State Councillor and foreign minister of the Republic of China Wang Yi will be on a state visit to Egypt, Eritrea, Burundi and Zimbabwe from January 7 to 13 and will hold parleys with the political leadership of these countries. Wi’s visit assumes importance coming immediately after a breakthrough in the ongoing US-China trade war, which had a deleterious impact on most of the countries including countries in the African region. It is widely expected that the US and China would sign the first phase of the accord to end the trade war on 15th January. US President Donald Trump is on record telling that once the first phase of the accord is signed, he would soon visit China to hold parleys with his counterpart Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The Chinese foreign minister has a clear – cut brief for his recent Africa visit and that is further the strategic, diplomatic and economic diplomacy between the two regions. China has considerable investment exposure in the African region. Of late, a few other countries like the US, Russia and some European countries like France have upped their business exposure in Africa, particularly in the mining sector. China has an abiding interest in the mining sector since some of the raw materials mined out in African countries like Cobalt, lithium, copper, etc are widely used in the manufacture of electronic equipment in China.
It is in the interest of China to continue with that investments because of the increasing number of controls imposed by the US and its allies for exporting tech goods including electronic components as the technology war is thickening between the two countries. Some of the US companies like the technology majors Apple, Microsoft, Tesla, etc are winding up their operations from that country. The US also is looking at some of the Chinese companies like ZTE, Huawei etc as pariahs and technology stealers. This distrust between the two largest economies would continue even if the two countries sign accords to end their cold trade war. China has to import raw materials for the manufacture of electronic devices directly from Africa countries and start manufacturing components locally to avoid a backlash. Incidentally, China is the world’s largest exporter of electronic goods to the world market.
