In 2010 a team of African and Chinese archaeologists discovered a fifteenth century Ming Dynasty coin. The coin was nondescript, a remnant of Ming Emperor Zhu Di’s (1360-1424) diplomatic efforts to win allies outside of China. What made headlines, though, was where it was found – in the small coastal town of Mambrui in northern Kenya where it is believed to have been left by Ming envoy, Admiral Zheng He, when his Treasure Fleet, laden with imperial gifts, reached East Africa. The coins were minted between 1403 and 1424 and carried only by imperial envoys.⁽²⁾

The significance of the Kenyan discovery lies not only in that it opens up another possibility of finding the legendary and elusive sunken Zheng He treasure fleet; it could be indicative of a relationship between China and Africa established long before the first Europeans ever set foot on the continent.⁽³⁾ Now, 600 years later, another Chinese armada is arriving on African shores, bearing coins of a different kind. China is now Africa’s biggest trading partner, and Africa is increasingly looking east as it struggles to find new models for economic development to address social and economic issues that have blighted the continent.⁽⁴⁾ But economic might is not enough and as China battles to legitimise its growing economic influence in Africa, culture is becoming the instrument of choice with which to achieve this legitimacy.⁽⁵⁾

But what exactly is this cultural tool that China is using and why is the spread of Chinese culture so important to China’s leaders? This paper examines some of the reasons for the rapid spread of Chinese culture and philosophy throughout Africa. It also asks the question: Is this culture being forced on Africans in a neo-colonial way, or are Africans simply adapting to an emerging world order where knowledge of Chinese culture opens up legions of opportunities to the East?

The soft power of the Sage

To begin to understand Chinese culture it is necessary to understand the 2,000-year-old philosophy that guides everyday Chinese life; a philosophy that spells out the ethics by which to live a virtuous life, a philosophy that guides relationships and attitudes toward life – a philosophy known generally as Confucianism.⁽⁶⁾

Confucius lived in the fifth century BC, but the term Confucianism itself dates to the sixteenth century when Jesuit missionaries to China sought to give a name to the complex Chinese cultural-philosophical thinking that is still part of mainstream Chinese life today. Other Asian countries, such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam, have also been influenced by Confucian thought. Confucian philosophy deals mostly with how to live a virtuous and benevolent life, as this quote from the Analects of Confucius demonstrates:⁽⁷⁾

Tsze-chang asked, “What must the officer be, who may be said to be distinguished?” The Master said, “What is it you call being distinguished?" Tsze-chang replied, “It is to be heard of through the state, to be heard of throughout his clan." The Master said, “That is notoriety, not distinction. Now the man of distinction is solid and straightforward, and loves righteousness. He examines people's words, and looks at their countenances. He is anxious to humble himself to others. Such a man will be distinguished in the country; he will be distinguished in his clan. As to the man of notoriety, he assumes the appearance of virtue, but his actions are opposed to it, and he rests in this character without any doubts about himself. Such a man will be heard of in the country; he will be heard of in the clan."⁽⁸⁾

Yet, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under the rule of Chairman Mao Zedong declared Confucius an enemy of the state. Mao reviled Confucius as a conservative who wanted to restore the feudal rule he had struggled against. Two anti-Confucius campaigns were launched by the CCP to destroy Confucian ideals – one in 1966 and another in 1974.⁽⁹⁾

Barely thirty years later, China has become the world’s second largest economy, and by 2016 China is expected to take over the United States (US) economy to become the largest in the world. As China’s international economic influence is growing, it finds itself increasingly fighting the ‘man of notoriety’ label the West is tagging it with. This is true especially in terms of China’s involvement in Africa where a new scramble for resources has become necessary to sustain Chinese economic growth. Today China has diplomatic and economic relations with almost all African countries.⁽¹⁰⁾ By 2012, China overtook the US as Africa’s largest trading partner when trade reached US$ 200 billion.⁽¹¹⁾ But as the West loses ground in Africa, criticism of China increases and accusations of neo-colonialism against the Chinese in Africa abound. China is finding itself in a situation where its economic power is not matched by its soft power.⁽¹²⁾

