Given China’s consumption culture, South Africa has been urged to develop a better China strategy that will help South Africans export their products and services to China, as the country is open for business, welcoming multilaterals and small medium enterprises.
However, to fully take advantage of, and benefit from the Chinese market, speakers during the first series of the Wits Africa-China Reporting Project and China Daily SA-China Dialogue held on February 22, 2018 in Johannesburg, conceded that South Africa needs to work on its social relations with China if South Africans are going to comfortably engage with China.
“We need a better coordination strategy with China. I have lived in China for 20 years, mostly in Beijing and a bit in South East Asia. In all my time I have seen commodities and services from many countries but rarely any from South Africa,” said Kobus van der Wath, the Managing Director of The Beijing Axis.
Often, van der Wath said he meets lots of Chinese people who have shopping lists of commodities they want to buy from South Africa, but struggle to find them in China, let alone know how to go about procuring them directly from South Africa.
To penetrate the Chinese market South Africans were advised to learn how to speak Mandarin and equip themselves with contract drawing and negotiation skills. In order to reap, van der Wath, the man married to a Chinese woman said, one needs to become an insider, as that can get one close to those with the shopping list.
China, a country, is a 12 trillion US dollar economy while Africa, a continent, is a 2 trillion dollar economy that South Africans are encouraged to take advantage of as a trading partner. South Africa produces products and has some of the best services such as banking, insurance, security and energy efficiency it just hasn’t figured out how to export to China. China, as a nation trying to change and go green by adapting new environmental ways of doing things can benefit from South Africa’s knowledge of deep level mining among other disciplines that China wants and South Africa has. South Africa however is said not to be aware of China’s needs as South Africans do not speak Chinese and as a result are missing out on a market.
“20 years from now we will be more comfortable with China like we are with Western countries,” said Manelisi Genge, Ambassador and Chief Director of East Asia and Oceania, Department of International Relations and Cooperation in South Africa. He was taking into consideration the 20 year relations China and South Africa are celebrating this year.
Though the two nations are celebrating twenty years of diplomatic relations, South Africa and China have ties that date back to the 1600s when Chinese migrants were shipped into South Africa to serve prison sentences, while others worked as basket makers, and others were used as labour in gold mines. Chinese people back then were neither white nor black, they were just considered a sub group of coloureds. Because of this they suffered the same atrocities as blacks, but only in 2008 were Chinese people recognised as black by the law. Despite the fact that many Chinese people have since returned home, researchers at Wits University believe that academic exchanges, and an appreciation of each other’s cultures will further strengthen relations by creating a bridge between the two.
The 2018, 20 year diplomatic celebrations coincide with the Nelson Mandela centenary year. Celebrations will be tied together now and then with the desire to make South Africa and China’s partnership more vibrate. As the two nations continue to make strides into the future, South Africa desires to continue being China’s number one trade partner, while also working together as BRICS partners –an association of major emerging national economies; being Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa– and constantly engaging in the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC). In August last year, South Africa became the first country to export beef to China, and hence is inspired to export other goods and service with time.
“South Africa is seeing the benefit of engaging China in trade though it also wants to export to other countries. China is also engaging other countries. The question is, will the two nation’s engagements with other countries affect SA-China relations,” asserted Wu Yu-Shan, a Research Associate at the SAIIA and Africa-China Reporting Project. Though Yu-Shan questioned this, she did not seem to be perturbed as she believes that SA-China relations are unique and not static.
Surveys done in the past have shown that South Africans have positive perceptions of China in economic matters, but not much so in social relations. The two countries thus need to work on the social link that is missing. Of current, an estimated 250 000 Chinese people are said to live in South Africa.
What makes SA-China relations unique to the rest of the continent other than the obvious trade, travel destination, academic exchanges, FOCAC and BRICS is the fact that South Africa has been home to many Chinese people for decades. The Chinese diaspora community in SA not only speaks Chinese with an English accent but some speak Zulu, Afrikaans and other local languages they also consider their mother tongue apart from Chinese.
“When Nelson Mandela was President, relations with Taiwan were severed and Hong Kong was returned to China. When Jacob Zuma was in power the FOCAC was established. FOCAC took place after the 2008 financial crisis, that’s when China became SA’s major trading partner. Some say China did this to help SA cope with the 2008 aftermath,” said Wu Yu-Shan. For this reason she believes SA-China relations will continue to grow. Wu and other South African researchers patiently anticipate a new dispensation in SA-China relations with Cyril Ramaphosa as President. –END–
