Making sense of the new episode of great power rivalry in Africa through neorealist lenses: the Sino-US competition

This study reveals the implications for US interests of China’s extensive engagement with Africa. Making sense of international system through neorealist lenses, China’s strengthening ties with African countries constitute a systemic threat US interests in several ways. The first is China’s quest for African oil. The second concerns China’s non-interference policy in African countries’ domestic affairs. The third is the implications of China’s extensive engagement with Africa for US position international system. These three challenges together have potential for upsetting the existing distribution of power in international system favouring the US.

great power rivalry in Africa dates back to the 16 th century, when Portuguese activities challenged Ottoman sovereignty in Abyssinia. The second half of the 19 th century witnessed a competition between European powers in the brutal partition of Africa by acquiring colonial territories, called the "scramble for Africa". During the Cold War, the continent became one of the battlefields of the global East-West confrontation between the United States (the US) and the Soviet Union (USSR).
The current great power rivalry in Africa is between China and the US. Since the 2000s, China has increasingly been engaging with Africa in parallel with its own economic boom and thirst for oil, making it Africa's biggest trading partner, and source of aid and investment for African countries.
Having such economic leverage, China is also intensifying its diplomatic and military ties with the continent. Following a neorealist logic to make sense international system, China's extensive involvement in the continent constitutes a systemic threat to US hegemony. As a result, great power rivalry in the continent has entered a new stage in the 21 st century.
This study investigates the different strategies of China and the US for achieving their objectives in Africa through neorealist lenses. In doing so, it reveals the implications for US interests of China's extensive engagement with the continent. Given the characteristics of Chinese involvement in the continent, China's strengthening ties with African countries challenge US interests in several ways.
The first is China's quest for African oil. The second concerns China's non-interference policy in African countries' domestic affairs. The third is the implications of China's extensive engagement with Africa for US hegemony. These three challenges together have potential for upsetting the existing distribution of power in international system favouring the US.

