Earlier this year, South Africa demanded Taiwan move its unofficial embassy out of the African country's administrative capital, Pretoria, in a move largely seen as appeasing South Africa's largest trading partner, China, which claims Taiwan as its territory.
On this episode of Zoom In Zoom Out, TaiwanPlus reporter Chris Gorin sits down with Eric Olander, co-founder of the China-Global South Project. We first zoom in on the latest developments in the story of Taipei’s office in Pretoria, then zoom out to contextualize Africa’s relationships with China and the U.S.
On this episode of Zoom In Zoom Out, TaiwanPlus reporter Chris Gorin sits down with Eric Olander, co-founder of the China-Global South Project. We first zoom in on the latest developments in the story of Taipei’s office in Pretoria, then zoom out to contextualize Africa’s relationships with China and the U.S.
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00:00Welcome to Zoom In Zoom Out, your global look at news from Taiwan. I'm Chris Gorin.
00:17South Africa has asked Taiwan to move its unofficial embassy out of the African country's
00:22administrative capital, Pretoria. It's a move largely seen as appeasing South Africa's
00:27largest trading partner, China, which claims Taiwan as its territory. South Africa has
00:32asked Taiwan to move its office from the administrative capital, Pretoria, to its largest city, Johannesburg,
00:38just about a 45-minute drive away. Pretoria has since announced willingness to negotiate
00:43with Taipei on this issue, as the original deadline for the move had come and passed.
00:48Today to discuss the implications and the fallout, we're here with Eric Olander, co-founder
00:53of the China Global South Project. Eric, thanks for joining the show.
00:59Great to be here. Thanks for having me.
01:00So let's first zoom in on the news. Now, South Africa has asked Taiwan to move its liaison
01:06office out of its administrative capital. What's going on here and how did we get to
01:12this point?
01:13Well, this is not unusual. This is not the first time in Africa that the Chinese government
01:17has pressured a government to move the Taiwan representative office from the political capital
01:23to the commercial capital. Back in 2017, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi also did that when
01:29he visited Nigeria and they moved it from Abuja to Lagos. So there is precedent for
01:34doing this. It's not the first time that it's happened. And again, there's no political
01:39cost to South Africa for doing this. They're under a little bit of pressure from the United
01:44States and the U.S. Congress. But at the end of the day, the South African government
01:48feels like, listen, China's our largest trade partner. China's one of our largest, most
01:52important diplomatic partners. Why not? What's the downside for them?
01:58So as you mentioned before, Taiwan has actually been in this situation before with Nigeria
02:02in 2017. In that case, they actually complied with the request to move the office to another
02:09This time they refused. Do you view that as a new stance from President Lai? Or what's
02:14your take on this?
02:16Hard to tell. I think there's a certain amount of confidence that the U.S. Congress and now
02:22potentially the incoming Trump administration may be behind Taiwan because South Africa's
02:27stock in Washington is at a low point because of its participation in BRICS, its engagement
02:33with Russia, its condemnation of Israel in the Gaza war and whatnot. And so I think Taiwan
02:39may be sensing the mood in Washington and hoping that Washington's going to join in
02:43the pressure to prevent this from happening. That was not the case back in 2017.
02:47Given the fact that the United States is now going through a very dramatic political transition,
02:52I think that's kind of a fool's game as well. This is not going to be a priority for Americans,
02:57especially because the State Department itself is also going to be going through a transition
03:01of leadership in South Africa with the incoming administration. So my guess is it probably
03:06has something to do with the United States backing Taiwan and supporting Taiwan, that
03:10it felt confident to refuse the order.
03:13I'm not entirely sure on the legality of this. The Taiwan side says there's an agreement.
03:18I think the South Africans probably have quite a bit of power as a host country given the
03:24fact that Taiwan does not have formal diplomatic relations. So the office is not subject to
03:29any of the international laws that a standard embassy would be subject to in terms of closure.
03:35So there might be opportunities for the South African government to actually close the building
03:39or block it off if it came to that. I doubt it's going to come to that simply because
03:43I think the South Africans don't want to provoke the Americans at a time like this when potentially
03:49AGOA, the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which is the free trade agreement, is coming
03:54up for renewal.
03:55South Africa is the biggest beneficiary of AGOA in all of Africa. Taiwan may get wrapped
04:00up in this in the Congress on the renewal. So a lot of moving parts to this issue. But
04:06Taiwan itself is probably the smallest player here. And Taiwan has the weakest hand of all
04:12the major players. So that, I think, is something for us to take into account as well.
