Exclude exactly 6526 unnecessary words in this "Description
China has made significant inroads into much of the global south a trend that does not always
receive adequate attention in the West. China's image in those countries has deteriorated in
recent years and there appears to be an assumption that this is universal. However polling
data from Africa and the Middle East show that China's reputation in the developing world is in
much better shape.
Takeaways
Overview of China’s influence on the Global South
The different perspective of China between Western and Global South countries
Africa’s positive impressions of China
Position of Africans in the US-China conflict
China’s influence in the productive dimension
Quotes
Positive impressions and perceptions of China in Africa come from these tangible projects
goods and infrastructure that people can use to make their life easier - Dr.  
China is identifying itself as a member of the Global South family. This makes them more
appealing to countries in the Global South as  as a model for countries aspiring to be 
nations.
We'll be discussing the gains China has made in
much of the Global South a trend that doesn't always receive enough thorough analysis in the
West. Perceptions of China in those countries have plummeted in recent years and there
seems to be an assumption that this is universal. Yet polling data from Africa and the Middle
East indicates that China's reputation in the developing world is in much better shape. In a
recent episode Michael Robbins from The Arab Barometer walked us through a report that they
published in August of this summer that emphasized positive views of China and the Arab
world. And a 2021 report from the Afrobarometer  showed that Africans tend to have
positive views of Chinese assistance and influence on the continent. So what is it that China is doing differently in the Global South and why is it effective
Why is it so important for Beijing to make such significant inroads into what we used to call the Third World but now we call the Global South
So China's early days and early encounters with much of the
global south goes back to the Bandung conference in 1955 when we have PRC delegates
coming into close contact with delegates coming from Egypt from Ghana from Algeria lots of
African and Asian countries lots of African countries that were not even independent. during that Bandung conference it became really evident for the PRC that there was an
opportunity for China to take on this kind of stage of developing countries countries in the
global south to sort of share the lessons from the CCP's own revolutionary times from its own
ideology about anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism. And the relationship  starts there
starts with these opportunities that the Bandung kind of created and opened up for Chinese
delegates to get to know delegates from various countries in the global south and try to give
China that kind of platform to really talk about its own experience and that history. Right that
moment of solidarity where we see the CCP get to know and try to kind of enter into that
revolutionary kind of friendship. It stayed right it is rhetoric and it is a moment that is celebrated
even today in political discourses between the Chinese president and African and Asian and
other presidents and leaders from throughout the Global South. So it has always been important
for China to orient itself toward the global south because it could exercise that kind of leadership
role to show that China has something to share with the Global South. In the 1950s it was
these anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism lessons that the CCP was interested in building on
and finding momentum for its own revolution outside of its borders and in the global south. And
we see that as  even today with this idea of democratizing international relations by
including   China in the conversation and not  focusing on the Cold War kind of
bipolar moment. And so the Global South has always been important for Chinese foreign policy
orientation because it allows China to exercise that sort of leadership.
  Sure. And when you talk about the democratization of international politics I
mean this is something  that  factors right Because   you hear Chinese
leaders often talking about this that they want to see a more democratic global order. But 
the politics of it  play to China's advantage too. When you look at   democratic
international institutions like the United Nations where you've got a lot of countries  
that don't necessarily see things the same way that maybe the U.S. or the EU see things and
they might vote with China on issues that are more important to them. And it gives a lot more
weight  in those kinds of forums.
 And you mentioned the UN. Of course it is through
the UN right that the block of 77 was able to kind of show its support back to China right. So 
this is something that Xi Jinping had brought up as recently as 2021--this idea that China that
the PRC owes a lot to the global south in terms of gaining United Nations recognition as you
know the PRC being the official China the official representation of China. And of course with
that came the United Nations Security Council. So the vote was tilted in the favor of the PRC
precisely because of this group of countries that became independent. They gained their
independence in the late sixties   mid-sixties and late sixties. And a lot of that
solidarity that was built around the Bandung conference translated itself and manifested itself
into something like that vote and something that   kind of is present even today in
China's rhetoric with the global south that sort of recognition of the support that China got from
these countries that were supported by China during the Revolutionary Wars as . And so
we see the manifestation of that solidarity even. And talking about it even today is present.
