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China s Non State Soft Power Actors Tai Chi Traditional Culture and the Practice of Public Diplomacy China Policy Series 1st Edition Xiaoling Zhang Tony Hong
China’s rise as an aid provider in Africa has caught global attention, with China’s activity being viewed as the projection of soft power of a neo- colonialist kind in an international relations context. This book, which focuses on China’s education aid—government scholarships, training, Confucius Institutes, dispatched teachers, etc., reveals a much more complicated picture. It outlines how the divide between the Chinese Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Education hinders China’s soft power projection, how much of China’s aid is bound up with an education-for-economic-growth outlook, mirroring China’s own recent experiences of economic development, and how China’s aid—prioritized to reflect the commercial sector’s interests—is out of step with most international development aid, which is dominated by education agendas and the campaigns of international organizations and traditional donors; this leaves China easily exposed to the charge of neo-colonialism. This situation also reveals insufficient knowledge production of China and in South-South Cooperation. Substantial production of Southern knowledge should recognize the international development cooperation architecture as an open system by which both traditional donors and Southern countries transform.
Wei YE is a Post-doctoral Fellow at the Institute for International Affairs, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, China
China Policy Series
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67. Civilization and the Chinese Body Politic
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68. The War on Corruption in China
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69. China’s Education Aid to Africa
Fragmented Soft Power
Wei YE
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge. com/China-Policy-Series/book-series/SECPS
China’s Education Aid to Africa
Fragmented Soft Power
Wei YE
First published 2023 by Routledge
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The right of Wei YE to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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ISBN: 978-1-032-42255-8 (hbk)
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DOI: 10.4324/9781003361961
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Figures
3.1 TMSA. Bhaskar, The Possibility of Naturalism: A Philosophical Critique of the Contemporary Human Sciences, 40. 50
3.2 TMIDC. Compiled by the author based on the TMSA. 51
4.1 Allocation of China’s Foreign Aid by Sector 2010–2012 (Percent). Information Office of the State Council, “China’s Foreign Aid (2014).” 72
4.2 Training Opportunities Announced in the FOCAC 2004–2021. Compiled by the author based on the FOCAC action plans from 2004 to 2021 announced by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA). 72
4.3 Chinese Government Scholarships to Africa 1956–2018. 73
4.4 Allocation of Chinese Government Scholarships by Continent 1999–2018 (Percent). Compiled by the author based on statistics in MOE’s yearly published book Laihua Liuxuesheng jianming tongji (Concise Statistics on International Students in China) from 1999 to 2018. 74
5.1 The Structure of Foreign Policymaking in the Maoist Era. 94
5.2 The Structure of Foreign Aid Policymaking in the 1950s. 95
5.3 Share of Chinese Government Scholarships to Africa (Percent). 105
6.1 ODA to Education and Total ODA (Africa, Million U.S. Dollars). Compiled by the author based on data from the OECD. Accessed October 3, 2020. https://stats.oecd.org/ Index.aspx?QueryId=58197#. 131
6.2 ODA to Education in Africa by Education Level (Million U.S. Dollars). Compiled by the author based on data from the OECD. Accessed October 3, 2020. https://stats.oecd.org/ Index.aspx?QueryId=58197#. 132
6.3 ODA to Higher Education and Training in Africa (Million U.S. Dollars). Compiled by the author based on data from the OECD. Accessed October 3, 2020. https://stats.oecd.org/ Index.aspx?QueryId=58197#. 132
3.1
3.2
4.1
5.1 China’s Aid to Developing Countries (Millions U.S. Dollars).
Preface
Soft power seems an excessive topic in the broad debate on China’s global practice. Yet, in the context of China-Africa relations, it remains vague. International media either exaggerates or undermines China’s soft power in Africa while rarely scrutinizing it. The discussion of China’s soft power in Africa is usually intertwined with its expansive economic activities. As a result, soft power is confounded with economic influence. With the campaign of “telling China’s story well,” soft power is simplistically reduced to international communication skills with a special emphasis on media. The essence, scope, and mechanism of soft power are under-researched. Particularly, what defines China’s soft power? How to measure China’s soft power in Africa? Who are the actors in projecting soft power? How does China exert its soft power in Africa? All these questions remain obscure. Another myth concerns the policy context of China’s soft power in Africa. Soft power is frequently misunderstood as part of China’s grand strategy regarding Africa. The defeat of this grand strategy assumption is twofold. On the one hand, soft power emerged in the late 2000s as the policy context of China’s relations with developed countries.1 The realpolitik mindset in this policy context contradicts the concept of equality in South-South Cooperation, which is widely considered the base for China-Africa relations by Beijing. Given this contradiction, the soft power can hardly be regarded as an intentional strategy. As noted by scholars, China does not have a clear strategy for its various soft-power activities in Africa,2 neither does it a unitary actor. This can be exemplified by the fact that various actors with divergent goals are involved in policymaking and implementation. On the other hand, despite the divergent policy contexts for and realities in developed and developing countries, soft power appears as the indifferent rhetoric in China’s cultural relations with foreign countries. In this rhetoric, soft power is evidenced by foreign recognition of Chinese culture. With this understanding, insufficient soft power is usually understood as insufficient capacity in terms of content or the way to “tell China’s story.” However, from the perspective of Africans, the inefficiency perhaps implies a different story. The implicit pursuit for foreign recognition through cultural distinctiveness makes little sense, as China is already powerful in the eyes of African countries. Overemphasizing
attractiveness can be perceived as “aggressive.” Instead, facilitating mutual understanding should be the goal of China’s soft power aims in Africa.
This book investigates the mechanism of China’s soft power in Africa with education aid as an example. Ethiopia is selected as the informationrich case in which I conducted fieldwork to examine the implementation of China’s education aid in 2019 and 2020. In this book, I construct an analytic framework by introducing critical realism from sociology to international relations. This analytic framework entails dual agent-structure relations within China and between China and the current international development cooperation architecture. With the dual agent-structure relations, it moves beyond the unitary actor assumption in international relations. Examining the internal agent-structure relation, it uncovers the interaction between ministerial agendas and Chinese foreign policy in formulating China’s education aid to Africa. Then, it explores the external agent- structure relation and reveals how the perception gaps between China and the international discourse on China’s soft power in Africa are formed. This book also transcends disciplinary knowledge to achieve interdisciplinarity. It informs foreign policy researchers why China’s soft power through education aid, in some cases, loses moral ground in the international discourse. Likewise, it dispels misunderstandings among international development and education researchers by revealing how China’s education aid to Africa is embedded in its domestic development and bureaucratic structure.
Completing this book has been an unforgettable journey. The first draft of this book was completed on May 4, 2021. This timing seems a preordained destiny for me. On May 4, 2020, I was cherishing probably the best luck: I got a ticket that could take me from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to Shanghai, China. God knows how difficult it was to obtain such a ticket, owing to the cancellations of international flights during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, I struggled with the unexpected disorder in the airport for almost the whole day until I finally got on board at midnight. I never expected to end my fieldwork on this book in this way.
Life in Ethiopia during the COVID-19 pandemic was a precious experience to rethink national “self-reliance,” a textbook term in China’s narrative about the historical legend of the “Third World.” I was born in a globalizing world, and until the pandemic, I realized that the presumed connections could perish. Since March 2020, I have witnessed the cancellations of almost all the flights that connected the African continent with the rest of the world, except the Ethiopian Airlines, which kept limited operations at the worst time. I felt as if the entire continent was isolated from the world—a world where we could access medical resources. Luckily, we had each other’s support. We saw the newly established production lines for medical products in Ethiopian industrial parks. Then we had medical support from the outside world.
When I sat in a modernized office in Hong Kong writing my methodology chapter in November 2020, I questioned myself, “does this piece document
my fieldwork?” Thanks to my friend Dr. Wei WANG’s suggestion, “do not overshadow your precious experience from the field with a boring textbookstyle methodology chapter,” I turned down the original methodology chapter which was written in a “scientific” way. Instead, the record of my fieldwork is finally structured in the way it appears in the Appendix.
I would like to thank Prof. Yongnian ZHENG, an insightful mentor who has offered crucial guidance and support to turn this research into a book. My gratitude also goes to Prof. Haifang LIU, a role model who has helped and inspired me a lot with her noble personality and academic excellence. Apart from her sharp, thorough, and humanistic mindset in research, I am always touched by her devotion to nurturing young scholars and encouraging female researchers. I would like to thank my advisors Prof. Rui YANG from the University of Hong Kong and Prof. Ming LI from the UNESCOICHEI, for their guidance. This study could not have been completed without their excellence in their respective fields.
Among all the great people I have met in the fieldwork, my gratitude first goes to those who offered companionship, help, and shelter to me since my dormitory at Addis Ababa University was about to be taken as a quarantine site in 2020. These people include Prof. Messay Mulugeta Tefera, his wife, Ms. Haregewoin Mirotaw, their lovely kids Tsion and Pomi, Prof. Dilu Shaleka Teshome, Ms. Chungai ZHANG, Ms. Rongting WANG, Mr. Jiafu LI, Mr. Xiang XI, Mr. Jianyu HUANG, Prof. Haifang LIU, Mr. Xiangdong YAN, Mr. Fan MU, Ms. Xi LUO, Ms. Futao MA, Mr. Xiangshun WANG, Doctor Qi HUANG, Mr. Zhigang CHEN, Mr. Yuanchao CHEN, Mr. Lintuo WU, Mr. Chao DING, Ms. Amila, and others who facilitated help.