Enter ‘the Sage’ as the Chinese soft power diplomat. Six hundred years after Zheng He, Confucius has become the new imperial envoy, spreading the “harmonious society” ideology of former CCP president, Hu Jintao.⁽¹³⁾ Since 2004, China has been actively promoting all things Chinese under the umbrella of Confucianism. Worldwide, Confucius Institutes have mushroomed to promote business and teach Chinese philosophy, language, arts and culture. More than 400 university-affiliated Confucius Institutions and 500 Confucius classrooms have been established in 108 countries and regions, while around 2,000 universities worldwide are offering Chinese programmes.⁽¹⁴⁾ The Chinese Government has indicated that by 2020 there will be 1,000 Confucius Institutes worldwide.⁽¹⁵) Registered students at these institutes are increasing rapidly. In 2010, Confucius Institutes had 360,000 registered students globally. Two years later, in December 2012, this figure stood at more than half a million students.⁽¹⁶⁾ They are part of an estimated 30 to 40 million people across the globe who are learning Mandarin.⁽¹⁷⁾ More than 11,000 Chinese teachers and volunteers from China are teaching at Confucius centres and classrooms around the world.⁽¹⁸⁾

The African battleground

Africa is no exception to this worldwide expansion. There are currently 31 Confucius Institutes in 24 countries, and counting.⁽¹⁹⁾ China’s aim: To compete with the US and European cultural influences on the continent; to get the African youth to exchange hip-hop culture for Chinese language and kung-fu lessons, and to get Africans to exchange Hollywood dramas for Chinese soap operas. The cultural cold war is on and it is happening on all fronts – in movie theatres, at home on television screens, in schools, and in museums. In Tanzania, Swahili-dubbed Chinese dramas are popular. In South Africa there are plans to translate Chinese books into the local languages and vice versa. In Ethiopia, a 2010 cultural agreement with China kicked off with a Chinese film festival – if Hollywood can spread the American dream, then China’s movie industry can surely do the same for the Chinese dream.⁽²⁰⁾ This was a sign of things to come. Three years later, in 2013, incumbent Chinese president, Xi Jinping unveiled his “Chinese dream, African dream” to become the new Africa-China relations catch phrase for the 21st century.⁽²¹⁾

Learning Chinese culture and language is now a popular past-time globally, and Africa has joined the fray. The reason for this all boils down to economics, it would seem. Africans have been involved in trade with China since the eighth century, during the time of the Tang Dynasty when they were given the name "kunlun" in Chinese, meaning "dark-skinned" people.⁽²²⁾ The African influence in China can be seen today for example in traditional Chinese medicinal herbs, many of which were imported from Africa. There are an estimated 100,000 Africans working and studying in China and migration is on the increase – at a rate of about 30% to 40% annually since 2003.⁽²³⁾ Most of these African migrants are traders living in Guangzhou, the hub of China’s manufacturing industry, and in Shanghai and Beijing from where they export goods back home. On the other hand, around half a million Chinese are living in Africa.⁽²⁴⁾

Shared language and culture promotes trade because it increases access to a bigger pool of trading partners. It allows for trade without intermediaries, contracts without translators, and it enhances trust. Cultural diffusion increases accumulation of knowledge and expands economic borders.⁽²⁵⁾ As already mentioned, China is now Africa’s largest trading partner, and in addition, it has pledged US$ 20 billion in investment and loans to Africa over the next three years.⁽²⁶⁾ It therefore seems only natural for Africans to learn the language of the new economic masters.

