China’s relational power in Africa: Beijing’s ‘new type of party-to-party relations’

Using a Chinese conceptualisation of social capital—Qin Yaqing’s ‘relational theory of world politics’ (i.e. ‘relationality’)—along with informal interviews and two decades of official data this study explains how and why the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (ID-CPC) is building relationships with African political elites. It shows how the department has become the institutional embodiment of relationality—the primary party organ tasked with enhancing what Qin calls China’s ‘relational power’ with like-minded political partners regardless of their ideology. The ID-CPC offers its African counterparts bilateral and multilateral ‘host diplomacy’ and ‘cadre training’ programs that share Chinese governance methods and rewards them for their praise and political support. Relationality helps explain why the ID-CPC continues to expand and deepen its relationships with African political elites, maintained them virtually during COVID-19, and quickly restarted in-person exchanges as soon as China’s pandemic travel restrictions were loosened in early 2023. The literature on social capital theory has long been based on Western experiences and notions of relationship building. Applying Qin’s distinctly Chinese conception of social capital to systematic empirical data reveal how traditional Confucian sociocultural practices continue to shape China’s contemporary international relations.