Is China ready to take a front seat to help resolve conflicts in the Horn of Africa?

Observers say that China still prefers to take a back seat in solving disputes, favouring development-led strategies and working with incumbents.

HK mediation centre to bolster China’s influence in Africa

That approach was apparent in the Ethiopian conflict.

For example, China supported the Ahmed government as the country faced mounting pressure from Western countries over alleged human rights violations committed by Ethiopian forces in Tigray.

According to Paul Nantulya, a China-Africa expert and research associate at the Africa Centre for Strategic Studies at the National Defence University in Washington, China’s strategy of supporting leaders in power marginalised political opponents and other significant political actors.

“There is no evidence that Chinese diplomats have sought to reach out to government opponents like the TPLF in Ethiopia, or coordinated closely with the [African Union],” Nantulya said.

He said that by excluding some stakeholders, China avoided discussing the core issues in the region’s complex conflicts.

Nantulya said China was also highly selective about when, where and with whom it mediated. He said Beijing was very averse to urging governments and their opponents to resolve differences as it considered that “interference” that could offend its government partners.

“Chinese diplomats tend to play a back-seat role to multilateral efforts and only come in when their interests are threatened directly,” Nantulya said.

He said that in South Sudan said Beijing did bring warring sides to the negotiation table since China’s oil infrastructure and personnel were in the line of fire.

“Yet, even in that case, China did not take the lead, but instead worked to support the UN and AU [African Union],” he said.

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China is building a new Egyptian capital in the desert under its Belt and Road Initiative

China is building a new Egyptian capital in the desert under its Belt and Road Initiative

Karoline Eickhoff, a researcher at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs who has studied China’s Africa strategies, said China’s focus in disputes was more on development and less on Western-style peacebuilding.

“It is likely that Chinese officials will advocate for a development-driven approach to peace that prioritises infrastructure development and economic partnerships over comprehensive conflict transformation efforts that are favoured by peacebuilding actors from Western contexts,” Eickhoff said.

She said such projects may raise concerns about competing mandates and fragmented process development across the region’s diverse conflict zones.

“Yet, these approaches are not incompatible by default. On the contrary, these developments could stimulate focused, pragmatic exchanges about good practices for tackling specific conflict constellations in the region,” Eickhoff said.

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SCMP Explains: China’s growing role in UN peacekeeping missions in Africa

SCMP Explains: China’s growing role in UN peacekeeping missions in Africa

Benjamin Barton, an associate professor at the University of Nottingham’s Malaysia campus, said there had not been any groundbreaking moves in the Tigray crisis in the same way that China momentarily bridged the divide between the warring factions in South Sudan in 2013.

He said China seemed to be working to profit from the US sanctions on Ethiopia and or to gain Ahmed’s trust.

“It would seem that the Tigrayan faction isn’t convinced either that Chinese mediators would serve as neutral brokers,” Barton said.

He said China’s approach to mediation in Africa reflected the more structural changes in its foreign policy – transitioning from a somewhat low-profile, passive power seeking during the Deng Xiaoping era, to the more Xi Jinping-inspired stance of trying to position China at the forefront of international relations in any way possible, including African mediation.

As a result, Barton said China had gone from a stakeholder that would not seek to take the lead on conflict and dispute mediation in Africa and elsewhere to a power growing confident in its belief that it should position itself as the lead mediator in hotspots across the world.

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One of those hotspots is the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, a US$4.6 billion hydropower project that Ethiopia is building across the Blue Nile river.

The dam has been a source of tension in the Nile basin since the project broke ground in 2011. Sudan and Egypt have said that using water from the Blue Nile – on which Egypt is heavily dependent – to fill the Ethiopian dam could lower the river’s water levels.

But so far China has also avoided the role of mediator among rivals Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan.

Nantulya said China had instead held separate talks with each country, urging them to avoid military options.

As part of those discussions, China has promised huge economic investments to incentivise them to dial down the pressure while continuing to look to China as a preferred partner.

“China is likely to continue relying on targeted economic and financial partnerships as an indirect means of reducing conflict rather than direct mediation,” Nantulya said. He said China was focused on extending its Belt and Road Initiative into the region as a kind of “peace dividend”.

China has also poured money into Djibouti’s maritime sector, including the country’s ports and free-trade zones, and built its first overseas military base near the strategic Bab el-Mandeb strait between the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea.

Lukas Fiala, the coordinator of the China Foresight project at the London School of Economics, said China had been involved in the diplomatic dispute surrounding the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam in the sense that Chinese companies helped build the project.

Fiala said that given China’s existing interests in the Horn – extensive investments in Ethiopia and neighbouring countries, close bilateral partnerships with regional governments, and a growing security presence in Djibouti, “Beijing is surely keen for regional parties to find a way to de-escalate tensions”.

“Yet, politically, China has not been as active as one might expect. China surely wants to appear as a constructive diplomatic actor in the region, but China’s Horn of Africa envoy Xue Bing has, at least publicly, largely avoided tackling the issue of the [dam] head-on. China likely wants to avoid alienating any of the regional parties involved – Sudan, Ethiopia and Egypt,” Fiala said.

Yet, broadly speaking, “China prefers to set the table rather than the agenda, delegating the substance of mediation to regional, African parties”, Fiala said.

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