  I know that typically every year when the Foreign Minister
Wang Yi makes his first trip   his first international trip it's to Africa right And this is
something that  is the optics of it are pretty important  for a lot of folks in the
developing world to see this giant economic power this political power that says our first trip of
every year is going to be to Africa to show that this is an important set of relationships. I was
doing some reading before the show and I found this quote from Xi Jinping a speech he gave
in 2021 when he said China will always be a member of the family of developing countries. We
will continue to do our utmost in raising the representation and voice of developing nations in
the global governance system. I've seen other quotes where   Chinese leaders talk
about themselves as the permanent representative of the developing world in a lot of
international institutions. So it does seem to be more than  rhetoric. It seems to be
something that's taken pretty seriously by Beijing.
  You can see this from a lot of different
angles. You're based in the U.S. So of course you're hearing a lot of the narratives within the
U.S. discourse whether it's academic or political what people are saying about China. But then
with your background with your academic focus you see it from different vantage points as
. So  for our audience how are our perceptions of China different in the global south
  whether it's at home and in North Africa or whether it's in the countries where you’ve
done fieldwork in the past And why is this important for audiences in the West to understand
 You had mentioned earlier
Arabbarometer there is a similar thing to that which is the Afrobarometer which is a survey
that is conducted by a whole big research team that typically goes to survey Africans  in
something close to 40 countries 37 38 countries across the African continent. And then the
surveys ask a whole bunch of different questions about government about institutions about
but  in the recent 2 to 3 iterations of the surveys there have been questions about China.
So the Afrobarometer has been asking about how Africans perceive China and how Africans
perceive their country's engagement with China. And by and large the perceptions of China in 
Africa through Afrobarometer our perceptions show that Africans are aware of their country's
foreign partnerships and of their country's foreign partnerships. They are generally
overwhelmingly supportive of the relations with China the country's relations with China. And
when we follow sort of the Afrobarometer questions and we try to understand what it is about
China that Africans give such a positive perception of then we find that there is a high
appreciation of it. So there is an association between Chinese investments with palpable
material sort of infrastructure that people can see in their immediate background. So it's not sort
of a fungible kind of aid that goes to someone's bank account or some sort of relationship that
favors the elite over the rest of the country or that feeds into those kind of divisions that already
exist in societies. But people associate  having infrastructure that is in the form of
highways or ports or airports or schools or hospitals or apartment complexes. They see these
things as ways and opportunities and infrastructure that actually benefit the general population.
And so a lot more people see benefit in having those infrastructure projects built in their
countries than they would the usual kind of fungible aid kind of classic models. So in many
ways that's what people in lots of African countries when you talk about China's investments
those are the things that come to their mind. And I would say from my own research and my
own travels and fieldwork it is very much the same impression I get. So even when I was in
Bamako doing fieldwork in 2019 it's really interesting when you talk about China people can
point to a bridge and say that's the Chinese bridge. So it's   Bamako is a city that's
divided by this big river Niger. So we have both sides of the river. So you always are in traffic
crossing from one side to the other. And so bridges are extremely important.  it's the only
way to get across to go to this side or the other side. And there are three bridges and one of
them the most recently built one is a Chinese-built bridge. And immediately people can point to
that and say this is what we think. Or they point to the motorbikes and you get around in the city
on motorbikes if you don't want to be stuck in traffic for hours. And a lot of those motorbikes are
Chinese they come they're imported from China. And so people are able to point to these
things and say so this is   having China be involved in the economy this is what we
can point to see that connection. And  that a lot of what   a lot of the reason
behind positive impressions and perceptions of China in Africa come from these tangible
projects and goods and infrastructure that people can point to and say it makes my life easier to
be able to get onto this bridge and get across the city or get onto this motorbike or have this
phone that I'm able to do my business on because of all the e-commerce and all the facilities
that that that comes with that that people have these positive impressions because there is a
very present alternative. There's a present kind of contribution that they can see in their daily
lives. It's not out there. It's not  at the level of  talking. Right. So China's presence in
the continent is really present. And so these are the things that people can point to and say. But you  get obviously some more critical perceptions. Of course people can
speak about issues of competition with   smaller businesses not being able to make it
in front of giant kind of conglomerates of of of of Chinese companies coming in. So all of those
you get into the nuance of it. And of course there are nuanced perceptions but by and large
that positive perception comes from there being kind of this material presence of China in the
daily lives of regular citizens.