It is in preparation for this expansion of economic borders that more and more African countries are offering Chinese language and culture courses. In South Africa, even members of the police force are getting to know Chinese culture, and parents are encouraging their children to learn Chinese so that they can have a competitive edge in the future – a future that might see an increasing number of African students looking not only to Western countries, but also to China for education opportunities.⁽²⁷⁾

In Uganda, where China accounts for about 30% of trade,⁽²⁸⁾ there is ongoing debate on whether to offer Chinese as an elective language in schools. The country is lagging behind in terms of teaching Chinese in schools – other African countries, such as Kenya and Nigeria, already offer this option to students.⁽²⁹⁾ Head teacher of Luyanzi College in Kampala, Jimmy Dheyongera, sums up his school’s reasons for offering Chinese language courses:

We became interested in Chinese language when it became clear that the Chinese economy is growing and there is no country in the world without Chinese commodities. We also came to realise that everyday people leave the African continent and elsewhere to go to China to do business, and their biggest handicap is in the area of communication. That is how we came to think of teaching people the Chinese language.⁽³⁰⁾

Ugandans doing business in China have complained about being cheated because they don’t understand Chinese, and Chinese have been deported from Uganda because of language barriers.⁽³¹⁾ Due to its increasing trade with China, Uganda, like many other African countries, can ill afford a less than amicable relationship with the Chinese. The Chinese have already bought a stake in Uganda’s recently discovered oil resources, and companies investing in Uganda could offer employment to thousands of Ugandans.⁽³²⁾

Trojan horse or dark horse?

The rapid increase in language and cultural exchanges between China and Africa is fuelling neo-colonialist criticisms from the West. Africa is being bombarded with cultural delegations from China signing agreements all over the continent. In the past 50 years China has signed more than 60 cultural exchanges and cooperation agreements with African countries. Since the first meeting of the Forum of China-Africa Cooperation in Beijing in 2000 these cultural events have been on the increase.⁽³³⁾

Yet those who criticise China are standing behind the proverbial door. In the US alone there are 13 times more Confucius Institutes than on the whole of the African continent. The United Kingdom has three times as many, while Australia and Canada both have around the same number of institutes as all the African countries combined.⁽³⁴⁾ Could this then just be a case of the Western pot calling the Chinese kettle black?

Exporting culture is not a modern idea, and where there is contact between cultures there is cultural exchange and assimilation. One has but to look at the diversity of Africa’s languages and religions to know that the continent has been at the receiving end of cultural export for many centuries. Islam came to Africa during the seventh century when early Muslims were seeking safe haven from persecution.⁽³⁵⁾ By the nineteenth century the Muslim powerbase in West and East Africa had been firmly established. European ruling elites used colonial expansion into Africa to strengthen their political and economic power base at home. To do so, they created colonial ideologies to convince Africans that colonisation was in their best interest.⁽³⁶⁾ Similarly, during the Cold War period the US exported cultural ideologies of political and religious freedoms to Africa, Asia and Latin America. This freedom was closely linked to consumer capitalism and the ideals of the free market. Artists, singers and dance troupes became goodwill ambassadors, spreading an American dream not even recognised by Americans. ⁽³⁷⁾

China has learned from the best. Culture is an immensely powerful tool in any country’s soft war arsenal. Now, the Chinese too, are applying the Western model – spending billions on its media expansion and cultural exchanges across the world. Millions are also being made available for cultural and language exchanges in the form of study grants. In 2012 China’s global expenditure for Confucius Institutes stood at US$ 400 million.⁽³⁸⁾

But China has to be credited with creating a more equal playing field for reciprocal cultural exchange. There have been more than 200 cultural exchange delegations and hundreds more cultural and art exchange events between China and Africa.⁽³⁹⁾ Since 2007 there have been more than 30 major arts performances, exhibitions, cultural festivals and personnel exchanges between the two. New millennium Sino-African cultural exchanges feature large-scale cultural activities under the framework of the China-Africa Cooperation Forum. In addition to this, the China-Africa Joint Research and Exchange Programme was launched in 2010 to increase people-to-people cultural exchanges, scholarly and otherwise. This resulted in a new generation of Chinese Africanists and African Sinologists tasked with improving the depth and breadth of Sino-African relations.⁽⁴⁰⁾

Conclusion

Chinese culture and language are becoming increasingly popular in Africa, if for no other reason than to facilitate greater economic freedom to Africans. Now that China has become the world’s second largest economy and Africa’s biggest trading partner, it is only natural that Africans should take advantage of the opportunities offered to them. Africans are not forced to learn Chinese. They simply understand that knowledge of Chinese culture and language would greatly enhance their ability to benefit from a new economic world order, just like the rest of the world does. Furthermore, China’s interaction with Africa has been relatively more reciprocal than past, colonial relationships, creating an atmosphere conducive to cultural exchange, rather than imposition.

