An attack on a private Chinese gold mining company in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in July, reportedly carried out by local militia, “left several Chinese nationals dead or missing”.
It was not an isolated incident.
Security issues have become a growing concern for Beijing as China expands trade and investment projects in African countries under its Belt and Road Initiative. Chinese nationals are being targeted in attacks, as are Chinese economic interests.
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As a result, Beijing has been taking a more proactive role in peace and security across the continent – seen most recently in a deal signed in early September with 14 countries that are members of the Eastern Africa Police Chiefs Cooperation Organisation, to address new challenges in law enforcement and security.
The deal followed the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) summit in Beijing, where Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged to train 1,000 police and law enforcement officers in Africa and provide police equipment to African countries.
This recent deal adds to dozens of existing public security and law enforcement agreements that China has with African nations, linked to China’s Global Security Initiative launched by Xi in 2022.
However, one country which refused to sign the security cooperation memorandum in Beijing was the DRC, despite its being the location of the July attack. The DRC said it would not sign due to the East African Community member countries’ lack of condemnation of Rwanda’s role in the ongoing conflict in the eastern DRC.
The DRC is rich in copper, lithium and gold, and is the world’s largest producer of cobalt, a critical component in lithium-ion batteries for electric cars and mobile phones. As such, it has attracted many Chinese companies.
But those companies have paid a high price for their investment, especially in eastern DRC, which has been plagued with violence and instability for the past three decades. Recently this has included a series of kidnappings and killings of Chinese and Congolese workers.
Beijing sent a team of security experts to the DRC in 2022 when the situation worsened, and offered to send criminal investigators to Nigeria after a rise in kidnappings and attacks on Chinese people there.
Francois Vrey, a professor emeritus of military science and research coordinator at the Security Institute for Governance and Leadership in Africa at South Africa’s Stellenbosch University, said East Africa hosted major Chinese investments – in both infrastructure and industry.
“East African littoral countries are the ocean outlets that connect China’s economy to the resource-rich African countries – both coastal and landlocked,” Vrey said.
So any instability in the countries on Africa’s east coast threatens the logistics of China’s trade with the continent.
Paul Nantulya, a China specialist at the National Defence University’s Africa Centre for Strategic Studies in Washington, said the China-East Africa security deal represented a push towards institutionalising Chinese engagement with African policing systems.
He said what started out as assistance with law enforcement training has grown deeper, with links between China and African policing institutions.
“China has significant investment portfolios in East Africa and also has security stakes in the region,” Nantulya said.
The push to establish links with regional policing bodies has been stated in nearly every FOCAC outcome document since 2012, but now this is taking shape, particularly after the 2021 FOCAC summit in Dakar, Senegal, according to Nantulya.
China has been engaging in Africa’s police and law enforcement for many years, he said, as a way to protect its expanding economic engagements, particularly state-owned enterprises which appear to be investing in unstable and fragile environments.
China also aims to shape African policing architectures, practices and policies, according to Nantulya, and wants to “secure African support in apprehending Chinese nationals wanted back in China for one or other reason given by the Chinese government”.
According to a 2023 study conducted by Nantulya, more than 2,000 African police and law enforcement personnel received training in China between 2018 and 2021. In that time, Beijing also negotiated extradition treaties with more than a dozen African countries.
Ethiopia and China’s public security ministry signed a cooperation framework to protect “major Chinese-assisted projects in the country”, such as the Addis Ababa-Djibouti railway.
In neighbouring Kenya, the government worked with China to set up an elite police force to protect the Mombasa-Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway.
Between 2000 and 2023, China advanced US$3.8 billion in loans for Africa’s public administration, according to Boston University’s Global Development Policy Centre. Part of the money went into the construction of police stations and training schools, the purchase of equipment for police and immigration, and the building of national security networks and surveillance systems.
Vrey at Stellenbosch University said the idea was that the host African government is helped to build the capacity to police its own country and so extend stability and security that serve Chinese economic interests.
“Military intervention is expensive and controversial so building policing capacity is a strategic initiative to avoid military entrapment. Here the events in Sudan demonstrate crisis behaviour to extract citizens and placing investments at risk,” Vrey said, referring to China’s evacuation of 1,300 of its citizens from Sudan last year after fighting broke out between rival groups.
According to Dr Ilaria Carrozza, a senior researcher at the Peace Research Institute Oslo, China’s interest in Africa’s police and law enforcement focuses on expanding influence and securing political interests.
“Beijing promotes its policing models, which emphasise state control and security,” Carrozza said.
China provides training, equipment and infrastructure to African police forces, sometimes supporting regimes accused of human rights violations, she said.
“This cooperation strengthens ties with African governments while raising concerns about the potential erosion of democratic principles and human rights on the continent,” she said. Concerns have been raised by human rights groups over China’s Africa police training programmes.
East Africa hosts several Chinese infrastructure projects and Chinese nationals, “so aiding law enforcement in the region is mainly a way for China to protect its economic interests”, Carrozza added.
China-Africa specialist David Shinn, a professor at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs, said Chinese nationals had been subjected to a growing number of criminal or terrorist-related attacks.
“Better trained African police and military could reduce these attacks,” Shinn said. “China also sees the military and police training as a way to increase the sales of military equipment to African countries and to maintain contact with an important part of African society.”
This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP’s Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2024 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
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