economic growth versus environmental quality has been given greater importance. That is pointing to the livelihood of the people. It is not only expressed in economic income, but in the quality of the air they breathe, the quality of water and the quality of food. China is highly committed to the carbon peaking and carbon neutrality agenda; to contribute to addressing the climate change issues on a worldwide basis.
Africa has a rapid urge for rapid industrialisation. One big opportunity that lies in Africa is that there is no sophisticated telecom network in the landlines. But now you can really use the mobile phones dealing with wi-fi, connecting with satellites. This leapfrog type of opportunity is really available for the energy generation in Africa, because China produces more than 90 percent of the solar panels as compared with the rest of the world. So there is a high incentive for Chinese, the businesspeople to ship more of the solar panels to engage in power generation in Africa without sophisticated power grids. People can have access to a light to the powerful industrialisation.
The other is digitalisation, because with more of the digital technologies available, people know how to monitor the quality of air and pollution from industrial projects. Communities can also come up with more participation in key decisions of major projects.
CAT: What does Africa need to do and think about to benefit from China's goal of advancing Chinese modernisation?
CO: Africa should be deliberate about these opportunities and building capacity. One important thing is to have aspirations to engage opportunities. But another is, if you have the capacity, did you build capacity? Did you create a prerequisite policy? We just have the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA), but you must create harmony. You must build institutional coherence. You must build capacity to address critical issues, tariffs, non-tariffs, point of origin, where it goes. If you have divergent, conflicting policies with individual African countries within AfCFTA, it is of no help to attract foreign investment.
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Opportunities are not given. You have to walk through it, you have to do institutional reforms. At various levels, we need to coordinate, we need to strengthen market efficiency. These are all what it takes. China provides these opportunities, but they have to be liberated through deliberate policy choices on the side of African governments.
CAT: What can we expect moving forward in terms of policies in Africa?
CO: If you look at the African policy calendar, we have had what we call lost decades, lost years and all that. I believe that to develop relevant policy platforms, to engage the opportunities, it is required for more understanding of the challenges of Africa, more understanding of important issues at stake.
How do we make businesses thrive? You need smart, slimmer institutions, less corruption, so that the cost of doing business can be reasonably reduced, and the benefits more broadly shared.
So, I think in African policy circles, more needs to be done. We still have policies that are handed down by international financial organisations, mostly Western-based; the World Bank, the IMF (International Monetary Fund). We have them still dictating policy choices.
CAT: For China, how does the third plenum shape its future?
LB: Since the inception of the People's Republic of China 75 years ago, modernisation has been the Chinese dream.
China is firm in working with Africa, so this way, we are able to shape the realisation of the Chinese dream by revitalising the Chinese glory. We are also able to contribute to the building of the community with a shared future with the rest of the world, particularly now with the global south.