  But so this is interesting because   a lot of different companies or
countries can build bridges or   build roads or these projects. Is this  a matter of a
lot in Africa specifically a lot of those countries or companies  haven't engaged at the same
level that China has or   is there something beyond the tangible outcomes Is there
something about China that's unique  in an earlier episode we spoke with Tin Hunan alKhateeb who talked about   growing up in Algeria and seeing  how China kind of
transformed itself during her lifetime from a place where people tended to have kind of negative
perceptions of it as a kind of a poor and backward country. And then suddenly it's this
technological and economic giant and thinking   oh like how do we do this How did
they manage to navigate this development gap so quickly and efficiently when a lot of countries
in the Global South have been trying to do this for decades and it  hasn't really been
successful Is it something that China does differently or better or more appealing or is it 
that China's who's there now
  it is all of the above.  when it comes to actual
infrastructure projects there's a huge deficit in the African continent. In the realm of
infrastructure there's a huge deficit. Even with all the hype around what China has been
building and what Turkey has been building what the UAE has been contributing. There is an
absolute need. There's a very vast gap in terms of infrastructure building in the continent. And
so I don't think that there is a big competition really as much as there is a huge gap in
infrastructure building in the continent. And so it is not from that immediate sense that Chinese
companies are doing  the work without having a huge competition. So there's not a
whole lot that's there that can say these companies are building the same thing. And then why
are Chinese companies more popular It's actually not there at all maybe in other aspects but
not in the immediate kind of presence of those infrastructure projects. And so actually I was
looking at Brookings put out a report a couple of years ago but I was  looking at the share of
China's investment in infrastructure projects.  in terms of funding about almost 20% of
infrastructure projects that are built on the continent are funded by China. And then and then
sort of the next biggest one is individual governments. And then you have from 20% then you
have individual countries like the US which are like 5%. And then the IMF World Bank all of
these things are in the single digit tiny tiny percentages. And then you sort of you get the idea
here that it's  by and large you kind of   it's more present in that way. But to the
point that you brought up   aside from these infrastructure projects at the level of the
elites at least right so then we can talk about this relationship at the level of the regular sort of
  citizen what is present to what's immediately present to them what's available to
them. But we can  talk about this at the level of sort of the elites and the leadership and that
and in that sense of course then you can see that the conversation moves maybe a little bit
beyond kind of the material things that are available to more or less the aspiration. And so this
aspiration of China's success story in terms of its development and in terms of  how it
was able to achieve historically huge levels of development in a very short amount of time is
very much in the back of people's minds and leaders and elites when they are thinking about
their own development their own countries trajectories and thinking about what is what's an
aspiration what's a model to aspire to. And  that this is something that has  worked
for China. Earlier you mentioned how Xi Jinping talks about China being a member of the Global 
South family in the family of developing countries. And that is in itself really exercising that
attraction on   leaders and elites from the Global South because they can still today
associate and it resonates right. So people can identify with China because they don't think of it
as  it's already jumped over to the other side. It's a developing country. It's a big 
power. And all of a sudden that experience is not available as something that can be done or is
doable in the same way it would be if people thought of China as part of this family of
developing countries. And so in a way that language used is a practice as you said precisely
because it keeps this momentum going around. If China was able to achieve this level of
development in 30 40 years of course coming from a similar background in the developing
world then that provides that aspiration that people elites and leaders can  achieve or can
have the aspiration to achieve those levels of development as . It's not inaccessible. It's not
impossible to do. There is definitely that aspect that's  important in the development of
Africa at least in terms of looking at China as very viable. And   an enviable real
success story on that that China was able to do this in this amount of time coming from all the
challenges that the PRC came out of in 1949 which are very similar challenges to a lot of
African countries coming out of their own struggles for independence.