Making Sense of the New Episode of Great Power Rivalry in Africa
After the dissolution of the USSR ended a worldwide ideological confrontation, the US, as the victor of the Cold War, appeared to be the sole great power in world politics. Since US interest in Africa was mainly a response to USSR involvement during the Cold War, Africa inevitably lost its place in the US strategic projections for the post-Cold era, thereby weakening the global power rivalry. This is evident in a US Department of Defense (DOD) report of August 1995, "U.S. Security Strategy for Sub-Saharan Africa": Making sense of the new episode of great power rivalry in Africa through neorealist lenses: the Sino-US competition 3 Meridiano 47, 20: e20014, 2019 Sarı America's security interests in Africa are very limited. At present we have no permanent or significant military presence anywhere in Africa: We have no bases; we station no combat forces; and we homeport no ships. We do desire access to facilities and material, which have been and might be especially important in the event of contingencies or evacuations.
But ultimately we see very little traditional strategic interest in Africa (DOD, 1995). However, this lack of interest soon changed following China's emergence as a rival to US hegemony and its extensive involvement in Africa in parallel with oil discoveries in the continent.
Indeed, China's economy has been remarkably successful since the implementation of free-market reforms in 1979 (Yueh, 2007: 35), with Chinese GDP growing over 9 percent annually. With such momentum, China is now the world's second largest economy after the US, with the highest GDP on a purchasing power parity basis (World Bank, 2018). 1 Having risen to such a status, China constantly needs to expand its markets and secure reliable supplies of resources to sustain its rapid economic growth. Africa has thus appeared as probably the most important area of operations for China. Hence its involvement with the continent has dramatically diversified and deepened since the 1990s.
China currently has the upper hand in Africa despite US efforts to contain its presence. Its massive trade with the continent surpassed the US in 2008 and was estimated to be four times larger in 2018. In parallel, cementing its ties with African states, Chinese aid and investment activities have eclipsed US activities. As Tibor Nagy, US assistant secretary of state for African Affairs, acknowledges, "For too long when investors have knocked on the door, and the Africans opened the door, the only person standing there was the Chinese" (BBC, 2019).
China is also now challenging the US militarily in Africa. It has acquired a military base in Djibouti, located on one of the most important chokepoints between the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, and only a few miles from a critical US base, Camp Lemonnier. There have already been reports of rising tensions between the Chinese and US militaries in the continent. According to US officials, for example, China used military-grade lasers from its base in Djibouti to distract US pilots on ten different occasions, causing eye injuries in two pilots (Dahir, 2018).
Following neorealist lenses to explain state behaviours, China's extensive economic investments, intense educational, cultural and political interactions, and growing military ties in Africa constitute a systemic threat to US hegemony. Neorealist assumptions suggests that the ordering principle of international system is anarchy, which means that the system consists of sovereign states without any central authority above them to regulate their interactions (Waltz, 1979: 103;Mearsheimer, 2001: 30). This is to say, states operate in an environment in which there is no authority to prevent them from hurting and even destroying each other (Waltz, 1979: 103-104;Grieco, 1988: 497-498;Mearsheimer, 2001: 30-31). Such environment fuels suspicion and fear since states and especially great powers, possessing offensive capabilities, are potentially dangerous to each other. Therefore, states rationally incline to ensure their survival on their own rather than depend on others, called as self-help behaviour (Waltz, 1979: 105, 107;Mearsheimer, 2001: 30-31). Given the inclination Meridiano 47, 20: e20014, 2019 Sarı towards self-help behaviour, states, as the optimal way to secure their survival, are concerned with the distribution of power in the system and seek to maximize their relative power vis à vis other states (Grieco, 1988: 498;Mearsheimer, 2001: 3, 21 and 34). In doing so, states not only strive to gain more power for themselves but also endeavour to prevent others from amplifying their capabilities (Gilpin, 1981: 87-88;Grieco, 1998: 498;Mearsheimer, 2001: 3, 35). Mearsheimer (2001: 34-35) states that the pursuit of power for great powers stops only when they achieve global hegemony. This is seen as the best way to eliminate any possibility of challenge by other great powers. Global hegemon here is defined as a state that is far more powerful capable of dominating all others, thus is in a commanding position to build and sustain an order in international system (Gilpin, 1981: 29;Wolhforth, 1993: 12-14;Mearsheimer, 2001: 40). In modern era, Mearsheimer (2001: 41, 84, 140-141) argues, it is difficult (if not impossible) to achieve global hegemony due to the nuclear balance and presence of insuperable oceans. Hence, great powers can best hope to be regional hegemons, which dominate only a distinct geographical area. The US, dominating the Western Hemisphere, constitutes the only regional hegemon in today's world.
Neorealist assumptions regarding the nature of international system suggest that regional hegemons aims to prevent other great powers from dominating other areas. This is because if other great powers achieve regional hegemony, they might upset the existing distribution of power favouring the existing regional hegemon, thus diminish its security and jeopardize its interests (Mearsheimer, 2001: 41-42, 141). Building upon this logic, Chinese involvement and gaining upper hand in Africa serve only its interest in maximizing its relative power and achieving hegemony to balance the US power in international system. The US, on the other hand, seeks to block China's further progress in the continent since it present a systemic threat to US hegemony. The threat even grows since Africa has become world's one of the most wealth-generating areas thanks to oil discoveries. Hence, Sino-US rivalry in Africa is thus likely to intensify in the future. On the one hand, it is obvious that China is going to deepen its engagement with the continent to maintain economic growth. More importantly, it seems that China has been preparing to play a more assertive role in world politics, evident in President Xi Jinping's speech to the Chinese Communist Party Congress on October 16, 2017. Identifying China's rise as a "new era", Jinping stated that "It is time for us [China] to take centre stage in the world" (BBC, 2017). On the other hand, the US is determined to curb China's rise both globally and in Africa specifically.

