There is nothing wrong with Africa’s heads of state being interested in investment from China. Germany and the EU are also trying to attract foreign investors and are willing to accommodate them if offered. But Xi had the full attention of those present in the Great Hall of the People when he promised the participants at the China-Africa Forum in Beijing 45 billion euros.
It is striking how openly interested Africa’s representatives are in fresh loans, writes Andreas Sieren. But China’s messages also concealed the announcement of a change of course: Xi emphasized the creation of new jobs in Africa. This has so far hardly happened. China delivered its goods to Africa, taking raw materials with it instead of building new manufacturing plants. This has been widely criticized in the recipient countries. Xi is now changing course here.
The arrest of artist Gao Zhen highlights the mounting pressure on artistic freedom in China, as Fabian Peltsch writes. Art that criticizes socialist leaders, such as the sculptures by the Gao brothers, is increasingly the target of state repression. Although there have been restrictions before, they are becoming much worse under Xi Jinping than under previous leaders since Mao.
The Chinese government is also trying to suppress dissident art abroad, while figures such as Gao Zhen and Australia-based Badiucao continue to resist. In doing so, they are drawing international attention to the state of freedom of expression in Chinese society.
The ninth China-Africa Summit comes to an end in Beijing on Friday. The meeting between representatives of 53 African countries and Xi Jinping and other top Chinese leaders is considered a resounding success for China. Xi promised Chinese investments worth 360 billion yuan (45 billion euros) over the next three years, as well as at least one million jobs in Africa. Xi said that Sino-African relations were at a high point.
China is winning over Africa with a combination of money and respect. Especially now, Xi can achieve a lot for his geopolitical goals by using the right levers: The Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (Focac) is taking place against the backdrop of changing geopolitical conditions. The Global South, including Africa, wants a greater say in the world and is supported by China in this endeavor.
China, in turn, is striving to return to the world’s center stage. The future of the world is also being decisively shaped in Africa. Paul Frimpong, Director of the Ghana-based Africa-China Centre for Policy and Advisory, told the BBC that Western powers – as well as the oil-rich Gulf states – are trying to match China’s influence in Africa. “There is a keen interest and competition in and around what Africa’s potential is.”
China has been Africa’s largest trading partner for the past 15 years, with trade reaching another all-time high of 282 billion US dollars in 2023. But the actual picture is more mixed. Trade relations are characterized by a severe deficit at Africa’s expense. Africa is also regularly criticized for not speaking with one voice vis-à-vis China.
However, the same can be said of Europe, where Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has tried to determine Brussels’ China policy single-handedly and without consulting EU member states.
The African Union (AU), which represents twice as many countries as the EU, is also still busy with many political development projects, such as the establishment of the African Free Trade Area. In a bilateral meeting with Xi, the Chairman of the AU Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, noted that he has “witnessed the rapid growth of AU-China relations” during his eight years in office and thanked China for its “valuable assistance.” But not only pleasantries were exchanged. The Africans ask ever more bluntly: “What’s in for us?”
African presidents used the time before the summit for bilateral state visits with Chinese President Xi Jinping. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa already met with Xi on Monday. Both spoke of a meeting of “great importance,” which focussed on mutual investments between the two economies. Ramaphosa had already praised the good relations between South Africa and China in the run-up to the meeting.
But Ramaphosa also had a clear message: “We would like to narrow the trade deficit and address the structure of our trade,” said the President. “We were encouraged by the inward procurement mission of Chinese companies last year. We urge for more sustainable manufacturing and job-creating investments.”
Xi announced that bilateral relations would be elevated to a “new era of comprehensive strategic partnership.” Specifically, Ramaphosa highlighted the energy sector, which the country in the Cape hopes to revolutionize with renewable energies and green hydrogen and gain China as a partner in the process.
The call comes in the same week that Rainer Baake, Germany’s Special Envoy for the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) with South Africa, and Jennifer Morgan, Secretary of State for Climate Action, are attempting to forge similar cooperation in Pretoria. However, they came with more good advice than money in their pockets.