  There's so much in there that that's really struck me.   when I was
doing my bachelor's degree in the mid-nineties I was focused mostly on African politics. And I
had this vision of myself working on African politics. And then I took a turn and ended up in
Taiwan by accident I guess and became like an Asia guy. And now I’m Middle East. But I
remember one of the things in that period was oh   the African Department at my
university was not expanding in the mid-nineties because after the Cold War it was you could
see the direction things were going in. A lot of Western institutions  saw that it wasn't
maybe as useful a piece of real estate as it was during the Cold War. And you could see 
politically maybe that that became a bigger issue where especially the U.S. didn't engage in
Africa in the way it did. And you can see a point when China starts becoming a much bigger
actor there. And so   to your point about showing up   I remember a couple
of years ago  when John Bolton was the national security adviser and he went to I can't
remember which country it was in East Africa. And he gave a speech. And  he mentioned
China upwards of 30 times in the speech. And it was pretty clear to the audience that the focus
wasn't on what the U.S. can do with African countries. That was mostly like Africa has to work
with us   in this kind of geostrategic struggle with China. So  your point of 
showing up and delivering material or tangible outcomes is something that's really important.
And  that transfers across   a lot of different countries and regions. One of the
things I keep seeing studying a lot of Belt and Road projects over the years is there has been a
lot of caution from Western governments saying   to developing countries you
shouldn't engage with China on this stuff.   there's the debt trap narrative which of
course was very very prominent for a long time. There was talk of environmental degradation
or lax labor standards or any number of things. A lot of reasons for countries to not engage with
China. But  what we saw was what you described where  what's the alternative Are
you going to come in with something that we need that you can deliver on time that we can
afford that is going to meet the same criteria And often the answer is no how does it resonate
do you think when   this narrative of you shouldn't let China into this whether it's 
critical infrastructure or whether it's    standard infrastructure that countries need
for   economic   a bridge.
  you set it up very nicely in that even in the speech that
you mentioned by Bolton it is not that Africans are naive to the possible challenges and
disadvantages of their relationships with X Y and Z partners. And oftentimes you will  you
will see Africans actually being very open and to listening to engaging in a conversation. The
issue with a speech like the one that Bolton made was that it kind of showed Africans it 
gave the impression that the US did not at all see Africans as a partner in this relationship. It 
was a platform for theater which is the language used in the military. But it's it is   not
   it's the theatrics of it actually is very interesting is that the African continent is
then at this point  used as a theater to counter China as much as it was used as a theater to
counter the USSR as much as it will be a theater to counter X threat in the future and so on
and so forth. So when put in this longer context of interaction with the US then Africans are a
little bit skeptical because they are not able to figure out what is it exactly right that the US is
interested in doing differently in Africa than China is. At the end of the day then it becomes the
case where Africa is kind of used in this really US-China competition and there is no genuine
interest in actually figuring out what works for Africans or not. So if this conversation was to say
 let's set up a way  for a government to have a third party doing a risk analysis
of X Y or Z project coming in so that you have the full picture of what are the potentials on debt
issues on financial survivability on environmental sustainability. I'm pretty sure people would
listen to something like that. So if it was framed as sort of a building the capacity of Africans to
negotiate better in terms of figuring out what the project might look like or might bring in terms of
risks. That was not what was presented. And what was presented is  kind of a very
patronizing discourse that treats Africans as less than able to make decisions on their own and
that there is a threat coming from China that they  needed to be protected from. And that is
really what Foreign Minister Pandor of South Africa  this last time when Secretary Blinken
was visiting South Africa and held a meeting and press conference with her she did mention
this to say to Secretary Blinken that Africans are not willing to take sides in somebody else's
conflict. If the US has issues with China it should be able to resolve its issues with China
outside of its relationship with Africans and that Africans today are more interested in
cooperation and they are more than willing to cooperate with Chinese companies and with U.S.
companies and take sort of the better bid the better   kind of offer. And she kind of
pushed a bit against this rhetoric and this growing kind of discourse trying to pull Africa into this
US-China kind of competition and trying to influence Africans. And she mentioned precisely the
burden right of being talked at and talked down at as Africans when leaders she didn't mention
the US in fact she said that that's that she isn't she doesn't she's not talking about Blinken as
having done that. But she said she had said in meetings with several Western leaders where
she is asked  to stay away and to choose between and to  move away from
dealing with China. And she had refused that. She said we actually are sovereign countries.
