{UAH} CHINA IS GETTING READY TO SURGE TROOPS INTO AFRICA

China is getting ready to surge troops into Africa

 

 

March 19, 2015

 

Chinese activities in Africa have expanded massively during the last decade. To be sure, most of this has been purely economic — such as bartering access to natural resources in exchange for loans.

But these money-making activities have grown so much in recent years, China is realizing it can't keep relying on African governments to protect them — and the thousands of Chinese nationals who've moved to the continent.

Beijing isn't giving up on making business deals in Africa. Far from it. It's just that protecting those economic ties is turning into a job for the Chinese military.

David Shinn, a former American ambassador to Ethiopia and Burkina Faso — and an expert on China-Africa relations — believes Chinese investment in Africa will slow down over the next 15 years.

But there's a catch. China's military will grow to take a more prominentrole. "The other sectors are pretty well advanced at this point, and the security connection is still relatively modest," Shin tells War Is Boring.

"Although it's grown a lot, particularly since the Chinese got involved in 2008 in the anti-piracy operation off Somalia," he adds. "That has significantly increased ship visits to Africa — and not just on the east coast — but throughout Africa."

China's economic growth and internal stability relies on free and open trade routes. In 2008, when Somali pirates began abducting merchant ships on a weekly basis — and jacking up insurance costs — China joined the international naval mission to stop the hijackers.

Since China's initial contribution to anti-piracy activities, the country greatly increased maritime cooperation in with Africa, holding exerciseswith Tanzania and providing warships to the Nigerian navy.

(U.S. Marine Corps/Courtesy War Is Boring)

Power projection

Officially, China abides by a strict hands-off policy when it comes to the internal affairs of other countries. And to be fair, Chinese intervention in Africa is nowhere near the scale practiced by the United States, France, and some African countries.

But Beijing hasn't followed this practice consistently. China is also becoming more assertive on the continent. It has to.

"With the growing numbers of Chinese living in Africa, they become more and more subject to negative incidents, just like Westerners," Shinn says. "[China is] finding that they have to be somewhat more innovative in the way that they protect their own interests and nationals on the continent."

Beijing has relied on local governments to handle security for Chinese nationals in Africa. But this approach has met its limits, Shinn explains.

When civil war broke out in Libya four years ago, Beijing had to evacuate 36,000 Chinese nationals living in the country. The long-time dictator Muammar Gaddafi wasn't willing or able to do it. And China certainly didn't want to ask Western powers to help rescue its citizens.

"China had to do the entire evacuation on its own without any assistance whatsoever," recalls Shinn. "That was a wake-up call for the Chinese."

"They didn't even know that they had 36,000 nationals in the country," he adds. "They did very well actually pulling it all of, but they realized that they were hopelessly unprepared for this sort of thing."

Then there's considerable economic interests. A prime example is the young nation of South Sudan. China procures about 5 percent of its oil imports from the east African country.

In 2013, South Sudan collapsed into civil war. China soon embarked on its first major military intervention in Africa — deploying 700 soldiers as part of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in South Sudan.

While China had far more peacekeepers deployed to Africa than any other four permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, the South Sudan mission is the first that explicitly includes Chinese combat troops.

The soldiers were part of an unprecedented level of Chinese engagement. Beijing's diplomats also took on the role of direct mediators between the warring parties.

 

 

EM

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