For China, greater interest in Chinese language and culture in Africa could be beneficial as a soft power tool to fight Western criticism questioning Chinese motives in Africa. However, every Ming coin has two sides, and while the short term benefits of an increased cultural relationship between China and Africa are visible in its economic form, the long term effects of this relationship remain to be seen.

Written by: Charmaine Pretorius

NOTES:

(1) Charmaine Pretorius is a CAI Research Associate and a South African freelance journalist. Contact Charmaine through Consultancy Africa Intelligence's Asia Dimension Unit ( asia.dimension@consultancyafrica.com). Edited by Nicky Berg.
(2) ‘Ancient Chinese coins found in Kenya’, People’s Daily Online, 25 August 2010, http://english.people.com.cn; Greste, P., ‘Could a rusty coin rewrite Chinese-Africa history’, BBC News Africa, 18 October 2010, http://www.bbc.co.uk; Szczepanski, K., ‘The Yongle Emperor, Zhu Di’, About.Com Asian History, http://asianhistory.about.com.
(3) Ibid.
(4) Ye, X., ‘A path to mutual prosperity? The trade and investment between China and Africa’, African Development Bank 5th African Economic Conference, 27 October 2010, http://www.afdb.org.
(5) Xin, X., 2009. Xinhua News agency in Africa. Journal of African Media Studies, 1(3), pp. 363-377.
(6) Tan, J.Y., ‘Confucianism and neo-Confucianism’, New Catholic Encyclopedia, http://www.jonathantan.org.
(7) Ibid.
(8) Ibid.
(9) Zhou, Z., ‘Confucius and the Cultural Revolution: A brief comparison of the two anti-Confucian campaigns during the Cultural Revolution’, paper for presentation at the Columbia University Seminar on Neo-Confucian Studies, New York, 12 April 2013, http://neoconfucian.files.wordpress.com.
(10) Zafar, A., ‘The growing relationship between China and Sub-Saharan Africa: Macroeconomic, trade, investment and aid links’, World Bank, 2007, http://www.relooney.info.
(11) Ye, X., ‘A path to mutual prosperity? The trade and investment between China and Africa’, African Development Bank (AfDB) 5th African Economic Conference, 27 October 2010, http://www.afdb.org.
(12) Xin, X., 2009. Xinhua News agency in Africa. Journal of African Media Studies, 1(3), pp. 363-377.
(13) Moulds, J., ‘China’s economy to take over US in next four years, says OECD’, The Guardian, 9 November 2012, http://www.theguardian.com.
(14) Paradise, J.F., 2009. China and international harmony: The role of Confucius Institutes in bolstering Beijing’s soft power. Asian Survey, 49(4), pp. 647-669; ‘Confucius Institutes bridges friendship between China and Africa’, Crienglish, 17 February 2009, http://english.cri.cn; Peters, M. and Zhang, Z., ‘Confucius Institutes propagate China and its culture’, China Daily, 25 September 2011, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn.
(15) Sautman, B., ‘The all-American criticism against Confucius Institutes’, South China Morning Post, 7 November 2013, http://www.scmp.com; Simons, B.B., ‘Confucianism at large in Africa’, Asia Times, 7 August 2009, http://www.atimes.com.
(16) Custer, C., ‘How many people are learning Chinese?’, The World of Chinese, 13 December 2010, http://www.theworldofchinese.com; ‘655,000 students registered at Confucius Institutes’, China.org.cn, 13 December 2012, http://www.china.org.cn.
(17) Sautman, B., ‘The all-American criticism against Confucius Institutes’, South China Morning Post, 7 November 2013, http://www.scmp.com.
(18) ‘Annual Report 2012’, Confucius Institute Headquarters, http://www.hanban.org.
(19) Li, J., ‘Chinese regime courts Africa with Confucius Institutes and scholarships’, The Epoch Times, 3 October 2013, http://www.theepochtimes.com.
