To counter rising Chinese influence, American diplomacy needs to reprioritize national interests over progressive values.
To counter this rising Chinese influence, American diplomacy needs to reprioritize national interests over progressive values.
S ince the end of the Cold War, the United States has been the biggest and most active player in global diplomacy, brokering peace deals, providing development assistance, and directing international institutions. Over the past decade, however, that paradigm has changed dramatically. Since the beginning of the Xi Jinping era, the Chinese Communist Party has significantly expanded its diplomatic efforts across the globe and its influence within multilateral institutions. At the same time, the United States has taken a secondary role on the world stage, first with President Obama’s “leading from behind” and then under the “America First” Trump administration. Biden’s term has seen a more assertive United States, but in precisely the wrong ways, privileging progressive ideology over American national interests. This process is seen most clearly in the diplomatic competition over Africa.
Since coming into office, one of the Biden administration’s top overseas priorities has been engagement with Africa, its rising populations and largely untapped resources making it a potential driver of 21st-century economic development. The White House hosted a United States–Africa Leaders Summit late last year, First Lady Jill Biden has traveled to the continent, and Vice President Kamala Harris recently toured various African nations. This focus is meant to bring the U.S. back into the forefront of African development after a decade of relative diplomatic neglect. Unfortunately, the approach taken by the current administration has left much to be desired.
Under Biden, the national interest has consistently been sidelined in favor of sops to domestic constituencies. The climate radicalism of the Democratic base has become a major plank of U.S. diplomacy, as has the idea of “defending democracy,” a constant theme of Biden’s partisan politicking. These two topics were heavily featured in the agenda for the U.S.–Africa Leaders Summit in Washington and were reflected in the summit results presented by the State Department. In the same press briefing, infrastructure was mentioned only once, the ESG (environmental, social, governance) values of American companies were promoted as their competitive edge, and nearly every question was tied to climate change or democracy.
On a more local scale, American embassies flying Pride flags and promoting divisive cultural topics has put the priorities of liberal domestic constituencies above those of African populations. Recently, U.S. Ambassador to Kenya Meg Whitman said to Kenyan reporters that “every country has to make their own decisions about LGBTQ rights,” a reasonable approach in a culturally conservative polity. After backlash from American LGBT groups, the State Department and Whitman herself quickly walked that back, without any input from Kenyans. This progressive approach is not how one wins over African populations who need development aid, not drag brunches.
On the other hand, Chinese diplomacy under Xi Jinping has been aggressive, even coercive. But it has also been successful. Since 2012, China has relentlessly promoted its interests abroad, gaining greater economic and military influence. This is especially clear in Africa, where China is the continent’s biggest trade partner and has its first overseas naval base. It has also gotten far more involved in mediating internal African issues, working to limit the civil war in Ethiopia and promoting China’s form of one-party governance as a shortcut to success. Another Chinese geopolitical goal is to raise its influence on international organizations. This was most notable in its co-opting of the World Health Organization to stifle any investigation of Covid’s origins. That process ran directly through Africa, where Beijing leveraged its ties to promote Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus as its favored candidate for the directorship of the World Health Organization in 2017. Tedros won that contentious election with strong Chinese support, and returned the favor with his complicity in China’s Covid deception.
Perhaps the most serious example of China’s diplomatic expansionism relates to a traditional staple of American foreign policy: development aid. Under Xi, Chinese outflows of foreign direct investment have more than doubled, rising from $65 billion in 2012 to a peak of $216 billion in 2016. In 2020, as other nations retrenched during the pandemic, China became the largest global investor for the first time. China has been the largest source of foreign direct investment to Africa since 2013, displacing the U.S. as the continent’s primary development partner. The massive Belt and Road infrastructure project, Xi’s diplomatic baby, has attracted the bulk of those funds, making inroads into many African countries, funding bridges, dams, railways, and more.