My journey to Ethiopia began with the guidance of Dr. Liang CHEN, through whom I obtained the initial knowledge and academic and practical support. Since my first research trip to Ethiopia in 2019, my host professor at Addis Ababa University, Prof. Messay Mulugeta Tefera, has been a fantastic mentor. He had paid efforts to engage me in the community of Addis Ababa University and offered me opportunities to share my research with his students. Without him, I could not have completed most of my fieldwork tasks. I thank his considerate guidance on how to approach different Ethiopian people and mentor students. I am also impressed by his integrity as a wonderful husband and father and the lovely kids nurtured by him and his wife. I also thank his wife, Ms. Haregewoin Mirotaw, who exerted her network in the Ethiopian Investment Commission to support my research, inspired me to be a confident and independent female with herself as a model, and taught me the irreplaceable value of love and family. Then, I would like to thank Mr. Xiangdong YAN, a noble person who is open to scholars and has empathy for the vulnerable; who is a truly benign man all about culture. I also would like to express my gratitude to Prof. Dilu Shaleka Teshome, a great leader who has kindness, professionalism, and a strong sense of responsibility in his leadership; who spared efforts to entail my special visa extension during the pandemic; and who offered prompt support for me to go through the disorder in the airport on my last day in Ethiopia in 2020.
Preface xi
During the journey, my deepest gratitude goes to Prof. Tony TAM and Prof. Ly-Yun CHANG, the spiritual parents who refresh and nurture me with their faith, kindness, mercy, and wisdom. My thanks also go to Ms. Yajun ZHENG, Ms. Lingjun ZHANG, Mr. Willian HO, Ms. Saifang, Prof. Jun XIANG, Ms. Dongni XU, Mr. Kenneth LEE and Ms. Chen CHEN for their presence and support during this journey.
The support from my friends also enriches this journey. I would like to thank Ms. Xue LI for encouraging me to go through hardships and supporting my empirical research with her expertise. I am grateful for the strong peer support from Dr. Wei WANG and Dr. Jing ZHANG, without whom this academic journey would have been lonely. I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Hengzhi LIU for his wise suggestions at critical points in this journey.
Others I would like to thank include Ms. Sihan LIU, Prof. Magda Nutsa Kobakhidze, Prof. Samson Bezabeh, Ms. Jiazhen SHEN, Ms. Xi CHEN, Ms. Fan LI, Mr. Xiangzheng TANG, Ms. Sherry DUAN, Ms. Xiaohan BI, Mr. Zhanjia WANG, Prof. Lixia TANG, Dr. Han FU, Mr. Du CHEN, Prof. Yun LIU, Dr. Xianghui XIONG, Mr. Liang PAN, Prof. Fengjie ZHAI, Prof. Ailing QIAN, Prof. Mulat Asnake, Mr. Yosef Shiferaw, Mr. Zelalem Assefa, Mr. Mitiku Berecha, Ms. Mukakarangwa Assoumpta, Prof. Ying YANG, Prof. Yaohui LI, Ms. Yanan GONG, Mr. Gaofeng CHEN, Ms. Wanchen ZHAO, Dr. Yi GUO, Prof. Guibo SUN, Mr. Quanming PU, Prof. Tirussew Teferra Kidanemariam, Prof. Mulu Nega Kahsay, Dr. Liehui HE, Mr. Girma, Mr. Ke WANG, Ms. Alem, Ms. Xiaocen HUANG, Mr. Kelun LU, Prof. Facil Tesfaye, Prof. Minghua ZHONG, Dr. Dilamo Otore Ferenje, Dr. Wondimu Tekle Sigo, Dr. Weldegebriel Abraha Hagos, Mr. Nael Hailemariam, Mr. Natinael Mulugeta Seid, Dr. Zenebe Garedew Boku, Prof. Anshan LI, Ms. Ruixi LIU, Dr. Yumiko Yokozeki, Dr. Wei WANG, Ms. Jingxin BAO, Mr. Yanqing TAN, Prof. Hussien Kedir, Prof. Emebet Mulugeta, Prof. Asrat Dereb, Mr. Mezgebu, Prof. Temesgen Melaku, Dr. Margareth Gfrerer, Prof. Wei HA, Ms. Fengwei LIU, Prof. Mark Bray, Dr. Mengyang LI, Dr. Ying MA, Dr. Zhenjun GAN, Dr. Chenguang ZHAO, Mr. Jimmy, Ms. Yan WAN, Prof. Zhenqian HUANG, and those who might not have appeared on this list but whose help is kept in my mind.
Last but not the least, I would like to thank my parents and sister, Mr. Huican YE, Ms. Shurong YI, and Ms. Cong YE, for their unconditional love and support, as always. I am grateful for all the blessings I have experienced during this journey.
Notes
1 Kenneth King, China’s Aid and Soft Power in Africa: The Case of Education and Training (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2013), 11.
2 Ibid. Also see Haifang Liu, “China-Africa Relations through the Prism of Culture: The Dynamics of China’s Cultural Diplomacy with Africa,” China Aktuell 37 (2008): 9–44.
Abbreviations
AAU Addis Ababa University
AIBO Academy for International Business Officials, Ministry of Commerce, China
AUN ASEAN University Network
ASEAN Association of Southeast Asian Nations
BRI Belt and Road Initiative
BRICS Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa
CAEA China Atomic Energy Authority
CCO Cultural Counselor’s Office, Chinese Embassies
CCRFC Committee for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, China
CEXIM Export-Import Bank of China
CFAC Central Foreign Affairs Commission, China
CFIT UNESCO-China Funds-in-Trust
CFPA China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation
CIDCA China International Development Cooperation Agency
CIs Confucius Institutes
CLEC Center on Language Education and Cooperation, Ministry of Education, China
COCA Committee for Overseas Chinese Affairs, China
CoDS College of Development Studies, Addis Ababa University
CPC Communist Party of China
CSC China Scholarships Council
CSR Corporate Social Responsibilities
DAAD German Academic Exchange Service
DAC Development Assistance Committee
ECO Economic and Commercial Office, Chinese Embassies
EFA Education for All
EU European Union
FAO Foreign Affairs Office in the State Council of China
FDI Foreign Direct Investment
FOCAC Forum on China-Africa Cooperation
HRD Human Resource Development
Abbreviations
ICHEI I nternational Center for Higher Education Innovation under the auspices of UNESCO
ICT In formation and Communication Technology
IGO International Governmental Organization
IICBA U NESCO International Institute for Capacity Building in Africa
ILD I nternational Liaison Department of the CPC Central Committee
IMF I nternational Monetary Fund
IR International Relations
ISSCAD I nstitute of South-South Cooperation and Development
LSG L eading Small Group
MDGs M illennium Development Goals
MFA M inistry of Foreign Affairs, China
MFER M inistry of Foreign Economic Relations, China
MFT M inistry of Foreign Trade, China
MOCT M inistry of Cultural and Tourism, China
MOE M inistry of Education, China
MOF M inistry of Finance, China
MOFCOM M inistry of Commerce, China
MOSHE M inistry of Science and Higher Education, Ethiopia
NDRC National Development and Reform Commission, China
NGO Non-governmental Organization
NPC National Planning Commission, China
ODA Official Development Assistance
OECD O rganization for Economic Cooperation and Development
OEEC Organization for European Economic Cooperation
OTC Overseas Territories Committee
PIF Pacific Islands Forum
PKU Peking University
PSC Politburo Standing Committee of the CPC
SAPs Structural Adjustment Programs
SDGs Sustainable Development Goals
SFIT U NESCO-Shenzhen Funds-in-Trust
TMIDC Transformational Model of International Development Cooperation
TMSA Transformational Model of Social Activities
TOSSD Total Official Support for Sustainable Development
TUTE Tianjin University of Technology and Education
TVET Technical and Vocational Education and Training
U.K. United Kingdom
UN Un ited Nations
UNCTAD United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
UNDP United Nations Development Program
xiv Abbreviations
UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization
UNICEF United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund
UNOSSC United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation
U.S. United States
WB World Bank
WMO World Meteorological Organization
WTO World Trade Organization
WWII World War II
1 China’s Education Aid to Africa and the Paradoxes1
Today, we are so glad to come back to our alma mater, Central Academy of Fine Arts, China. I am privileged but humbled to have this honorary title “Goodwill Emissary of the People” (awarded by the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries), for we just did a little about what we should do.
