Knowledge Diplomacy in the Forum of China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC): A critical discourse analysis on mutuality

• In Event: Exploring the shifting perspectives of donors to higher education in the Global South

Proposal

Bilateral and multilateral engagements in socio-economic development, especially between developed and developing countries, have been widely scrutinized due to power imbalances between donor and recipient countries. One attempt to establish an alternative paradigm was the establishment in 2000 of the Forum of China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), a uni-multilateral partnership platform between China and 53 African countries that convenes every three years to negotiate partnership activities. (Similar forums also exist between Africa and other countries - e.g. Japan, Korea, France, U.S. - and multilateral organizations - e.g. the EU, the Commonwealth).

FOCAC explicitly subscribes to the ideology of South-South Cooperation (SSC), which emphasizes exchange of resources, technology, and knowledge between countries in the Global South based on values such as mutuality, equality, and brotherhood/friendship between developing countries. At every triennial ministerial-level meeting, FOCAC publishes a Declaration and an Action Plan, which detail a wide range of cooperation agendas, from economic cooperation and infrastructure development to public health and education.

This presentation examines the power dynamics and ideology underlying partnership activities between China and Africa, via the results of a recent critical discourse analysis (CDA) of knowledge diplomacy (Knight, 2022) activities outlined in the past nine FOCAC Action Plans. The paper uses the concept of mutuality to examine the policy documents on the four dimensions of equity, autonomy, solidarity, and participation (Galtung, 1975, 1980). Mutuality was selected as the key construct in the study, due to its stated importance as a key criteria for international partnerships (Kaisse, 2022; Olouasa, 2014) and due to its frequent use as a framework in the study of educational cooperation models and partner positioning (Hanada, 2021; Hayhoe, 1986; Leng, 2016; Mwangi, 2017). Fairclough and Blommaert’s approach to CDA is adopted to analyze the policy documents as texts, discursive practices, and social practices (Fairclough, 2014), situating the analysis within the global context of power imbalance and history of inequalities (Blommaert, 2005).

Preliminary analysis finds the ideology of SSC based on mutuality repeatedly and consistently emphasized throughout the FOCAC Action Plans. Nevertheless, a critical examination of the underlying assumptions reveals that mutuality is achieved mostly in discourse but not in actions. The tension around achieving mutuality may be attributed to the assumptions that position China as the largest developing country with much experience in achieving rapid and successful development and Africa as the low-resourced continent that is presumably eager and willing to learn from China and accept its support. The uni-multilateral mechanism of FOCAC arguably recreates the center-periphery dynamic, which is antithetical to mutuality in South-South Cooperation. As a result, the irreconcilable tension between SSC and the center-periphery dynamic of FOCAC may require a transformation of the existing paradigm to better achieve mutuality. FOCAC and other similar Pan-African policy forums also interact with each other to form a site of global power struggle among countries actively engaging with Africa.

Author

• Bingran Zeng, Boston College