China’s ‘Noninterference’ Approach to International Cooperation

A corruption scandal erupts somewhere in Africa. Within days, several Western donors threaten to cut assistance. Pressure on the partner government is meant to provoke a swift solution of the case as well as broad governance reforms. China silently continues its alliance with the African government. This scenario could be ripped from the headlines – and China’s role in it illustrates an approach to international cooperation that has long raised concerns in policy and aid experts around the globe, especially in the United States and Europe. China has come under fire for supporting Zimbabwean strongman Robert Mugabe, though recently, Chinese officials have insisted the African country settle its arrears before receiving more aid from Beijing. China was criticized in 2007 for its $5 billion loan to Angola in exchange for oil concessions and infrastructure contracts. China’s $9 billion mining and infrastructure partnership with the Democratic Republic of Congo elicited concerns from the International Monetary Fund in 2008 because it significantly raised DRC’s international debt. China may be “learning the limitations of noninterference,” Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt and Andrew Small wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine in early 2008. The country may, in the words of the authors, have “found noninterference increasingly unhelpful as it learns the perils of tacitly entrusting its business interests to repressive governments.” But it is still true that China’s foreign policy has for the longest time been based on the notion that it would not interfere in a partner country’s internal affairs. China “won’t follow the West in imposing economic sanctions on” Zimbabwe and Sudan, said Deborah Brautigam, professor at the American University’s School of International Service and author of “The Dragon’s Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa.” “These are places,” Brautigam continued, “that are very problematic with very poor governance and perhaps sanctions would help to improve the situation, although sanctions don’t really have a good track record for getting countries to change” such as in the case of Cuba, Myanmar and even China, on which the U.S. slapped a 20-year embargo from 1949. Chinese officials are aware that the country’s aid practice draws frowns. But some of the comments about China’s motives in engaging with Africa, according to one Chinese official, are unjust. In a speech during the symposium on Africa-China Relations at Syracuse University on April 8, Du Xiaocong, counselor of the Chinese permanent mission to the United Nations, acknowledged accusations that China was practicing neocolonialism in Africa and should be considered a threat to the continent. “I can give you a typical example,” he said. “When a politician from Europe made a speech in Africa, he bluntly pronounced that what China is doing in Africa is the same as what his ancestors did several hundred years ago, and China is repeating the mistake that European colonial countries used to make. To my understanding, he is either demonizing China’s policy toward Africa aimed at undermining China-Africa relations on purpose or at least was distorted by prejudice and underestimate the wisdom and judgment of Chinese and African peoples.” For Brautigam, China is more consistent in its approach to foreign assistance than many Western donors. She cited the example of Afghanistan, which receives massive aid from Western nations yet is also one of the world’s most corrupt countries, and oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, where many U.S. energy companies operate. The Chinese, meanwhile, apply the principle of noninterference almost everywhere, she said. “I would have more respect for our [the U.S. and other Western nations’] approach, if we applied it equally everywhere,” she added. “We do not because of political reality.” When asked by a reporter in September what he tells Western diplomats who question China’s continued aid to countries with poor human rights and governance records, Chen Deming, China’s commerce minister, said he stresses that “the social and cultural systems are different and the development path and political regimes are diversified and there is no one single way.” >> China’s Aid Approach in Africa Evolving, Minister Says Zhan Shu, Chinese ambassador at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Department of African Affairs, ascribed his country’s approach to international cooperation to Chinese culture, which to him promotes “appeasement until we reach the consensus, but we are not rushing.” “If we are asked, for instance by EU or by Sudan, or by countries like Zimbabwe and so on, so forth, then we will go there and share with them what we think. But [it is] not necessary they have to listen to us,” Zhan Shu told Devex in May during the Africa: 53 Countries, One Union conference organized in Bologna by the Foundation for World Wide Cooperation. “They can share with us, and I think it is quite good that we listen to them, and we speak out what we think. But it is not necessary that any [opinion] should be adopted.” Coming up in Part 3 of 5 in our feature on China’s international assistance strategy: China moves to improve the transparency of its development assistance in talks with the EU and other partners. Read more: - CHINA’S FOREIGN AID STRATEGY PART 1: Western Donors Embrace China for African Development - CHINA’S FOREIGN AID STRATEGY PART 3: China Moves to Enhance Aid Transparency - CHINA’S FOREIGN AID STRATEGY PART 4: In Africa, China Expands Aid Priorities - CHINA’S FOREIGN AID STRATEGY PART 5: Partnership Opportunities in Chinese Development Cooperation