—Hibat Inayat 2 September 4, 2002
With the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) established in 2000, China’s increasing economic presence in Africa and its foreign aid have raised global concerns.3 The topic “China in Africa”4 falls into international debates that either delineate China as a neo-colonial exploiter or justify China as a development partner.5 China’s role as an “emerging” donor and its education aid to Africa are also exposed to such debates. China’s increasing input on higher education and human resource development (HRD) in Africa, announced in the action plans of the FOCAC, raises the visibility of educational engagement in China’s foreign aid. At the Beijing Summit of the FOCAC in 2018, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced a 60 billion U.S. dollars development financing package for Africa. This package promises 50,000 quotas for government scholarships and training, respectively, to African countries. It also stresses the continuous support of the CIs and the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)-China Funds-in-Trust (CFIT) project for educational development in Africa.6 These promises trigger intense international debates on China’s soft power in Africa.7
The Paradoxes
While the label “emerging,” it is worth noting that China’s post-war engagement with Africa is as long as traditional donors. In the Bandung Conference in 1955, China expressed its willingness to go beyond its then diplomatic principle of developing relations exclusively with socialist countries and to
China’s Education Aid to Africa and the Paradoxes
build diplomatic ties with newly independent countries in Asia and Africa. Following this shift, the diplomatic ties between China and Egypt were established in 1956. Since then, China has expanded its political, economic, and cultural ties with African countries. During the past decades, there are several turning points in China-Africa relations. African countries showed significant support toward Beijing in the United Nations (UN) in 1971 and during the Western isolation after the Tiananmen Square Incident in 1989. Chinese President Xi Jinping describes China-Africa relations as “friends in adversity.”8
Likewise, despite it is with the increasing economic presence that education aid catches public attention, education is not something “emerging” since the 2000s in China’s engagement in Africa. Instead, economic and cultural exchanges took the lead in developing diplomatic ties in Chinese foreign policy during the early years since the new regime was established in 1949. As Premier Zhou Enlai elaborated in 1956, “Our foreign policy includes politics, economics, and culture. Economics and culture pioneer foreign relations before diplomatic ties.”9 Education exchanges have always been the starting point for facilitating people-to-people bonds. The conventional perspective in international academia associates the coming of African students to China in 1961 with the deterioration of China-Soviet relations.10 In fact, educational exchanges between China and Africa started in 1956 when China and Egypt established their diplomatic ties after the Bandung Conference. In the same year, the first batch of Egyptian students went to study in China with scholarships on an exchange basis.11 Since then, China has continuously provided government scholarships, dispatched teachers, and donated educational equipment to Africa.12 In 1989 when China faced political isolation, it launched a special education fund in its foreign aid to Asian and primarily African countries.13 Soon since 1990, this special fund was transferred into the Intellectual Assistance to Africa (Zhili yuanfei ) project in China’s foreign aid and lasted until the early 2000s.14
Since the 2000s, the modalities of China’s education aid to Africa have enriched to include scholarships, school construction, materials donation, HRD, CIs as an extended form of dispatching teachers and offering scholarships, and the CFIT project.15 As mentioned, China’s increasing scholarships and training opportunities in Africa have caught wide attention. This attention also generates debates on China’s soft power in Africa. However, China’s soft power efforts in Africa seem to be with little progress if judged by the African people’s perceptions of China’s development aid and the popularity of the Chinese language.16 This directs to the first paradox of this study: despite China’s increasing government scholarships, training, and CIs in Africa, why does its soft power in Africa remain insufficient?17
A glance at some of the statistics of China’s education aid to Africa since the 2000s indicates that Africa is not the top destination where China’s education aid goes. During the past two decades, China’s government scholarships to Africa have counted roughly 20 percent, with a downward trend
China’s Education Aid to Africa and the Paradoxes 3 from 2008 to 2018, in the total government scholarships China provides to other countries. By contrast, the figure for Asia is around 40 percent.18 Likewise, Africa is also not the top destination of CIs. In 2005, the first CI in Africa was inaugurated at the University of Nairobi, Kenya.19 Since then, 61 CIs and 48 Confucius classrooms have been built in 46 African countries.20 While in global comparison, Africa ranks fourth, after Europe, the Americas, and Asia, in terms of the number of established CIs.21 This directs to the second paradox of this study: given the insufficient soft power and the fact that Africa is not particularly prioritized in China’s educational engagement, why is China’s presence faced with neo-colonialism critics?
Three Faces of Education Aid in China-Africa Relations
Research on China’s education aid to Africa resonates with the popularity of global debates on “China in Africa,” yet rarely confronts the above paradoxical situations faced by China. The faces of education aid include the traditions of international relations (IR), international development studies, and comparative education research, with divergent emphases.
Through the lens of foreign policy, the rationale for providing education aid as part of one’s foreign aid is directed to national interests. As one of the key concepts in IR, national interests are achieved through, or defined by, power. Thus, states realize their national interests through exercising power, or achieving power per se means realizing national interests. In this context, education aid is usually discussed with soft power. According to Joseph Nye, soft power appears as non-coercive power, based on resources from culture, values, and policies, to achieve desired outcomes in IR.22 Such a rationalist approach is implicitly based on the state-centric assumption of an existing national strategy for national interests, ultimately defined in the material dimension. The ideational dimension of education aid and its potential constructive process both at the agent (state) and structure (international system) level are absent.
The state-centric orientation of the rationalist approach captures some of the key elements of education aid as part of foreign policy. Yet, this approach alone is incapable of revealing the complexity of reality. In practice, the fragmented structure of China’s foreign aid, its implication in education aid, and the versatile education aid activities in Africa contradict the unitary national strategy assumption.23 Instead, Deng Xiaoping’s general guidance of “cross the river by feeling the stones” for China’s opening and reform is manifested in China’s cultural policies toward Africa.24 Even in the Maoist era, when China’s foreign aid was centralized to a relatively unitary national strategy, the then internationalist narrative25 and people-to-people bonds stood out in the ideational dimension of China’s education aid to Africa. As mentioned above, this ideational dimension is unrepresentative in the rationalist approach. Thus, the historical context of China-Africa relations at the structure level and domestic development in China, as well as their
constructive power in the formulation of China’s education aid to Africa, are undermined in the rationalist approach.
Compared to foreign policy analysis emphasizing the state level, international development and comparative education studies focus more on the structure level of the international system. The scholarship of education aid in international development and comparative education studies are intertwined, as international cooperation in education is situated in the post-war international development cooperation architecture. With the emergence of this architecture, education for national development has grown into the paradigm for education aid in international development.26 In this paradigm, the essence of development is influenced by development studies theories. The prevailing growth-oriented theories in development studies direct the relations between education and development to the educationfor- economic development paradigm.27 Yet, this paradigm is increasingly criticized for its obsession with the universality of market and productivity and the materialistic concept of development.28
Sharing the above debate, education aid through the lens of comparative education enriches the dynamic of the education-for-development paradigm by bringing in the social equity dimension. Education as a universal right is rooted in Western welfare states’ experience of mass public education.29 It is institutionalized in the post-war international development cooperation architecture dominated by multilateral organizations and bilateral donors from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) under the liberal order. In such a context, the notion of education for all (EFA) has grown as the prevailing norm in international cooperation in education. This is manifested in the global agendas for international education aid, advocating universal primary education and social equity, as articulated in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Such prevalence makes EFA the implicit moral ground for international education aid.
The above studies on international development and comparative education supplement foreign policy analysis by bringing education aid to the international development cooperation architecture at the structure level yet incompletely. Education aid in international development and comparative education studies originated from and is still based on the superiority of traditional donors from the OECD over recipients in terms of educational capacity. Despite the “partnership discourse” advocated by traditional donors to change the asymmetric donor-recipient relationships,30 the divide between donors and recipients has had profound influences. The architecture of international development cooperation is implicitly divided into an orthodox architecture based on the experiences of the OECD donors and “emerging” donors that will conform to or challenge the orthodox structure. In this divide, traditional donors’ practices and norms are considered the benchmark. Thus, the architecture of international development cooperation appears as a relatively closed system in which an orthodox structure
China’s Education Aid to Africa and the Paradoxes 5 and its one-way socialization to agents are recognized. Beyond this orthodox structure, the preexistence of non-traditional actors and their divergent activities and mechanisms are labeled as “emerging” or perceived as heterodox to the orthodox structure.
In the case of China’s education aid to Africa, the long-standing engagement embedded in historical contexts was absent until the 2000s, when “China in Africa” raised global debates. With these debates, China’s divergent practices and mechanisms, in comparison with those of traditional donors, attract attention. As China’s post-war education engagement in Africa is as long as those of the traditional donors, the label “emerging” only makes sense under the condition that China’s previous engagement is considered heterodox to an orthodox structure. Based on this implicit premise that considers China heterodox, the essence of China’s education aid to Africa can hardly be fully captured. Despite China’s divergences gaining attention, how such divergences grow from historical and domestic contexts and continuously influence the current reality of China’s education aid to Africa can hardly be understood merely through the comparative lens. For instance, “people connectivity” is stressed as one of the five key areas in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).31 However, this is not something new since the BRI.32 As manifested in the quote at the beginning of this chapter, the dimension of people-to-people bonds originated in 1956, with changing implications over time, remains a significant component in China’s education aid to Africa. Without understanding this historical origin, one can hardly capture the continuity and transition of the people-to-people bonds. This reflects an “epistemic fallacy”33 in visiting the reality of China’s education aid to Africa, especially the reality that is out of traditional donors’ experiences and discourses.
While the above “epistemic fallacy,” the identified paradoxes of China’s education aid to Africa in the previous section also imply two sets of major questions at the state and structure levels to be revisited. First, what has China actually done, through what mechanisms, and how, with its education aid in Africa over time? Second, to what extent has China’s education aid to Africa differentiated from/influenced by other actors and the structure constituted by actors in the international system over time? These are core questions investigated in this empirical research.
Understanding China’s Education Aid to Africa: A Critical Realist Approach
To address the “epistemic fallacy” and empirical gaps identified, building on existing scholarship on education aid that is scattered into IR, international development studies, and comparative education, this research introduces the meta theory of critical realism from sociology to construct the analytic framework. A critical realist analytic framework is enlightening as it fruitfully propels interdisciplinary research out of a fragmented
China’s Education Aid to Africa and the Paradoxes
merging of knowledge to address the complexity of reality.34 Specifically, revisiting the ontological base and epistemological implications in social sciences, critical realism re-organizes disciplinary knowledge according to the essence of knowledge concerning the ontological and epistemological nature of social reality.
Through examining the relationship between object and knowledge, critical realism perceives the world as an open system in which objects (i.e., the domain of empirical ), the causal power or mechanisms possessed by objects (i.e., the domain of actual ), and the effects produced by those mechanisms (i.e., the domain of real ) co-exist.35 This classification of reality transcends the factitious disciplinary boundaries by re-organizing knowledge according to its essence concerning the three domains of reality. Its stance on the agent-structure issue bridges divergent understandings of the nature of the international system in which states situate. Rationalist theories believe that anarchy is an inherent structure of the international system, while constructivism contends that “anarchy is what states make of it.”36 From a critical realist perspective, the structure is indispensably situated in the physical world before rule-following.37 However, based on the multilayered ontology, the structure is dually the conscious medium to socialize agents and the unconscious outcome of agents’ reproduction.38 This implies two-way socialization between agents and the structure.
Drawing on the above three domains of reality and their epistemological implication of a transformational model of social activities,39 this research constructs a transformational model of international development cooperation (TMIDC) as the analytic framework to explore the dual agent- structure relations in China’s education aid to Africa. Internally, it goes beyond the state-centric approach by unveiling how China’s ministerial actors and the state transform each other in policy formulation. China’s educational aid appears as a product input by different ministerial actors. This implies the activities, flows, actors, and rhetoric of China’s educational aid to Africa in the domain of empirical, and the mechanisms of policymaking in China and its implementation in Africa in the domain of actual. Externally, it differentiates itself from conventional understandings of socialization in IR by emphasizing the two-way socialization,40 or in other words, transformation and reproduction, between China and the current international development cooperation architecture. The international development cooperation architecture socializes China through institutions and norms that are in the domain of actual. This architecture is, in return, reproduced by the preexisting institutions and norms of China and South-South Cooperation that lie in the domain of actual. Finally, the tangible inputs, mechanisms, and twoway socialization (reproduction) consist of the reality of China’s education aid to Africa.
