5 Descriptive Statistics
6.6 People perceiving economic change are more positive toward China
Similar to the individual living condition, results also show that people who recognized an economic improvement in their country tended to have more positive attitudes toward China’s growing influence. The effect is quite strong in all models (r
= 0.0543, 0.0538, 0.0527) and highly significant (p ≤ 0.001). These results can be explained by two different arguments. First is that people in fact see differences and economic improvements in their countries and they attach these changes to Chinese investments. Many examples were already mentioned in the previous results chapters: people may see direct beneficiaries because of Chinese infrastructure investments like access to electricity, railways, roads, or telecommunication infrastructure. Because these investments are highly visible and recognizable in their daily lives, it is possible that citizens are able to connect these improvements with FDI from China.
Graphic 15: Fitted plot – Economic change and people’s perception
Notes: The y-axis again shows the fitted values of people’s perceptions of China’s influence. The x-axis covers the respondents’ rankings of economic change in their country (compared to twelve months before). 1 means ‘much worse’, while 5 means ‘much better’.
However, argued previously, it is more likely that people who perceive direct economic improvements in their countries are in general more open for foreign investments. Again, the interaction effects supported this argumentation. The amount of inward FDI relative to GDP and the total amounts on the regional level did not affect the positive impact between the respondents’ perceptions of economic change and their levels of support for China’s engagement. Federal direct investment neither strengthens nor weakens the effect because no significance is observable.
Thus, other factors likely explain this connection more productively. One factor that should not be neglected is the role of public opinion shaping – especially through the media in sub-Saharan Africa. As we have learned from several classical media research papers, mass media can influence people’s views and opinions on specific issues. Ball-Rokeach and DeFleur (1976: 19) found that if people do not have ‘social realities that provide adequate frameworks for understanding, acting, and escaping, and when audiences are dependent in these ways on media information received, such messages may have a number of alteration effects’. Wanta et al. (2004: 372)
‘show a clear relationship between media coverage of nations and how individuals viewed those nations’. In contrast to Western media, articles in African newspapers or radio broadcasts about China are biased to appear much more positive. Matanji (2019: 44) analyzed media coverage in three African countries. The examination
‘suggested that most African countries favor Chinese investment’. Thus, people may also be influenced by their local media stipulating that China brings economic improvement. It would be another explanation for why the effect of people thinking their economy has improved were more positive toward China’s engagement – regardless of whether people themselves benefit from FDI. In this field of opinion-building, further research is necessary.
To summarize, the sixth hypothesis can be confirmed. People who think their country’s economy has improved compared to one year before tended to have more positive attitudes toward China’s growing political and economic influence in sub-Saharan Africa. However, this positive effect was independent on the amount of inward FDI to the respondents’ countries or regions.
7 Conclusion
This quantitative analysis confirms that people’s attitudes toward China’s growing economic and political influence in sub-Saharan Africa can be shaped by the amount of inward FDI. In countries where China invests large amounts of money relative to the state’s GDP, respondents had more positive perceptions of China’s activities. The effect is quite strong and significant as well. Prior research has struggled to find empirical evidence for this connection in part because of a lack of significance due to a small number of cases (countries) and low variance. To overcome this deficit, this paper attained a closer look at the places in sub-Saharan Africa to which this Chinese FDI goes. Using data from the AEI, hundreds of Chinese FDI projects have been disaggregated from the country level to the regional (provincial) level, which increases the variance significantly and reduces the problem of visibility. Analysing the effects on the regional level increases the probability that people are aware of these Chinese investments or even are directly affected because they work for a Chinese multi-national or benefit from new infrastructure. The effect of regional FDI on people’s perceptions was not very strong but showed an interesting tendency. In contrast to the western perspective on China in Africa, inward FDI from the People’s Republic did not generate negative perceptions at all; it was indeed able to produce positive attitudes. Or, in other words, China is able to buy love in sub-Saharan Africa. But why? This question cannot be ultimately answered here. According to Goldsmith et al. (2012: 1), foreign aid ‘can serve an important strategic goal for those countries that give it: fostering positive perceptions among foreign publics. By doing good, a country can do well’ (Goldsmith et al. 2012: 1). However, it is even more likely that China’s expansive infrastructure projects have positively shaped people’s attitudes. The numerous railroad projects in several African countries mostly operated by Chinese SEOs are important to the economy but also to the mobility of many citizens in these countries. They have solved some of the logistic difficulties of the African continent. Our results supported this explanation, as Chinese investments in the transport and real estate sectors tended to be the most important factor positively shaping people’s attitudes. This argumentation aligns with the results for other effects in this analysis. Classic globalization theories are not well applicable to the idea of people’s support for China’s engagement. First, the type of occupation (skill level) has no impact on how people perceive China. The oft-heard fear of China taking away local labor was not reflected in the data in terms of how people felt about China’s activities. Local low-skilled workers did not report feeling
as harmed as one may have expected. This is in part because China ‘tended to keep local recruiting to a minimum and recruited mostly their own professionals and laborers’ (Zhao 2014: 11).”
In contrast to skill-level, the effect of education is highly significant. People with a lower educational background are more positive toward China than high-educated respondents. As the African continent is still at a separate point of globalization and is based on labour-abundant economic sectors, it is likely that these globalization effects have not reached the continent the same way as in other parts of the world. It may explain why low-educated people in this section of the world are (still) more positive toward globalization and in this case China’s growing economic and political influence. Regarding the negative perceptions among high-educated respondents, Chinese growing presence can also be regarded as a kind of threat to their privileged position in African societies. The interaction regression models of this research showed that highly educated respondents are even more skeptical toward China’s engagement if the amount of inward FDI is high as well.
Additionally interesting but no longer surprising is the fact that people in urban areas were in general less positive toward China’s influence, as citizens in cities tended to be more educated. However, not as for education, the effect turns vice versa as the amount of inward FDI increases. This means that people in urban areas tended to be more positive but only where China invests a considerable amount.
Further, the results show that people who rated their individual living situations as good also had more positive attitudes toward China’s growing influence. The same is true for people who thought their country had economically improved. However, it is doubtful that people are able to see these economic changes themselves and intead attribute them to China’s investments. For all variables tested in this research, public opinion – mainly driven by local mass media – should not be neglected. In general, China is portrayed more positive in African media than in other parts of the world Matanji (2019). Analysing the effect of local media should be taken into account for further research. This research significantly contributed to a better understanding of popular views of China’s activities in sub-Saharan Africa. Hanusch (2012: 510) in his research mentioned that it would be ‘beneficial to examine African perceptions of the Chinese across population groups, focusing especially on individuals employed in sectors in which there is particularly pronounced Chinese engagement’. The results of this paper have helped to overcome this research gap, as they deliver important evidence to show that socioeconomic factors do affect how African people perceive
China’s engagement in their countries. However, this paper also has limitations.
Socioeconomic factors alone are sufficient explanations for people’s support of China’s activities. It would be also important to find evidence of cultural factors, as internationalization and the growing Chinese presence also affect people’s environment in Africa. Yankuzo (2014), for example, spoke of an increasing homogenization in African culture, whereas African culture is becoming increasingly dominated by global principles. The fear of losing their own culture may be an important driver of why people have more negative attitudes towards China.
Additionally interesting would be to analyze how people’s opinions of China’s activities change over time. It is likely that some of the assumed economic and social effects are going to be visible in a few years. The fact that the amount of Chinese investments can positively shape people’s perceptions of China shows that further research in this field is highly needed.
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