It was only a matter of time. Unusually open and emotional, users in China shared their views on topics such as the one-party system, democracy and women’s rights in chat rooms on Clubhouse over the weekend. The live podcasts created free spaces that had never existed before. By Monday, that was already over. The app was blocked by Chinese authorities. Finn Mayer-Kuckuk looked behind the ban and found out what it means for Chinese social audio providers.
Josep Borrell has criticized conditions in Xinjiang and Hong Kong in a video call with China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi. While Wang dismisses human rights abuses as “lies”, the BBC reports on torture and rape in China’s re-education camps for the Uyghur Muslim minority in Xinjiang. Nico Beckert, Marcel Grzanna and Amelie Richter have spoken to Uyghurs abroad about this, including politicians in the Bundestag and the EU, who now call for independent United Nations observers to travel to Xinjiang.
Chafrica – today’s Opinion author Amaka Anku calls for a new EU trade agreement with Africa to counter China’s expansion in Africa. The fact that Nigerian Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala may soon become Africa’s first woman to hold the post of director-general at the World Trade Organization (WTO) is also supported by China.
In Germany, it was Bodo Ramelow who pushed the Clubhouse app into the spotlight. The prime minister of Thuringia casually admitted to passing the time with mobile games during summit talks with the chancellor. In China, it was the participation of US entrepreneur Elon Musk in the talks on the app that attracted widespread attention.
After a few weeks of allowing uncensored chatter on the platform, China pulled the metaphorical plug. The app is now only accessible with VPN in many regions, as tests show. The AFP news agency confirms corresponding observations through reports from various parts of the country. The blocking is also a topic on social media.
Even when it was working, however, Clubhouse was hard to come by in China. As an uncensored source of information, Apple does not offer the app in its mainland Chinese app store. Nor is there an Android version from which installation files could spread via file-sharing. Only with a trick does the app also runs on iPhones of Chinese users: Apple user accounts from other regions can be bought on the black market. Whoever dials in with this account will no longer find many typical Chinese programs in the store but can download all international apps. Those who take all this on themselves often have a VPN on their mobile phone anyway – for these users, the blocking doesn’t make much of a difference at first.
Clubhouse and its Chinese competitors like TT Voice, Tiya and Yalla are establishing a new genre: social audio. These are nothing more than group chat rooms that return the word “chat” to its original meaning – a conversation with a human voice. Clubhouse, however, has added an element of exclusivity that makes participation more interesting. Entry to the chat rooms is by invitation only. That’s why Ramelow believed he could speak openly.
In China, invitation codes for Clubhouse have been a sought-after commodity in recent weeks. But here, too, the government has cracked down, corresponding offers have disappeared from Taobao, and the search goes nowhere.
The Sunday night blocking is believed to have been triggered by a series of media reports over the past week. Particularly provocative, as recently as Sunday, the South China Morning Post ranked the app close to irritating issues like Hong Kong and Xinjiang. Although the majority of its Chinese users are probably more interested in technology and business issues, systemic issues, freedom of expression and democracy as topics.
However, blocking Western apps is not only an act of censorship in China but also of industrial policy. What’s bad for Clubhouse gives a boost to Chinese competitors. To be safe, Chinese social audio providers dutifully engage in self-censorship. Otherwise, they would immediately lose their license as an Internet company. But now their success is almost guaranteed. At least since Clubhouse was blocked on Monday, these competitors have a huge advantage: They no longer have to fear competition from the US in the vast Chinese market. The vast majority of potential customers don’t want to do a triple jump with a fake Apple ID and VPN anyway, but simply download an app from the built-in store.
The names Yalla, TT Voice and Tiya could be heard even more often in the future. These are the names of three promising apps that enable voice chats in rooms and groups. Yalla is particularly strong in the Middle East and North Africa. Yalla’s stock has been listed in the US since September. Now that social audio has become a topic of conversation around the globe, investors are snapping it up.
TT Voice has its origins in the computer games scene and is also known as TT Chat. Tiya, meanwhile, is more of a playground for kids and teens who shout over each other in forums about topics. The topics there are simply incomprehensible for adults. Both providers don’t really seem like challengers to Clubhouse at the moment, with its high-profile conversation formats.
But even the well-known Chinese Internet services were able to thrive in the protected biotope behind the Great Firewall until they became big enough to survive. Either they became good enough for the global market like Douyin/TikTok or WeChat – or they at least conquered the lucrative position of the Chinese market leader like the search engine Baidu.