Guided by this analytic framework, this research consists of a qualitativedriven design of two phases lasting from 2018 to 2020. Policy formulation of China is divided into policymaking and implementation, while the
China’s Education Aid to Africa and the Paradoxes 7 interactions within different ministerial actors and between China and the international development cooperation architecture are manifested in policymaking and implementation. The first phase (2018.9–2019.5), primarily focusing on policymaking, explores the formulation of China’s education aid to Africa through the lens of bureaucracy. Bureaucratic politics has been considered a changing dynamic in the historical evolution of policymaking in China since 1949. Statistics, policy contents, and archives are collected to map the policymaking mechanism. Participant observations on China’s HRD training seminars for Africans and in-depth interviews are adopted to supplement secondary sources. It reveals how the fragmented bureaucratic politics at the ministerial level, since 1978, has reinforced the dualism of China’s education aid to Africa. It also unveils how this fragmented bureaucracy has been accommodated in authoritarianism over time.
The second phase (2019.5–2020.5) investigates the implementation of China’s education aid in Africa through a case study in Ethiopia. A nearly half-year fieldwork with participant observations and in-depth interviews in Ethiopia is engaged in this phase. As revealed in the previous sections, foreign policy (soft power) and the education-for-economic development arguments prevail in explaining China’s education aid to Africa. Ethiopia is selected as a typical case for the typicality of the bureaucratic structure in the Chinese embassy and the wide range of China’s education aid modalities in this country. In the bureaucratic arrangement of China’s embassies, the Economic and Commercial Office (ECO) and the cultural counselor’s office (CCO) are set as the representatives of the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism (MOCT), respectively. In Chinese embassies in African countries except for Egypt and South Africa, educational affairs are managed by the CCO. As one of the initial eight African countries in the CFIT project, Ethiopia has a wide range of modalities of China’s education aid. Phase two reveals how the fragmented bureaucratic politics in policymaking is reinforced at the implementation level to hinder China’s soft power projection and joint knowledge production between China and Ethiopia.
What Is (NOT) This Research?
The issue of generalization in qualitative research has long been commonplace in the debate, addressed by the decent answer of “analytic generalization.”41 Avoiding homogenizing Africa is also a constant reminder for researchers who conduct Africa-related research, as Africa is not a country but a region comprised of 54 countries. Before heading to the intense methodological discussions in Chapter 3 and the Appendix, it is necessary to clarify what this research is (NOT) about.
The ways to approach China-Africa/Africa-China engagements can include at least three types of perspectives: the comparative lens that situates China-Africa/Africa-China in the perspective of traditional donors,
the Chinese endogenous perspective that considers China as the agent, and the African endogenous perspectives that treat African countries as agents. This research adopts the Chinese endogenous perspective to explore how China’s education aid to Africa is formulated. With this perspective, it explores China’s policy in education in the African region concerning the Chinese government’s approach to addressing its policy in a pan-A frican way in the FOCAC. Thus, this research is not about the rationale for allocating particular modalities in China’s education aid to a specific African country. Neither is it about why China allocates more education aid to a specific African country than another. Instead, it focuses on exploring the changing motives and policymaking mechanisms rooted in China’s domestic development in various sectors and the historical development of China-Africa relations over time that shape this regional policy. The necessity of endogenous perspectives to address the “epistemic fallacy” of the comparative lens has been discussed previously. Clarifying this Chinese endogenous perspective does not mean denying any African endogenous perspectives. Instead, it defines the focus of this research. In terms of the scope, this research primarily concerns the state behavior of China. Thus, it focuses on government aid at the central government level through bilateral and/or multilateral channels.42 Regional governments, enterprises, and social organizations may be involved in the implementation.43 Yet, initiatives of Chinese regional governments, enterprises, and social organizations and their interaction with government aid are also noted in data collection. The case study on Ethiopia does not imply generalizing Africa. Rather, it aims to generate analytic evidence on the fragmented bureaucratic politics at the implementation level. As specified in the previous section, Ethiopia is selected as a typical case to reveal how the fragmented bureaucracy in China’s education aid is reinforced at the implementation level. Therefore, the typicality of the Ethiopia case lies in the bureaucratic structure of the Chinese embassy. Since it is a common institutional arrangement in Chinese embassies in most African countries that the CCO takes charge of educational affairs,44 the identified negative effects of the Ministry of Education’s (MOE) unrepresentativeness in this institutional arrangement could have far-ranging implications. It illustrates manifestations of bureaucratic inefficiency that can reduce educational affairs to inconsequential administrative tasks in which bureaucrats’ personal interests, willingness, and ability to mobilize educational resources weigh significantly. Nonetheless, the identified obstacles of the CFIT project related to Ethiopia’s federalism in this research aim to raise the importance of context matters. It does not mean applying this specific context in other African countries regardless of political, socio-economic, and cultural conditions.
This research is comprised of seven chapters. Following this introductory chapter, Chapter 2 reviews the theoretical grounds of education aid in the scholarship of foreign policy analysis, international development studies, and comparative education research. It identifies the limitation of
China’s Education Aid to Africa and the Paradoxes 9
disciplinary knowledge and the lack of dialogues across disciplines. It then reveals how the above limitations are manifested in the paradoxical situations faced by China regarding its education aid to Africa.
Chapter 3 first revisits the scholarship of China’s education aid to Africa that is implicitly structured by disciplinary knowledge. After figuring out the “epistemic fallacy,” it then examines the ontological and epistemic foundations of critical realism and constructs a transformational model of the open system of international development cooperation based on critical realism. The function of this model is threefold. First, it is an analytic framework that entails the dual agent-structure relations within China and between China and the international development cooperation architecture. Second, it implies the methodology to re-organize and integrate knowledge and empirical data. Third, the three domains of reality in critical realism, i.e., the domain of empirical, the domain of actual, and the domain of real, serve as the reference to thematically organize this book.
Research findings are thematically presented in Chapters 4 – 6 concerning the critical realist classification of the three domains of reality, respectively. It is worth noting that the three domains of reality exist in each theme (or chapter) with divergent intensity, while the label of a particular domain a ccording to the intensity is used for clarity. Chapter 4 examines the fragmented activities, actors, and discourse of China’s education aid to Africa and the estimated flows that primarily lie in the domain of empirical. It figures out a dualism originated from the beginning of China-Africa education ties, the changing motives of China influenced by its domestic development and external relations over time, and how these are related to the fragmented practices and structure at present.
Chapter 5 focuses on the mechanism primarily concerned in the domain of actual. It explains the formulation of China’s education aid to Africa by unveiling the changing domestic agent-structure relations in policymaking and implementation. It argues that the economic and education sectors interact with foreign policy in shaping China’s education aid to Africa. The power of influence of MOFCOM and the MOE depends on the relevance of their agendas to China’s foreign policy and their ministerial influences in foreign policymaking. It reveals that, compared to MOE’s outside-in role, MOFCOM’s role in African policy is inside-out. The case study on Ethiopia illustrates that MOE’s passive role is further reinforced at the implementation level to hinder China’s soft power projection and joint knowledge production. Despite the China International Development Cooperation Agency (CIDCA) was established to coordinate foreign aid, the bureaucratic divide remains. This chapter also discusses the changing dynamics in policy formulation since the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) reform of Party and state institutions in 2018.
Chapter 6 situates China’s tangible inputs, mechanisms, and the effects of such mechanisms in the broad picture of the international development cooperation architecture to explore the openness and two-way socialization
China’s Education Aid to Africa and the Paradoxes (reproduction) in this architecture. It first examines the sectoral, structural, and discursive divergences of China’s education aid to Africa compared to traditional donors. Following this examination, it explains these divergences by uncovering how international norms in education aid are differentially socializing China’s ministerial actors. Exploring agents’ reproduction of the international development cooperation architecture also reveals the undermined reproduction from China and South-South Cooperation to the architecture, owing to insufficient knowledge production from the South. It argues that China’s insufficient (joint) knowledge production is attributable to the inadequate agency of the domestic bureaucratic system and the contradicted understanding of culture and soft power in China-Africa relations. Yet, individual institutions’ visions, capacity, and efforts in knowledge production can be developed by intellectuals.
Chapter 7 concludes this research by echoing the two paradoxes raised in this introductory chapter. As noted by scholars, soft power in the Chinese context did not originate as the official context for China-Africa relations in which South-South Cooperation is stressed.45 Soft power implies a realpolitik mindset, which contradicts the equality emphasized in South-South Cooperation. This research illustrates a fragmented mechanism, rather than a unitary soft power strategy, of China’s education aid to Africa, in which the fragmentation is manifested in policymaking and implementation. In this fragmented structure, MOCT’s understanding of cultural influence for foreign recognition contradicts the reality of ChinaAfrica relations and falls into the neo-colonialism debate. Yet, the neocolonialism debate should be understood in China’s involved international vision since its modern transformation and insufficient knowledge production capacity. It is also worth noting that, with this involved international vision, China should probably be cautious about how to contribute to global knowledge production in the future based on the common good instead of nationalism.
The core of this research is to address the two paradoxical questions about China’s education aid to Africa: (1) despite China’s increasing government scholarships, training, and CIs in Africa, why does its soft power in Africa remains limited, as illustrated in surveys? and (2) although Africa is not particularly prioritized in China’s education aid, as illustrated by statistics, why is China’s presence in Africa faced with neo-colonialism critics? To this end, it illustrates what China has actually done, through what mechanisms and why, with its education aid in Africa over time, and to what extent China is differentiated from/influenced by other actors and the structure. It contributes to the knowledge by bridging the disciplinary gaps by introducing critical realism to achieve interdisciplinarity in researching China’s education aid to Africa. Theoretically, it reveals how two-way socialization, as opposed to the constructive understanding of socialization in IR, occurs in international development cooperation through South-South Cooperation. This addresses the “epistemic fallacy” problem in understanding China’s
education aid to Africa, leading to resolving the paradoxes concerned by this research.