And if you are going to talk about partnerships you have to recognize our sovereignty first and
our ability and responsibility to deal with our partners in the way we see fit our own constituents
and our own people and so on and so forth. And so we see this pushback. We see this at least
awareness right on the African side that's trying to say please leave us out of this these 
tensions that the US is experiencing with China precisely because we've already been through
that and the Cold War where you have these two giant powers and then somewhat playing
these proxy conflicts on the African continent and the and then the African is on the losing end
of this relationship. So  we are seeing that kind of pushback coming from
African leaders and that's a good thing.
  So I take your point. I hear the same kind of thing. Like so there was an
article we're recording this in early November. There was an article yesterday in the Wall Street
Journal about Xi Jinping's expected trip to Saudi Arabia in December. And  the way that
we often hear about this trip is how Saudi is trying to get things from China and trying to get
things from the U.S and this is the hedging strategy that they're using for this tension. And I
was actually quoted in the article and my point was I don't think that's  it's kind of a
superficial way of looking at it because I don't think they're trying to take advantage of the
situation.  that   the Saudis have a deep interest in the U.S. and they have a
deep interest with China and they're trying to pursue both of those things concurrently. It
doesn't have to be one or the other. This binary  doesn't register with a lot of countries'
leaders who aren't thinking about things as pieces on a chessboard. They're thinking how can
we address our own domestic or economic or political pressures And when  of the
points you're making about the narrative I don't think it's always necessarily from a patronizing
tone like I know it often is but I don't think it always is.  one thing that I really enjoy and
I've heard you on it as  is We Used to Be the China-Africa podcast  now it's the
China Global Self podcast which is a really good show. And what I get when I listen to that is I
hear a lot of really brilliant African people who know China really  and  that's one of
the things that folks maybe should listen to more is  the voices from Country X or Region X
because  what's the assumption is it isn't really you don't know what you're doing. The
assumption is there's not always a lot of knowledge production about China coming out of a lot
of countries.  I see this in the Middle East where   here in the UAE I don't
know a lot of people who have studied Chinese I don't know a lot of people who've been
studying Chinese history of language or culture. So  what we see is a place like the U.S.
where there's an amazing community of China scholars and China watchers who are maybe
sometimes a little heavy-handedly saying   learn from our experience. And it doesn't
work very  sometimes. But   I don't think it's always necessarily meant to be you
know kind of finger-wagging even though it probably often sounds like that.
 And  to add to
that oftentimes the point you make about the voice and listening to voices from the country is
important is extremely it's on point precisely because if you think about  you take
the example of Confucius Institutes and Confucius Institutes in the US have been in the last few
years there's this trend of  closing down and canceling the contracts or at least trying to
 curb a bit the influence of Confucius Institutes on curriculum design and all hiring and
all kinds of other issues. If one does not understand that Confucius Institutes in the US are
 built on a very different premise than Confucius Institutes in African countries. One
could assume that the experience that universities in the US have experienced with Confucius
Institutes is directly translatable to the experiences of universities in Africa with their Confucius 
Institutes. And then what you come with from the US and this experience as the lesson learned
will sound patronizing because it  doesn't even match the reality. And so what And so that
gap that you mentioned right that gap is that you mentioned should be mediated through
knowing more about how Africans experience China in their own context and not in the context
of let's say universities across the US or across European institutions and how they experience
Confucius Institutes. So that's  one example to kind of go back to the point you made about
the importance of listening and learning from Africans about their own experiences so that we
can figure out which lessons make more sense. And then if the lessons don't make sense then
that's where the patronizing experience becomes real.
  I was smiling as you were talking about the
Confucius Institutes because I've seen a lot of them around the Middle East. And  
you'll hear obviously when they're in say the UK or in the U.S. or in   European
countries you do hear these narratives of their serving   very overt political agendas.
