China’s diplomatic moves over the past year have set alarm bells ringing in the collective West. First, the normalisation of relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries on both sides of the Gulf last year (May 20-23), after decades of conflict, was a major diplomatic achievement, even if the West tried to underestimate this big splash… Because at the time of the Shah, a close friend of the US, Iran was on one side of the Gulf and Saudi Arabia and the Arab states on the other, and almost all of these states were allies of the US (except for Iraq under Saddam Hussein), but the Washington administrations could not reconcile these friends/allies and did not even try to do so properly…
Since US strategies are not based on reconciling states and sharing resources according to the principles of justice, they did not try to do so between Turkey and Greece. It was more in line with America’s geopolitical logic to exploit the contradictions between its allies in the Gulf, the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean. We can clearly see that they are still doing so between Turkey and Greece.
China’s achievements in regional diplomacy were not limited to this. In May this year (2024), China and the Arab League countries met in Beijing at the level of foreign ministers. Some Arab states, notably Egypt, attended the meeting at the level of heads of state. China’s appeal to the Arab countries and especially to the Palestinians as an ‘oppressed nation’ seemed to be enough to win their hearts. China’s harsh criticism of Israel and the West’s collective sins in Gaza not only represented a line consistent with its previous policy, but also helped win the hearts of all Arabs. Moreover, the fact that China looked at the Palestinian issue from the perspective of the Arab side and had no hidden agenda of its own made these diplomatic initiatives both possible and fruitful.
About two months later (23 July 2024), the news broke that China had brought together and reconciled fourteen Palestinian resistance organisations, mainly Fatah and Hamas, to put aside their differences and fight together. In media terms, the news was a bombshell. None of this could/could have been done by the US or any other Western country, because it was almost impossible for Washington to achieve such a success, as the US has never respected the legitimate rights of the Arabs/Palestinians and has always been thought to act with the idea of forcing or deceiving the Arabs/Palestinians.
Africa Summit disturbs the collective West
The Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), which came on top of all these successful diplomatic moves, seems to have disturbed the peace of the former colonialist Western countries, especially America. In fact, the summit in question has been held eight times since 2000, the ninth in Beijing (4-5 September 2024). There is no doubt that one of the main reasons why this summit has become so prominent in the media is the extraordinary strain on the collective West caused by the establishment of a multipolar system and the fact that the American-led unipolarity is inevitably coming to an end. Another reason must be the above-mentioned consequential diplomatic moves by China, which will play a decisive role in the multipolar world order.
To put it bluntly, the collective West’s analyses and assumptions about both China and Africa over the past three decades have been completely wrong. What we were told about China and Africa in 1996, when I first went to the US for about a month on an American government programme, seems to describe quite well what is happening today… Throughout our trip, which included a week in Washington, a week in San Jose, the capital of Silicon Valley, which was very famous and important at the time, then five days in Minnesota and five days in New York, the briefings we received in both official institutions and think tanks and lobbying firms, we were told that Africa was not on the West’s radar, that China was a country that produced socks, textiles, T-shirts, etc. that China is a country that produces socks, textiles, T-shirts, etc.; that it is a free market economy. China is a country that produces socks, textiles, T-shirts, etc.; if it continues to develop with a free market economy, it will experience great changes and transformations, and it will not be able to sustain the current planned economic system.
However, in the thirty years that have passed, China has not remained a country producing cheap textiles and children’s toys as expected, nor has Africa continued to struggle in its own way, off the world’s radar. In particular, China’s investments in Africa and its economic and trade relations with African countries have put the continent on the world’s radar. African countries whose resources had been largely exploited by the former colonial powers, France and Britain, and whose regimes were ruled by dictatorships supported by these states, were introduced to a new international trade and economic practice by the new opportunities offered by China and the political pressure it did not exert.
China, once thought to be a country of simple textiles and light industry, and now thought to be ethnically fragmented, has become one of the world’s giants. Its economic and planned development programme, based on manufacturing and exports, has not only made it the world’s second largest economy, but has also made China a world leader in high-tech production and innovation. As many experts have pointed out, China is no longer competing with the United States and Europe, because China has won this race by a landslide.
One of the most important factors favouring China over Western countries in Africa is the fact that Beijing does not make political demands when granting loans or building infrastructure facilities. Moreover, it does not exploit the disagreements and contradictions between states, as the Western powers have always done, and it does not organise minorities within each state and incite them against their own states under the pretext of democracy, human rights and freedoms. These dirty methods, which have been used everywhere except in the states of the collective West, have cost many countries dearly and have even caused turmoil that has led to the disintegration of some of them.
China’s thesis that there should be cooperation between civilisations, intensive contacts between peoples, and that each civilisation should learn from the other, in contrast to the West’s insistence that one civilisation and culture is superior to all others, is also appreciated by Africans. When this civilisation initiative, which is one of the most important factors behind China’s successive successes in its Middle East initiatives, is taken together with the global security initiative and the global development initiative developed by Chinese leader Xi, one can better understand why Beijing has a complete advantage over the collective West in Africa.
Ninth forum
This year’s ninth Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) also witnessed new initiatives from Beijing, which has built tens of thousands of kilometres of roads, thousands of kilometres of railways, numerous schools, hospitals and factories on the continent. For example, China announced that it had allocated fifty billion dollars in new investment/financing to Africa. On the other hand, it has announced that it will allow Africa and the world’s poorest countries to sell their products to China at zero tariffs, both of which represent serious investment in the real economy and indicate that the areas of cooperation between China and Africa will broaden and deepen.
Just as a strong, developed and consolidated China has emerged, while Washington has squandered its own resources and wasted trillions of dollars on wars led by the American deep state and largely instigated by the Israeli lobby, which in the last thirty years, under the pretext of democratisation, has made many countries, notably Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, vomit blood under the guise of democratisation stories, African states have discovered that they have an alternative. It is likely that Africa, where states such as Russia on the one hand and Turkey on the other, in addition to China, are trying to create a sphere of influence, is now on the world’s radar and will not go away.
But this radarisation will take place in a way that excludes the patronising attitude of the collective West that says ‘Africa is not on our radar’. As one Zambian analyst succinctly put it, American officials are landing at Chinese-built airports, driving on Chinese-built roads and holding meetings in Chinese-built buildings to tell Africans why they should not cooperate with China. The African peoples, now on the world’s radar, seem to be putting the propaganda of democracy, freedoms, etc. into the mouths of Westerners, especially those who turn a blind eye to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and will continue to cooperate with China in real economic areas with increasing volume and enthusiasm.
