China’s desire to imprint its own brand of diplomacy on global affairs has undergone a major test this week, in one of the world’s least stable regions, the Horn of Africa — exposing some of the contradictions to its approach in the process.

Held over two days beginning last Monday in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa, the first ever China-Horn of Africa peace conference followed months of shuttle diplomacy from China’s special envoy, Xue Bing, resulting in seven of the eight often mutually hostile countries in the region attending (only Eritrea failed to show).

Beijing’s success in putting the conference together partly reflects its economic clout in this part of east Africa, thanks to its heavy long-term investment in its resources and infrastructure: even the conference’s venue, the African Union’s headquarters in Addis, was built with Chinese funding. 

But the event’s significance stretches beyond regional politics, analysts say, in that it was Beijing’s first major diplomatic initiative since Xi Jinping laid out his new so-called Global Security Initiative (GSI) — an approach to international relations designed to draw a sharp contrast with that of the U.S. and its allies. 

Billed as being derived from “diplomatic tradition and wisdom with unique Chinese characteristics,” the GSI is a six-point plan that reflects Beijing’s long-standing emphasis on national sovereignty, including individual countries’ right to choose their own development paths, as well as its desire to resolve conflicts through “dialogue and consultation.”

The convening of the Horn of Africa’s leaders is part of “China’s multifaceted effort to lay the foundation for a new international order in which it would ultimately be the leading world power,” says Seifudein Adem, professor of global studies at Doshisha University in Japan.

At least at the senior level Chinese engagement in the region is much more significant than what we are seeing from the United States.

Yun Sun, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center

Yet this week’s conference has also demonstrated some of the potential inconsistencies in Xi’s blueprint for Chinese diplomacy, in particular its emphasis on non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs. Its latest foray into African politics is, in fact, a “formalization and acceleration of China’s active diplomacy or, in this instance, ‘soft interference’ in the domestic politics of others,” says Adem.

China has experimented with international peace mediation before, notably when officials traveled to Sudan to urge the government to cease violence in Darfur in 2007. That effort, though, did not involve multiple nations and was less high profile than this week’s Horn of Africa conference. 

Conflict in the region is currently widespread. Alongside the onoging civil war between Ethiopia and Tigrayan rebels, terrorist group Al-Shabaab has carried out acts of violence in Kenya and Somalia that have recently targeted Chinese nationals. Disagreements between Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan over control of Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and Sudanese military violence on protesters also present problems.

The Chinese approach to interacting with internal African conflict is “not coming to the continent to lecture you and tell you how to solve your problems. Rather, they are coming to learn and support as much as they can. They favor consultation and interaction over interference,” says Ovigwe Eguegu, a Nigeria-based analyst at Development Reimagined, a development consultancy based in China that helps facilitate Chinese investments in Africa. 

Yet others argue that resolving conflict in the Horn of Africa may inevitably lead to China having to get involved in countries’ internal affairs.

The conference shows the Chinese commitment to non-interference already being redefined, says Lina Benabdallah, assistant professor of international affairs at Wake Forest University. “As long as there is no actual intervention — there are no military boots on the ground — then that’s more or less okay” to the Chinese government, she says.

In the run-up to this week’s event, special envoy Xue was keen to distinguish China’s approach to resolving such conflicts from that of his American counterparts, whom he accused of having a more militaristic bent. “China will send engineers and students. We don’t send out weapons,” he told The East African in a pre-conference interview.

“The conference shows the dedication, commitment, and willingness to engage by the Chinese in Africa,” says Yun Sun, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center, a Washington-based think tank. “At least at the senior level Chinese engagement in the region is much more significant than what we are seeing from the United States.”

Recent U.S. foreign policy in the region has largely been characterized by military aid. In May, President Biden announced that he would redeploy around 450 troops to Somalia while General Stephen Townsend, head of U.S. Africa Command, visited the capital of Somaliland in the same month to discuss access for U.S. forces to the Port of Berbera along the strategic Gulf Aden. 

These [peacemaking] efforts are no doubt intended to increase China’s visibility and burnish its image as a constructive ‘public goods’ leader on the international stage.

John Calabrese, director of the Middle East-Asia Project at the Washington-based Middle East Institute

China has also been willing to sell arms to countries in the region, despite its claims to the contrary. From 2010 to 2020, nearly one-fifth of all Chinese arms sales were to African countries, with about 20 percent of those headed for east Africa, according to the China Power Project, at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

China has other non-altruistic motives for deeper involvement in the Horn of Africa’s regional politics, such as protecting its investments. Some $33.9 billion worth of Chinese loans have flooded the region since 2000, according to Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center. Earlier this month, a Chinese joint-venture took a $560 million stake in a zinc and copper mine in Eritrea. 

The region is vital to Xi Jinping’s signature Belt and Road Initiative too. “You can consider the individual HOA countries as links in a chain of investments that stretch along the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea. Peace and stability in the HOA is integral to the success of the BRI,” says John Calabrese, director of the Middle East-Asia Project at the Washington-based Middle East Institute. “These [peacemaking] efforts are no doubt intended to increase China’s visibility and burnish its image as a constructive ‘public goods’ leader on the international stage.”

For now, the limited outcomes of the conference suggest China faces a long-term struggle to bring peace to the region. An offer from special envoy Xue to personally mediate disputes between the region’s nations was the conference’s most tangible outcome; however, no actual mediation took place. 

“The fact that China was able to host this conference to begin with is already its biggest achievement,” says the Stimson Center’s Yun Sun. “This [was] not a typical peace or conflict mediation conference as we normally would envision. This [was] more of a conference where China gathered the countries of the region to come together and talk about China’s vision.”

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