China’s first Mars probe, Tianwen-1, is expected to arrive at the red planet this Wednesday. After about nine months in space and some minor course corrections, the probe is expected to enter the orbit of Mars. The first black-and-white images taken by Tianwen-1 on its approach to Mars already reached Earth over the weekend. The Chinese are not alone in their Mars mission. In addition to the US Perseverance mission, which is to bring a new rover and, for the time being, a small helicopter to Mars, the United Arab Emirates also has a spacecraft in the running with its Hope orbiter.
The Chinese project is very ambitious. With an orbiter, a lander and even a rover, it includes as many complex procedures as NASA would usually divide among several missions. It shows the great self-confidence that the Chinese display in their space programs.
In May, Tianwen-1, which means “questions to the sky”, is scheduled to make the landing. This is probably the biggest challenge Chinese spaceflight has faced so far. Although China has successfully managed several landings on the moon, Mars is more complex as it has a thin atmosphere and stronger gravity, unlike Earth’s satellite, as Geng Yan, a member of CNSA’s Center for Lunar Research and Spaceflight told China’s Xinhua news agency back in July 2020. According to Geng, scientists want to use the atmosphere to slow down the lander, but knowledge about the somewhat unstable atmosphere is limited.
The Chinese are therefore taking a long time to prepare for the landing. The lander is expected to orbit Mars for up to three months while high-resolution images are taken of the intended landing site Utopia Planitia, an area more than 3,000 kilometers in size where the American lander Viking 2 touched down in 1976.
During landing, the aerodynamic shape, a parachute and finally braking rockets will slow the lander’s fall and allow it to touch down in a controlled manner. After landing, the rover will then use ground penetrating radar to examine the composition of the soil and look for indications of water beneath the surface. A weather station will take measurements of the surface climate. The orbiter will perform two tasks from orbit. Firstly, it will transmit signals from the rover to Earth, and secondly, it will take atmospheric measurements and map Mars. The CNSA hopes to be able to use the rover on Mars for three months. However, it is quite possible that the rover will remain in operation for much longer, as its predecessors did on the moon. US rovers are also known to exceed their estimated lifetimes, sometimes by decades.
The Chinese Mars mission is part of a space program that has grown rapidly over the past decade and has evolved into a new race with the United States. On the surface, this is about research and national prestige. In 2021 alone, the year of the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party, the Chinese have planned 40 rocket launches. The first module of the new Chinese space station Tiangong (“Heavenly Palace”) is also supposed to be launched into a near-Earth orbit.
China is on the hunt for superlatives in space research. With FAST (Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope), they have built the world’s largest radio telescope of this type in Guizhou province. The Chang’e lunar missions caused a sensation last year when China became the first nation to land on the far side of the moon from Earth and shortly after brought lunar rocks from recent lunar history back to Earth. The Mars mission is also expected to add another record, as Ye Peijian, a senior scientist at the China Academy of Space Technology explains, “It will be the world’s first Mars mission that manages to achieve all three goals (orbit, landing, rover ed.) in just one mission.”
In addition to researching new technologies, the Chinese government pursues economic goals. Due to new technologies, the demand for satellites has been growing rapidly for years. Building them for other nations, launching them into space and operating them there has become a very lucrative business that will continue to grow in the future. China’s customers are already mainly smaller countries that do not have their own or smaller budgeted space programs, such as Venezuela, Laos or African states like Nigeria or Algeria. In addition to revenues, Beijing also stands to gain geopolitical influence. To this end, it is important to demonstrate to the world that even complex undertakings such as a Mars mission are no problem for China’s space program. Gregor Koppenburg / Joern Petring
As the United States retrenches from its global leadership role, China grows more powerful, and the international order becomes more fragmented, opportunities are emerging for a more assertive Europe to shape world affairs by exporting an alternative model of representative politics that promotes human rights and individual freedoms.
The neighboring African continent is an important part of that future. A stronger Africa – especially one that grows with investment from Europe – would boost Europe‘s security and expand its global influence. That means the EU must invest in the region’s long-term stability, including by encouraging African governments to boost local production using the same kinds of smart industrial policies used by Europe itself to spur infant industries.
Increased African productivity would generate more employment, lead to higher incomes, and ultimately provide a larger market for Europe’s manufactured goods, increasing global prosperity. It would also stem growing migration from sub-Saharan Africa to Europe, as well as provide a local buffer against rising extremism in the Sahel.
The inroads already made by China are increasing the pressure on Europe to develop smart polices for Africa. For years, both foreign direct investment and project financing from Chinese firms to their African counterparts have grown exponentially while investment and financing from European firms has declined. As a result, Chinese firms are increasingly dominating trade networks in Africa. On the current trajectory, China, not Europe, will be the primary beneficiary of a more prosperous Africa.
