CHINA-AFRICA PEACE AND SECURITY COOPERATION IN NEW ERA: INNOVATING ON PUBLIC PRODUCTS SUPPLY FOR INTERNATIONAL SECURITY

ZHANG CHUN

Research Fellow and Director, Institute for Foreign Policy Studies,Shanghai Institutes for International Studies

Over the past fifty years and more, major changes have occurred to China-Africa peace and security cooperation in content as well as in importance. In studying China-Africa peace and security cooperation, though mainly observed from the prospective of protecting China’s legitimate overseas interest, it is more significant to explore China’s innovation on concepts and modes of supplying public goods for international security. It is due to the fact that only by innovating on concepts and modes of supplying public goods can it advance interest of others while advancing that of one’s own so as to truly construct a still closer community with a shared future between China and Africa.

New Challenges Facing Peace and Security in Africa

Since the outset of the second decade of the 21st century, a series of new changes have happened to challenges facing peace and security in Africa, which raises new demand for China-Africa peace and security cooperation and for China’s participation in supplying public goods for international security. In concrete terms,new challenges for African peace and security fall into six areas.

First of all, traditional threats to security are on the decrease whereas on the societal plane bottom up security threats have rapidly come up to become main threats. According to data provided by several databanks that closely follow the trends of violent incidence, since the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century there has been a trend of“one up and one down” in African security situation namely bottom up societal security challenge is on the rise whereas top down structural security challenge is on the decline. For example, according to the counting of Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), the two types of top down violence of combats between traditional armed groups and their violence against civilians decreased from 81% in 2010 to less than 50% in 2017, a drop of over 30 percentage points whereas at the same time, various bottom up riots, protests and other societal violence increased from 18.9%to 52%, seriously corroding government legitimacy and being highly harmful to innocent people in the society. The latter security threats are more complicated and more difficult to resolve.

During the 2018 Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation,President Xi Jinping committed to jointly building a China-Africa community with a shared future that enjoys common security and championed a new vision of security featuring common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security. The picture shows Chinese President Xi Jinping delivering a keynote speech titled “Work Together for Common Development and a Shared Future”at the opening ceremony of the 2018 FOCAC Beijing Summit on Sept. 3rd, 2018. (Photo source: Xinhua News Agency)

Secondly, in Africa’s electoral politics,a long-term change has happened to“politics of loser”, from “chaos in every election” to “troubles of winner”. It should be admitted that Africa’s democratization has long faced the problem of ill acclimatization, easily leading to the phenomenon of “chaos in every election”: it is more often than not that the losing side in the election will neither recognize nor accept its defeat but resort to all means to resist it, a phenomenon known as “politics of loser”, which used to be characterized traditionally by three aspects being illegal, violent and with outside support. However, since 2015 and 2016, changes have happened to Africa’s“politics of loser”, namely, constitutionality, non-violence and exclusion of outside intervention becoming typical characteristics, resulting in the fact that the winner in election has to conduct long-term political dialogue with the loser at the long-term cost of the country’s governance and development.

The 2018 FOCAC Beijing Summit stresses its support for African countries to participate in jointly building the “Belt and Road” and expresses the aspiration to enhance synergy with African countries on all fronts. African countries are fully confident in participating in the building of the “Belt and Road”. The picture shows the grand opening of the 2018 FOCAC Beijing Summit at the Great Hall of the People on Sept.3rd, 2018. (Photo source:Xinhua News Agency)

Thirdly, ethnic conflicts are turning from violent confrontation to peaceful separation, threatening solidarity and unity of African countries. Most of the politicians are yet to see this trend of changing influence mechanism in security. Roughly taking “the Arab Spring”of 2011 for demarcation line, “wanting to develop” was the core of ethnic conflicts in the period before 2011 whereas“wanting to be equal” has become more important afterwards. In another word,a more equal share of development results has become the core concern of ethnic and tribal politics. This change in demand, in addition to still profound memories of ethnic conflicts, has led most of the ethnic conflicts to turn from violent conflicts to peaceful separation.The virtual independence of Somaliland, the legal separation of Eritrea and that of South Sudan all have provided ethnic separatism with justification,likely to produce diffusion effects.

Fourthly, the self-awareness of Africa in its own security affairs is on the increase, which promotes structural change in security partnerships in Africa. It boils down in three aspects, first change for African independence in terminology from “African Solutions to African Problems” to “African Centric Approach”, second rising independence for the African Union to finance its own security action, especially the expectation of reaching the goal of at least 25%budget for AU peace security actions raised by Africans by 2020, and third,rapid growth of various sub-regional initiatives for security cooperation, for example the coalition forces of four African countries to combat Boko Haram,the G5 Sahel cooperation mechanism and the list goes on. Because of their own economic difficulties, the United States and Europe have availed themselves of the opportunity of rising African security independence to cut back on financial support for African peace and security projects, especially on direct assistance from multilateral bodies such as the United Nations.

