China's Education Aid to Africa: Fragmented Soft Power (Book Excerpt)

Dr. Wei YE finds a much more complicated picture than just the projection of soft power of a neo-colonialist kind in an international relations context.

China’s rise as an aid provider in Africa has caught global attention, with China’s activity being viewed as the projection of soft power of a neo-colonialist kind in an international relations context. China's Education Aid to Africa: Fragmented Soft Power, which focuses on China’s education aid—government scholarships, training, Confucius Institutes, dispatched teachers, etc., reveals a much more complicated picture.

In the 2023 book, Dr. Wei YE outlines how the divide between the Chinese Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Education hinders China’s soft power projection, how much of China’s aid is bound up with an education-for-economic-growth outlook, mirroring China’s own recent experiences of economic development, and how China’s aid—prioritized to reflect the commercial sector’s interests—is out of step with most international development aid, which is dominated by education agendas and the campaigns of international organizations and traditional donors; this leaves China easily exposed to the charge of neo-colonialism. This situation also reveals insufficient knowledge production of China and in South-South Cooperation. Substantial production of Southern knowledge should recognize the international development cooperation architecture as an open system by which both traditional donors and Southern countries transform.

Wei YE is a Research Assistant Professor at the Institute for International Affairs, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, China. She holds a Ph.D. degree from the University of Hong Kong. She was a visiting scholar in the College of Development Studies at Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia. Her research interests include China-Africa relations, international development cooperation, knowledge production and discourse of the Global South, and cultural diplomacy and soft power.

From China's Education Aid to Africa: Fragmented Soft Power, 1st Edition by Dr. Wei YE, Copyright (2023) by Imprint. Reproduced by permission of Taylor & Francis Group.

Chapter 7  Fragmented Soft Power in the Myth of Global China 

The scholarship on China’s in Africa has been dominated by the critical lens from the West.¹ Going beyond such an intellectual structure, this book has examined China’s education aid to Africa from an endogenous perspective of China. From this endogenous perspective, China’s education aid to Africa is understood through uncovering the evolving domestic power structure and its interaction with international society. This book reveals how the education-for-economic development paradigm adopted by the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) and the Ministry of Education (MOE)’s reluctance toward Africa jointly shape China’s ineffective practice in the international discourse. It unveils ministerial interaction in policy formulation and the two-way socialization within China and between China and the international development cooperation architecture.

Ministerial Interaction in Foreign Policymaking and the Reinforced Fragmentation

China’s education aid to Africa has originated with a dualism in which “aid to education” and Human Resource Development (HRD) programs are conducted in the contexts of cultural cooperation and development cooperation, respectively. Since the reform and opening-up in 1978, this dualism is reinforced by the bureaucratic structure that governs China’s education aid to Africa. With the sectoral development of China’s economy and education since 1978, the bureaucratic structure of foreign aid at the ministerial level has evolved to one in which MOFCOM and the MOE engage parallelly in the issue area of education. Apart from its dominating role in the foreign aid structure before the China International Development Cooperation Agency (CIDCA), MOFCOM is also a pivotal actor of education aid, manifested in its HRD that provides training and scholarships.² The divergent agendas of MOFCOM and the MOE and their different weight in the power structure entail the divide in the policymaking of China’s education aid to Africa. While the HRD driven by economic changes is seamlessly embedded in China’s Africa policy, the divergent paces between China’s internationalization of higher education and foreign policy exist.

Despite the changing contexts and features over time, HRD has been consistently based on the education-growth nexus. With an education-for-economic development paradigm, especially since the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), China’s commitment to the training of officials and managerial and technical personnel from Africa surges through its HRD program. This increasing commitment is intimately related to MOFCOM’s “going out” strategy that intertwines aid with trade and investment in Africa. On the one hand, Chinese companies’ “going out” and expected win-win should, first and foremost, be based on the mutual aspiration for development cooperation at the government level. On the other hand, Chinese companies’ overseas operations require qualified local talents. The HRD program addresses the above two dimensions of demands through cascade training for officials and managerial and technical personnel.

In contrast, opening up to bring advanced knowledge and technology has been MOE’s major internationalization agenda since the reform and opening-up. This agenda entails the attention of Chinese higher education that focuses on learning from and catching up with the West. It accordingly implies a merit-based selection of students globally in terms of government scholarships. Without diplomatic influences, Africa could be marginalized in such a selection, given its disadvantaged position in the global education landscape. As illustrated in Chapter 5, despite MOE’s ambition to expand international students, the share of African recipients in Chinese government scholarships declined from 27.63 % in 2008 to 19.84 % in 2018. This downward trend is expected to change with the setting up of a regional-based scholarship scheme to Africa to meet China’s promises in the FOCAC, like the raise from 2005 to 2008.