According to World Bank estimates, almost one in four of the world’s people will live in sub-Saharan Africa by 2050. Nigeria alone will be the third most populous country, just behind India and China. Two other sub-Saharan African countries-the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ethiopia – will also be among the ten most populous.
Assuming the appropriate investments are made in improving African productivity as part of the new African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA), the African continent could be home to the world’s largest trading bloc, potentially encompassing 54 states and $30 trillion in economic output.
The region already benefits from an abundance of natural resources: 90 percent of the world’s supply of platinum and cobalt; half its gold supply; 35 percent of uranium deposits; two-thirds of the supply of manganese; and nearly 75 percent of the world’s coltan. These resources, coupled with growing investment in local value-added production, could transform Africa into a significant market by 2050.
However, if things go badly for Africa, its population explosion would make it an ever-growing source of instability, with direct spillover effects for Europe. An impoverished Africa would also set back Europe’s commitment to address climate change, the effects of which would further exacerbate a population and economic crisis. And Europe would lose a unique opportunity to lead the world on addressing climate change by leveraging Africa’s abundant solar insolation, vast windy plains, many large rivers, and significant untapped geothermal potential, to develop ever more sustainable energy regimes.
Perhaps recognizing the opportunity for an emerging global power to dominate the world’s next frontier, China has had a clear Africa strategy for over two decades. Chinese authorities have explicitly encouraged Chinese citizens and firms to seek business opportunities in Africa and often provided project financing to facilitate them. Though public discussion of China-Africa relations has mostly focused on large state-to-state infrastructure deals, smaller Chinese firms and entrepreneurs have made significant strides in cornering strategic supply chains.
For example, Chinese firms now control transportation and processing of cobalt and coltan, materials used to produce electronic products such as laptops, smartphones, and electric cars. Over 80 percent of global cobalt sulfate production now happens in China, mostly with raw materials sourced from Africa. This will be an important part of the global race to dominate battery production. Chinese firms have also taken the lead in selling consumer electronics to Africans, especially mobile devices. Shenzhen-based Transsion Holdings, which owns the Tecno, Itel, and Infinix brands and focuses on the African market, is the top selling phonemaker in the region, leading in unit sales of both feature phones (64 percent of sales) and smart phones (36 percent). The 14-year-old firm is now valued at $17 billion after an IPO last year, thanks to its African business. Transsion’s success-and others like it-is driving further Chinese interest in local African technology ventures, an area once dominated by Western firms. Indeed, as the US-China technology cold war intensifies, Chinese firms appear to be doubling down on acquiring equity in local African tech ventures. Chinese participation in African technology funding rounds grew to about 15 percent of total deal volume in 2019, up from less than 1 percent in 2018. This trend, should it continue, would increase Chinese soft power in the region.
China’s – and Chinese firms’ – ability to recognize the economic opportunity in Africa, and engage with African states primarily as economic partners, rather than aid recipients or mere agents in mitigating security crises elsewhere (such as the West’s focus on counter-terrorism and illegal immigration), has encouraged a perception amongst Africans that Africa’s economic prosperity is more in line with China’s economic interests than Europe’s. China appears to understand that investing in Africa, and then dominating exports to fast growing African markets, would help drive China’s growth as demand tapers off in advanced economies. This is an important dynamic because, to become a true superpower, China needs an engine of growth to lift millions more out of poverty.
The fact that China itself benefitted from massive investment from Western firms over the past three decades is not lost on African policymakers. Since the 1990s, American and European firms pumped trillions of dollars into Asian economies, expanding global aggregate demand and boosting profits in the West. But until recently, Europe had shown little interest in pursuing a similar path in Africa. Only now, after China’s growing influence in the region has become obvious, is the European Commission contemplating a pivot to an equal partnership with Africa on issues such as fighting climate change, promoting digital advances, and supporting the multilateral international system.
Now that European leaders are starting to think differently about Africa, their next step should be to jettison the economic partnership agreements that have been the EU’s principal lever of economic engagement with Africa for nearly two decades. Widely perceived as unfair trade deals that advance Europe’s commercial interests at Africa’s expense, these agreements nominally provide duty-free access to the EU for African countries in exchange for a gradual liberalization of tariffs on 80 percent of European imports. But they ignore the reality that African countries primarily export raw, often agricultural, products that are unlikely to be competitive in the EU given substantial agricultural subsidies there.