Fifthly, with population growing fast,Africa may be under great population pressure before it enjoys population dividend. Africa takes the first place in the world in terms of population growth and it is expected that its population will grow by another 50% by 2035, that is, from 1.2 billion in 2017 to 1.8 billion.But it also means that the government will have to make colossal expenditure on education, medical and other basic services. On current projection, as population grows faster than economy does,it is very likely that African poverty will be still more complicated. Even if Africa as a whole can maintain an annual growth rate of 4% on the average,by 2035, there will be 170 million more Africans living in extreme poverty (less than US$1.9 per day) than today. To make the situation more serious, the African population dividend will not arrive any time soon, no sooner than 2070 as generally anticipated or maybe even later.

Sixthly, the trend of militarization of Africa policy by major Western countries will be further strengthened, which makes Africa’s peace and security governance more difficult. As their capacity of military action in Africa is affected by the global financial crisis of 2008, major Western countries endeavor to develop their comparative competitiveness especially in peace and security area in face of rapid development of emerging countries and that of China-Africa relations in particular. Not only did the United States announced in 2007 and officially set up in October 2008 the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM), it has also developed the so-call 3D (Defense,Development and Diplomacy) Strategy.Besides, it is also obvious that France has militarized its Africa policy and that construction of military bases in the Red Sea region by major countries and Mideast countries also accelerates.

Innovation on China-Africa Pease and Security Cooperation

As peace and security in Africa face new challenges, it is, to a large degree,necessary to effectively meet the situation by innovating on supplying public goods for international security. On the one hand, security challenges to Africa call for new concepts and modes of supplying public goods. On the other,the concepts and modes of militarizing supply of public goods for international security as represented by the United States and Europe evidently are not helpful in meeting the challenges, let alone resolving the problems. China has always attached great importance to innovating on peace and security cooperation with Africa. At the 2018 Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, President Xi Jinping once again emphasized on building a China-Africa community with a shared future that enjoys common security and included peace and security in his eight major initiatives.

The most important contribution to supplying public goods for international security by China-Africa peace and security cooperation is to present new concepts.

First, it stands for the concept of giving priority to development. Peace and development have all along been two major challenges facing mankind, being also the main theme and proposition of the times. As to how to meet both challenges, solutions differ from country to country, which can be divided by two routes, “priority to development” and“priority to security”. China has adopted the approach of “priority to development”, giving priority to jump starting economic development, followed by meeting existing and newly engendered security challenges and promoting development on a higher plane with results of development in a synchronized way, so as to put in place a benign circle of “development-security-more development-more security”. The experience of reform and opening up in the past forty years attests to the fact that China’s road is successful and effective.In comparison, many African countries that enjoyed development conditions far better than China in the 1970s have adopted the approach of “priority to security”. The experience of past forty years proves that they have been less effective than China. It is precisely in this sense that President Xi Jinping rightly pointed out that “development holds the master key to solving all problems”.

Second, it stands for the concept of sustainability. China is a major country with a continued civilization of 5000 years, having always held a more comprehensive and holistic concept of international peace and security. Since the end of Cold War, it has promoted a new vision of security. At the 2018 Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, President Xi Jinping further extended the above new vision and was committed to joint construction of a China-Africa community with a shared future that enjoys common security, calling for a new vision of security featuring common, comprehensive,cooperative and sustainable security.A core objective of China-Africa peace and security cooperation is to achieve sustainability: first to realize “sustainable transformation” from conflict to stability and second to move on from stability to “sustainable development” of peace and development.

Third, it stands for the concept of localization. China has constantly gone by the principle of non-interference of internal affairs, firmly supporting African countries and regional organizations such as the African Union in solving African issues in the African way, and playing a constructive but non-leading role in Africa’s peace and security affairs. For instance, at the 2018 Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, President Xi Jinping was committed to cooperative projects with Africa on peace and security, supporting the African initiative of “Silence the Guns in Africa” and supporting African countries to strengthen their independent capacity for safeguarding stability and peace, all in fact were ideas of Africans themselves. For another instance,to promote peace process in South Sudan, China made a special initiative to hold “a special consultation in support of the IGAD-led peace process in South Sudan” in January 2015.

On top of innovation on concepts, China-Africa peace and security cooperation has also made quite a number of innovations on concrete modes and measures,innovations of important bearings on exploring new type of delivery of public goods for international security.

First, it goes by equal treatment. In conducting peace and security cooperation with Africa, major Western countries tend to differentiate the former into conflict countries, post conflict countries under reconstruction and countries in transition and give differential treatment accordingly, which is liable to give rise to over simplification of policy by security, differentiation and even morality.In comparison, going by the basic principles of “non-interference into internal affairs of other countries” and “all countries being equal”, China will not classify countries by their conditions of development or security situation and even less adopt a differential policy towards them,this mode helping various countries meet concrete security challenges in a more objective and effective way.