Kenyan President William Ruto also met with Xi. He, too, emphasized the potential of cooperation in the energy sector: “Our continent possesses 60 percent of renewable energy globally. Combining our renewable energy resources and renewable energy technologies from China will be a win-win outcome,” Ruto said in an interview with the state-affiliated Chinese news agency Xinhua.
However, his long wishlist included key infrastructure projects that he would like to progress with Chinese funding, including the extension of the Mombasa-Nairobi railway line to Uganda and the Rironi-Nakuru-Mau Summit Expressway, also to the Ugandan border.
During his meeting with Xi, Félix Tshisekedi, President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, emphasized that FOCAC “has provided an important opportunity for African countries to realize their development dreams.” He added that China is a “reliable and committed partner in the development of the African continent.” Ultimately, he also wanted new loans. The heads of state and government of Ethiopia, Nigeria and Senegal, who met with Xi, expressed similar sentiments.
The joint declaration adopted today will set the direction for the next three years. This is because the summit is only held every three years. In the eyes of Cobus van Staden, co-founder of the China-Global South Project, China is trying to underline its status as a developing country and signal solidarity with Africa and the rest of the global South. “It avoids the dreariness of the US and EU’s ongoing aid focus with its attendant conditionality and preaching,” says van Staden.
That goes down well in Africa. But in the end, the only thing that counts is how many jobs the Chinese create in Africa. And the Chinese know the game perfectly well. Three decades ago, they also started forcing Western manufacturers to produce more and more products for the Chinese market in China. This is why Xi specifically emphasized the one million jobs figure in his speech.
The state continues to intimidate China’s artists through a series of arrests and threats. These incidents show that the leadership cares less than ever about the advantages of a free society. Meanwhile, criteria for the evaluation of art that were believed to have been overcome are returning to the fore: Maintaining respect for socialist leaders and social stability.
As became known earlier this week, renowned artist Gao Zhen 高兟 was arrested in China in late August. Gao’s wife, who was about to travel to New York with their son, was also arrested in China last Tuesday. Gao Zhen has held a US Green Card since 2011 and his son was born there. Over the past two years, the 68-year-old artist has often traveled between China and New York to work on his sculptures in his studio outside Beijing. He came to China in June for a family visit.
Under the name Gao Brothers, he and his brother Gao Qiang 高强 had also created critical artworks in the past dealing with the Cultural Revolution, including pieces depicting the likeness of Mao Zedong. One of the confiscated giant busts shows the “Great Helmsman” with breasts and a Pinocchio nose. A provocation. On the other hand, the sculpture was completed over ten years ago and has been exhibited many times since then. So why arrest him now?
Gao’s brother, who has not been to China in many years, believes that Gao Zhen will be made an example of under a law added to the penal code in 2021. It punishes “activities that defame heroes and martyrs or distort and diminish their deeds” with up to three years in prison. “I believe that such retroactive punishment contradicts the principle of non-retroactivity, which is a widely accepted standard in the modern rule of law,” Gao Qiang told Table.Briefings. “Moreover, it is debatable whether Mao can be labeled a hero or a martyr.”
Gao Qiang had warned his brother before traveling. “Our friends in China have told us how much the government has tightened control over various aspects of society in the past ten years,” says Gao Qiang. “The environment for artists has become more difficult, and there is a higher risk of creating artworks that are not in line with the government’s views.”
President Xi Jinping has also repeatedly urged the country’s artists to tell China’s story well. In doing so, Xi follows the tradition of Mao, who explained in his famous 1942 “Talks at the Yan’an Conference on Literature and Art” that all art forms should serve to educate the masses. However, artists in China have not always been so constrained since then – on the contrary.
In the 2000s, art parodying Mao was still a common sight in China’s flourishing art market. In the commercial galleries of Moganshan Lu 50 in Shanghai or the art district 798 in Beijing, they were reproduced and imitated thousands of times until they had faded into a cliché that no longer seriously outraged anyone.