With the implementation of the BRI, Chinese regional governments, enterprises, and social organizations are increasingly engaged as education aid providers. Their engagement and interplay with government aid should also be explored in further research on China’s education aid dynamics in Africa. In terms of contextual evidence about the implementation in African countries, the typicality emphasized in this research lies in the bureaucratic structure of the Chinese embassy and how it affects implementation. It does not aim to promote a generalizable conclusion on how indigenous factors in African countries matter merely based on the case of Ethiopia. Rather, it calls for attention to the agency of recipients, not only the donors, in international development cooperation. The agency of recipients is subject to specific political, socio-economic, and cultural contexts. This implies the need for more context-based research with African countries as agents in the future.
Notes
1 The scope of this entire research primarily includes the education aid of the People’s Republic of China to Africa from 1956 to 2018, while also discussing changes since 2018. Education aid refers to governmental aid at the central government level as a state behavior. The roles of subnational and nongovernmental actors in China’s education aid to Africa include two patterns: (1) subsidiary actors to fulfill foreign aid tasks from the central government and (2) active actors as education aid providers. The first pattern is part of the state behavior. The second pattern and its interplay with governmental aid from the central are also briefly discussed in the last chapter.
2 Ling Peng and Yi Zhang, “Sirenyishi, youyi changcun: ji aiji zhuming huajia, zhongguo ‘renmin youhao shizhe’ chenghao huodezhe heibai” [Perished Man, Permanent Friendship: The Famous Egyptian Painter and Awardee of “Goodwill Emissary of the People” Mr. Hibat], Shijie wenhua [World Culture] 6 (2008): 13–15. Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, usually chaired by a vice-ministerial level official, is a civil organization managed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Hibat Inayat and his wife Tumadir Turki, Hei Bai and Tu Made in Chinese, respectively, are Egyptian artists who came to study in China in 1956 according to the bilateral cultural cooperation agreement. I thank Prof. Ailin Qian for her efforts on identifying the handwriting of Arabic names on the album of their artworks published in China and confirming the identification with the reference of other sources from her Egyptian friend.
3 See, for example, Gregory T. Chin and Michael B. Frolic, “Emerging Donors in International Development Assistance: The China Case” (International Development Research Center, 2007), https://idl-bnc-idrc.dspacedirect.org/ bitstream/handle/10625/57510/IDL-57510.pdf?sequence=2; Ngaire Woods, “Whose Aid? Whose Influence? China, Emerging Donors and the Silent Revolution in Development Assistance,” International Affairs 84, no. 6 (2008): 1205–1221; Deborah Bräutigam, “Aid with ‘Chinese Characteristics’: Chinese Foreign Aid and Development Finance Meet the OECD-DAC Aid Regime,” Journal of International Development 23, no. 5 (2011): 752–764.
4 “China in Africa” is primarily used to describe China’s economic engagement in Africa and the consequential policy, media, and academia responses it has raised. See Ching Kwan Lee, The Specter of Global China: Politics, Labor, and Foreign Investment in Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), xi.
5 Suisheng Zhao, “A Neo-Colonialist Predator or Development Partner? China’s Engagement and Rebalance in Africa,” Journal of Contemporary China 23, no. 90 (2014): 1033–1052.
6 “Forum on China-Africa Cooperation Beijing Action Plan (2019–2021),” MFA, last modified September 12, 2018, http://focacsummit.mfa.gov.cn/eng/ hyqk_1/201809/t20180912_5858585.htm
7 To name a few, Judd Devermont, “Real Threats and Misplaced Fears at the Seventh Forum for China-Africa Cooperation,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, last modified September 5, 2018, https://www.csis.org/analysis/ real-threats-and-misplaced-fears-seventh-forum-china-africa- cooperation ; Esther Nakkazi, “China Ramps up Support for African Higher Education,” University World News, September 7, 2018, https://www.universityworld news.com/post.php?story=20180907083412817; “Soft Power Superpowers,” British Council, last modified November 2018, https://www.britishcouncil.org/ research-policy-insight/insight-articles/soft-power-superpowers; Jevans Nyabiage, “Scholarship Offers Driving China’s Soft-Power Play in Africa,” South China Morning Post, September 28, 2019, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/ diplomacy/article/3030570/scholarship-offers-driving-chinas-soft- powerplay-africa; Benjamin Mulvey, “Foreign Students and China’s Soft Power: The Case of Uganda,” The Diplomat, January 10, 2020, https://thediplomat. com/2020/01/foreign-students-and-chinas-soft-power-the-case-of-uganda /.
8 Jingjing Tan, “Zhongguo he feizhou guojia huannan zhijiao buneng wang” [China and Africa Are Unforgettable Friends in Adversity], Zhongguo qingnian bao [China Youth Journal] (August 26, 2014): 07. http://zqb.cyol.com/ html/2014-08/26/nw.D110000zgqnb_20140826_2-07.htm.
9 Enfan Song and Jasong Li, Zhonghua renmin gongheguo waijiao dashiji (diyijuan) [Chronicle of Foreign Affairs in the People’s Republic of China (Volume One)] (Beijing: World Knowledge Press, 1997), 255.
10 This point is clarified by Liu, while King also notices the start of China-Africa educational exchanges in 1956. See Haifang Liu, “Zhongguo duifei liuxuesheng jiangxuejin zhengce yange yu jixiao yanjiu” [A Study of the Policy Evolution and Effectiveness of Chinese Government Scholarships], in Annual Review of African Studies in China 2015 [Zhongguo feizhou yanjiu pinglun 2015], eds. Anshan Li and Haifang Liu (Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press, 2017), 141–192; Kenneth King, China’s Aid and Soft Power in Africa: The Case of Education and Training (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2013), 68. For the conventional perspective, see Barry Sautman, “Anti-Black Racism in Post-Mao China,” China Quarterly 138 (1994): 413–437; Cooley also associates it with African independence, while Liu’s research suggests that China also received African students from non-dependent countries. See John K. Cooley, East Wind Over Africa: Red China’s African Offensive (New York: Walker, 1965), 220–221.
11 Liu, “A Study of the Policy Evolution and Effectiveness of Chinese Government Scholarships,” 141–192.
12 China’s educational exchanges with Africa were interrupted by the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1970. Dispatching teachers to Africa and receiving African students were resumed in 1970 and 1973, respectively. See State Education Commission, “China’s Educational Exchanges and Cooperation with Africa (April 18, 1997),” quoted in Sandra Gillespie, South-South Transfer: A Study of Sino-African Exchanges (New York: Routledge, 2001), 245.
15 See “China’s Foreign Aid (2011),” Information Office of the State Council, last modified April 21, 2011, http://www.scio.gov.cn/zxbd/nd/2011/Document/ 896900/896900.htm; “UNESCO-China Funds-in-Trust Inaugurates,” People, last modified November 23, 2012, http://world.people.com.cn/n/2012/1123/ c157278-19674628.html; Bjorn Harald Nordtveit, “An Emerging Donor in Education and Development: A Case Study of China in Cameroon,” International Journal of Educational Development 31, no. 2 (2011): 99–108; King, China’s Aid and Soft Power in Africa: The Case of Education and Training, 47. In the literature of China’s education aid to Africa, HRD is always discussed although sometimes with the separate label of “training.” China’s HRD is comprised of training and scholarships. “Training” is consistent with the label of “technical and managerial training” in the “post-secondary education” category of education aid in the OECD creditor reporting system, while scholarship is a typical component of education aid. The scope and activities of China’s education aid will be further discussed and defined in Chapter 4.
16 The latest survey of Afrobarometer on African people’s perceptions on China suggests that less than half of the responders have heard about the existence of China’s loans and development aid in their countries. It also reveals that only 2 percent responders consider Chinese as a promising international language to learn. See Josephine Appiah-Nyamekye Sanny and Edem Selormey, “Africans Regard China’s Influence as Significant and Positive, but Slipping,” dispatches no. 407, Afrobarometer, 2020, https://afrobarometer.org/sites/default/files/publications/ Dispatches/ad407-chinas_perceived_influence_in_africa_decreasesafrobarometer_dispatch-14nov20.pdf. This survey suggests the contrasts between (1) China’s increasing development aid and African people’s insufficient perceptions about those aid and (2) China’s input through CIs and the insufficient cultural influence. The findings of this survey can be cross-checked with the Uganda official’s statement on “China is new to us … we need to know more about this country” and the Zambian comment about “Working with Chinese will be very difficult to adapt, and it might even take another thirty years …We are a bit ok with the West because they colonized us, and we understand each other a bit …” in Chapter 3. The media debates on the controversies of African elements in China’s Lunar New Year TV show in 2018 and 2021 can also exemplify China’s insufficient cultural soft power in the sense of mutual understanding.
17 The scholarship of China’s soft power in Africa is mostly associated with cultural and educational activities, while existing research also loosely considers China’s African policy and economic activities as evidence of soft power. For the latter, see, for example, Łukasz Fija ł kowski, “China’s ‘Soft Power’ in Africa?,” Journal of Contemporary African Studies 29, no. 2 (2011): 223–232; Wei Liang, “China’s Soft Power in Africa: Is Economic Power Sufficient?,” Asian Perspective (2012): 667–692; Pippa Morgan, “Can China’s Economic Statecraft win Soft Power in Africa? Unpacking Trade, Investment and Aid,” Journal of Chinese Political Science 24, no. 3 (2019): 387–409. The soft power question in research concerns cultural and educational activities in the context of foreign aid. By describing China’s soft power as “insufficient,” it refers to the contrast between China’s eye-catching input and African people’s insufficient perceptions and willingness to buy it.
18 Figures are generated based on MOE’s semi-open statistics named Laihua Liuxuesheng jianming tongji (Concise Statistics on International Students in China) from 1999 to 2018. For more details, see Chapter 4.