The power of influence of MOFCOM and MOE depends on the relevance of their agendas to China’s foreign policy and ministerial influences in foreign policymaking. Serving diplomacy has long been a guideline of China’s education aid to Africa, while the particular significance and contents of “diplomacy” in China-Africa relations changes. MOFCOM’s “going out” agenda endows it an inside-out role in Africa policy, as it meets the economic theme in the current China-Africa relations. By contrast, MOE’s role in Africa policy is outside-in. In the post-Maoist era, bureaucratic politics matters particularly at the ministerial level on foreign policy issues of secondary importance. With its HRD to directly serve the economic development theme in China-Africa relations and its influence in policymaking in the superstructure, MOFCOM overshadows MOE. The passive role of MOE is further reinforced at the implementation level owing to its unrepresentativeness in China’s overseas embassies in most African countries. Despite the reinforced centralization to erode bureaucratic politics in Chinese foreign aid policymaking since 2018, education aid further fragments at the implementation level, particularly with the implementation of BRI.

The distinctiveness of China as an “emerging” actor in international development is primarily understood with traditional donors’ practice as the benchmark. With this benchmark, China’s education aid is either perceived as an emulation of the Western growth-based paradigm or public diplomacy tools. This research identifies the dualism of China’s education aid to Africa and how this dualism evolves with the changing domestic power structure and sectoral development. Therefore, it provides a strong alternative to explain China’s education aid to Africa. This alternative effectively explains the paradox of China’s insufficient soft power in Africa which was unsolved in previous research.

International Development Cooperation Architecture as an Open System

The international development cooperation architecture is an open system in which a pre-existed society and the constantly ongoing reproduction of agents within and beyond the society interact. China as an “emerging” actor is not only socialized by the pre-existed “orthodox” international development cooperation architecture dominated by traditional donors but also reproduces the entire system. While the interaction between China and the international development cooperation architecture, China’s ministerial actors and the state also interact bidirectionally in generating China’s education aid to Africa. This agent-structure relation embedded at the agent level of the open system also shapes the way how China is socialized.

Divergent Diffusions of Education-for-Development and EFA in China

The education-for-development paradigm, shared by China and traditional donors, directs China’s practices to a different scenario. OECD countries’ commitments to education have remained stagnant in the recent decade, while China’s government scholarships and training to Africa have been surging. While the ODA’s priorities shift between basic education and post-secondary education since the mid-1990s, China has focused on higher education and vocational training. Despite China’s recent change to align with the OECD categorization of education aid, this categorization can hardly capture the full picture of China’s education aid to Africa. In the official documents, education aid scatters into HRD, “aid in education,” and international cooperation sections. This divide implies the development, people-to-people exchanges, and multilateral cooperation dimensions of China’s education aid. Yet, the distinctiveness of China’s education aid to Africa should be understood in China’s domestic development and South- South Cooperation. Different from traditional donors’ education aid based on their education superiority over recipients at the beginning, China’s education aid to Africa originated from a similar starting point shared by China and Africa.

The education-development nexus has been a linchpin in China’s reform and opening-up since 1978. After the Cultural Revolution, Deng Xiaoping’s initiative to send high officials for overseas study tours consolidates the Chinese leadership’s determination to reform. With this determination, financing college students to study abroad is a seminal initiative to bring in science and technology. Simultaneously, the resume and expansion of higher education continuously fuel China’s economic growth. Yet, the education-for-development paradigm is di used divergently in China’s economic and education sectors. With the “going out” strategy, MOFCOM applies this paradigm in its outgoing practices in Africa. Training African officials through the HRD program in Chinese foreign aid is comparable to China’s overseas study tours for its high officials. Thus, inspiring elites’ aspiration for development first and then providing them with relevant knowledge. Education’s function to transfer population into human capital is also adopted to meet the local talent demands in Chinese companies’ “going out” practices. By contrast, MOE fulfills its domestic mission of transferring domestic population pressure into human capital through education, while its internationalization policy continues to focus on learning from and catching up with developed countries. Therefore, for MOE, education aid to Africa is a task from foreign policy rather than a ministerial priority in internationalization. Situated in this divergent diffusion of education-for-development, China’s preference for post-secondary education in its education aid to Africa projects its economic development experience supported by sending officials for overseas training and expanding higher education.