China's Engagement with Africa
As mentioned, China's active engagement is also closely related to Africa's proven energy reserves.
While the continent was of only minor economic interest in the 1970s and 1980s due to its diamond and strategic minerals reserves, its importance in energy markets has been growing following the latest oil explorations, such that Africa's proven oil reserves were estimated at 7.2 percent of world reserves in 2017 (British Petroleum, 2019). While this still lags far behind the Middle East, discoveries estimates predict that the combined oil output of African producers will rise by 91 percent between 2002and 2025(DOE, 2005; see also Klare and Volman, 2006/b: 611).
In line with this increase in Africa's proven oil reserves, great power interest has grown rapidly.
For example, the US National Energy Policy Development Group's (NEPD Group) report of 2001, "National Energy Policy", also known as the "Cheney Report", highlighted Africa's potential to supply the US's increasing energy needs in the 21 st century. The report also underlined that the high quality of Africa's low-sulphur oil makes it suitable for the stringent requirements of refined products. The report calls for a vigorous approach by the US government towards Africa to promote a more receptive environment for oil and gas trade, investment and the operations of US companies (NEPD Group, 2001: chapter 8, 11). In parallel, Harry Longwell, Exxon's then vice-president stated in 1999 that "we expect that future operations in Africa will account for a significant portion of Exxon's worldwide production" (quoted in Klare and Volman, 2006/b: 611).
Meanwhile, China was also becoming aware during the 1990s of Africa's increasing importance in global energy markets. Given its growing need for reliable supplies of resources, China's interest in the continent intensified enormously as it was no longer self-sufficient in oil. For a time, it was self-sufficient after the Daqing oil field began production in 1963. However, its oil consumption has exceeded production since 1993, when it produced 2.8 million barrels of oil per day (mbpd) but consumed an estimated 3 mbpd. Since then, the growth in the gap between China's oil production and consumption has accelerated, with demand for oil doubling within a decade between 1995 and 2005, from 3.3 to 6.6 mbpd, while oil production only rose from 2.9 mbpd to 3.6 mbpd. By 2018, China consumed 13.5 mbpd while oil production only reached 3.7 mbpd (British Petroleum, 2019).
Consequently, China is now the world's largest crude oil importer.
This widening gap raised concerns in Chinese decision-making circles, who realized that the increasing dependence on imported oil meant that China had to participate in the global oil market. Accordingly, Chinese leaders adopted a "going out" strategy to secure and diversify oil supplies. Africa soon emerged as the most important part of China's efforts to diversify foreign oil sources. Hence, China's state-owned oil companies entered African oil fields in the second half of the 1990s, when they began prospecting in Sudan. Since then, China has participated in exploiting and producing African oil, and constructing infrastructure like pipelines and ports to facilitate oil flows to China. In addition to China's thirst for oil and the continent's rising proven oil reserves, Hong  Servant, 2005). The second factor was that US, Japanese and European oil companies dominated all key oil producing regions except for Africa, making it difficult for Chinese companies To seize the opportunity that Africa presented and consolidate its influence in the continent since the end of the 1990s, China has extensively engaged with African countries, diplomatically, economically, militarily and culturally means. China's strategy is mainly moulded by the "Five Points The striking feature of Chinese aid to Africa is that there are no strings attached. That is, Chinese aid is based on the principle of non-interference in the recipient countries' domestic affairs.
As then deputy foreign minister, Zhou Wenzhong, put it in 2004, regarding accusations against Sudan's government of massive and systematic human rights violations, "Business is business … We try to separate politics from business … Secondly, I think the internal situation in the Sudan is an internal affair, and we are not in a position to impose upon them" (French, 2004). The principle of non-interference gives China an advantage over the US, whose aid is tied to structural reforms as conditions imposed by Western values, such as democracy, human rights and a liberal economy. As Wang and Bio-Tchané (2008) point out, it is particularly noteworthy that Africa's exports to and imports from China have risen by more than 40 percent and 35 percent, respectively, which is significantly higher than growth in world trade at 14 percent and commodity prices at 18 percent.
Unlike US trade, China's trade with Africa reflects the comparative advantages of each partner rather than serving any unilateral Chinese interest in exploiting natural resources. Evidence of this is the fairly even import-export balance (see Figure 1). While China mainly imports oil, other energy sources (about 60 percent) 2 , and strategic minerals and metals (about 15 percent), Africa mainly imports manufactured products, machinery and transport equipment (about 75 percent).   (Shinn and Eisenman, 2012: 198), and are used to promote a positive image of China in Africa.
China is also interested in presenting itself as a friendly power to African countries in education and culture. It claims to have provided 20,000 scholarships for African students, trained more than 30,000 African professionals, and sent 350,000 technicians and experts to Africa by 2012 (Ongodia, 2017: 40 China is also conducting health diplomacy to improve relations, such as an anti-malaria campaign and construction of medical facilities in many parts of the continent. It regularly sends medical teams to Africa and has intensified cooperation in the prevention, treatment and research of diseases and the application of medicines. It also provides training programs for HIV/AIDS, hospital management and health reform (Cooke, 2008: 7-8).