04:17Yeah, and we're definitely going to get back to how this plays into other major powers
04:22and their influence in Africa. But I want to stay focused a little bit on the Taiwan
04:26situation first. So, you know, from your point of view, depending on how the situation goes,
04:32what could be the fallout for Taiwan in this case or for relations between South Africa
04:38and Taiwan?
04:39Ultimately, I think what's going to happen, and this is not based on anything other than
04:44just looking at the precedent. And again, as I said, the weak hand that I think Taiwan
04:48has in playing this is that they're either going to have to close the office or move
04:52into Johannesburg. I mean, I don't think there's a lot of option in this. When it comes
04:56to the South Africans, where they're going to take sides, China is clearly a more important
05:01partner for them than Taiwan is today. Taiwan's investment in South Africa is much smaller
05:07than that of China's. Taiwan's trade with South Africa is considerably smaller. Remember,
05:12South Africa accounts for about a third of all China-Africa trade. And it is the gateway
05:18for this $280 billion trading relationship, two-way trading relationship between China
05:24and Africa. There's just no way to overstate how important China is to South Africa economically
05:32and increasingly politically, diplomatically, in so many different ways.
05:35So when we look at where the calculations are being made inside DERCO, the foreign ministry
05:40in Pretoria, I think they're saying to themselves, this is not an issue for us. Close the office,
05:46I don't care. But China is going to be our focus, especially if the United States imposes
05:53new tariffs on imported goods, closes down the AGOA free trade agreement, then China's
05:58going to be even more important for South Africa. And so the question of whether or
06:03not they're going to squeeze Taiwan, I don't know. I just don't see what kind of recourse
06:10Taiwan has to change that equation.
06:13And just generally speaking, despite the fact that obviously Taiwan is a much smaller
06:17player in Africa than China, as far as you know, what are their goals for their policies
06:25in Africa?
06:26Just, I mean, for a while it was to maintain the few diplomatic relationships that it has.
06:32Now it's down to just one, Eswatini. That's not a great diplomatic relationship for Taiwan.
06:38It's not a good look for Taiwan, that it's partnered with a kingdom that is, you know,
06:42non-democratic, authoritarian in its way and its handling of things. I mean, it's not a
06:46good look for Taiwan that this is its main partner in Africa today.
06:51Taiwan has also made some inroads in Somaliland as well. But for the most part, Taiwan is
06:56not a major player in Africa. It's not a priority for the Taiwan foreign ministry. There is
07:01some investment that's there. A lot of it is in South Africa. The historical legacy
07:05of course is in South Africa, because during the apartheid years, Taiwan had diplomatic
07:11relations prior to Mandela coming to power. The ANC has not forgotten that Taiwan was
07:17partners with the apartheid government. Okay. So there's no love lost between the ruling
07:22ANC and Taiwan on this issue.
07:25Taiwan has a pretty small, light footprint in Africa. And what it does is, again, bordering
07:30on insignificant compared to the other major powers and the other, not even major powers,
07:36even middle powers like Turkey and the Emirates and others that are very active in Africa
07:42today. It's not Taiwan.
07:44Okay. Well, let's now zoom out a little bit. And one thing I really want to discuss with
07:52you is when we talk about Africa in the sense of geopolitics, what are we actually talking
08:00about here? I mean, this is a continent with more than 50 countries in it. Does it really
08:05make sense to talk about Africa as one block of countries with common interests? What are
08:10we really talking about when we say Africa?
08:12I mean, we can ask the same question of Europe and there's the European Union. We could ask
08:16the same kind of question of any number of regional groupings. And so Africa certainly
08:22is an incredibly diverse continent, 54 countries, 1.4 billion people, countless languages, religions,
08:29racial, cultural differences, so much diversity and variety. So yes, by talking about Africa,
08:35you certainly have the risk of flattening an incredibly dynamic continent. But at the
08:40same time, there are some interests which is represented by the African Union and by
08:46regional groups like ECOWAS, SADC, the East African Community. These regional groups do
08:53account like the African Union for broader interests.
08:57So for example, food security is a broader interest. Climate change is a broader interest.
09:02Agricultural exports, employment, these are all interests that transcend all of the countries
09:07in Africa today, even South Africa, which is among the most economically advanced of
09:12the continent. Youth unemployment is staggeringly high. And so in that sense, working across
09:18the continent on regional and even continental issues makes a lot of sense. At the end of
09:23the day though, when African countries interact with countries like China, for example, they
09:28do so predominantly as a bilateral level. So there are bilateral relationships, there
09:34are regional relationships, and then there are continental relationships. And a sophisticated
09:40view of the continent has to appreciate the subtleties of all three.
