“北京共识”根本就不是共识
M Iqbal
November 12,2010
Abstract
When the United States emerged as the victorious nation in the Cold War the “Washington Consensus” became the only remaining credible sociopolitical model. With the financial crisis in 2008, continued African underdevelopment and China’s economic success, it lost this status again. The result is a welcome debate about a “China Model”, referring to the economic and political system that led to sustained growth in China, while many African countries continue to struggle with the effects of “structural adjustment” policies. While the term “Chinese Model” is misleading, because it implies a certain transferability of the Chinese experience, it is clear that some aspects of it are highly relevant for Africa.
This paper describes why China does not refer to a “Beijing Consensus”, and argues that this has to be seen as a good thing for African development. Especially, it questions the universality and, in a second step, the transferability that both terms imply. Rather than finding a consensus on a single model put forward, Beijing recognizes the coexistence of commonality and difference. Africa is a continent that has been told for centuries by foreign powers which model to follow. In contemporary China–Africa relations, it is therefore not the successful “China Model”, but the absence of a single “Beijing Consensus” that makes China so attractive.
Return To a Multipolarity of Ideas
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Africa?s intellectual Left was muted, and the Washington consensus appeared to be the only remaining way forward. Before entering the debate about what effect this set of policies had for African development, we have to stress the perceived lack of alternatives to it at that time. This is the main reason why the policies were adopted without much consideration about the local situation, which might require different policies than the ones that had been successful in the West. The apparent failure of communism led to a belief in the universalism of a Western model. Considering this background, political and economic reforms in Africa were well-intended and understandable. Nevertheless they failed to recognize that Africa needed some home grown policies that reflect the situation on the ground, rather than a ?one-size fits all? approach that might have worked elsewhere in the past.
At the same time, China, which has never been subject to structural adjustment programs, achieved the most significant reduction of poverty in history within two decades through a gradual opening up reform process that allowed for many experiments to test its own genuine path.3
China?s success has now revived the debate in Africa about its own path of development, which had been muted by a perceived foreign consensus. Disillusion has settled upon Africa through failures of structural adjustment policies and “poverty reduction strategies”4 subscribed by foreign donors, but Chinese strategies bring fresh wind into the debate.
To be sure, this article does not suggest that Africa should try to imitate Chinese economic and political policies, nor does it believe that this would be feasible. Not only is there no such thing as a single “Chinese model”, but even if there was one, it would only trade one evil for the other. If there is something that Africa can learn from China?s experience, then it is that there actually is an alternative to conventional wisdom and that each country has to find its own path, leaning on more than one point of reference and genuinely taking into account history and local reality.
As Ndubisi Obiorah writes, ?China’s emergence as a major axis of global power is welcomed among many African intellectuals who hope that it may herald a return to a global multi-polarity in which milieu Africa and the developing countries will have a greater role on the global stage than they currently do?.5
Multipolarity is definitely a key word in the question of how China might influence African paths of development. Not only in the terms of a multipolar approach to political issues, but also in terms of a multipolarity of ideas and the revival of a debate that had been concluded too early.
African Agency
Ironically, in the debate around African paths of development, African perspectives have often been downplayed. It has been a long standing joke that USAID, DIFID and the World Bank hold a trilateral meeting about how to increase the African participation in these issues. The debate about “ownership” has been attempted to counter this problem but has widely failed as Western donors continue to set their own agenda.
Leaning on this experience, Western debate of current China-Africa relations very much puts China in the driving seat. Common phrases include “Because China needs natural resources…”, “China holds the FOCAC…” (Forum on China-Africa Cooperation), and “In Africa, China competes with the West…” This is to say, African agency is frequently downplayed in the debate about its own development.
As Ndubisi Obiorah writes in a chapter, very appropriately titled “How Africa discovered China”6, that it was African liberation movements that actively sought assistance from China in the 1950s. So did post independence leaders Julius Nyerer of Tanzania and Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia. In an attempt to find an appropriate way of national development, they looked for models in the West, the Soviet Union as well as in China. The collapse of the Soviet Union meant that it ceased existing as a model, and African perspectives of China experienced a shift. While before, China-Africa relations were dominated by ideological considerations, with China?s post-1978 reforms and the collapse of soviet communism, Africa increasingly found business opportunities with China. The way in which these activities are realized, however, differed very much from the West. And here we enter the debate around the concept of a Chinese model.