China’s Education Aid to Africa and the Paradoxes
19 “About Us,” Confucius Institute at University of Nairobi, accessed September 29, 2020, https://confucius.uonbi.ac.ke/index.php/basic-page/about-us.
20 “Confucius Institute/Classroom,” Official website of Hanban , accessed September 29, 2020, http://english.hanban.org/node_7586.htm. This webpage was no longer available in 2021.
21 Ibid.
22 Joseph S. Nye, “Soft Power,” Foreign Policy 80 (1990): 153–171; Joseph S. Nye, “Public Diplomacy and Soft Power,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 616, no. 1 (2008): 94–109.
23 For the fragmented structure, see King, China’s Aid and Soft Power in Africa: The Case of Education and Training, 17; Bräutigam, “Aid ‘with Chinese Characteristics’: Chinese Foreign Aid and Development Finance Meet the OECD-DAC Aid Regime,” 752–764; Yanbing Zhang, Jing Gu, and Yunnan Chen, “China’s Engagement in International Development Cooperation: The State of the Debate” (evidence report no.116, Institute of Development Studies, 2015), https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/ handle/20.500.12413/5838/ER116_ChinasEngagementinInternationalDevelop mentCooperationTheStateoftheDebate.pdf?sequence=1; Denghua Zhang and Graeme Smith, “China’s Foreign Aid System: Structure, Agencies, and Identities,” Third World Quarterly 38, no. 10 (2017): 2330–2346. Despite the establishment of the China International Development Cooperation Agency (CIDCA) in 2018, this fragmentation remains. Changes since the CIDCA will be discussed in Chapter 5
24 This is particularly manifested in the development of the CIs in Africa. See Liu, “China-Africa Relations through the Prism of Culture: The Dynamics of China’s Cultural Diplomacy with Africa,” 9–44.
25 Haifang Liu, “Cong zhongguo moshi de zhili yanzhu dao quanqiuhua shidai xin gonggong waijiao: jiangshu zhongguo dui feizhou jiangxuejin de gushi” [From Intellectual Aid Stems from the China Model to New Public Diplomacy in Globalization: The Story of Chinese Scholarships to Africa], Dangdai shijie [Contemporary China] 3 (2013): 54–57; Liu, “A Study of the Policy Evolution and Effectiveness of Chinese Government Scholarships,” 141–192.
26 Karen Mundy, “Education for All and the New Development Compact,” International Review of Education 52, no. 1/2 (2006): 23–48.
27 Bjorn Harald Nordtveit, “Western and Chinese Development Discourses: Education, Growth and Sustainability,” International Journal of Educational Development 29, no. 2 (2009): 157–165.
28 Aram Ziai, “‘I Am Not a Post-Developmentalist, But …’ The Influence of Post-Development on Development Studies,” Third World Quarterly 38, no. 12 (2017): 2719–2734.
29 Karen Mundy, “Educational Multilateralism and World (Dis)Order,” Comparative Education Review 42, no. 4 (1998): 448–478.
30 Kenneth King, “Introduction: New Challenges to International Development Cooperation in Education,” in Changing International Aid to Education: Global Patterns and National Contexts, eds. Kenneth King and Lene Buchert (Paris: UNESCO Publishing/NORRAG, 1999), 13–28.
31 See “Full Text: Action Plan on the Belt and Road Initiative,” State Council, last modified March 30, 2015, http://english.www.gov.cn/archive/publications/2015/ 03/30/content_281475080249035.htm
32 For example, Mulvey and Lo consider people-to-people bonds as a new feature on China’s policy on international students since the BRI. See Benjamin Mulvey and William Yat Wai Lo, “Learning to ‘Tell China’s Story Well’: The Constructions of International Students in Chinese Higher Education Policy,” Globalization, Societies and Education 19, no. 5 (2021): 545-557.
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Two hours later we had cruised the city ... and found nothing. It hadn't changed from what my extra memory recalled—except that all the people were gone. The parks and boulevards were trimmed, the fountains and pools sparkled, the lights glowed ... but nothing moved. The automatic dust precipitators and air filters would run forever, keeping things clean and neat; but there was no one there to appreciate it. I pulled over, sat watching the play of colored lights on a waterfall, and considered. Maybe I'd find more of a clue inside one of the buildings. I left the car and picked one at random: a tall slab of pink crystal. Inside, I looked around at a great airy cavern full of rose-
colored light and listened to the purring of the cat and my own breathing. There was nothing else to hear.
I picked a random corridor, went along it, passing through one empty room after another. I went out on a lofty terrace overlooking gardens, leaned on a balustrade, and looked up at the brilliant disc of Cinte.
"We've come a long way to find nothing," I said to Itzenca. She pushed her way along my leg and flexed her tail in a gesture meant to console.
I sat on the balustrade and leaned back against the polished pink wall, took out a clarinet I'd found in one of the rooms and blew some blue notes. That which once had been was no more; remembering it, I played the Pavane for a Dead Princess.
I finished and looked up at a sound. Four tall men in grey cloaks and a glitter of steel came toward me from the shadows.
I had dropped the clarinet and was on my feet. I tried to back up but the balustrade stopped me. The four spread out. The man in the lead fingered a wicked-looking short club and spoke to me—in gibberish. I blinked at him and tried to think of a snappy comeback.
He snapped his fingers and two of the others came up; they reached for my arms. I started to square off, fist cocked, then relaxed; after all, I was just a tourist, Drgon by name. Unfortunately, before I could get my fist back, the man with the club swung it and caught me across the forearm. I yelled, jumped back, found myself grappled by the others. My arm felt dead to the shoulder. I tried a kick and regretted that too; there was armor under the cloaks. The club wielder said something and pointed at the cat....
It was time I wised up. I relaxed, tried to coax my alter ego into the foreground. I listened to the rhythm of the language: it was Vallonian, badly warped by time, but I could understand it: "—musician would be an Owner!" one of them said.
Laughter.
"Whose man are you, piper? What are your colors?"
I curled my tongue, tried to shape it around the sort of syllables I heard them uttering, but it seemed to me a gross debasement of the Vallonian I knew. Still I managed an answer:
"I ... am a ... citizen ... of Vallon."
"A dog of a masterless renegade?" The man with the club hefted it, glowered at me. "And what wretched dialect is that you speak?"
"I have ... been long a-voyaging," I stuttered. "I ask ... for briefing rods ... and for a ... dwelling place."
"A dwelling place you'll have," the man said. "In the men's shed at Rath-Gallion." He gestured, and snapped handcuffs on me.
He turned and stalked away, and the others hustled me after him. Over my shoulder I got a glimpse of a cat's tail disappearing over the balustrade. Outside, a long grey aircar waited on the lawn. They dumped me in the back seat, climbed aboard. I got a last look at the spires of Okk-Hamiloth as we tilted, hurtled away across the low hills.
I had had an idealistic notion of wanting to fit into this new world, find a place in its society. I'd found a place all right: a job with security. I was a slave.
CHAPTER XIV
It was banquet night at Rath-Gallion, and I gulped my soup in the kitchen and ran over in my mind the latest batch of jingles I was expected to perform. I had only been on the Estate a few weeks, but I was already Owner Gope's favorite piper. If I kept on at this rate, I would soon have a cell to myself in the slave pens. Sime, the pastry cook, came over to me.
"Pipe us a merry tune, Drgon," he said, "and I'll reward you with a frosting pot."
"With pleasure, good Sime," I said. I finished off the soup and got out my clarinet. I had tried out half a dozen strange instruments, but I still liked this one best. "What's your pleasure?"
"One of the outland tunes you learned far-voyaging," called Cagu, the bodyguard.
I complied with the Beer Barrel Polka. They pounded the table and hallooed when I finished, and I got my goody pan. Sime stood watching me scrape at it.
"Why don't you claim the Chief Piper's place, Drgon?" he said. "You pipe rings around the lout. Then you'd have freeman status, and could sit among us in the kitchen almost as an equal."
"I'd gladly be the equal of such a pastry cook as yourself," I said. "But what can a slave-piper do?"
Sime blinked at me. "You can challenge the Chief Piper," he said. "There's none can deny you're his master in all but name. Don't fear the outcome of the Trial; you'll triumph sure."
"But how can I claim another's place?" I asked.
Sime waved his arms. "You have far-voyaged long indeed, Piper Drgon. Know you naught of how the world wags these days? One would take you for a Cintean heretic."
"As I've said, in my youth all men were free; and the High King ruled at Okk-Hamiloth—"
"'Tis ill to speak of these things," said Sime in a low tone. "Only Owners know their former lives ... though I've heard it said that long ago no man was so mean but that he recorded his lives and kept them safe. How you came by yours, I ask not; but do not speak of it. Owner Gope is a jealous master. Though a most generous and worshipful lord," he added hastily, looking around.
"I won't speak of it then, good Sime," I said. "But I have been long away. Even the language has changed, so that I wrench my tongue in the speaking of it. Advise me, if you will."
Sime puffed out his cheeks, frowning at me. "I scarce know where to start," he said. "All things belong to the Owners ... as is only right. Men of low skill are likewise property; and 'tis well 'tis so; else would they starve as masterless strays ... if the Greymen failed to find them first." He made a sign and spat.
"Now men of good skill are freemen, each earning rewards as befits his ability. I am Chief Pastry Cook to the Lord Gope, with the perquisites of that station, therefore, that none other equals my talents."
"And if some varlet claims the place of any man here," put in Cagu, "then he gotta submit to the trial."
"Then," said Sime, "this upstart pastry cook must cook against me; and all in the Hall will judge; and he who prevails is the Chief Pastry Cook, and the other takes a dozen lashes for his impertinence."
"But fear not, Drgon," spoke Cagu. "A Chief Piper ain't but a fivestroke man. Only a tutor is lower down among freemen."
