Susan Thornton, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs and Peter Barlerin, director of the Office of Economic and Regional Affairs in the Bureau of African Affairs, in this Africa Regional Media HubTelephonic media briefing, speak on US-China cooperation in Africa. Excerpts
Moderator: Our first question will go to Tayo Olanipekun of Newswatch Times.
Media: Hello?
Moderator: Yes, we can hear you.
Media: Good afternoon all. I would like to ask specifically in the area of this collaboration, does it have anything to do with the provision of something like mobile cancer centre that Nigeria is in dire need of to combat the spread of cancer, the same way that we have enjoyed the similar support in combating polio, TB, and even Ebola in recent times?
Deputy assistant secretary of state, Thornton: Okay, thank you very much for the question. I believe it has to do with the joint efforts to combat infectious diseases in Africa, if I’m not mistaken. Is that correct?
Media: Oh, yeah, specifically cancer.
Moderator: Cancer, specifically, is what he said, which would not fall under the infectious disease. Is that correct, sir, you are asking about efforts to fight cancer?
Media: Yeah.
Deputy assistant secretary of state, Thornton: Right, so what I would say is that the discussions that we have been having with China, and the African Union, and other countries in Africa, are focusing on building up a sustainable infrastructure, health infrastructure in Africa, along many lines of effort. The successful partnership that we had together with China and a number of other, of course, international donor countries to combat Ebola is the spark, the sort of foundation, on which we want to build further efforts to help work with the international donor community, and of course, bringing in China as a major contributor, to try to set out plans for building up a sustainable health infrastructure that can hopefully help to stave off further pandemic outbreaks. But of course, would also have the secondary effect of having a health infrastructure in place that could also potentially address other kinds of diseases, aside from pandemic and infectious diseases. But as far as I know, under the U.S.-China cooperation, we don’t have a specific programme at the moment that aims directly at cancer. But my Africa Bureau colleague here may be able to add something to that.
Peter Barlerin: You answered it correctly. We don’t focus on chronic diseases like cancer, diabetes, coronary disease, although we recognise that that is a growing problem in Africa. And the cooperation we have with China, and what we are doing ourselves, in the sense of building health system capacity in Africa, I think will help with combating chronic diseases, as well.
What we found with the Ebola-affected countries and the outbreak of the disease was that a lot of the people that died in that epidemic were healthcare workers, and so the health systems in those three countries most affected by Ebola were decimated. And so what we want to do is to try to build up capacity to prevent that kind of thing from happening again.
Moderator: Thank you. Our next question was submitted by email from Prisca Rakotomalala of Les Nouvelles in Madagascar. “Is this about support from China and the U.S.A. for Africa, or is Africa a new economic conquest of these two countries?”
Deputy assistant secretary of state, Thornton: Okay, thank you very much. I think that this is the kind of question that we want to make sure that we don’t leave any sort of misperceptions about. One of the things that have been at the centre of the conversations that we have had with China about our cooperation, not just in Africa, but in all third countries where we are working together, the starting point is always that this is not about the U.S. and China going to some other place. This is about the U.S. and China talking with representatives of countries that are interested in having some kind of proposal or programme of cooperation from the U.S. and China, and working together with that country, or that region, to formulate a plan that is in the interest of that country. It is not about, by any means, a U.S.-China competition for domination or influence. It is to benefit the people in that region and in that country, and help them face up to the challenges that are the most pressing challenges that they face, you know, at the time.
And as I said at the beginning, I think it’s quite telling, the degree to which U.S. and Chinese interests in Africa overlap, which is to say that our primary focus, for both the United States and China, is to see a prosperous and peaceful continent of Africa. That is the focal point of our joint efforts, and we certainly welcome China’s growing interest in, sort of, pushing forward with more development assistance and humanitarian assistance overseas. And we want to make sure that, of course, all of those efforts are coordinated, not just with the United States, but with the rest of the international donor community, so we make sure that we are using everybody’s resources in ways that are the most effective, and also that don’t duplicate each other. So I think, you know, it’s…I forget what the term was in the question, but I certainly don’t see, from where I sit, any kind of question of economic conquest. Thank you.