Europe’s stringent safety and quality standards also make it difficult (and costly) for African manufacturers to obtain certification for export into the common market. That makes the liberalization of EU tariffs effectively meaningless without a sustained effort, including critical investments – beyond the meager development aid that come with the economic partnership agreements – to help African firms orient to exportation and obtain EU certification. EU leaders should then pivot to enthusiastically embracing the AfCFTA. The agreement’s success depends on a coordinated push to facilitate local manufacturing of African goods for sale across the region. That would create new jobs, expand income, and create a larger African market for EU exports.
EU officials should proactively offer technical advice on a wide range of complementary issues that they have already worked through in the process of creating their own trade area, including enhancing regional border security (which would encourage investment in local production by ensuring that only African-made goods benefit from AfCFTA-reduced tariffs), unifying customs procedures and quality standards, and ensuring that the benefits of greater integration are fairly distributed between small and large economies. It is time for the EU to demonstrate a true commitment to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s promise of a geopolitics of mutual interest.
Amaka Anku leads the firm’s Africa practice, directing its analysis of regional trends and the interaction of politics, policy, and markets. Her own work focuses on political and economic trends in West Africa, particularly in Nigeria, Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, and Senegal.
Source: “International Politics, Jan/ Feb 2021”
Friedolin Strack is a permanent fixture at the Federation of German Industries (BDI). Now 55, he began his BDI career in 1994 – at that time still at headquarters in Bonn. Initially, Strack focused mainly on transatlantic relations, but the impending move to Berlin ensured, in a double sense, that Strack turned east. “There was a vacancy in the Asia-Pacific Committee at the time because the move was imminent,” Strack recalls. Stefan Winter, the head of the International Markets Department, approached him and asked him whether he could imagine being more active in the Asian region from now on.
Strack agreed and threw himself into the work. “I built up my China know-how. Today I benefit from the fact that I have done nothing else since 1999,” he says. In 2003 he became managing director of the Asia-Pacific Committee of German Business (APA), then eight years later, head of the BDI’s International Markets Department. The political scientist, who grew up in the Black Forest, is in great demand when it comes to correctly classifying economic relations with China. Whether at political discussion events in Berlin or in the columns of The Economist, Strack is omnipresent and always remains objective.
This objectivity is also evident when talking to him. When asked how he currently assesses Germany’s relationship with China, Strack gives a balanced answer: “There are three trends that I see: The first trend is that there is a tension between our desire for partnership and systemic competition,” he says. “In parallel, there’s the trend, driven by the policy shift in Washington, that has to do with everything around decoupling. We’re between worlds, the US and China. Our companies want to be equally present in both markets.”
The third trend concerns the two existing extremes in the exchange with China. Many German companies are very well integrated in the Chinese market and the economic policy dialogue between Germany and China is largely functioning according to expectations. However, on issues such as Hong Kong, Xinjiang, data protection or the Chinese social credit system, there is radio silence: “There are areas where it works fantastically well and areas where there is no more dialogue,” Strack summarizes.
He sees the BDI as a driver for market access in China, but also as a mouthpiece on other issues. “We try to buffer everything that is worthy of criticism,” says Strack. That goes from the situation in Hong Kong to discrimination against foreign companies in environmental audits, for example.“Individual companies have a hard time openly criticizing. For them, there is an immediate risk to their own business,” Strack points out. That’s why a large association like the BDI needs to speak out more.
Strack has got to know some interesting places in China over the years. He has been traveling to the country regularly since 2002. Among other things, he remembers a hike along the Great Wall of China between Simatai and Jinshanling. As a jogger, he has also done runs on Lead Mine Pass, a mountain pass in Hong Kong’s New Territories. “But you have to be prepared to run for two and a half to three hours,” he warns. Given his long career with the BDI, however, no one can accuse Strack of lacking stamina. Constantin Eckner
What does the possible successor to Chancellor Angela Merkel think about China? Armin Laschet gave his first major foreign policy interview as CDU leader to Reuters correspondent Andreas Rinke for the political magazine “Internationale Politik”. “We have an ambivalent relationship with China,” according to Laschet. On the one hand, he said, China must be seen as a “geostrategic challenger“, a competitor within global systems and human rights violations must be “clearly highlighted and criticized,” which he, Laschet, also does “regularly.” At the same time, he said, trade with China and the “very intensive scientific exchange” is also a development “of great importance for our export-oriented economy”. From his point of view, Laschet said, it was “always a matter of safeguarding our own interests”.