It can be perceived that EFA is absent even in the newly released white- paper China’s International Development Cooperation in the New Era (2021). This absence is understandable as the origin of EFA and China’s development path since the reform and opening-up are different. Based on industrial countries’ experience of mass public education, universal education has underpinned the normative account of the multilateral organizations’ policy and practices in education³ and profoundly influenced national governments’ education policy in less developed countries.⁴ The EFA has been institutionalized and reaffirmed through a series of conferences, actions, and agendas of international organizations. With this institutionalization, EFA appears as an implicit moral ground for international education aid.

By contrast, China’s development path since 1978 is not supported by the adoption of EFA but by a cascade routine that prioritizes coastal regions and higher education for economic growth. Higher education’s role in China’s development lies in its contribution to science and technology and cascade inputs to education at all levels. This suggests China’s divergent understanding of social justice: accumulation comes before distribution. This understanding is also manifested in China’s education aid to Africa which prioritizes higher education and gradually values balanced distribution of education resources in basic education later. China’s avoidance of the EFA rhetoric should be understood as divergent understandings, rather than the rejection, of social justice.

South-South Cooperation in the International Development Cooperation Architecture

Ever since its origin in the 1950s, South-South Cooperation has been a stream in international society to facilitate decolonization and development cooperation. Yet, these efforts had long been neglected until the recent decades when the rise of some developing countries catches wide attention. With the Bandung Conference in 1955 and the following Non-Aligned Movement, the newly independent countries have developed their own approaches to pursue national development while maximally keeping out of taking sides during the Cold War. For those countries, on the one hand, a peaceful and equal international environment, as opposed to military alliances in wartime, is expected in the post-war era. The rivalry between two aligned blocs led by the U.S. and the Soviet after WWII under- mines this expectation. Therefore, they seek to escape from the rivalry through a non-aligned approach. On the other hand, after independence, they pursue a new international economic order that differs from the previous North-South relations. In accordance with the non-alignment notion, they strengthen their negotiating capacity over economic and development issues in the UN system through consolidated efforts rather than establishing a separate structure. As detailed in Chapter 6, decolonization is not granted by colonial powers. Southern countries’ efforts contribute to transforming the international development cooperation landscape to go beyond colonial relations.

China’s participation in South-South Cooperation signifies the shift from prioritizing its communist/socialist identity to the shared identity as a developing country. Despite ideological influences in the Maoist era, the legacy of internationalism in China’s foreign aid to Africa was more of South-South solidarity than the communist “proletarian internationalism” ideology. Even with the revolutionary enthusiasm during the Cultural Revolution, China’s symbolic foreign aid project, the TAZARA Railway in Tanzania and Zambia, projected the intention of developing a self-relied economy and increasing the negotiating capacity of the Southern countries in South-South Cooperation. Situated in this background, in addition to foreign policy considerations, receiving foreign students was regarded as an “international obligation” by China.⁵Despite the divergent origins in cultural and people-to-people cooperation and economic cooperation, both “aid to education” and HRD were phrased in this “international obligation” to friendly countries. In this era, China’s reproduction of international development cooperation lied in its involvement in South-South Cooperation as a collective stream in the international society rather than transforming the landscape of international development cooperation.

With the changes of China-Africa relations from political interests to prioritizing economic relations in the FOCAC framework since 2000,⁶ China’s education aid to Africa has surged in terms of the number of scholarships and training opportunities and the diversified activities and channels. This dynamic is in line with the general trend of China-Africa relations. Education aid is grounded in the education-for-development paradigm that has been adopted in China’s domestic development. Based on its own development experience, China perceives the lack of talents as one of the major obstacles that hinder African countries’ self-sustained development.⁷

Meanwhile, the demand for qualified local talents also rises with Chinese companies’ “going out” practices. As China’s expansive economic presence in Africa is faced with debates, the cultural and people-to-people dimension has been re-emphasized since China’s second Africa policy paper and the BRI. In this period, China’s reproduction of the international development cooperation architecture lies in its development experience rather than educational experiences or knowledge production.

Soft Power and the Intellectual Structure of Knowledge Production

As indicated in Chapter 1, this entire book aims to answer two paradoxical questions: (1) despite China’s increasing government scholarships, training, and CIs in Africa, why does its soft power in Africa remain insufficient? (2) although Africa is not particularly prioritized in China’s education aid, why is China’s cultural presence in Africa faced with neo-colonialism critics?