Under Xi, however, censorship and self-censorship are once again the norm, young Shanghai video artist Bing Qing tells Table.Briefings. “Every generation has its own political problems.” For her, the zero Covid lockdown in Shanghai, in particular, was a trauma. She believes that if you avoid certain topics and don’t close yourself off to commercial opportunities, there is still room to make a good living from art. “I would also consider my work to be political, but not in the way the Western world usually defines political art,” she says.”I’m more interested in the mental complexities of being human, which also underlie political decisions.”
The Gao brothers had also practiced a pragmatic approach to the state’s red lines and recently produced hardly any more distinctive political art. For security reasons, they no longer open their studio to the public. “When the artist Ai Weiwei was arrested ten years ago, we were not arrested, although we had a lot of trouble because of interviews with Western media and creating and exhibiting sensitive works,” he recalls. In the meantime, however, the gray areas are increasingly vanishing. “A healthy society should move toward increasing freedom of thought and action, not in the opposite direction.”
Even overseas, the Chinese state is trying to exert its influence on artistic freedom, explains the Australian-based artist Badiucao. In an attempt to prevent his exhibitions in countries such as Italy and Poland, Chinese diplomats have repeatedly exerted pressure and blatantly threatened him with severe consequences should his regime-critical works be displayed after all. “It’s almost impossible to avoid offending the Chinese government these days,” he says. “anything could be problematic.” After Gao Zhen’s arrest, the 38-year-old designed a poster calling for his immediate release.
Gao Zhen’s brother is also very worried. “Gao Zhen is almost 70 years old and is sensitive and melancholic by nature, so I am very worried about his physical and mental health. I hope that everyone will call for Gao Zhen’s immediate release so that he can be reunited with his family and return to New York safely.”
Unintentionally bewitching: These half-timbered houses in Zhenjiang in Jiangsu province have become overgrown like something out of a fairy tale, giving them an unintentionally exotic appearance. What looks like a perfect place to visit for fans of lost places and a real treat for photographers was originally supposed to be an amusement park. As a competitor to Disneyland in Shanghai, the park called Evergrande Cultural Tourism City was supposed to bring in millions. But before this could happen, the former second-largest real estate group in China ran out of money. Since 2021, the construction project has remained on halt.
There is nothing wrong with Africa’s heads of state being interested in investment from China. Germany and the EU are also trying to attract foreign investors and are willing to accommodate them if offered. But Xi had the full attention of those present in the Great Hall of the People when he promised the participants at the China-Africa Forum in Beijing 45 billion euros.
It is striking how openly interested Africa’s representatives are in fresh loans, writes Andreas Sieren. But China’s messages also concealed the announcement of a change of course: Xi emphasized the creation of new jobs in Africa. This has so far hardly happened. China delivered its goods to Africa, taking raw materials with it instead of building new manufacturing plants. This has been widely criticized in the recipient countries. Xi is now changing course here.
The arrest of artist Gao Zhen highlights the mounting pressure on artistic freedom in China, as Fabian Peltsch writes. Art that criticizes socialist leaders, such as the sculptures by the Gao brothers, is increasingly the target of state repression. Although there have been restrictions before, they are becoming much worse under Xi Jinping than under previous leaders since Mao.
The Chinese government is also trying to suppress dissident art abroad, while figures such as Gao Zhen and Australia-based Badiucao continue to resist. In doing so, they are drawing international attention to the state of freedom of expression in Chinese society.
The ninth China-Africa Summit comes to an end in Beijing on Friday. The meeting between representatives of 53 African countries and Xi Jinping and other top Chinese leaders is considered a resounding success for China. Xi promised Chinese investments worth 360 billion yuan (45 billion euros) over the next three years, as well as at least one million jobs in Africa. Xi said that Sino-African relations were at a high point.
China is winning over Africa with a combination of money and respect. Especially now, Xi can achieve a lot for his geopolitical goals by using the right levers: The Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (Focac) is taking place against the backdrop of changing geopolitical conditions. The Global South, including Africa, wants a greater say in the world and is supported by China in this endeavor.
China, in turn, is striving to return to the world’s center stage. The future of the world is also being decisively shaped in Africa. Paul Frimpong, Director of the Ghana-based Africa-China Centre for Policy and Advisory, told the BBC that Western powers – as well as the oil-rich Gulf states – are trying to match China’s influence in Africa. “There is a keen interest and competition in and around what Africa’s potential is.”
