China-Africa Cooperation: Beijing’s vision raises free expression concerns

The 9th Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) took place from 4 to 6 September 2024. As in previous years, China utilised the meetings to toutits cooperation and influence in Africa and promote its plans for the next three years of relations. Among its investment and policymaking priorities, China outlined plans to strengthen cooperation with African nations on cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and advancing normsin global digital governance. Consideringseveralhuman rights challenges inherent in China's model of digital governance, ARTICLE 19 is deeply concerned about the impact such plans for cooperation will have on freedom of expression and right to privacy across Africa. Moreover, we are concerned about the real risk of many African nations increasingly supporting China's efforts to rewrite global norms to reflect itsauthoritarian model of internet governance. Likewise, FOCAC stated objectivesto expand media cooperation point to further challenges for freedom of expression and information integrity across the continent.

Meeting every three years since 2000, the FOCAC functions as a multilateral platform between China, the African Union, and 53 African countries. Eswatini, the only African state thatmaintainsdiplomatic relations with Taiwan, at odds with the People's Republic of China's (PRC) One-China principle, does not participate. This year, 51 African heads of state and governmentas well as the Chairperson of the African Union were among those attending, along with the United Nations Secretary General, António Guterres, who addressed the opening ceremony.

Signalling the importance China is placing on expanding its influence in Africa, the 2024 summit is the largest diplomatic event the country has hosted in recent years, as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was clear to point out during abriefingahead of the Forum.

China is sub-Saharan Africa's largest bilateral trading partner, accordingto the International Monetary Fund (IMF), with $282 billion USD in trade in 2023. Development cooperation between China and the continent has especially grown in the decade since the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).Meanwhile, China's influence over digital development and internet governance has expanded under the Digital Silk Road.

At this year's FOCAC, China pledgedsome$51 billion USD in funding over the next three years. Noteworthy, while this is $11 billion USD more than pledged in 2021 when FOCAC met in Senegal, it is still less than the $60 billion USD China committed at the forum in 2018. It is worth reiterating XiJinping's remarks at the 3rdBelt and Road Forum in Beijing in October 2023:that future BRI initiatives would move away from the more grandiose infrastructure projects of the first decade in favour of 'small yet smart' or 'small but beautiful' projects. These include projectsinvolvinggreen technology and otherinitiativesunder the Digital Silk Road, which seems to have had some influence on the digital cooperation pledges made at this year's FOCAC.

The theme of this year's forum, 'Joining Hands to Advance Modernization and Build a Community with a Shared Future', is a reference to a key concept of Xi Jinping Thought. It is a term frequently used in previous years' themes and other policy setting, including on digital governance more broadly.

For example, ahead of FOCAC in August 2021, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) hosted the China-Africa Internet Development and Cooperation Forum in Beijing. In light of its increasing role in norm-setting and managing external cooperation, it is important to reiterate that the CAC plays both a propaganda and censorship function within the ecosystem of China's digital governance, and sits as the principal body responsible for the Great Firewall of China. CAC involvement in setting the tone of such cooperation elevates human rights concerns.

The resultingdocument from that meeting, 'Initiative on Jointly Building a Community with a Shared Future in Cyberspace', is itself a reference to digital governance principles introduced by Xi Jinping in 2015 at the World Internet Conference hosted by the CAC, which have become fundamental to China's objective of rewriting global internet norms in its favour.

In 2022 China's State Council Information Office issued a white papertitled 'Jointly Build a Community with a Shared Future in Cyberspace', outlining China's objectives to accelerate global digital infrastructure and reiterating China's goal of leading in international technical standards setting.

The white paper explicitly pointed to such preceding efforts with African nations. It also stressed China's concept of digital sovereignty, which has been developing consistently since first being introduced over a decade ago. China's concept of digital sovereignty arguably seeks to supplant multi-stakeholderism and the universality of human rights norms with a global cyberspace in favour of more authoritarian models of digital governance.

The 2021 China-Africa Internet Development and Cooperation Forum also produced the China-Africa Partnership Plan on Digital Innovation, which influenced FOCAC agendas and action plans in 2021 and 2024.

In April 2024, China hosted the China-Africa Internet Development and Cooperation Forum again, with sub-forum themes including digital economy, online media cooperation, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence - issues that would appear again during FOCAC in September.

The Forum on China-Africa Cooperation Beijing Action Plan(2025-2027) released at this year's gathering lays out several areas of digital cooperation on infrastructure and governance that build on previous years' commitments. A number of them are a cause for concern about infringements on freedom of expression and information and the right to privacy, and deserve further scrutiny.

