Solid relationship

Despite the broad range of cooperation between China and Africa, encompassing mutual fascinations of each other’s culture and a growing trend of people-to-people relations, exemplified in marriages and even cross cultural name swaps, there are a few isolated instances of abuses and slurs. A Chinese who recently called a Kenyan man “monkey” and was put on trial in a Kenyan court and on conviction, was deported.

Such isolated incidents are far from the trend of solidarity and mutual empathies of both peoples that drives the engagement of China and Africa.

Some Chinese companies have been caught on the wrong side of the law in their host African countries for being less scrupulous in observing local laws and customs. But the majority of Chinese companies in Africa, apart from being major employers of local labor, are active in discharging their corporate social responsibilities to their local communities and are also avid taxpayers to their host governments.

As the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping said that if one opens a window for fresh air, a few insects might fly in too, but it will not be wise to shut the window because of few undesirables.

The window of China-africa cooperation has advanced considerably in providing mutual benefits to both sides and the prospects for the future is even bigger and brighter.

The only rational course of action in addressing whatever challenges that may arise in China-africa cooperation is to deepen the cooperation and seize the opportunities it presents.

Individual acts of misdemeanor or even corporate misconduct may arise from time to time. However the general principle and strategic framework of China-africa cooperation rest on Africa’s open arms of international partnership and the time-tested Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, which form an important basis of China’s foreign policy. The five principles are mutual respect for each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, mutual non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence.

Even as malicious prejudices rear their heads to taint China-africa relations built from the common trenches of anti-colonial struggles and consolidated by a common aspiration for improved quality of lives for their respective peoples, the dogged fortitude of the people and their respective leaderships give a solid guarantee that ChinaAfrica cooperation belongs to the future.

* Comments to

niyanshuo@chinafrica.cn

* The author is director of the Center for China Studies, Abuja, Nigeria

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