Would Chancellor Armin Laschet, like Merkel once did, receive the Dalai Lama? “Every chancellor,” Laschet answers this question, “should stand up for human rights in the foreign policy continuity of Helmut Kohl and Angela Merkel with the means of diplomacy and at the right time, also with strong symbols”. asi
It was only a matter of time. Unusually open and emotional, users in China shared their views on topics such as the one-party system, democracy and women’s rights in chat rooms on Clubhouse over the weekend. The live podcasts created free spaces that had never existed before. By Monday, that was already over. The app was blocked by Chinese authorities. Finn Mayer-Kuckuk looked behind the ban and found out what it means for Chinese social audio providers.
Josep Borrell has criticized conditions in Xinjiang and Hong Kong in a video call with China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi. While Wang dismisses human rights abuses as “lies”, the BBC reports on torture and rape in China’s re-education camps for the Uyghur Muslim minority in Xinjiang. Nico Beckert, Marcel Grzanna and Amelie Richter have spoken to Uyghurs abroad about this, including politicians in the Bundestag and the EU, who now call for independent United Nations observers to travel to Xinjiang.
Chafrica – today’s Opinion author Amaka Anku calls for a new EU trade agreement with Africa to counter China’s expansion in Africa. The fact that Nigerian Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala may soon become Africa’s first woman to hold the post of director-general at the World Trade Organization (WTO) is also supported by China.
In Germany, it was Bodo Ramelow who pushed the Clubhouse app into the spotlight. The prime minister of Thuringia casually admitted to passing the time with mobile games during summit talks with the chancellor. In China, it was the participation of US entrepreneur Elon Musk in the talks on the app that attracted widespread attention.
After a few weeks of allowing uncensored chatter on the platform, China pulled the metaphorical plug. The app is now only accessible with VPN in many regions, as tests show. The AFP news agency confirms corresponding observations through reports from various parts of the country. The blocking is also a topic on social media.
Even when it was working, however, Clubhouse was hard to come by in China. As an uncensored source of information, Apple does not offer the app in its mainland Chinese app store. Nor is there an Android version from which installation files could spread via file-sharing. Only with a trick does the app also runs on iPhones of Chinese users: Apple user accounts from other regions can be bought on the black market. Whoever dials in with this account will no longer find many typical Chinese programs in the store but can download all international apps. Those who take all this on themselves often have a VPN on their mobile phone anyway – for these users, the blocking doesn’t make much of a difference at first.
Clubhouse and its Chinese competitors like TT Voice, Tiya and Yalla are establishing a new genre: social audio. These are nothing more than group chat rooms that return the word “chat” to its original meaning – a conversation with a human voice. Clubhouse, however, has added an element of exclusivity that makes participation more interesting. Entry to the chat rooms is by invitation only. That’s why Ramelow believed he could speak openly.
In China, invitation codes for Clubhouse have been a sought-after commodity in recent weeks. But here, too, the government has cracked down, corresponding offers have disappeared from Taobao, and the search goes nowhere.
The Sunday night blocking is believed to have been triggered by a series of media reports over the past week. Particularly provocative, as recently as Sunday, the South China Morning Post ranked the app close to irritating issues like Hong Kong and Xinjiang. Although the majority of its Chinese users are probably more interested in technology and business issues, systemic issues, freedom of expression and democracy as topics.
However, blocking Western apps is not only an act of censorship in China but also of industrial policy. What’s bad for Clubhouse gives a boost to Chinese competitors. To be safe, Chinese social audio providers dutifully engage in self-censorship. Otherwise, they would immediately lose their license as an Internet company. But now their success is almost guaranteed. At least since Clubhouse was blocked on Monday, these competitors have a huge advantage: They no longer have to fear competition from the US in the vast Chinese market. The vast majority of potential customers don’t want to do a triple jump with a fake Apple ID and VPN anyway, but simply download an app from the built-in store.
The names Yalla, TT Voice and Tiya could be heard even more often in the future. These are the names of three promising apps that enable voice chats in rooms and groups. Yalla is particularly strong in the Middle East and North Africa. Yalla’s stock has been listed in the US since September. Now that social audio has become a topic of conversation around the globe, investors are snapping it up.
TT Voice has its origins in the computer games scene and is also known as TT Chat. Tiya, meanwhile, is more of a playground for kids and teens who shout over each other in forums about topics. The topics there are simply incomprehensible for adults. Both providers don’t really seem like challengers to Clubhouse at the moment, with its high-profile conversation formats.
But even the well-known Chinese Internet services were able to thrive in the protected biotope behind the Great Firewall until they became big enough to survive. Either they became good enough for the global market like Douyin/TikTok or WeChat – or they at least conquered the lucrative position of the Chinese market leader like the search engine Baidu.
