History has always been the handmaid of power. “History is written by the winners,” Napoleon Bonaparte quipped. In the third decade of the 21st century, African and Chinese intellectuals are tapping into veins of the rich history of their civilisations as a strategy to transform global power and create a non-hegemonic, equitable, just and prosperous post-covid world.
In this regard, on May 12, 2023, the China-Africa Institute (CAI) and the Chinese Academy of History (CAH) convened an international symposium on “Comparative Study of Chinese and African Civilisations” in Beijing.
The meeting, which attracted more than 100 scholars and diplomats from Africa and China, occurred at a time when the balance of global power is steadily tilting from the West to the rest.
“A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots,” said renowned pan-Africanist, Marcus Garvey.
But this civilisational dialogue is also soared by the thoughts of Sun Tzu, the Chinese military strategist credited with authoring The Art of War.
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles,” Sun Tzu wrote.
Africa and China are aware that the Global South—signified by the BRICS club (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) — is eclipsing the North. China ($58.499 trillion) and India ($44.128 trillion) will overtake the United States ($34.102 trillion) as a global economic power in the next 33 years, according to a recent report, The Long View: How Will the Global Economic Order Change by 2050? published by the professional services giant, PwC.
America will also be the only power in the current G7 club to appear in the G7 of 2050. Blissfully, Nigeria and Egypt will join the G20 club.
The decline of the West and rise of the rest has largely fuelled doomsday theories signified by Robert Caplan’s Coming Anarchy, Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilisations’ and Graham Allison’s Thucydides Trap’—the idea that the rise of China will inevitably lead to war with America.
As a response, Chinese and African intellectuals are countering these theories with a call for dialogue.
Hierarchy of civilisations
Further, China and Africa are also ill at ease with the idea of a ‘global hierarchy of civilisations’.
Long after Josiah Strong published his book, Our Country (1885), which depicted Anglo-Saxons as “a superior race endowed by God the mission to conquer the world”, this hierarchical mindset still undergirds Western global hegemony.
The history as a strategy now propelling the Sino-Africa dialogue of civilisations is focusing on four core issues.
First, history as a strategy is focusing on the civilisational ties that bind Africa and China. China and Africa are cradles of civilisations. In his two volumes, In Zheng He’s Footsteps (2018) and Zheng He’s Voyages to Africa (2023), Professor Li Xinfeng captures the epic voyages of the Chinese admiral Zheng He to Africa.
Similarly, the Moroccan scholar, Ibn Khaldūn and Mohamed of Mogadishu, also travelled to China. This history of the past is nourishing the African and Chinese dreams of a shared future.
Also reinforcing these dreams are shared core values. China’s Confucian moral universe stresses harmony, mutual respect, justice and equality.
Africa’s ‘Ubuntu’, ‘Ujamaa’ and ‘Harambee’ philosophies also emphasise shared community values: “I am because we are.” A shared history of external invasion and occupation by Western imperial powers and partnership in the liberation struggles reinforced the ideas of justice, freedom and sovereignty.
This heritage has inspired the African Union's “Declaration on Shared Values” (2011) and African Agenda 2063 as Africa’s development blueprint. Recently, it has inspired President Xi Jinping’s March 15, 2023, Global Civilization Initiative (GCI) proposal.
Second, history as strategy is focusing on the impact of recent development processes on the two civilisations. While development is the hardware, arts, culture and history are the software in this dialogue of civilisations.
A new architecture of Sino-Africa dialogue of civilisations has emerged around the Forum for China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) as a policy forum, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as a connectivity framework and the China Africa Institute (CAI) as the knowledge base.
China is dispensing global public goods through the Development Initiative (GDI) and the Global Security Initiative (GSI) unveiled in 2012 to support poor countries in realising the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and promoting peaceful development, respectively. The GDI is devolved in Africa into the Peaceful Development Initiative in the Horn of Africa (PDI), which promotes the trinity of development, governance and security.
Third, history as a strategy is designed to promote mutual understanding between Chinese and African people.
The expansion of people-to-people and business-to-business exchanges is a key pillar of the BRI. Within FOCAC, China is supporting training and capacity building in arts and cultures. The number of Confucius Institutes in Africa has increased.
In China, the list of centres of African studies has been growing.
Finally, history as a strategy will promote the building of a community with a shared destiny for mankind.
As the Chinese adage goes, a single flower does not make spring, while one hundred flowers in full blossom bring spring to the garden. A key lesson from humanity’s collective triumph over the Covid-19 pandemic— one of the worst pandemics in history that decimated millions of people and pushed the world to the brink of a recession—is the need to revitalise the ties of humanism that bind people across diverse cultures and civilisations.
The idea of a shared future for humanity is the cornerstone of a more tolerant, humane, equitable and just post-covid order. Solidarity across civilisations is still needed to counter global threats: poverty, disease, climate change and the threat of war.
The sino-African dialogue of civilisations has to reassert multilateralism as the best guarantee for a peaceful and prosperous future. But Sino-Africa relations are a target of post-truth politics that characterised global geopolitics.
Africa and China need to develop the capacity to counter propaganda, misinformation and lies about their civilisations. Knowledge of both Africa and China is still dominated by Western intellectuals. China has to effectively counter Western claims that its rise heralds the coming of ‘oriental colonisation’, a ‘neo-colonial power’ and depiction of its development assistance to Africa as a ‘debt-trap’ or ‘debt diplomacy’.
The sino-Africa dialogue of civilisations is not just about the history of the past, it is also about the dreams of a shared future.
Prof Kagwanja is a former Government Adviser (2008-2013). This article draws from the author’s remarks during the International Symposium on ‘Comparative Study of Chinese and African Civilizations’ on May 12, 2023 in Beijing, China.
