China’s Training of African Officials as a Soft Power Mechanism

• In Event: Chinese Politics Mini-Conference: China on the Global Stage: Policies and Reactions

Abstract

In recent years Western policy-makers and experts have called China a threat to the liberal order, cautioning about the diffusion or the export of its ideology and its repressive political governance model to the developing world. This paper critically and empirically engages with these claims by examining China's governance training programs for African elites. Specifically, the study analyzes how China presents its system to a potentially receptive audience of Ethiopian party cadres, government officials and journalists. Ethiopia is one of China's closest economic and political partners in Africa, with thousands of Ethiopian officials already trained in China. Drawing on rare access to presentations used in trainings of Ethiopian party cadres, government ministers and journalists, as well as on my interviews with key participants carried out over the past two years, this manuscript argues that the trainings do not appear to present a coherent “China model,” nor a set of repressive skills to the participants. Instead, they aim to "show off" China to the visitors through a mix of excessive hospitality, sightseeing tours and lectures on China's economic development. I further argue that these training programs featured a controlled courtship ritual that indirectly strengthens China’s hegemony in Ethiopia and beyond. China's trainings signify a generous gift of international exposure to the participants--something they reciprocate with publicly acknowledging and celebrating China's accomplishments, thereby symbolically strengthening China's position or hegemony on the global stage. This paper, therefore, empirically underscores the limitations of the "China authoritarian export" narrative, and instead draws our attention to the importance of China's symbolic politics in the Global South.

Author

• Maria Repnikova, Georgia State University