The China Question

China is simultaneously Africa's largest bilateral trading partner, its largest infrastructure financier, its most significant surveillance risk, and its most documented economic exploiter. The AU's own China-sponsored headquarters transmitted five years of Africa's most sensitive diplomatic data to servers in Shanghai. The DRC's minerals-for-infrastructure deal costs Congolese society $132 million annually in tax exemptions alone. Chinese loans to Africa peaked at $28.8 billion in 2016 and remain — despite decline — the primary mechanism by which African resource wealth is converted to Chinese industrial dominance. The AR deals with China from a fundamentally different position than any individual African state has ever been able to.