China’s first Mars probe, Tianwen-1, is expected to arrive at the red planet this Wednesday. After about nine months in space and some minor course corrections, the probe is expected to enter the orbit of Mars. The first black-and-white images taken by Tianwen-1 on its approach to Mars already reached Earth over the weekend. The Chinese are not alone in their Mars mission. In addition to the US Perseverance mission, which is to bring a new rover and, for the time being, a small helicopter to Mars, the United Arab Emirates also has a spacecraft in the running with its Hope orbiter.
The Chinese project is very ambitious. With an orbiter, a lander and even a rover, it includes as many complex procedures as NASA would usually divide among several missions. It shows the great self-confidence that the Chinese display in their space programs.
In May, Tianwen-1, which means “questions to the sky”, is scheduled to make the landing. This is probably the biggest challenge Chinese spaceflight has faced so far. Although China has successfully managed several landings on the moon, Mars is more complex as it has a thin atmosphere and stronger gravity, unlike Earth’s satellite, as Geng Yan, a member of CNSA’s Center for Lunar Research and Spaceflight told China’s Xinhua news agency back in July 2020. According to Geng, scientists want to use the atmosphere to slow down the lander, but knowledge about the somewhat unstable atmosphere is limited.
The Chinese are therefore taking a long time to prepare for the landing. The lander is expected to orbit Mars for up to three months while high-resolution images are taken of the intended landing site Utopia Planitia, an area more than 3,000 kilometers in size where the American lander Viking 2 touched down in 1976.
During landing, the aerodynamic shape, a parachute and finally braking rockets will slow the lander’s fall and allow it to touch down in a controlled manner. After landing, the rover will then use ground penetrating radar to examine the composition of the soil and look for indications of water beneath the surface. A weather station will take measurements of the surface climate. The orbiter will perform two tasks from orbit. Firstly, it will transmit signals from the rover to Earth, and secondly, it will take atmospheric measurements and map Mars. The CNSA hopes to be able to use the rover on Mars for three months. However, it is quite possible that the rover will remain in operation for much longer, as its predecessors did on the moon. US rovers are also known to exceed their estimated lifetimes, sometimes by decades.
The Chinese Mars mission is part of a space program that has grown rapidly over the past decade and has evolved into a new race with the United States. On the surface, this is about research and national prestige. In 2021 alone, the year of the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party, the Chinese have planned 40 rocket launches. The first module of the new Chinese space station Tiangong (“Heavenly Palace”) is also supposed to be launched into a near-Earth orbit.
China is on the hunt for superlatives in space research. With FAST (Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope), they have built the world’s largest radio telescope of this type in Guizhou province. The Chang’e lunar missions caused a sensation last year when China became the first nation to land on the far side of the moon from Earth and shortly after brought lunar rocks from recent lunar history back to Earth. The Mars mission is also expected to add another record, as Ye Peijian, a senior scientist at the China Academy of Space Technology explains, “It will be the world’s first Mars mission that manages to achieve all three goals (orbit, landing, rover ed.) in just one mission.”
In addition to researching new technologies, the Chinese government pursues economic goals. Due to new technologies, the demand for satellites has been growing rapidly for years. Building them for other nations, launching them into space and operating them there has become a very lucrative business that will continue to grow in the future. China’s customers are already mainly smaller countries that do not have their own or smaller budgeted space programs, such as Venezuela, Laos or African states like Nigeria or Algeria. In addition to revenues, Beijing also stands to gain geopolitical influence. To this end, it is important to demonstrate to the world that even complex undertakings such as a Mars mission are no problem for China’s space program. Gregor Koppenburg / Joern Petring
As the United States retrenches from its global leadership role, China grows more powerful, and the international order becomes more fragmented, opportunities are emerging for a more assertive Europe to shape world affairs by exporting an alternative model of representative politics that promotes human rights and individual freedoms.
The neighboring African continent is an important part of that future. A stronger Africa – especially one that grows with investment from Europe – would boost Europe‘s security and expand its global influence. That means the EU must invest in the region’s long-term stability, including by encouraging African governments to boost local production using the same kinds of smart industrial policies used by Europe itself to spur infant industries.
Increased African productivity would generate more employment, lead to higher incomes, and ultimately provide a larger market for Europe’s manufactured goods, increasing global prosperity. It would also stem growing migration from sub-Saharan Africa to Europe, as well as provide a local buffer against rising extremism in the Sahel.
The inroads already made by China are increasing the pressure on Europe to develop smart polices for Africa. For years, both foreign direct investment and project financing from Chinese firms to their African counterparts have grown exponentially while investment and financing from European firms has declined. As a result, Chinese firms are increasingly dominating trade networks in Africa. On the current trajectory, China, not Europe, will be the primary beneficiary of a more prosperous Africa.