There was a bellow from the door, and I grabbed my clarinet and scrambled after the page. Owner Gope didn't like to wait around for piper-slaves. I saw him looming up at his place, as I darted through to my assigned position within the huge circle of the viand-loaded table. The Chief Piper had just squeezed his bagpipe-like instrument and released a windy blast of discordant sound. He was a lean, squinteyed rascal fond of ordering the slave-pipers about. He pranced in an intricate pattern, pumping away at his vari-colored bladders, until I winced at the screech of it. Owner Gope noticed him about the same time. He picked up a heavy brass mug and half rose to peg it at the Chief Piper, who saw it just in time to duck. The mug hit a swollen airbag; it burst with a sour bleat.
"As sweet a note as has been played tonight," roared Owner Gope. "Begone, lest you call up the hill devils—"
His eye fell on me. "Now here's a true piper. Summon up a fair melody, Drgon, to clear the fumes of the last performer from the air before the wine sours."
I bowed low, wet my lips, and launched into the One O' Clock Jump. To judge from the roar that went up when I finished, they liked it. I followed with Little Brown Jug and String of Pearls. Gope pounded and the table quieted down.
"The rarest slave in all Rath-Gallion, I swear it," he bellowed. "Were he not a slave, I'd drink to his health."
"By your leave, Owner?" I said.
Gope stared, then nodded indulgently. "Speak then."
"I claim the place of Chief Piper. I—"
Yells rang out; Gope grinned widely.
"So be it," he said. "Shall the vote be taken now, or must we submit to more of the vile bladderings ere we proclaim our good Drgon Chief Piper? Speak out."
"Proclaim him!" somebody shouted.
Gope slammed a huge hand against the table. "Bring Iylk, the Chief Piper, before me," he yelled.
The piper reappeared.
"The place of the Chief Piper is declared vacant," Gope said loudly. "—since the former Chief Piper has been advanced in degree to a new office. Let these air-bags be punctured," Gope cried. "I banish their rancid squeals forever from Rath-Gallion. Now, let all men know: this former piper is now Chief Fool to this household. Let him wear the broken bladders as a sign of his office." There was a roar of laughter, glad cries, whistles.
I gave them Mairzy Doats and the former piper capered gingerly. Owner Gope roared with laughter.
"A great day for Rath-Gallion," Gope shouted. "By the horns of the sea-god, I have gained a prince of pipers and a king of fools! I
proclaim them to be ten-lash men, and both shall have places at table henceforth!"
I looked around the barbarically decorated hall, seeing things in a new way. There's nothing like a little slavery to make a man appreciate even a modest portion of freedom. Everything I had thought I knew about Vallon had been wrong: the centuries that passed had changed things—and not for the better. The old society that Foster knew was dead and buried. The old places and villas lay deserted, the spaceports unused. And the old system of memoryrecording that Foster described was lost and forgotten. I didn't know what kind of a cataclysm could have plunged the seat of a galactic empire back into feudal darkness—but it had happened.
So far I hadn't found a trace of Foster. My questions had gotten me nothing but blank stares. Maybe Foster hadn't made it; there could have been an accident in space. Or perhaps he was somewhere on the opposite side of the world. Vallon was a big planet and communications were poor. Maybe Foster was dead. I could live out a long life here and never find the answers.
I remembered my own disappointment at the breakdown of my illusions that night at Okk-Hamiloth. How much more heartbreaking must have been Foster's experience when and if he had arrived back here.
And Foster's memory that I had been bringing him for a keepsake: what a laugh that was! Far from being a superfluous duplicate of a master trace to which he had expected easy access, my copy of the trace was now, with the vaults at Okk-Hamiloth sealed and forbidden, of the greatest possible importance to Foster—and there wasn't a machine left on the planet to play it on.
Well, I still meant to find Foster if it took me—
Owner Gope was humming loudly and tunelessly to himself. I knew the sign. I got ready to play again. Being Chief Piper probably wasn't going to be just a bowl of cherries, but at least I wasn't a slave now. I had a long way to go, but I was making progress.
OWNER Gope and I got along well. He took me everywhere he went. He was a shrewd old duck and he liked having such an unusual piper on hand. He had heard from the Greymen, the free-lance police force, how I had landed at the deserted port. He warned me, in an oblique way, not to let word get out that I knew anything about old times in Vallon. The whole subject was tabu—especially the old capital city and the royal palaces themselves. Small wonder that my trespassing there had brought the Greymen down on me in double quick time.
One afternoon several months after my promotion I dropped in at the kitchen. I was due to shove off with Owner Gope and his usual retinue for a visit to Bar-Ponderone, a big estate a hundred miles north of Rath-Gallion in the direction of Okk-Hamiloth. Sime and my other old cronies fixed me up with a healthy lunch and a bottle of melon wine, and warned me that it would be a rough trip; the stretch of road we'd be using was a favorite hang-out of road pirates.
"What I don't understand," I said, "is why Gope doesn't mount a couple of guns on the car and blast his way through the raiders. Every time he goes off the Estate he's taking his life in his hands."
The boys were shocked. "Even piratical renegades would never dream of taking a man's life, good Drgon," Sime said. "Every Owner, far and near, would band together to hunt such miscreants down. And their own fellows would abet the hunters! Nay, none is so low as to steal all a man's lives."
"The corsairs themselves know full well that in their next life they may be simple goodmen—even slaves," the Chief Wine-Pourer put in. "For you know, good Drgon, that when a member of a pirate band suffers the Change the others lead the newman to an Estate, that he may find his place...."
"How often do these Changes come along?" I asked.
"It varies greatly. Some men, of great strength and moral power, have been known to go on unchanged for three or four hundred years. But the ordinary man lives a life of eighty to one hundred years." Sime paused. "Or it may be less. A life of travail and strife can end much sooner than one of peace and retirement. Or unusual vicissitudes can shorten a life remarkably. A cousin of mine, who was marooned on the Great Stony Place in the southern half-world and who wandered for three weeks without more to eat or drink than a small bag of wine, underwent the Change after only fourteen years. When he was found his face was lined and his hair had greyed, in the way that presages the Change. And it was not long before he fell in a fit, as one does, and slept for a night and a day. When he awoke he was a newman: young and knowing nothing."
"Didn't you tell him who he was?"
"Nay!" Sime lowered his voice. "You are much favored of Owner Gope, good Drgon, and rightly. Still, there are matters a man talks not of—"
"A newman takes a name and sets out to learn whatever trade he can," put in the Carver of Roasts. "By his own skills he can rise ... as you have risen, good Drgon."
"Don't you have memory machines—or briefing rods?" I persisted. "Little black sticks: you touch them to your head and—"
Sime made a motion in the air. "I have heard of these wands: a forbidden relic of the Black Arts—"
"Nuts," I said. "You don't believe in magic, do you, Sime? The rods are nothing but a scientific development by your own people. How you've managed to lose all knowledge of your own past—"
Sime raised his hands in distress. "Good Drgon, press us not in these matters. Such things are forbidden."
I went on out to the car and climbed in to wait for Owner Gope. It was impossible to learn anything about Vallon's history from these
goodmen. They knew nothing.
I had reached a few tentative conclusions on my own, however. My theory was that some sudden social cataclysm had broken down the system of personality reinforcement and memory-recording that had given continuity to the culture. Vallonian society, based as it was on the techniques of memory preservation, had gradually disintegrated. Vallon was plunged into a feudal state resembling its ancient social pattern of fifty thousand years earlier, before development of memory recording.
The people, huddled together on Estates for protection from real or imagined perils and shunning the old villas and cities as tabu—except for those included in Estates—knew nothing of space travel and ancient history Like Sime, they had no wish even to speak of such matters.
I might have better luck with my detective work on a big Estate like Bar-Ponderone. I was looking forward to today's trip.
Gope appeared, with Cagu and two other bodyguards, four dancing girls, and an extra-large gift hamper. They took their places and the driver started up and wheeled the heavy car out onto the highroad. I felt a pulse of excitement as we accelerated in the direction of BarPonderone. Maybe at the end of the ride I'd hit paydirt.
We were doing about fifty down a winding mountain road. As we rounded a curve, the wheels screeching from the driver's awkward, too-fast swing into the turn, we saw another car in the road a quarter of a mile ahead, not moving, but parked—sideways. The driver hit the brakes.
Behind us Owner Gope yelled "Pirates! Don't slacken your pace, driver. Ram the blackguards, if you must!"
The driver rolled his eyes, almost lost control, then gritted his teeth, reached out to switch off the anti-collision circuit and slam the speed control lever against the dash. I watched for two long heart beats as
we roared straight for the blockading car, then I slid over and grabbed for the controls. The driver held on, frozen. I reared back and clipped him on the jaw. He crumpled into his corner, mouth open and eyes screwed shut, as I hit the auto-steer override and worked the tiller. It was an awkward position for steering, but I preferred it to hammering in at ninety per.
The car ahead was still sitting tight, now a hundred yards away, now fifty I cut hard to the right, toward the rising cliff face; the car backed to block me. At the last instant I whipped to the left, barrelled past with half an inch to spare, rocketed along the ragged edge with the left wheel rolling on air, then whipped back into the center of the road.
"Well done!" yelled Cagu.
"But they'll give chase!" Gope shouted. "Masterless swine!"
The driver had his eyes open now. "Crawl over me!" I barked. He mumbled and clambered past me and I slid into his seat, still clinging to the accelerator lever and putting up the speed. Another curve was coming up. I grabbed a quick look in the rear-viewer: the pirates were swinging around to follow us.
"Press on!" commanded Gope. "We're close to Bar-Ponderone; it's no more than five miles—"
"What kind of speed have they got?" I called back.
"They'll best us easy," said Cagu cheerfully.
"What's the road like ahead?"
"A fair road, straight and true, now that we've descended the mountain," answered Gope.
We squealed through the turn and hit a straightaway. A curving road branched off ahead. "What's that?" I snapped.
"A winding trail," gasped the driver. "It comes on Bar-Ponderone, but by a longer way."
I gauged my speed, braked minutely, and cut hard. We howled up the steep slope, into a turn between hills.
Gope shouted. "What madness is this?"