Fragmented Soft Power in Global China

This book responds to the soft power question by uncovering the internal structure of China. China’s soft power in Africa is fragmented as divides exist in both policymaking and implementation. As documented in Chapter 5, MOFCOM and the MOE, along with their different weight in the domestic power structure, entail divides in the formulation of Chinese education aid to Africa. The power structure is further fragmented as MOCT takes the responsibilities of MOE in China’s overseas embassies in most African countries. Since the mid-2000s, increasing soft power, together with the rhetoric of “the going out of Chinese culture,” has been a guideline for MOCT to develop cultural relations with foreign countries. Cultural influence is understood as foreign recognition of Chinese culture, as manifested in events and pictures that emphasize foreigners’ enthusiasm for Chinese cultural activities. Despite soft power did not originate as the policy guidance for China- Africa relations,⁸ it is adopted indiscriminately in China’s cultural relations with developed and developing countries. However, this understanding of soft power through cultural influence contradicts the internationalism legacy and the current reality of China-Africa relations. Overemphasizing attractiveness can be perceived as “aggressive” by Africans.⁹ A humanistic understanding of culture for mutual understanding and connectivity, rather than foreign recognition, is needed in China-African relations. With the CPC’s reform of Party and state institutions since 2018, the erosion of bureaucratic politics and increasing non-state actors in foreign aid may entail mutual understanding through people-to-people connectivity.

China’s understanding of cultural influence for foreign recognition, a manifestation of lacking confidence and consciousness since the defeat of the Chinese Empire in the Opium War in 1840,¹⁰ reflects its cultural vision of the world that is unmatched with its current self-perception as a “responsible major power.” A responsible major power in international society, rhetoric stated by the Chinese leadership on many occasions, requires the ability to address its relations not only with developed countries but also with developing countries. However, contemporary China is featured by the inferiority and resentment toward Western powers since the Opium War and the increasing superiority that centralizing itself in world affairs since its economic success. The latter is projected probably more than only in China-Africa relations.¹¹ This feature undermines China’s soft power to address its relations with both developed and developing countries.

China’s (In)Capability of Knowledge Production

China’s cultural presence in Africa in the neo-colonialism debate is, on the one hand, associated with the above soft power approach that combines China’s inferiority and superiority at the same time. On the other hand, it is related to China’s insufficient capacity for knowledge production. This incapacity is attributable to both domestic and external intellectual structures. Domestically, as discussed in Chapter 6, contrasting the scope of “international” in the Maoist era that emphasized the Third World, the education sector in China focuses on learning from and catching up with the West in the post-Maoist era. Despite China’s accumulation of development experiences and engagement with Africa, its self-conscious knowledge production on development and Africa is hindered. Further, although area studies and China-Africa joint research plans are increasingly developed in universities as government initiatives, researchers mainly speak to the state machinery rather than the international academia.¹² This domestic intellectual style reinforces the intellectual structure of China-Africa engagements that the West dominates. Without genuine endogenous perspectives, the “epistemic fallacy” can be further reinforced by the uneven international power structure.

From China's Education Aid to Africa: Fragmented Soft Power, 1st Edition by Dr. Wei YE, Copyright (2023) by Imprint. Reproduced by permission of Taylor & Francis Group.

1. Mohan et al., “The (Im)possibility of Southern Theory: The Opportunities and Challenges of Cultural Brokerage in Co-producing Knowledge about China-Africa Relations,” 12–26.

2. As revealed in Chapter 5, despite HRD is reallocated to the CIDCA, it seems to remain with MOFCOM in recent years. Significant changes after this organizational change remain to be seen.

3. Coleman and Jones, The United Nations and Education: Multilateralism, Development and Globalization, 41–42.

4. Bray, “If UPE Is the Answer, What Is the Question? A Comment on Weaknesses in the Rationale for Universal Primary Education in Less Developed Countries,” 147–158.

5. Liu, “A Study of the Policy Evolution and Effectiveness of Chinese Government Scholarships,” 141–192.

6. Prioritizing economic relations in this context does not mean completely neglecting political and cultural relations. I mean to describe the change compared with the Maoist era.

7. China Daily, “Full Text: China’s Second Africa Policy Paper.”

8. King, China’s Aid and Soft Power in Africa: The Case of Education and Training, 11.

9. Interviews with a Chinese diplomat, May–June 2019, Ethiopia.

10. Haibin Wang, The Spiritual Structure of Human and Its Modern Critique: Reconstruction of the Spiritual World of Contemporary Chinese, 24.

11. This point is from Professor Yizhou Wang in a meeting on the ongoing controversies in China-Africa relations during the COVID-19 pandemic. The meeting was hosted by the Center for African Studies on April 17, 2020. See https:// mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=Mzg3MTU2NjU1OQ==&mid=2247489130&idx= 1&sn=8576e57a175d6e91d1d6592dfd988e4b&source=41#wechat_redirect.

12. Mohan et al., 12–26.