Cooperation on digital infrastructure and governance

Under key measures of support over the next three years outlined in the Action Plan, China pledges continuing 'people-to-people exchange'. This concept of mutual exchange is a cornerstone of China's soft power promotion but in reality is often more of a one-directional dynamic providing disproportionate benefits for China.

In pledging continued support with a focus on engineering technology, China commits to set up or upgrade 10 Luban Workshops and 20 schools. China made the same commitment in 2018. To date, there are at least17 Luban Workshops in 15 African countries.

Named after an ancient Chinese craftsman, Luban Workshops are ostensibly managed by the Tianjin Government but appearto be playing an increasingly crucial role under central party guidance in supplanting the more contentious Confucius Institutes in China's global soft power efforts, not least of all in touting Chinese prowess, 'best practices', and technical standards. While capacity-building is a valuable contribution to African economic development, the Luban system has a clear objective of positioning a China model often at odds with international rights-based standards as the new norm.

Another area of support outlined that is worth noting is China's commitment to establisha China-Africa digital technology cooperation centre, which did not appear in the previousFOCAC Action Plan,and deserves greater understanding for its potential tofurther export China's digital governance norms.

The Action Plan also pledges that Chinese businesses will support 20 digital infrastructure projects. This is an increase of pledged support in comparison with 2021, in which China merely offered to support the development of African digital infrastructure without any concrete commitments.

As ARTICLE 19 revealed earlier this year in its reporton the Digital Silk Road in the Indo-Pacific, such digital infrastructure efforts, while providing needed connectivity, often proliferate censorship and surveillance models, and are built around public-private partnerships that lack transparency and prevent meaningful human rights impact assessments.

The 2024 Action Plan further lays out specific areas for cooperation on cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and references setting global norms. The 2018 FOCAC Action Planmade only two references to the term 'cyber' and spoke just briefly of digital economy and narrowing the digital divide, and while the Plan published in 2021in Senegal did expand on the emphasis on digital infrastructure, innovation and cybersecurity, the mention of AI this year is new.

In particular, Chinaand Africa agreed to strengthen cooperation on capacity-building relating to AI and to promote exchanges, including as relates to the governance of cross-border data flows, new technologies, and internet laws and regulations. In pledging cooperation in these areas, the Action Plan explicitly references the Initiative on Jointly Building a Community with a Shared Future in Cyberspace, noted above, the Global Initiative on Data Security, and the Global AI Governance Initiative, which China put forward last year.

The Global AI Governance Initiative, announced at the Third Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, is part of China's effort to position itself as the leader in developing governance for new and emerging technologies such as AI. Its goal of leading in developing new standards and governance models for artificial intelligence, as set out in reports regarding partnerships with African countries on the deployment of surveillance technologies, is a concerning prospect in light ofits record of deploying such technologies for mass surveillance and incarceration of Uyghurs, Tibetans, and othersin China.

Beyond surveillance, China has also increasingly pioneered AI tools for information manipulation, andbegun to codify such efforts through various new CAC guidelines. With these technical and regulatory approaches inherent in China's approach to AI and emerging technologies, such deepening cooperation as promoted under the FOCAC Action Plan raises serious questionsabout the direction African states are taking in embracing China's approach to harnessing AI for surveillance and information control.

These questions are compounded by the document's further references to China's expanding influence over both digital governance norms in Africa and African countries' support for the normalisation of China's model at the international level, and by the FOCAC Action Plan statement that China and Africa will jointly advance rule-making in global digital governance.

The language in the 2024 Action Plan appears to point to plans for deepening cooperation in line with China's expanding ambitions to lead in repositioning global digital governance norms that favour its technologies and policies at the expense of rights-based models. For example, while the Senegal Action Plan in 2021 merely cited the African side as standing ready to advance global digital governance rules, the language in 2024 has it that both sides will strengthen cooperation, including to 'jointly advance rules-making for global digital governance'.

This builds on commitmentsmade by the director of the CAC in April 2024 at the China-Africa Internet Development and Cooperation Forum that it would work with Africa to 'improve' the global internet governance system.

As ARTICLE 19 has pointed outelsewhere, such cooperation initiatives have tended to focus on the normalisation of China's model of digital governance, which favours centralised state control, censorship and surveillance, and opacity at odds with fundamental internet freedom principles and international human rights.

Under this year's Action Plan, the two sides will also carry out cross-border cooperation on cybersecurity cases, information sharing, experience exchange, enhance cooperation on cybersecurity emergency response and make study trips. It also emphasises coordination between respective national computer emergency response teams (CERT). This marks a greater level of specificity on cybersecurity matters over the 2021 Action Plan. That said, the reference to deepening relations between CERTs is in line with China's 2022 white paper on a Shared Future in Cyberspace noted above.