Second, it goes by interconnected governance. Africa’s peace and security challenges are not simply pure or traditional peace and security issues but a product of intermingled political,economic, security and social issues.Based on the thinking of interconnected development, that is emphasizes by it, China-Africa peace and security cooperation is more likely to adopt the mode of interconnected governance,paying close attention to interconnection between security, society, development and governance. For instance,the 2018 Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation launched eight major initiatives, providing solutions to many a root cause issue, such as supporting Africa in achieving general food security by 2030, capacity building initiative, people-to-people exchange initiative, all of which may greatly alleviate challenges on Africa like population and youth unemployment. Even under the section of peace and security cooperation in the action plan, there are not only traditional security issues like military, police and anti-terrorism but also governance ones like anti-corruption,consular affairs, immigration, judiciary and law-enforcement.

Third, it stands for mechanisms of governance. Compared to traditional major countries, China-Africa peace and security cooperation is just at the beginning. A remarkable achievement of the 2018 Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation is to spur China-Africa peace and security cooperation to develop fast towards mechanisms of governance, including decision on establishing China-Africa Peace and Security Fund, China-Africa Peace and Security Forum and China-Africa Law-Enforcement and Security Forum and on continuing to improve mechanism building of FOCAC-Legal Forum and encouraging and assisting joint construction of China-Africa centers for legal studies and judicial training centers between Chinese and African universities.

Future Direction of China-Africa Peace and Security Cooperation

It has not been long for China-Africa peace and security cooperation to be in place. Furthermore, China’s understanding of African security situation is yet to go in depth. Therefore it may be necessary for existing efforts on cooperation to continue to be readjusted and optimized so as to lay a more solid foundation for shaping new concepts and modes of supplying public goods for international security.

First, it is necessary to make clear the guiding idea for China-Africa peace and security cooperation. As afore mentioned, major innovation has been made on concepts for China-Africa peace and security cooperation, which is yet to be systemic and clear-cut so as to become a guiding philosophy. As China-Africa peace and security cooperation goes in depth, a kind of security concepts that fit local agenda and sustainable development, or in another word, “a local and sustainable development-led vision of security” will gradually emerge. It is necessary to conduct further theoretic and academic analysis and to timely summarize policy and practice.

Second, it is necessary to optimize the strategic sequence of China-Africa peace and security cooperation. First of all, it is necessary to proceed from longterm sustainable transformation and development and to stress on helping Africa develop and improve all types of early warning and responding mechanisms, especially focusing on nurturing anti-terrorism capacity and peacekeeping capacity. Secondly, it is necessary to embed China-Africa peace and security cooperation in African mechanisms by supporting Africa in building peace and security mechanisms, that includes supporting Africa in mechanism building process for regional and sub-regional peace and security frameworks, supporting and financially assisting the early establishment of an African quick reaction force, supporting and financially assisting the construction of a training center for African peacekeeping forces and promoting the construction of a system for division of labor and cooperation between African regional and sub-regional organizations on peace and security affairs. Thirdly, it is necessary to promote mid and long-term transformation of African peace and security thinking through concrete cooperative projects, for instance to help shape“peace culture” as called for by United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development through helping Africa realize the initiative of “Silence the Guns in Africa” and prevent the proliferation of small and light weapons.

Third, it is necessary to improve structure and mechanisms for China-Africa peace and security cooperation and raise the effectiveness of policy implementation. First of all, it is necessary to interface various mechanisms,of which the core is to organically interface UN 2030 Agenda and AU 2063 Agenda with security concerns of China and various African countries. Therefore, it is necessary on the basis of existing initiatives for mechanisms to study the feasibility of establishing mechanisms such as joint Chinese-African foreign and defense ministerial conference, China-Africa-UN dialogue on peace and security, China-Africa liaison group on peace and security affairs and various pertinent technical and expert committees. Secondly, it is necessary to build early warning and crisis management mechanisms. It serves supporting Africa in building early warning system and improving China’s capacity in protecting its legitimate overseas interest in Africa to promote China-Africa joint construction of mechanisms for early warning, intelligence and information sharing, crisis responding and conflict management. Thirdly, it is necessary to set up mechanisms for concrete policy implementation and support, for instance mechanism of coordination between foreign and security departments,mechanism of intellectual support from think tanks and universities and mechanism for enterprise participation.Fourthly, it is necessary to put in place mechanisms for trilateral cooperation.As bilateral cooperation between China and Africa may not be sufficient, it will be a mid and long-term key project to introduce other third parties like the United Nations and others to jointly promote peace and security in Africa.

Fourth, it is necessary to set up a single financial support system for China-Africa peace and security cooperation.As peace and security affairs cover many areas, it is liable to give rise to phenomena of dispersion of financial support,mutual competition and even mutually making excuses. As China has already announced to set up China-Africa Peace and Security Fund, it is necessary to give systemic considerations prior to its founding on coordination, division of labor, source and usage of resources and to consider setting up sub-funds within the fund for special subjects in order to support key projects such as supporting Africa to build standing army, building norms of population security and nurturing China-Africa peace talents.