What I've seen here couldn't be further from the truth.  they seem almost cute in
comparison. They're    two or three teachers trying to   wrestle students
into a classroom so they can learn something about China. And it's really    your
point that it's different in different places is important because here it doesn't look like that. I did
a lot of research for this show. I was reading a whole lot of your stuff. And I went I found an
article you published in Foreign Affairs in 2019 called “China's Soft Power Advantage of Africa”
which will  link to the show page. It's a good article but  you made a good point. We
keep hearing maybe less so in the past couple of years. You published in 2019 when you
know the BRI narrative still dominated the big ports and the billion-dollar MOUs that we kept
seeing every time a Chinese official would visit a country. We've seen less of that as there's
been less travel and there's been more focus on smaller projects. But  the point you made
still holds. You wrote about the less visible elements of Beijing's diplomacy and how this is
important in a lot of countries. And I thought that was something that  really should be
described as impactful. But what are these less visible visible elements of what China is doing
in countries beyond the big splashy headlines
   in in the book as  as in that piece the
my my my experience looking at China-Africa relations and China's involvement in Africa and
 for the for the edited volume chapter that I wrote for you   I make the same
argument that we that there is this aspect of human capital investments that this aspect of
trying to build social capital in Africa through exchanges through delegation visits and seminars
and summit meetings with Africans that focuses on having those networks having that social
capital focuses on expanding that human capital. And that's exactly what  by this sort of
invisible infrastructure. So aside and beyond looking at what buildings show up after signing
deals and so on and so forth with China and Chinese companies it's  important to
understand that China's foreign policy in Africa is  interested in that human capital aspect in
the sense of   trying to expand the party-to-party relations. So the CCP
has increasingly been inviting members of different political parties from the African continent to
China. And so they would travel to China they would sit usually there's a mix a combination of
sort of really doing seminars and substantial kind of conversations with tours and cities and 
touring different facilities and sort of the combination of those two lead to. And of course over
time when you have these routine visits and exchanges what it does it it kind of brings people
closer right So these are elites that are part of the CCP on the Chinese side and part of the
political parties of different political parties on the African side. Then it gets political party elites
from Africa a first-hand experience of how the CCP is managing all this development. How is
the CCP able to keep its people happy and how is the CCP managing media-to-people
relations Or how is it managing civil society organizations How is it managing its own
relations between civil-military ties and so on and so forth And so you have these opportunities
for elites from different African countries to learn firsthand how the CCP has been able to
achieve this perceived success that it has achieved over the last 30 to 40 years. And so 
that that aspect this element of the network this element of social capital and building this
momentum of bringing delegations from various African countries to China for these
experiences is extremely important. And so that's one aspect looking at it from that party elites.
And of course now in Africa we have this new party leadership school that opened in Tanzania
that is a joint party school that six political parties on the African continent joined together. And
it's very much modeled after the CCP leadership party leadership schools and  on the
very first kind of inaugurated kind of class then you see participants write a letter Xi Jinping to
 thank the CCP for providing the model. And and so then actually   he wrote
that so he he got the message and he wrote back to them. And so you see these connections
in the ANC in South Africa as . It has all kinds of vocals. The ANC is the political party. The
African National Congress in South Africa has made several   speeches. And of
course there's an hour outside of Johannesburg as  a party leadership school that's
modeled after the CCP. And so we see these connections   that they're not as visible
as let's say a port that China built or an airport or a highway. But they are connections. They
are an infrastructure that is going to sustain China-Africa relations for generations to come
because this is  what today is kind of a lower or middle-ranked political officer in a
political party over time is going to be   high-ranking officers. These are people who
are going to elites who are going to take on positions in their government. Or in that piece that
you mentioned I  talk about  journalists from African countries who receive
these training sessions. So opportunities to go to China for training and as  when they come
back they have   the power to kind of portray and write and disseminate discourses
and narratives and stories and  rhetoric around China and China's investments in
Africa. So it is very important I really do think that especially now when we are seeing
investments in terms of BRI investments and in terms of hard kind of financial investments kind
of depend a little bit in China for correlations. We are still seeing these kinds of connections in
terms of social capital. They are even more important now than they were before because they
need to do the work of sustaining China's interests and China's foreign policy interests in the
continent in the long run.