(20) Yi, X., ‘Chinese and African museum directors meet in Beijing’, China Daily, 19 November 2013, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn; ‘Swahili-dubbed Chinese TV drama a hit in Tanzania’, 27 March 2013, Want China Times, http://www.wantchinatimes.com; Grafham, O., ‘A new battleground: Chinese culture in Sudan’, Pambazuka News, 22 April 2010, http://www.pambazuka.org; ‘Cultural exchanges and cooperation’, Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), 21 September 2006, http://www.fmprc.gov.cn; ‘SA, China strengthens cultural ties’, South African Government News Agency, 2 August 2011, http://www.sanews.gov.za.
(21) Lu, S., ‘Chinese Dream, African Dream - achieving common development through joint efforts’, Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), 17 July 2013, http://www.focac.org.
(22) Smith, R., ‘Blacks in China: An overview of Black presence in China since the 8th Century’, African Diaspora Tourism, 28 July 2010, http://www.africandiasporatourism.com.
(23) Ibid; Politzer, M., ‘China and Africa: Stronger economic ties mean more migration’, Migration Information Source, August 2008, http://migrationinformation.org.
(24) Ibid.
(25) Lazear, P.E., ‘Culture and language’, Hoover Institution and Graduate School of Business Stanford University, December 1997, http://faculty-gsb.stanford.edu; Ashraf, Q. and Galor, O., Cultural assimilation, cultural diffusion and the origin of the wealth of nations’, National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper, 23 April 2007, http://www.brown.edu.
(26) ‘Loans to African countries to double’, China Daily Forum, 19 July 2012, http://bbs.chinadaily.com.cn.
(27) ‘Yes! South African Police learn Chinese’, People’s Daily Online, 19 August 2013, http://english.peopledaily.com.cn; Mabuse, N., ‘Parents hope learning Chinese is children’s ticket to success’, CNN, 27 May 2011, http://edition.cnn.com; ‘Let a thousand flowers blossom: Confucius Institutes in Africa’, Centre for Chinese Studies, January 2010, http://www.ccs.org.za.
(28) Gatehouse, G., ‘Uganda feels China's African involvement’, BBC News, 7 August 2012, http://www.bbc.co.uk.
(29) Oluka, B.H., ‘Should Uganda teach Chinese language in schools?’ The Observer, 18 August 2013, http://www.observer.ug.
(30) Ibid.
(31) Ibid.
(32) Ibid.
(33) Cisse, D., ‘FOCAC: trade, investments and aid in China-Africa relations’, Centre for Chinese Studies University of Stellenbosch, May 2012, http://www.ccs.org.za.
(34) ‘Confucius Institutes around the globe’, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Confucius Institute website, http://confuciusinstitute.unl.edu.
(35) Hassan, H.D., ‘Islam in Africa’, Congressional Research Service, 9 May 2008, https://www.fas.org.
(36) Ekeh, P.P., 1975. Colonialism and the two publics in Africa. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 17(1), pp. 91-112, http://users.polisci.wisc.edu.
(37) Prevots, N., 1998. Dance for export: Cultural diplomacy and the Cold War. Wesleyan University Press: Middletown, http://www.google.com.tw.
(38) Mustafi, S.M., ‘Sino the times: Can China’s billions buy media credibility’, Columbia Journalism Review, 2 May 2012, http://www.cjr.org; ‘Annual Report 2012’, Office of Chinese Language Council International, 2012, http://www.hanban.org.
(39) Ibid; ‘Cultural exchanges and cooperation’, Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, (FOCAC), 21 September 2006, http://www.fmprc.gov.cn.
(40) Sun, X., ‘The state of play with African studies’, China Daily Africa, 29 November 2013, http://africa.chinadaily.com.cn.