According to World Bank estimates, almost one in four of the world’s people will live in sub-Saharan Africa by 2050. Nigeria alone will be the third most populous country, just behind India and China. Two other sub-Saharan African countries-the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ethiopia – will also be among the ten most populous.
Assuming the appropriate investments are made in improving African productivity as part of the new African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA), the African continent could be home to the world’s largest trading bloc, potentially encompassing 54 states and $30 trillion in economic output.
The region already benefits from an abundance of natural resources: 90 percent of the world’s supply of platinum and cobalt; half its gold supply; 35 percent of uranium deposits; two-thirds of the supply of manganese; and nearly 75 percent of the world’s coltan. These resources, coupled with growing investment in local value-added production, could transform Africa into a significant market by 2050.
However, if things go badly for Africa, its population explosion would make it an ever-growing source of instability, with direct spillover effects for Europe. An impoverished Africa would also set back Europe’s commitment to address climate change, the effects of which would further exacerbate a population and economic crisis. And Europe would lose a unique opportunity to lead the world on addressing climate change by leveraging Africa’s abundant solar insolation, vast windy plains, many large rivers, and significant untapped geothermal potential, to develop ever more sustainable energy regimes.
Perhaps recognizing the opportunity for an emerging global power to dominate the world’s next frontier, China has had a clear Africa strategy for over two decades. Chinese authorities have explicitly encouraged Chinese citizens and firms to seek business opportunities in Africa and often provided project financing to facilitate them. Though public discussion of China-Africa relations has mostly focused on large state-to-state infrastructure deals, smaller Chinese firms and entrepreneurs have made significant strides in cornering strategic supply chains.
For example, Chinese firms now control transportation and processing of cobalt and coltan, materials used to produce electronic products such as laptops, smartphones, and electric cars. Over 80 percent of global cobalt sulfate production now happens in China, mostly with raw materials sourced from Africa. This will be an important part of the global race to dominate battery production. Chinese firms have also taken the lead in selling consumer electronics to Africans, especially mobile devices. Shenzhen-based Transsion Holdings, which owns the Tecno, Itel, and Infinix brands and focuses on the African market, is the top selling phonemaker in the region, leading in unit sales of both feature phones (64 percent of sales) and smart phones (36 percent). The 14-year-old firm is now valued at $17 billion after an IPO last year, thanks to its African business. Transsion’s success-and others like it-is driving further Chinese interest in local African technology ventures, an area once dominated by Western firms. Indeed, as the US-China technology cold war intensifies, Chinese firms appear to be doubling down on acquiring equity in local African tech ventures. Chinese participation in African technology funding rounds grew to about 15 percent of total deal volume in 2019, up from less than 1 percent in 2018. This trend, should it continue, would increase Chinese soft power in the region.
China’s – and Chinese firms’ – ability to recognize the economic opportunity in Africa, and engage with African states primarily as economic partners, rather than aid recipients or mere agents in mitigating security crises elsewhere (such as the West’s focus on counter-terrorism and illegal immigration), has encouraged a perception amongst Africans that Africa’s economic prosperity is more in line with China’s economic interests than Europe’s. China appears to understand that investing in Africa, and then dominating exports to fast growing African markets, would help drive China’s growth as demand tapers off in advanced economies. This is an important dynamic because, to become a true superpower, China needs an engine of growth to lift millions more out of poverty.
The fact that China itself benefitted from massive investment from Western firms over the past three decades is not lost on African policymakers. Since the 1990s, American and European firms pumped trillions of dollars into Asian economies, expanding global aggregate demand and boosting profits in the West. But until recently, Europe had shown little interest in pursuing a similar path in Africa. Only now, after China’s growing influence in the region has become obvious, is the European Commission contemplating a pivot to an equal partnership with Africa on issues such as fighting climate change, promoting digital advances, and supporting the multilateral international system.
Now that European leaders are starting to think differently about Africa, their next step should be to jettison the economic partnership agreements that have been the EU’s principal lever of economic engagement with Africa for nearly two decades. Widely perceived as unfair trade deals that advance Europe’s commercial interests at Africa’s expense, these agreements nominally provide duty-free access to the EU for African countries in exchange for a gradual liberalization of tariffs on 80 percent of European imports. But they ignore the reality that African countries primarily export raw, often agricultural, products that are unlikely to be competitive in the EU given substantial agricultural subsidies there.
