Global Security and Intelligence Studies Volume 2, Issue 1, Fall 2016 | Page 90
Global Security and Intelligence Studies
of economic globalization and commercial competition, Chinese arms serve more
of a profit motive (Mullen 2016). In its arms relationship with African nations, arms
sales have more commercial and political bases and thereby promote both the geoeconomic
and geopolitical goals of Africa.
China’s Multidimensional Approach in Africa
This analysis focuses on China’s contradictory policies of arms sales/military
cooperation and peacebuilding/peacekeeping activities in African nations.
This in no way asserts that China alone is responsible for the sale of weapons
to sub-Saharan African nations. However, while arms sales and peacebuilding
activities may seem contradictory policies, they are an integral aspect of China’s
multidimensional approach to Africa which includes activities such as agriculture
and health training, educational cooperation, mineral investments, infrastructure
development, telecommunications services, and military cooperation, among many
others. This approach has inevitably led to the seeming contradictions between the
simultaneous expansion of arms sales and peacekeeping activities. In fact for a long
time, the foremost arms suppliers to Africa have been the US, France, Britain, and
Russia. In terms of largest world arms suppliers, China was for a long time not among
the five top global suppliers. It was only in 2010 that it ranked among the top five
suppliers occupying the position of third largest weapons supplier (SIPRI 2011). China
has realized that in order to achieve its geo-strategic and economic ambitions it needs
to be more competitive with the leading arms suppliers, the US, Britain, Germany,
France, and Russia. Its increasing competitiveness may in large part be due to its arms
sales to sub-Saharan African states. Its ongoing geo-political and economic objectives
in African countries have, at the same time, widened and even strengthened its arms
trade with African states.
China’s growing penchant for increasing its arms sales to Africa is driven by
both domestic factors as well as external imperatives of economic globalization—in
this latter case is the need to compete with the foremost global arms suppliers, the
US, France, Russia, Britain, and Germany in particular. The domestic factors that may
be largely responsible for China’s arms transfer to Africa are: (1) the Chinese state’s
inability to regulate or monitor all arms exports from China; (2) China’s arms sales
to African nations of geopolitical and geo-economic importance to China in Africa,
such as Sudan and Zimbabwe; and (3) the freedom of trade that comes with economic
liberalization in China which has spawned many private enterprises, some of which
are engaged in arms transfer purely for the profit motive. These internal–external
factors responsible for China’s arms transfer to Africa are driven by what could be
referred to as the globalization imperative. This last reason is directly related to the fact
that many Chinese enterprises with close ties to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA)
no longer benefit from that symbiotic relationship. The (PLA) formally divested itself
from commercial operations after Jiang Zemin called for the dissolution of China’s
military-business complex (Hyer 1992; Taylor and Wu 2012). Military acquiescence to
divestiture was contingent on generous compensation from Beijing as well as allowing
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