FOCAC at Twenty: A “Bargained Institutional Framework” for Shared Impacts

Abstract

The eighth Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in November 2021 marked two decades since the first major contemporary Sino–African meeting was held in Beijing in 2000. Despite the framework being entrenched as the principal inter-governmental and functional platform for China-Africa diplomacy and an avenue through which China’s policy toward Africa and Africa’s policy toward China is charted, doubts remain among some reviewers about the true nature of the framework. The arguable contention has been whether FOCAC is a self-interested grand machination imposed by China as the dominant actor to aid its global resurgence or African-oriented, serving the interests of Africa’s great power diplomacy in the twenty-first century. This paper maintains that both standpoints misinterpret what the forum truly represents. It argues that, contrary to the contending perspectives, FOCAC is a “bargained institutional framework” for shared impacts. Consequently, FOCAC represents a policy platform for collective engagement and serves as a knowledge production platform for developing and exchanging ideas and experiences to advance shared development goals.