These investments, primarily in the form of loans, are often used as debt traps that China leverages to its advantage. It uses its influence to coerce recipient nations into privileging its trade, derecognizing Taiwan, or allowing Chinese military use of civilian infrastructure. Still, China is able to sell these lopsided deals as “win-win” because they ostensibly benefit the host society and are values-neutral. Plus, China usually either is the only nation that will finance the projects or offers the most superficially appealing terms, irrespective of whether they are achievable. Winning the contracts allows China to further rope African nations into its economic and geopolitical orbit, and costs can be dealt with later.
Even with those profound negatives, China has been able to succeed in its diplomatic aims, increasing its regional influence and, throughout Africa, displacing the U.S. as a reliable partner in meeting local needs. The failures of American diplomacy under the Biden administration have contributed to our own relative decline. An exemplar of these divergent approaches is Ghana, where Vice President Kamala launched her African diplomatic campaign.
Ghana has long been an American security and trade partner. It is our largest bilateral development-aid recipient, with about $145 million invested annually — much of it in education, governance, and environmental programs. Vice President Harris’s trip began in Ghana for this precise reason, as that American predominance is under siege. China has invested enormous amounts in Africa generally, and Ghana is no exception, inking a $2 billion infrastructure deal with China in exchange for 5 percent of its bauxite reserves — an ore used to produce gallium, a key strategic material. America has failed to compete on this front, instead prioritizing democracy promotion on Harris’s visit and offering only part of a relatively meager $100 million regional security package. This approach has not won over African countries before, and it does not look to be doing so now. It turns out that ephemeral platitudes pale in comparison with concrete projects.
To counter this rising Chinese influence, American diplomacy needs to reprioritize national interests over progressive values. This does not mean discarding our respect for human rights, our commitment to free markets, or our belief in democracy. Those values are crucial to America’s positive image in the world, but they must take a supporting role in an age of great-power conflict. To oppose the serious threats to the U.S.-led world order, we will have to hold our nose and work with imperfect allies who share our interests, even if only regionally. Those values gaps are not make-or-break issues when weighed against the strategic and economic interests we share.
The best way of reorienting our diplomacy to contend with China’s African influence is by competing with it directly. That means, on a small scale, ensuring that our funding of aid is not obscured by routing it through international bodies or nongovernmental organizations. We must directly promote the fact that the U.S. government and U.S. companies are the ones providing material benefits for African nations and their people. Although charity should be anonymous, aid should not; it serves a key diplomatic purpose, and American contributions should be obviously marked as such. Locals know that China is present in Africa, and American presence should be just as well known.
In Africa, China has gained much of its diplomatic purchase through direct investment in infrastructure projects that benefit local economies, ease living conditions, and contribute to national pride. Their dominance in this sector is despite their weaknesses: Chinese infrastructure is typically of shoddy quality, uses only Chinese labor and materials, and often comes with abusive financial burdens. America can, with partners including Japan and the European Union, outcompete China. Leveraging the private sector and our comparative advantages — Japan in high-speed rail, for example — can give the edge to our proposals. We are also far more interested in using local labor and skills on these projects and in providing training and durable investment that China cannot match, as well as in building the person-to-person relationships that stronger bonds rely on.
Another factor in our favor is the goodwill that America has built up over the decades. Since our founding, the United States has served as a beacon of hope to billions around the globe and has, since at least World War II, been emblematic of liberty and prosperity. Our cultural power is unmatched, we promote the rule of law, and our technological innovations lead the world. We are correctly seen as the foremost nation in the international system, one that smaller countries want to befriend. These are natural advantages we would do well not to squander.
China is on a diplomatic warpath, seeking to displace American influence wherever it appears. The policies of the past three administrations have, intentionally or not, cleared the way for that push, particularly in Africa. The Biden administration’s focus on ideology over interests has alienated current allies and potential partners alike. China is not satisfied waiting for us to decline and is actively pushing its coercive diplomatic agenda. Without the ability to choose a better development partner, African countries are settling for a less than ideal option. If America wants to retain its primacy in the diplomatic sphere, it needs to compete with China across the continent, on neutral terms. That means sidelining the proselytizing and focusing on much-desired infrastructure projects. We can beat China at its own game, but we need to step up to the plate.