"We haven't got a chance on the straightaway," I called back. "Not in a straight speed contest." I whipped the tiller over, then back the other way, following the tight S-curves. I caught a glimpse of our pursuers, just heading into the side road behind us.
"Any way they can head us off?" I yelled.
"Not unless they have confederates stationed ahead," said Gope; "but these pariahs work alone."
I worked the brake and speed levers, handled the tiller. We swung right, then left, higher and higher, then down a steep grade and up again. The pirate car rounded a turn, only a few hundred yards behind now. I scanned the road ahead, followed its winding course along the mountainside, through a tunnel, then out again to swing around the shoulder of the next peak.
"Pitch something out when we go through the tunnel!" I yelled.
"My cloak," cried Gope. "And the gift hamper."
We roared into the tunnel mouth. There was a blast of air as the rear deck cover opened. Gope and Cagu hefted the heavy gift hamper, tumbled it out, followed it with a cloak, a wine jug, assorted sandals, bracelets, fruit. Then we were back in the sunlight and I was fighting the curve. In the rear-viewer I saw the pirates burst from the tunnel mouth, Gope's black and yellow cloak spread over the canopy, smashed fruit spattered over it, the remains of the hamper dragging under the chassis. The car rocked and a corner of the cloak lifted, clearing the driver's view barely in time.
"Tough luck," I said. "We've got a long straight stretch ahead, and I'm fresh out of ideas...."
The other car gained. I held the speed bar against the dash but we were up against a faster car; it was a hundred yards behind us, then fifty, then pulling out to go alongside. I slowed imperceptibly, let him get his front wheels past us, then cut sharply Here was a clash of wheel fairings, and I fought the tiller as we rebounded from the heavier car. He crept forward, almost alongside again; shoulder to shoulder we raced at ninety-five down the steep grade....
I hit the brakes and cut hard to the left, slapped his right rear wheel, slid back. He braked too; that was a mistake. The heavy car lost traction, sliding. In slow motion, off-balanced in a skid, it rose on its nose, ploughing up a cloud of dust. The hamper whirled away, the
cloak fluttered and was gone, then the pirate car seemed to float for an instant in air, before it dropped, wheels up, out of sight over the sheer cliff. We raced alone down the slope and out onto the wooded plain toward the towers of Bar-Ponderone.
A shout went up; Owner Gope leaned forward to pound my back. "By the nine eyes of the Hill Devil!" he bellowed, "masterfully executed! The prince of pipers is a prince of drivers too! This night you'll sit by my side at the ringboard at Bar-Ponderone in the rank of a hundredlash Chief Driver, I swear it!"
I spent the first day at Bar-Ponderone rubbernecking the tall buildings and keeping an eye open for Foster, on the off chance that I might pass him on the street. By sunset I was no wiser than before. Dressed in the latest in Vallonian cape and ruffles, I was sitting with my drinking buddy Cagu, Chief Bodyguard to Owner Gope, at a small table on the first terrace at the Palace of Merrymaking, BarPonderone's biggest community feasting hall. It looked like a Hollywood producer's idea of a twenty-first century night club, complete with nine dance floors on five levels, indoor pools, fountains, two thousand tables, musicians, girls, noise, colored lights, plenty of booze, and food fit for an Owner. It was open to all fifty-lashand-over goodmen of the estate and to guests of equivalent rank.
Cagu was a morose-looking old cuss, but good-hearted. His face was cut and scarred from a thousand encounters with other bodyguards and his nose had been broken so often that it was invisible in profile.
"Where do you manage to get in all the fights, Cagu?" I asked him. "I've known you for three months, and I haven't seen a blow struck in anger yet."
Cagu finished off an oily greenish drink and signalled for another. "Here." He grinned, showing me some broken front teeth. "Swell places, these big Estates, good Drgon; lotsa action."
"What do you do, get in street fights?"
"Nah. The boys show up down here, tank up, cruise around, you know."
"They start fights here in the dining room?"
"Sure. Good crowd here; lotsa laughs."
I picked up my drink, raised it to Cagu—and got it in my lap as somebody jostled my arm. I looked up. A battle-scarred thug stood over me.
"Who'sa punk, Cagu?" he said in a hoarse whisper.
Cagu took a pull on a fresh drink, put the glass down, stood up, and threw a punch to the other plug-ugly's paunch. He oofed, clinched, eyed me resentfully over Cagu's shoulder. Cagu pushed him away, held him at arm's length.
"Howsa boy, Mull?" he said. "Lay offa my sidekick; greatest little piper ina business, and a top driver too. How about a drink?"
"Sure." Mull rubbed his stomach, sat down beside me. "Ya losin' your punch, Cagu." He looked at me. "Sorry about the booze in the lap. I thought you was one of the guys." He signalled a passing waiterslave. "Bring my friend a new suit, and a shot. Make it snappy."
"Don't the customers kind of resent it when you birds stage a heavyweight bout in the aisle?" I asked.
"Nah; we move down inta the Spot." He waved a thumb in the general direction of somewhere else. He looked me over. "Where ya been, piper? Your first time ina Palace?"
"Drgon's been travelling," said Cagu. "He's okay Lemee tell ya the time these pirates pull one, see...."
Cagu and Mull swapped lies while I worked on my drinking. Although I hadn't learned anything on my day's looking around at BarPonderone, it was still a better spot for snooping than Rath-Gallion. There were two major cities on the Estate and scores of villages.
Somewhere among the population I might have better luck finding someone to talk history with ... or someone who knew Foster. "Hey!" growled Mull. "Look who's comin'."
I followed his gaze. Three thick-set thugs swaggered up to the table. One of them, a long-armed gorilla at least seven feet tall, reached out, took Cagu and Mull by the backs of their necks, and cracked their skulls together. I jumped up, ducked a hoof-like fist ... and saw a beautiful burst of fireworks followed by soothing darkness.
I fumbled in the dark with lengths of cloth entangling my legs, sat up and cracked my head—
I groaned, freed a leg from the chair rungs, groped my way out from under the table. A waiter-slave helped me up, dusted me off. The seven-foot lout lolling in a chair glanced my way, nodded.
"You shouldn't hang out with lugs like that Mull," he said. "Cagu told me you was just a piper, but the way you come outa that chair—" He shrugged, turned back to whatever he was watching.
I checked a few elbow and knee joints, worked my jaw, tried my neck: all okay.
"You the one that slugged me?" I asked. "Huh? Yeah."
I stepped over to his chair, picked a spot, and cleared my throat. "Hey, you," I said. He turned, and I put everything I had behind a straight right to the point of the jaw. He went over, feet in the air, flipped a rail, and crashed down between two tables below. I leaned over the rail. A party of indignant tally-clerks stared up at me.
A shout went up from the floor some distance away. I looked. In a cleared circle two levels below a pair of heavy-shouldered men were slugging it out. One of them was Cagu. I watched, saw his opponent fall. Another man stepped in to take his place. I turned and made my way down to the ringside.
Cagu exchanged haymakers with two more opponents before he folded and was hauled from the ring. I propped him up in a chair, fitted a drink into his fist, and watched the boys pound each other. It was easy to see why the scarred face was the sign of their craft; there was no defensive fighting whatever They stood toe-to-toe and hit as hard as they could, until one collapsed. It wasn't fancy, but the fans loved it. Cagu came to after a while and filled me in on the fighters' backgrounds.
"So they're all top boys," he said. "But it ain't like in the old days when I was in my prime. I could've took any three of these bums. The only one maybe I woulda had a little trouble with is Torbu."
"Which one is he?"
"He ain't down there yet; he'll show to take on the last boys on their feet."
More gladiators pushed their way to the Spot, downed drinks, pulled off gaily-patterned cloaks and weskits, and waded in.
After an hour the waiting line had dwindled away to nothing.
"Where's Torbu?"
"Maybe he didn't come tonight," I said.
"Sure, you met him; he knocked you under the table."
"Oh, him?"
"Where'd he go?"
"The last I saw he was asleep on the floor," I said. "Hozzat?"
"I didn't much like him slugging me. I clobbered him one."
"Hey!" yelped Cagu. His face lit up. He got to his feet and floored the closest fighter, turned and laid out the other. He raised both hands above his head.
"Rath-Gallion gotta champion," he bellowed. "Rath-Gallion takes on all comers." He turned, waved to me. "Our boy, Drgon, he—"
There was a bellow behind me, even louder than Cagu's. I turned, saw Torbu, his hair mussed, his face purple, pushing through the crowd.
"Jussa crummy minute," he yelled. "I'm the champion around here—" He aimed a haymaker at Cagu; Cagu ducked.
"Our boy, Drgon, laid you out cold, right?" he shouted. "So now he's the champion."
"I wasn't set," bawled Torbu. "A lucky punch."
"Come on down, Drgon," Cagu called, waving to me again. "We'll show—" Torbu turned and slammed a roundhouse right to the side of Cagu's jaw; the old fighter hit the floor hard, skidded, lay still. I got to my feet. They pulled him to the nearest table, hoisted him into a chair. I made my way down to the little clearing in the crowd. A man bending over Cagu straightened, face white. I pushed him aside, grabbed the bodyguard's wrist. There was no pulse. Cagu was dead.
Torbu stood in the center of the Spot, mouth open. "What...?" he started. I pushed between two fans, went for him. He saw me, crouched, swung out at me.
I ducked, uppercut him. He staggered back. I pressed him, threw lefts and rights to the body, ducked under his wild swings, then rocked his head left and right. He stood, knees together, eyes glazed, hands down. I measured him, right-crossed his jaw; he dropped like a log.
Panting, I looked across at Cagu. His scarred face, white as wax, was strangely altered now; it looked peaceful. I took a bottle from a waiterslave, poured out a stiff drink, then a couple more. Somebody helped Torbu to his feet, walked him to the ringside. I had another drink. It had been a big evening. Now all I had to do was take the body home....
I went over to where Cagu was laid out on the floor. Shocked people stood around staring. Torbu was on his knees beside the body. A tear ran down his nose, dripped on Cagu's face. Torbu wiped it away with a big scarred hand.