China has been Africa’s largest trading partner for the past 15 years, with trade reaching another all-time high of 282 billion US dollars in 2023. But the actual picture is more mixed. Trade relations are characterized by a severe deficit at Africa’s expense. Africa is also regularly criticized for not speaking with one voice vis-à-vis China.
However, the same can be said of Europe, where Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has tried to determine Brussels’ China policy single-handedly and without consulting EU member states.
The African Union (AU), which represents twice as many countries as the EU, is also still busy with many political development projects, such as the establishment of the African Free Trade Area. In a bilateral meeting with Xi, the Chairman of the AU Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, noted that he has “witnessed the rapid growth of AU-China relations” during his eight years in office and thanked China for its “valuable assistance.” But not only pleasantries were exchanged. The Africans ask ever more bluntly: “What’s in for us?”
African presidents used the time before the summit for bilateral state visits with Chinese President Xi Jinping. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa already met with Xi on Monday. Both spoke of a meeting of “great importance,” which focussed on mutual investments between the two economies. Ramaphosa had already praised the good relations between South Africa and China in the run-up to the meeting.
But Ramaphosa also had a clear message: “We would like to narrow the trade deficit and address the structure of our trade,” said the President. “We were encouraged by the inward procurement mission of Chinese companies last year. We urge for more sustainable manufacturing and job-creating investments.”
Xi announced that bilateral relations would be elevated to a “new era of comprehensive strategic partnership.” Specifically, Ramaphosa highlighted the energy sector, which the country in the Cape hopes to revolutionize with renewable energies and green hydrogen and gain China as a partner in the process.
The call comes in the same week that Rainer Baake, Germany’s Special Envoy for the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) with South Africa, and Jennifer Morgan, Secretary of State for Climate Action, are attempting to forge similar cooperation in Pretoria. However, they came with more good advice than money in their pockets.
Kenyan President William Ruto also met with Xi. He, too, emphasized the potential of cooperation in the energy sector: “Our continent possesses 60 percent of renewable energy globally. Combining our renewable energy resources and renewable energy technologies from China will be a win-win outcome,” Ruto said in an interview with the state-affiliated Chinese news agency Xinhua.
However, his long wishlist included key infrastructure projects that he would like to progress with Chinese funding, including the extension of the Mombasa-Nairobi railway line to Uganda and the Rironi-Nakuru-Mau Summit Expressway, also to the Ugandan border.
During his meeting with Xi, Félix Tshisekedi, President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, emphasized that FOCAC “has provided an important opportunity for African countries to realize their development dreams.” He added that China is a “reliable and committed partner in the development of the African continent.” Ultimately, he also wanted new loans. The heads of state and government of Ethiopia, Nigeria and Senegal, who met with Xi, expressed similar sentiments.
The joint declaration adopted today will set the direction for the next three years. This is because the summit is only held every three years. In the eyes of Cobus van Staden, co-founder of the China-Global South Project, China is trying to underline its status as a developing country and signal solidarity with Africa and the rest of the global South. “It avoids the dreariness of the US and EU’s ongoing aid focus with its attendant conditionality and preaching,” says van Staden.
That goes down well in Africa. But in the end, the only thing that counts is how many jobs the Chinese create in Africa. And the Chinese know the game perfectly well. Three decades ago, they also started forcing Western manufacturers to produce more and more products for the Chinese market in China. This is why Xi specifically emphasized the one million jobs figure in his speech.
The state continues to intimidate China’s artists through a series of arrests and threats. These incidents show that the leadership cares less than ever about the advantages of a free society. Meanwhile, criteria for the evaluation of art that were believed to have been overcome are returning to the fore: Maintaining respect for socialist leaders and social stability.
As became known earlier this week, renowned artist Gao Zhen 高兟 was arrested in China in late August. Gao’s wife, who was about to travel to New York with their son, was also arrested in China last Tuesday. Gao Zhen has held a US Green Card since 2011 and his son was born there. Over the past two years, the 68-year-old artist has often traveled between China and New York to work on his sculptures in his studio outside Beijing. He came to China in June for a family visit.
