EDITORIAL: Xi’s visit an opportunity we cannot miss

The state visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping to SA today is one of the major positive foreign policy events happening during a week in which Pretoria is hosting more than 40 heads of state. This is good for President Cyril Ramaphosa, host of this week’s summit of Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China and SA), and for SA’s foreign policy.          

The run-up to this week’s summit has been dominated by a sideshow involving Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, and his illegal invasion of Ukraine. Once the International Criminal Court had charged him and issued an arrest warrant in March, it put SA on the spot to arrest him were he to land in SA.

Of the Brics, China is SA’s biggest trading partner. By contrast, trade with Russia, which has benefited from SA’s stance on its assault on Ukraine, has been minuscule. This is unlikely to grow as long as the war continues and Russia’s economy continues to wither.

In another success, however, Ramaphosa persuaded Putin to attend the summit virtually. With the Russian president no longer expected, the summit can now focus on its core business, including a discussion about which new members to admit.

The biggest public relations coup has been convincing Xi, who has hardly travelled out of China after the Covid-19 pandemic, to undertake a state visit to SA. Today, Pretoria will roll out the red carpet to receive him and hundreds of his entourage. 

Xi owes Ramaphosa. SA has had a torrid time after ham-fistedly botching its attempts to look non-aligned, at great cost to our relations with Western powers and markets. And so Xi comes bearing gifts — a dozen bilateral government-to-government agreements are due to be signed.

Critically, the two presidents will witness the signing of $2.2bn worth of deals between Chinese and SA companies. The idea behind these 20 agreements is to help SA exporters to export more manufactured products. Currently, China is consuming more raw minerals to power its industrialisation than manufactured products.

On a bilateral, government-to-government level, the success of Xi’s visit will be measured by these two yardsticks. The imbalance in China-SA trade relations has been a source of concern in Pretoria. China has also overtaken the West as Africa’s foremost trading partner. That relationship, too, is skewed in favour of Beijing, which has cemented it with billions worth of loans to poor, but minerals-rich, African countries.

Ahead of the state visit, Chinese diplomats have been at pains to punt Beijing’s efforts to balance the trade and investment relationship with SA. They put Chinese investment at $10.5bn. The most emblematic Chinese investment in SA, albeit in shares, is Industrial and Commercial Bank of China’s equity stake in Standard Bank.

Addressing the enduring trade balance between SA and China is just one of the two challenges the two countries need to tackle. 

The second, and arguably more important issue for the private sector, is that the two presidents resolve the locomotives spares dispute between Transnet and CRRC, the Chinese state-owned locomotives maker. Transnet executives, board members and even ministers have all failed.

It promises to be an interesting week.