China still committed to Africa despite Covid-19 disruption, minister says

Pandemic’s economic impact is ‘temporary difficulty’, head of foreign ministry’s African department says before Forum on China-Africa Cooperation meeting
Strengthening cooperation with the continent ’will not waver’, he says, after slowdown in Chinese spending

China-Africa relations

Catherine Wong

Published: 7:55pm, 26 Nov 2021

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China will not scale back its investment in Africa, a Chinese diplomat said before a ministerial forum with the continent next week.

Beijing has become one of Africa’s largest creditors in recent years, lending hundreds of billions of dollars to governments to finance the bulk of their infrastructure. Africa is also home to a third of the countries that have signed up to China’s transcontinental infrastructure strategy, the Belt and Road Initiative.

But China’s dwindling appetite for large-scale investments, along with the Covid-19 pandemic, have led to a slowdown in Chinese spending in the continent.

Wu Peng, director general of the foreign ministry’s African affairs department, said on Friday that the Chinese government’s level of commitment to Africa remained the same.

“Africa experienced a relatively severe economic recession in 2020 because of the pandemic, but this is a temporary difficulty and we have already witnessed optimistic recovery in 2021,” Wu said.

“China’s confidence in strengthening cooperation with Africa will not waver because of the pandemic or the temporary economic slowdown. Our direction will not change. Our actions will not weaken.”

Wu was speaking in advance of a ministerial meeting of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, to be held in Senegal on Monday and Tuesday.

Chinese President Xi Jinping would announce “major initiatives” and plans for China-Africa cooperation in the next three years in a speech to be given online at the triennial summit, Wu said, indicating that the initiatives would cover health care and efforts to fight the pandemic, trade and investment, the digital economy and the environment.

Beijing also responded to concerns that China’s investment had created a “debt trap” for African nations when they struggled to repay loans, saying that such claims had “political motives”.

“The notion of a debt trap is a creation of Western governments and media,” said Wu Jianghao, the assistant foreign minister.

Asked about competition with the United States in the region, Wu said that China welcomed involvement from other major powers but Africa should not become a point of rivalry between powers.

How much debt has the Belt and Road Initiative accrued, and what’s next?

“We are happy that China’s involvement in Africa has attracted more countries into devoting more attention to the region,” Wu said. “We are open to such involvement and this is our common responsibility.

“But this should not become an arena for great power rivalry,” he said, adding that China was open to working with other countries in investing in Africa.

At a special summit in June 2020, Xi announced that China would exempt certain African countries from interest owed on loan payments due before the end of that year.

Between 2013 and 2018, 45 per cent of China’s foreign aid went to Africa, according to statistics released by the Chinese foreign ministry.

Chinese investments in the 138 countries involved in belt and road projects dropped 54 per cent year on year to US$47 billion last year – the lowest total since the initiative began in 2013, according to Green BRI, a China-based think tank.

In Africa, Chinese bank financing for infrastructure projects fell from US$11 billion in 2017 to US$3.3 billion in 2020, according to a report by international law firm Baker McKenzie.