Africa and US-China Rivalry: Between Webs and Bases

The rivalry between the US and China has expanded beyond the borders of either state to include competing for influence abroad. In the past, great power rivalry played out in both constructive and destructive ways in the Global South. However, the starting point of this chapter is that in order to understand the extent to which US–China rivalry impacts Africa in negative or positive ways, it is important to unpack the main areas and tools of influence that China has advantage over the US in. This chapter focuses its analysis on party-to-party diplomacy as an area of China’s foreign policy making in Africa, which is characterized by a relational approach centering mechanisms of social/human capital and professional network-building. This relational, network-building, approach is one of the fundamental differences between China’s approach in Africa and that of the US. The latter’s presence in the continent has mostly been focused on counterterrorism efforts while China has invested in relations with elites, government officials, and civil servants. Even more, as scholars of relationality and guanxi have argued, building social capital and putting a premium on expanding personal and professional networks between Chinese elites and their African counterparts are vital to understanding both the advantages and pitfalls of Chinese foreign policy making in Africa. Taking into account the global picture of China–Africa relations and building on robust scholarly work done in the field, this chapter starts from the observation that China’s presence (its influence and power) in Africa comes not only from Chinese investments in physical infrastructure buildings (as seen in the construction of ports, parliaments, and presidential palaces) but that it is also produced and manufactured through the creation of platforms for exchanging expertise which also serve as elite capture mechanisms.