US Engagement with Africa
Facing these challenges, the US realized that it needed to engage with the continent more seriously. Clinton also praised the US stance: "America will stand up for democracy and universal human rights even when it might be easier or more profitable to look the other way, to keep the resources flowing" (Smith, 2012;Ghosh, 2012). Describing Clinton's remarks as a "U.S. plot to sow discord between China [and] Africa", Xinhua news agency replied that "Whether Clinton was ignorant of the facts on the ground or chose to disregard them, her implication that China has been extracting Africa's wealth for itself is utterly wide of the truth" (Embassy of the PRC in the Republic of Kenya, 2012). AFRICOM was not designed as a typical military command as its focus is multi-functional rather than only serving security and defence purposes. On February 6, 2007, when AFRICOM was announced, the then US President, George W. Bush, stated that "Africa Command will enhance Meridiano 47, 20: e20014, 2019

Sino-US rivalry in
Sarı our efforts to bring peace and security to the people of Africa and promote our common goals of development, health, education, democracy and economic growth in Africa". Although Bush's statement did not mention it, many experts concluded that AFRICOM's creation was also closely related with securing Africa's natural resources in response to growing Chinese influence (McFate, 2008: 113).
Going even further, Conteh-Morgan (2018: 48) asserted that the US had launched a new containment policy with the establishment of AFRICOM -but this time against China and on a continental scale.
In line with its multi-functional framework, AFRICOM has various functions, including military activities, development programmes and humanitarian assistance. Its military activities mainly concentrate on promoting regional security and stability to create a secure environment Sarı conditions include respect for internationally recognized human rights and workers' rights. More importantly, SSA countries must refrain from activities that would undermine US national security and foreign policy interests. This has several times impinged on the sovereignty of African countries. For instance, the US used AGOA conditions to apply intense pressure on Angola, Guinea and Cameroon in the United Nations Security Council to support the US invasion of Iraq (Thompson, 2004: 465

Conclusion
Making sense of the international system through neorealist lenses, the US, dominating the Western Hemisphere, constitutes the only regional hegemon in international system. Main interest of the US, in this respect, is to preserve existing distribution of power in international power, thus prevent other great powers from achieving regional hegemony in other areas. On the other hand, China, as a great power, seeks to maximize its relative power at the expense of the US. Accordingly, the Chinese involvement in Africa serves its interest in achieving regional hegemony as it is ideal way to ensure security in self-help behaviour driven international system. that "China's strategy of securing ownership and control of oil and natural gas assets abroad could substantially affect U.S. energy security -reducing the ability of the global petroleum market to ameliorate temporary and limited petroleum supply disruptions in the United States and elsewhere".
Understood in this way, China's quest for oil constitutes a systemic challenge to US hegemony because, as Mearsheimer (2001: 103-104) suggests, great powers aim to maximize their share in the world's wealth in order to maximize their relative power vis à vis others. Hence, great powers not only strive to dominate wealth-generating areas, but also endeavour to ensure that none of those areas falls under domination of rival great powers. From this point, the US, as the sole regional hegemon in the system, seeks to prevent China from dominating Africa, one of the oil rich, thus wealth-generating areas of the world, as it did in the past against the Soviet Union regarding Europe, Northeast Asia, and the Persian Gulf.
The second challenge is the implications of China's "no strings attached" policy in its engagement with African governments. This is said to encourage misrule, corruption and human rights violations by supporting oppressive and destitute African regimes (Hilsum, 2005: 421;Brookes and Shin, 2006: 1-5;Pham, 2006: 249-250;Carmody and Owusu, 2007: 512-515;Sun, 2014: 6-7 Conteh-Morgan, 2018. It therefore undermines the US vision of Africa governed by democratic regimes that respect human rights and embrace liberal free market principles embodied by the IMF and World Bank. A hearing report in the US House of Representatives (2018: 1) claims that "While a number of African nations have welcomed Chinese engagement and investment, it often comes at a very high cost, with a tendency to adopt the worst practices that prop up kleptocrats and autocrats". From this point, China's "no strings attached" policy jeopardizes the commanding position of the US in international system, sustained through an order governed by principles that serve the interests of the US. Accordingly, the Chinese way of engagement with Africa constitutes a systemic challenge to US interests.
The third challenge for US hegemony is China's extensive engagement with the continent (Gill, Huang and Morrison, 2007: 5;U.S. Congressional Research Service, 2008: 4;Conteh-Morgan, 2018: 44). Chinese expansion in Africa appears to be part of its overall strategy to confront the US globally.
It can be argued that in response to US efforts to rebalance the Asia-Pacific region to contain Chinese influence there, China has shifted its attention westward to Africa to escape from this new US containment (Rotberg, 2008: 2;Sun, 2014: 7). Understood in this way, China's extensive involvement in Africa serves the aim of maximizing its relative power. Hence, it is a deliberate attempt to change the existing distribution of power in international system, a systemic challenge to US hegemony.