China and the Global South (FOCAC, Latin America)
China's engagement with the Global South: the FOCAC architecture, Africa policy, and Latin American economic and political ties for the Guokao international section.
The FOCAC Framework
The Forum on China–Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) is the institutional backbone of China's Africa policy. It was inaugurated in Beijing in October 2000 under Jiang Zemin, and convenes a ministerial conference every three years, alternating between China and an African host (Addis Ababa 2003, Beijing 2006, Sharm el-Sheikh 2009, Beijing 2012/2018/2024, Johannesburg 2015, Dakar 2021). The 2006 and 2018 sessions were elevated to summit level. FOCAC produces a Declaration and a triennial Action Plan that set the financial and sectoral agenda.
The headline pledges track China's evolving capacity and priorities. Beijing committed US$5 billion in 2006, US$20 billion in 2012, US$60 billion in 2015 (Johannesburg) and again in 2018 (Beijing), then recalibrated to US$40 billion at Dakar in 2021 and roughly US$50 billion (360 billion yuan) at the September 2024 Beijing Summit. The 2024 summit upgraded ties with all African states with diplomatic relations to the level of "all-weather China–Africa community with a shared future," and announced ten partnership actions plus zero-tariff treatment for least-developed countries with which China has relations.
Doctrine and Instruments
China frames its Africa engagement through the "sincerity, real results, amity and good faith" (真实亲诚) principle Xi Jinping articulated in March 2013, and the "five-no" approach announced at the 2018 summit (no interference in development paths, no interference in internal affairs, no imposition of will, no political strings on aid, no pursuit of selfish gains). This non-interference posture is the rhetorical contrast China draws against Western conditionality and Bretton Woods structural adjustment.
The instruments are concrete: concessional loans and export-buyer's credits via the Export-Import Bank of China and China Development Bank; the China–Africa Development Fund (established 2007); infrastructure delivered by SOEs (the Mombasa–Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway 2017, the Addis Ababa–Djibouti Railway 2018, the African Union headquarters gifted in 2012); Confucius Institutes; and the deployment of medical teams since 1963. Djibouti hosts China's first overseas military support base, opened August 2017, underscoring how commercial logistics (the adjacent port) and strategic presence converge. Africa also anchors China's UN diplomacy: African states form the largest regional bloc in the General Assembly, and China is the largest troop contributor among the permanent five to UN peacekeeping, with significant deployments in Mali, South Sudan and the DRC.