Moderator: The next question goes to a journalist at the listening party at the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Operator, please open the line?
Media: Thank you. My name is Elias Gebreselassie, freelance journalist. Recently, the meeting between President Xi and President Obama, they discussed the issues of cybersecurity and climate change, which I think also is of paramount concern to many African countries. Can you tell me what kind of cooperation the U.S. and China are going to have on cybersecurity and climate change that is going to be also beneficial to African countries, in light of the upcoming Paris climate change conference?
Deputy assistant secretary of state, Thornton: Great, thank you very much. So we have been working very hard with China for the past several years to try to, because we are the two largest emitters of greenhouse gasses, to try to work with them to inspire ambitious commitments, both for ourselves and for China, to make sure that we are undertaking the kinds of actions that will have a beneficial and significant impact on greenhouse gas emissions, but also that will help to show the rest of the world that we are serious, so that we can get commitments from other big greenhouse gas emitters to also take bold actions to cut what they are doing.
So I think all of this is going to culminate next month in Paris at the climate change talks, and we do not want to see a repeat, obviously, of the 2009 experience in Copenhagen. So after, in the last few years, to try to prevent that kind of thing from happening again, we have been very focused on working with China to make sure that we are both committed to doing a lot to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Some of the things that we have been talking to China about, that I think will have an impact more broadly, and also particularly in Africa, include working on cutting financing for the most polluting power plants, and making sure that the kinds of infrastructure that we are financing is going to be clean, green, and sustainable. So we are working hard with China, and with other countries, on that.
I think another area that we have been working on very hard with China is the area of promotion of clean energy technology development, and we are hoping very much that with a view toward the Paris Climate Change Conference, we can get, working together with China, get commitments from other developed countries and other interested countries who have strengths in technology development, to commit to more government funding of research in clean energy technology.
But there are number of things that we are working with China on in the clean energy area. We have more than fifty pilot programmes. We are working on clean carbon capture sequestration technology to try to make coal fired power plants burn cleaner. And I think all of these agreements that we have reached with China will have beneficial effects for other countries in the world, through either technology dissemination, or agreements to limit greenhouse gas emissions by our two countries, and by others.
On cybersecurity, we have been working very hard with China, and have had a number of problems, of course, in this area. There is a lot of unregulated space in the cyber domain, and the United States and China are the two biggest users of the internet. So one of the things that we have found is that the lack of international agreements and regulations for how governments should act in cyberspace has been creating some problems. And we were able to reach an agreement with China during this visit about the need to have high level exchanges and dialogues about various hacking and cyber intrusions. And we are going to be having a meeting in China–no in Washington–in early December, of ministers to discuss how to improve the exchange of information, and how we can work together with our two law enforcements to go after people who are hacking, or stealing information in cyberspace.
But the other part of the agreement we reached, which I think is significant for all countries, is that we are going to try to promote international rules of the road, so to speak, for how governments should behave in cyberspace. And this is something that has been started at the U.N., but is still very much a technical discussion, and we are working very much with China and other countries to try to agree on certain norms.
One of the things we agreed with China when President Xi was here, was that the use of cyberspace to steal companies’ intellectual property, and having governments do that, and then give that technology that has been stolen to their companies, that that is not something that can be tolerated by other governments, and should be, you know, not entered into by governments. So, the prohibition on government-sponsored theft of companies’ commercial information. And I think it was very gratifying to all of us that Chinese President Xi Jinping committed that his government would not be participating in that. I think that was a very big note of progress. Peter wants to add something here, specific to Africa.
Peter Barlerin: Yeah, thank you for your question. I just wanted to flag that the State Department, working with the private sector, U.S. private sector, and non-governmental organisations, has been engaging with the African Union and regional economic organisations across Africa to build capacity in cybersecurity, and also to discuss internet governance models of development.
Moderator: Thank you.
Deputy assistant secretary of state, Thornton: Yeah, I would add that this is sort of a new area of growth for international norms and rules development, and so I think all countries will, of course, be very interested in this as the internet has become a sort of crucial piece of infrastructure, and a crucial platform for much of our work. So, I think if we watch this space, we will see a lot more going on here. Thank you.