  That's one of the things about the Belt and Road that I thought was really
interesting because it really was quite vaguely defined in a lot of people's minds. But they did
lay out these five cooperation priorities and they didn't make a hierarchy of it. They said you
know we want to focus on these five baskets of things. And it was of course the infrastructure
and the financial integration the trade and policy coordination with people-to-people bonds I 
think is the way they put it were the last of the five that were listed. And when   you
start to see things like less big funding for huge projects or you saw COVID   making
the trade less viable you start to see these other things whether it was   educational
or sharing health information or   a lot of these things start to step up. And you could
say there's still this kind of cooperation that's linking these countries to China in a pretty
meaningful way. I know before COVID when and   when I used to be able to go to
China pretty easily I was always amazed to see  this broad range of international students
going to all these different Chinese universities. And it was I thought a really really smart
move   to meet people from Egypt people from Yemen people from Nigeria people
from wherever that were going and getting a master's degree in China and learning Chinese.
And they go back home and obviously they're going to have pretty favorable stories to tell.
 At the very least they have the language skills to be able to act
as a direct kind of bridge between their own government and the Chinese government in terms
of translating in terms of. So you don't have to go through to understand what's going on in
China when you have people who have been trained and have lived in China and have that sort
of deep knowledge of the history of the culture of the economics of the politics and so on and
so forth.
  You see it wherever you go. You'll meet people that
went to university in the US and they go back home and they've got their alumni associations
and they're very   they've got  nostalgia and they've got  memories. And I
think it's pretty smart on China's part. Another piece of your writing that I was reading recently
was again with your very very very good book. I'm really enjoying it. I haven't finished yet but I
promise I will. But one of the things you wrote about that I thought was interesting was you
wrote about the errors of conventional wisdom that a lot of folks when they think about China's
engagement with you write about in Africa but  it applies in other places.   that
China's power is measured in material terms.     it's military power or you
know things like this  than relational or productive dimensions. And a lot of what you've
 discussed were these relational dimensions  of China's ability to enhance those
political ties or personal ties. But  can you go into this a little more like what do you mean by
these relational productive dimensions Because  it gives us a pretty useful way of
thinking about how China's influence in the global south   whether it's in Africa or the
Middle East or Latin America whatever it is it's much more interesting than  we tend to
look at it.
 The premise for that argument is exactly as you describe. I
mean it's  simple. It  says that when we are examining China's influence in Africa for
example and we try to understand what does China's influence look like in the continent or
where is China's influence in the continent The biggest or the strongest influence What I am
proposing to do there is instead of looking at where China built the most number of the largest
number of ports highways and airports I say actually at the end of the day then   a
port even if it's built by China is it's an airport is built by a Chinese company. It's true that
immediately people will remember that but over time they may not necessarily associate that 
airport with something that China has built. It  becomes part of the background. It's  an
airport. You  go and you fly into the airport and come in. But what I'm trying to say here is if
we really wanted to measure the influence and try to understand that influence we need to look
at these investments that are really long-term. And  the investments are long-term as
opposed to an airport which let's say in ten years people will forget that it was built in China. If
you have a political party membership that has annual training annual and more than annual
even more frequent than that close connections and close ties and visits and exchanges and
seminars and learning from the CCP and from Chinese counterparts. In the long term that's not
going to go anywhere. You're not going to forget that in ten years or 15 or 20 or longer. So I
think that what I'm trying to do there is to shift the way we understand the influence and the way
we calculate or we measure influence by saying instead of really focusing on these immediately
accessible visibly ready projects we need to  really figure out a way to calculate in our
understanding of influence precisely what you are what you were mentioning earlier about
students. So if   a generation  were a couple of different statistics.  I
know  in Juba the University of South Sudan and the vast majority actually of
people trained who work now at the university are people who got their PhDs from universities
across China because of the scholarships that Chinese embassy has been the first kind of you
know saw an opportunity. It's a new country. It's a country that needs to have its elite and
capacity building invested in. And so you have Chinese   universities inviting PhDs.
And so it's not  not going anywhere in that way. The influence and I  saw a piece
of there was a publication in Quartz Africa in December 2021 where the authors say that in the
year 2021 there were more Ghanaians with a Ph.D. who graduated from Chinese universities in
that year than there were Ghanaians with PhDs that graduated from Ghanaian universities. And
so that is quite impressive at that scale of figuring out the kind of these long-term investments.
