Contemporary Sinologists consider that the process foreign policy making in China is a very complex and intricate one. Unlike the pre-reform period, particularly the period of the first generation, when Chairman Mao ruled, contemporary foreign policy making has become a game of a multitude of actors and interests (Lampton 2001). No more there is monopoly in the foreign policy making by the core members of the CCP – let alone the personal monopoly of the chairman of the party. Chinese foreign policy making has become a game involving both official and unofficial actors. In other others, the twentieth-century foreign policy of China is combination of two things: diplomacy, when involving the traditionally diplomatic actors such as the state leaders and the internationally recognized representatives of the state, and paradiplomacy, involving actors such as Chinese Multinationals and State-Owned Enterprises, and other private-oriented actors. Nonetheless, this new foreign policy configuration should not be understood that the core leadership of the CCP does not have any sway in the designing Chinese international relations. Rather on the contrary, there are certain issues in which the core political leadership monopolizes and controls the decision-making process. As argued by Lampton (2001: 4) there are two concentric policy circles that include the policy interveners of the contemporary Chinese foreign policy. On the one hand, relative to major strategic issues, such as the diplomatic and commercial dealings with the United States or the cross-straits relations, senior political elite controls and restricts the number of actors involved in the decision making process. On the other hand, issues of the lesser importance and/or involving technicalities, such as economic agreements, and diplomatic include the middle and lower echelons of the party and state bureaucracy.
This double-circled configuration of the structures of Chinese foreign policy making is the upshot of the four intimate processes that characterized contemporary Chinese politics and society: professionalization of the bureaucracy; pluralization of the involving actors – including, along with the political class and the bureaucracy, the regional and local authorities, state-owned companies, among others; decentralization of the political authority – the process of delegating power from Beijing to the local authorities; and, the last but not necessarily the least, the influence of globalization on China’s domestic and international politics (Lampton 2001).
These four “izations,” as noted by Lampton et al., suggests the complexity of the contemporary foreign policy making in China. This paper does not deal directly with issues that are of capital importance to China. Rather, the focus is Lusophone Africa, a region that is no so vital to the Chinese foreign policy establishment. As such, the lesser strategic issues imply an increasing number of interveners whose inputs are taken in consideration in the formation of the policy. The making and implementing of African policy is characterized by a myriad of actors and interests. On the one hand, there are the official actors, such as the party core leadership and the bureaucrat from the intervening ministries (particularly the Ministry of Foreign Relations, the Ministry of Commerce) and other statal authorities and agencies – such as the regional and local authorities, the Chinese Exim Bank, etc. On the other hand, there are non-official actors such as some Chinese Multinationals and State-Owned Enterprises, among others which are well-connected and can influence the route not only the decision making but also the policy implementation. Gill and Reilly (2007) consider the official actors to be the “government principals,” while the second group is what they call “corporate agents,” because they are the ones that are in the field, and can considerably impact the Chinese policy. Unlike most of the analysts which tend to perceive China’s African policy making and implementation as a monolithic and one-dimensional process, Gill and Reilly are very skeptical and they speak of the “principal-agent” problem. This problem or dilemma is the consequence of
[A]n increasing set of tensions and contradictions between the interests and aims of governments principals – the bureaucracies based in Beijing tasked with advance China’s overall national interests – and the aims and interests of ostensible agents – the companies and businesspersons operating on the ground in Africa. (Gill and Reilly 2007: 39)
Although I agree with the logic behind this argument I consider it incomplete. The degree of the principal-agent dilemma varies in direct proportion to the number of the involving actors in the processes of making and implementing the Chinese policy. This means that in some African states the number of Chinese interests and actors are greater than in others. Some African states, chiefly the African petro-states, can attract more and relatively important Chinese economic actors, such as the Chinese Exim Bank, big Chinese Multinationals in the field of public construction, etc. As for an example, there are obviously more Chinese agents acting in Angola than in Cape Verde. This situation is because there are obviously more economic interests at stake in Angola than in case of Cape Verde.
Mainstream approach of studying Sino-African relations tend to look at Africa as if it is one big country, and neglect the fact that Africa has 53 and extremely varied states. There isn’t and it can not be a Sino-African relation. On the contrary, following Wilson’s (2005) analysis “‘China-Africa relations’ is actually embedded in 50 plus distinct relations [and] some are more important than others.” The approach followed by this paper is to analysis the motives of the Chinese penetration on an individual case based.
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