Europe’s stringent safety and quality standards also make it difficult (and costly) for African manufacturers to obtain certification for export into the common market. That makes the liberalization of EU tariffs effectively meaningless without a sustained effort, including critical investments – beyond the meager development aid that come with the economic partnership agreements – to help African firms orient to exportation and obtain EU certification. EU leaders should then pivot to enthusiastically embracing the AfCFTA. The agreement’s success depends on a coordinated push to facilitate local manufacturing of African goods for sale across the region. That would create new jobs, expand income, and create a larger African market for EU exports.
EU officials should proactively offer technical advice on a wide range of complementary issues that they have already worked through in the process of creating their own trade area, including enhancing regional border security (which would encourage investment in local production by ensuring that only African-made goods benefit from AfCFTA-reduced tariffs), unifying customs procedures and quality standards, and ensuring that the benefits of greater integration are fairly distributed between small and large economies. It is time for the EU to demonstrate a true commitment to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s promise of a geopolitics of mutual interest.
Amaka Anku leads the firm’s Africa practice, directing its analysis of regional trends and the interaction of politics, policy, and markets. Her own work focuses on political and economic trends in West Africa, particularly in Nigeria, Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, and Senegal.
Source: “International Politics, Jan/ Feb 2021”
Friedolin Strack is a permanent fixture at the Federation of German Industries (BDI). Now 55, he began his BDI career in 1994 – at that time still at headquarters in Bonn. Initially, Strack focused mainly on transatlantic relations, but the impending move to Berlin ensured, in a double sense, that Strack turned east. “There was a vacancy in the Asia-Pacific Committee at the time because the move was imminent,” Strack recalls. Stefan Winter, the head of the International Markets Department, approached him and asked him whether he could imagine being more active in the Asian region from now on.
Strack agreed and threw himself into the work. “I built up my China know-how. Today I benefit from the fact that I have done nothing else since 1999,” he says. In 2003 he became managing director of the Asia-Pacific Committee of German Business (APA), then eight years later, head of the BDI’s International Markets Department. The political scientist, who grew up in the Black Forest, is in great demand when it comes to correctly classifying economic relations with China. Whether at political discussion events in Berlin or in the columns of The Economist, Strack is omnipresent and always remains objective.
This objectivity is also evident when talking to him. When asked how he currently assesses Germany’s relationship with China, Strack gives a balanced answer: “There are three trends that I see: The first trend is that there is a tension between our desire for partnership and systemic competition,” he says. “In parallel, there’s the trend, driven by the policy shift in Washington, that has to do with everything around decoupling. We’re between worlds, the US and China. Our companies want to be equally present in both markets.”
The third trend concerns the two existing extremes in the exchange with China. Many German companies are very well integrated in the Chinese market and the economic policy dialogue between Germany and China is largely functioning according to expectations. However, on issues such as Hong Kong, Xinjiang, data protection or the Chinese social credit system, there is radio silence: “There are areas where it works fantastically well and areas where there is no more dialogue,” Strack summarizes.
He sees the BDI as a driver for market access in China, but also as a mouthpiece on other issues. “We try to buffer everything that is worthy of criticism,” says Strack. That goes from the situation in Hong Kong to discrimination against foreign companies in environmental audits, for example.“Individual companies have a hard time openly criticizing. For them, there is an immediate risk to their own business,” Strack points out. That’s why a large association like the BDI needs to speak out more.
Strack has got to know some interesting places in China over the years. He has been traveling to the country regularly since 2002. Among other things, he remembers a hike along the Great Wall of China between Simatai and Jinshanling. As a jogger, he has also done runs on Lead Mine Pass, a mountain pass in Hong Kong’s New Territories. “But you have to be prepared to run for two and a half to three hours,” he warns. Given his long career with the BDI, however, no one can accuse Strack of lacking stamina. Constantin Eckner
What does the possible successor to Chancellor Angela Merkel think about China? Armin Laschet gave his first major foreign policy interview as CDU leader to Reuters correspondent Andreas Rinke for the political magazine “Internationale Politik”. “We have an ambivalent relationship with China,” according to Laschet. On the one hand, he said, China must be seen as a “geostrategic challenger“, a competitor within global systems and human rights violations must be “clearly highlighted and criticized,” which he, Laschet, also does “regularly.” At the same time, he said, trade with China and the “very intensive scientific exchange” is also a development “of great importance for our export-oriented economy”. From his point of view, Laschet said, it was “always a matter of safeguarding our own interests”.
Would Chancellor Armin Laschet, like Merkel once did, receive the Dalai Lama? “Every chancellor,” Laschet answers this question, “should stand up for human rights in the foreign policy continuity of Helmut Kohl and Angela Merkel with the means of diplomacy and at the right time, also with strong symbols”. asi