So these are long-term investments of people who get their degrees from China. They are
people who live in China. They identify they have friends they have stories and they have
connections. And they  have a way of looking at whatever it is. It's if it's engineering or
journalism or whatever it is that they've got their degree that's mediated through their
experience in China. And that's going to stay there. It's not going to go anywhere. So these
people these elites young people who come back with their degrees they take jobs. They get
promoted through the ranks. And the more we have these connections over time and over the
scale that they are happening  that to me that's how we should measure China's
influence in a way looking at it from the perspective of network theory. So it's not about how big
the port is or the airport is it's actually how many layers how dense that network is in terms of
figuring out   the numbers of delegations the programs that send students to
universities the journalists that go for training the kind of party-to-party connections. And then
on top of that of course and then  I'm happy to add the other sense of influence. But what
I'm trying to get at is really these relations that Chinese foreign policy is building in the continent
through investments and capacity building and human capital and student exchange programs
and scholarships and so on and so forth really are what I call shaping the future of power. It's
really looking at the future. It's looking at the long-term investment  than focusing on 
on the airport or on the highway and so on and so forth only without looking at this other
aspect.
  That's . So the way you're describing it   there's again there's
a lot that resonates when  of my field of research which is   the Middle East
what China's doing in this region. And I hear I keep hearing a lot of conversations from folks in
extra-regional powers who will say   how can we kind of meet the China challenge
How can we know how can we maybe not balance but   step into this place where
China seems to be making tremendous gains And what you're describing is kind of what I see
missing for a lot of countries here is  like  articulate what the region or the continent or
the country mean to your country or your government and then come up with a policy to say
let's pursue this in a meaningful   serious way. That's why I keep thinking when
people say like how can we   engage like in the Middle East. And   what
do you want from the Middle East What does the Middle East mean to your country And
when you can answer that question then you can start to make not a policy that is against
China but is a policy that helps your country in that country of that region and kind of play to
your own strengths  than tries to hobble somebody else. That's what I'm thinking when I'm
listening to you talking about Africa. But I'm  wondering what advice   a lot of the
people who listen to this are in the D.C. area. There are a lot of folks who are thinking about this
professionally. Any advice you have for people when you're thinking about how other countries
could engage more meaningfully in Africa or in the global south
 And  maybe I want to reiterate two points that you made in our
conversation. The first one is listening to African voices. What does that mean It means really
being open to coming out of this conversation from understanding first of all the African
perspective or the Ghanaian perspective or the Nigerian perspective or the Ethiopian
perspective and really listening and trying to understand what are these people's needs what
are they looking for how do they see their position in terms of their relations with the world and
tying that number to which is very closely related. And it's something that you  mentioned
now but it is really figuring out what is  a private company in the US What is its
competitive advantage in Africa What can it do in Africa that it can do best  than let’s
say China's really doing  at X and then the company wants to outdo China at X.  that
that's not the best way to look at it because already as I mentioned earlier there are huge
deficits in the continent.  within infrastructure there's a huge gap that there's room for all
kinds of different investments and come in at this from only the narrow-angle of outdoing China
and outperforming and competing and out kind of that's not necessarily always the best thing
because Chinese companies especially in terms of infrastructure have been doing this for
decades. They have really entered the market. They made themselves really smart about
moving within the market and figuring out their own competitive advantage.  that for
instance for the US private sector it would be important to figure out what is that fees that
these companies can add and the same thing for the US government. So it would be the same
question that the US can offer Africans that it can do the best job at doing it  than trying to
compete directly head-to-head with China or with Russia or with Turkey or with UAE on things
that these countries do best. So in many ways and of course   Judy Moore and
Aubrey Shubert and others have been   right time and time and time again about what
they see as the private sector competitive. What do they see What are these investments and
projects and sectors that they see the US can contribute to or what US companies can 
contribute the best in Africa. But for me is  in general the attitude it's and the strategy should
 be focusing on what can US companies offer to the table that the US companies can do the
best job at  than  trying to ideologically stubbornly kind of compete in sectors that may
or may not work out
I've been consumed with writing a bit on China's
mediation strategy and diplomacy in Africa. Actually I  finished turning in a chapter in an
edited volume that's going to look at China's mediation diplomacy and so forth. For my part I
looked mostly at Mali but the idea was to look at the Sahel in general. In the piece I both found and argued
that China's mediation policy in the Sahel is closer to China-Middle East than it is to China-Horn
of Africa or China's remaining thinking of the continent. I argue that it's a bit
closer to the Middle East."