09:44So insofar as we can think of Africa as one block of countries with common interests,
09:49what do you see as China's main interests in Africa now?
09:53Generally speaking, a lot of people think that China's there for the oil, mineral, and
09:58timber. And for the most part in the 2000s, when they were looking for new markets to
10:03go out, there was Africa. The U.S. and Europe had largely disengaged after the Cold War.
10:10They kind of looked down on the continent as a place for aid, war, famine. And there
10:15was really not a lot of enthusiasm in the West to engage with Africa, other than on
10:20aid and on charity and on military issues. The Chinese came and they said, listen, we
10:25don't do aid and charity. We do business. And Africans said, that's great because we're
10:30tired of aid and charity with these other guys. And so one of the things that the Chinese
10:35did was they broke this centuries-old dependence on Europe and later on the U.S. And that provided
10:43African countries for the first time in a long time with a choice of who to engage with.
10:50But let's fast forward to 2012, 2013, when Xi Jinping comes to power. China then introduces
10:57the Belt and Road. And all of a sudden now, from the 10 years of the Belt and Road, it
11:02really doesn't need the oil and minerals and timber that comes out of Africa, because it
11:06can get that in much larger quantities from Brazil, from the Middle East, even from the
11:11United States and Southeast Asia, Australia. And so Africa doesn't export in the volumes
11:16that those places do. So when we look at China-Africa trade, again, around $282 billion, in regional
11:25terms, it's at the very bottom of China's regional trade relationships. Now, out of
11:30a $6 trillion global trade portfolio, Africa's insignificant to China, between 3 and 4 percent.
11:38So if it's not economics and it's not trade and it's not what comes out of the ground,
11:43why is Africa important to China? Well, it's politics. Africa votes as a bloc at multilateral
11:49fora more than any other region in the world. And so when China is trying to push back on
11:56the West, when China's trying to, you know, push adoption of Huawei and norms and standards,
12:02Africa plays a very important role. When China wants to introduce new governance architectures
12:06like the Global Civilization Initiative, the Security Initiative, the Development Initiative,
12:11the BRICS, the New Development Bank, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Africa's participation
12:16in those becomes incredibly important. And so I would say that Africa's role for China
12:22now is in politics and not in economics. And that is a radical departure from Africa's
12:28engagement with other regions and countries around the world for the past 400 years.
12:33You've just had the most recent BRICS summit back in October. Given all the diplomatic
12:39spats between Taiwan, which is a U.S. ally, and their relationship with China, do you
12:43feel that these kinds of conflicts can push South Africa closer to China through BRICS?
12:50South Africa will tell you no. South Africa will tell you that it can maintain relationships
12:55with Russia, with China, with the United States, that it has an autonomous foreign policy,
13:01and that just because they're more closely aligned in some ways with U.S. rivals does
13:07not necessarily mean that they're diminishing the relationship with the United States that
13:11the South African government will tell you is very important. And irresponsible to say
13:16otherwise. The U.S.-South Africa relationship is critically important. U.S. auto manufacturing
13:20is a major part of their industrial base. U.S. investment is very strong in South Africa.
13:26Very dynamic and robust people-to-people exchanges. This is a very dynamic relationship.
13:32And so I think in some ways it's a little bit reductive to suggest that, and this is
13:36a common, you know, narrative that's out there today, that because South Africa is engaging
13:42all of these different actors in the world community, that in some ways it's turning
13:47its back on the U.S. The South African government, and DERCO in particular, the foreign ministry,
13:52has been very articulate in pushing back against that narrative. And I think this is
13:56something that is also, you know, used against other developing countries when they get close
14:01to China or get close to Russia. And again, here, you know, in Vietnam, in India, in Brazil,
14:08they are balancing these relationships just the same way that South Africa is, and it's
14:13not a zero-sum game where if they like one, they don't like the other, and vice versa.
14:17Okay. Well, Eric Olander, thank you so much for joining us today and helping us understand
14:22this incredibly complex topic.
14:25Thank you so much. It was a pleasure speaking with you.
14:27This has been Zoom In Zoom Out. For more stories from Taiwan Plus News, check us out on social
14:32media. Thanks so much for joining us. We'll see you next time.
14:47Transcribed by https://otter.ai