On the Chinese side, this means greater coordination with the National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team/Coordination Centre of China (CNCERT), supervised by the CAC, which is not only responsible for security of critical information infrastructure but also for developing the tools to support censorship under the Great Firewall of China. As such, coordination, information and experience-sharing on such matters is likely to promote China's more authoritarian model of cybersecurity governance as the best practice to be emulated on a national level in Africa and normalised at the global level.

In light of this emphasis on increasing partnership on cybersecurity matters, it is worth reiterating China's pledge at the 2006 FOCAC to support a new African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa. In 2018, it came to light that for five years China had been exploitingdigital backdoors built into the building's computer system, supplied by Huawei, that allowed massive data flow to China, amounting to a major cybersecurity breach. China has denied wrongdoing.

The 2024 Action Plan further highlights that the African Union and 53 participating African states express appreciation for the China-Africa Internet Development and Cooperation Forum, for deepening cooperation on cybersecurity and plans to strengthen coordination under the China-Africa Exchange and Cooperation Centre on Cybersecurity and Informatization. Each one is a nexus of China's digital diplomacy efforts to expand its model of digital governance that needs further unpacking, and arguably greater awareness-raising of the inherent human rights concerns among African communities.

In addition to digital infrastructure and governance issues, FOCAC also addressed press and media cooperation plans that give rise to additional concerns for the protection of freedom of expression and future of information integrity.

Cooperation on press and media

The Action Plan not only lays out China's commitment to encourage Chinese businesses to create some one million jobs in Africa but also to foster talent development in several professions, such as through the implementation of the African Media Vocational Training Program. While there appears to be heightened media influence efforts from China following this years' FOCAC, a dedicated category for press and media cooperation as part of the Action Plan is nothing new.

The two sides agree on the importance of press and media in promoting understanding and call for strengthening exchanges and cooperation to 'better tell the story of China-Africa friendship'. This precise wording did not appear in previous Action Plans but carries explicit significance in China.

This mention of persuasive storytelling is a referenceto a propaganda directive 'to tell China's story well' delivered first by Xi Jinping during the 2013 National Propaganda and Ideology Work Conference under a notion of external propaganda. It has been developed since. It entreats China's party-state media, Chinese diplomats, private companies, and other actors to fulfil information manipulation responsibilities. With this reference to China's propagandising efforts, arguably the FOCAC Action Plan points directly to the likelihood of escalating coordination in the capacity of African states to engage in domestic information manipulation and to promoting pro-PRC narratives across the continent, such as those relating to Taiwan.

China commits to continuing its China-Africa Press Centre Program and to holding workshops and training programs and mutual visits. This emphasis on 'exchange and cooperation' and 'mutual visits' is a continuation of commitments made in previous FOCACs, and represents a core strategyin China's soft power projection and information operation efforts in Africa. This issue of China's purported knowledge exchange and capacity-building for African media deserves more research and awareness-raising in Africa to address concerns of media and information manipulation.

Meanwhile, in the Action Plan China further welcomes more African media outlets joining the Belt and Road News Network (BRNN), a reference that was absent from the 2021 Action Plan. The BRNN was launched in 2019 to promote positive stories and position counter-narratives to negative coverage of China's global development and influence operations. That the BRNN is chaired by the People's Daily, the official media entity of the Communist Party of China, its function as a propaganda network under the BRI should not be overlooked, and likely points to efforts by China to more aggressively reposition the narrative on such cooperation in Africa.

Moving forward

The inherent lack of transparency during FOCAC, and indeed most cooperation agreements with China, and limited independent monitoring mechanisms in many affected countries continue to impede meaningful investigation and accountability to address the above concerns. The relationship at the conclusion of FOCAC is one in which China can make statements and commitments to African nations with no consideration to their adverse human rights impact and with little concern for effective oversight.

Human rights, press freedom, and transparency organisations across the continent should bemore empowered to engage in monitoring and awareness-raisingto guide wider civil society engagement in holding China accountable for its human rights impact in the continent. Capacity-building on technology and human rights, international press freedom principles, and information integrity should be matched by equally robust capacity-building to understand the laws, policies, and institutions guiding China.

African states parties to the FOCAC must likewise ensure that they are adhering to their international human rights obligations, especially in cooperation agreements with China. In particular, while African states should take greater strategic ownership to counterbalance the dominance of China's strategy on Africa, indeed as several African scholars have argued, they must ensure that human rights and transparency are mainstreamed in future strategies on China from African states.

For more information

Alfred Bulakali, Regional Director Sénégal / West Africa, [email protected]

Michael Caster, Asia Digital Programme Manager, [email protected]

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