Under the name Gao Brothers, he and his brother Gao Qiang 高强 had also created critical artworks in the past dealing with the Cultural Revolution, including pieces depicting the likeness of Mao Zedong. One of the confiscated giant busts shows the “Great Helmsman” with breasts and a Pinocchio nose. A provocation. On the other hand, the sculpture was completed over ten years ago and has been exhibited many times since then. So why arrest him now?
Gao’s brother, who has not been to China in many years, believes that Gao Zhen will be made an example of under a law added to the penal code in 2021. It punishes “activities that defame heroes and martyrs or distort and diminish their deeds” with up to three years in prison. “I believe that such retroactive punishment contradicts the principle of non-retroactivity, which is a widely accepted standard in the modern rule of law,” Gao Qiang told Table.Briefings. “Moreover, it is debatable whether Mao can be labeled a hero or a martyr.”
Gao Qiang had warned his brother before traveling. “Our friends in China have told us how much the government has tightened control over various aspects of society in the past ten years,” says Gao Qiang. “The environment for artists has become more difficult, and there is a higher risk of creating artworks that are not in line with the government’s views.”
President Xi Jinping has also repeatedly urged the country’s artists to tell China’s story well. In doing so, Xi follows the tradition of Mao, who explained in his famous 1942 “Talks at the Yan’an Conference on Literature and Art” that all art forms should serve to educate the masses. However, artists in China have not always been so constrained since then – on the contrary.
In the 2000s, art parodying Mao was still a common sight in China’s flourishing art market. In the commercial galleries of Moganshan Lu 50 in Shanghai or the art district 798 in Beijing, they were reproduced and imitated thousands of times until they had faded into a cliché that no longer seriously outraged anyone.
Under Xi, however, censorship and self-censorship are once again the norm, young Shanghai video artist Bing Qing tells Table.Briefings. “Every generation has its own political problems.” For her, the zero Covid lockdown in Shanghai, in particular, was a trauma. She believes that if you avoid certain topics and don’t close yourself off to commercial opportunities, there is still room to make a good living from art. “I would also consider my work to be political, but not in the way the Western world usually defines political art,” she says.”I’m more interested in the mental complexities of being human, which also underlie political decisions.”
The Gao brothers had also practiced a pragmatic approach to the state’s red lines and recently produced hardly any more distinctive political art. For security reasons, they no longer open their studio to the public. “When the artist Ai Weiwei was arrested ten years ago, we were not arrested, although we had a lot of trouble because of interviews with Western media and creating and exhibiting sensitive works,” he recalls. In the meantime, however, the gray areas are increasingly vanishing. “A healthy society should move toward increasing freedom of thought and action, not in the opposite direction.”
Even overseas, the Chinese state is trying to exert its influence on artistic freedom, explains the Australian-based artist Badiucao. In an attempt to prevent his exhibitions in countries such as Italy and Poland, Chinese diplomats have repeatedly exerted pressure and blatantly threatened him with severe consequences should his regime-critical works be displayed after all. “It’s almost impossible to avoid offending the Chinese government these days,” he says. “anything could be problematic.” After Gao Zhen’s arrest, the 38-year-old designed a poster calling for his immediate release.
Gao Zhen’s brother is also very worried. “Gao Zhen is almost 70 years old and is sensitive and melancholic by nature, so I am very worried about his physical and mental health. I hope that everyone will call for Gao Zhen’s immediate release so that he can be reunited with his family and return to New York safely.”
Unintentionally bewitching: These half-timbered houses in Zhenjiang in Jiangsu province have become overgrown like something out of a fairy tale, giving them an unintentionally exotic appearance. What looks like a perfect place to visit for fans of lost places and a real treat for photographers was originally supposed to be an amusement park. As a competitor to Disneyland in Shanghai, the park called Evergrande Cultural Tourism City was supposed to bring in millions. But before this could happen, the former second-largest real estate group in China ran out of money. Since 2021, the construction project has remained on halt.
