Friend or Would-be Coloniser? A Constructivist Appraisal of Zambia–China Relations in the Light of Anti-Chinese Sentiments in Zambia

Abstract

Recent occasional attacks on Chinese entrepreneurs in Zambia, supposedly on grounds that they are expropriating socio-economic opportunities for Zambians, deserve a fresh interrogation of Zambia–China relations. Labourrelated tensions between Chinese employers and their Zambian employees have also ignited violence between the two parties. Opportunistic Zambian politicians have used these tensions to sponsor the narrative that China in general has malevolent designs over Zambia. Due to increasing external debt and general economic difficulties during the tenure of Zambia’s Patriotic
Front (PF) government, from 2011 to 2021, desperate Zambians took their frustration out on the increasing numbers of Chinese entrepreneurs who are considered harbingers of Zambia’s external debt crisis and usurpers of Zambia’s sovereignty. Using constructivism as the theoretical framework, the research found that Zambia–China relations are no longer driven by ethical moorings that were typical of the colonial and Cold War eras. Secondly, that China’s identity in Zambia has assumed an ominous dimension with the
increasing number of Chinese migrants whose conduct is at variance with the image that the Chinese government strives to present. Third, that the ineffective governance of the PF leadership threatened to force the country to default on the debt it owes to China and this could have led to China limiting the room for manoeuvre on the part of the Zambian government, thereby justifying the arguments of those who opine that China aims to take over Africa even though ineffective African governments are culpable.