At the Fourth China International Supply Chain Expo in Beijing on June 22, 2026, South Africa’s deputy president Paul Mashatile signaled a renewed partnership with China amid a complex geopolitical global environment.  Speaking at the event, he emphasized that South Africa wants to be more than a mine for the world’s second-largest economy, aiming to build manufacturing units and local factories, process its own minerals, and serve as Beijing’s gateway to the wider African market. This vision indicates a deep-seated strategic outlook that treats supply-chain security as a critical pillar of national security, economic resilience, and strategic autonomy, while simultaneously hedging against an increasingly complex geopolitical and security environment characterized by disruptions to global production, trade, and energy supply networks. Deputy President Mashatile’s address reflects South Africa’s broader vision to reposition itself within global value chains, rather than remain just a net supplier of raw materials. Pretoria seeks to become a major destination for industrial beneficiation, advanced manufacturing capacity, and regional supply-chain integration by leveraging its sophisticated and diversified industrial base, world-class service industry and financial sector, logistics infrastructure, abundant critical mineral reserves, and, above all, preferential access to the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). These objectives are strategically sound and could pave the way for a South African economic renaissance. The vital question, however, is whether China’s evolving supply-chain diplomacy is designed to support South Africa’s fair and equitable participation or to reinforce Beijing’s own geoeconomic priorities.

Against the backdrop of the friendly optics of the summit, this article examines the complex strategic reality that South Africa cannot afford to overlook: China’s engagement with Africa is not solely designed to create a win-win situation through development cooperation. Rather, it is a zero-sum game carefully engineered around geo-economic and strategic intentions to secure markets and critical resources, dominate the supply chain, and shape long-term political influence. As bilateral cooperation between Beijing and South Africa deepens amid global rebalancing, Pretoria is becoming increasingly integrated into this broader strategic architecture to serve Chinese interests first, creating both opportunities and dependencies that warrant careful consideration. However, the US retreat from Africa and President Donald Trump’s trade policies based around protectionism, sanctions and isolationism have limited South Africa’s choices of capital, technology and market access. As a result, its reliance on a single external partner for financing, digital infrastructure, operational technologies, logistics systems, and governance standards creates a strategic vulnerability that may prove far more detrimental to South Africa in the long term.

South Africa’s Dilemma: A Relationship Built to be Unequal

The trade and economic relationship between Beijing and Pretoria has never been one between equitable partners. Although South Africa is China’s largest trading partner in Africa, with bilateral trade reaching approximately US$53.7 billion in 2025, the balance of trade is lopsided. Pretoria exported approximately US$13 billion to Beijing, more than two-thirds of which consisted of unprocessed ores and metals, while importing close to US$23 billion in Chinese machinery, electronic goods, batteries, and telecommunication equipment. This imbalance is not merely an outcome of existing market dynamics but the product of a carefully crafted geoeconomic strategy that strengthens China’s position within global value chains. The strategic design is straightforward: secure access to raw minerals and other critical resources, process and manufacture higher-value products domestically, and export those finished goods back to resource-rich economies, making significant economic, political, and strategic gains in the process. China currently accounts for over 90% of the world’s rare earth processing and graphite production, as well as around 60% of refined lithium and cobalt, putting it a dominant position in downstream critical mineral supply chains. This strategy is particularly significant because Africa sits at the center of the global critical minerals landscape. Africa contains approximately 30% of global critical mineral reserves and accounts for a dominant share of several strategic minerals, including cobalt, manganese, and platinum group metals. However, much of this reserve is extracted and exported in raw form for processing abroad—predominantly in China, which controls a majority share of the world’s refining and processing capacity for critical minerals. This arrangement enables Beijing to control the highest-value segments of the supply chain while resource-rich African economies remain largely confined to the extraction stage.

The recently signed zero-tariff deal does little to address this unequal trade relationship and its structural deficiency. The Framework Agreement on Economic Partnership for Shared Prosperity (CADEPA), taking effect on May 1, 2026, allows eligible South African goods to enter China duty-free, the same terms that Beijing has offered to all 53 African nations with whom it has diplomatic ties. At first glance, the arrangement appears to be a generous trade concession aimed at expanding bilateral trade and narrowing Africa’s persistent trade imbalance with China. However, the underlying structural vulnerability and trade asymmetries remain. Sino–African trade reached a record US$348 billion in 2025, making Beijing the continent’s largest trading partner. Yet, China’s imports from Africa totaled just US$123 billion. The trade imbalance reflects an unequal relationship in which African exports, including those from South Africa, remain largely concentrated in the export of raw materials to Beijing, while China predominantly exports higher-value manufactured goods. Therefore, unless preferential market access is accompanied by significant investments in local mineral processing, value addition, industrial upgrading, technology transfer, and manufacturing capacity —which could facilitate the continued export of raw minerals and other primary commodities in a value-added form to yield greater revenues—duty-free market access alone is unlikely to fundamentally alter this asymmetry. Without these measures, the imbalance will remain, reinforcing the classic neo-colonial patterns of economic dependence that South Africa seeks to escape. Trade preferences alone, however, represent only one dimension of China’s engagement. The more consequential transformation is taking place behind the docks, along the logistics corridors, across the digital networks, and among the governance structures that increasingly shape Africa’s integration into global supply chains.

Ports as Strategic Gateways: China’s Expanding Role in South Africa’s Supply Chain Networks

Beyond trade and tariffs, a much deeper concern for South Africa is not merely what it exports to Beijing, but rather how comprehensively China is embedding itself within the expanding architecture of Africa’s trade, logistics, and maritime ecosystem. As noted by many scholars, China is no longer competing simply for access to African resources but is positioning itself to influence the entire chain of the logistics network that moves subsoil resources from African mines to the global marketplace. A recent study by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies reveals that “Chinese state-owned enterprises and private firms finance, construct, operate, or hold majority equity stakes in 78 of Africa’s 231 commercial ports across 32 countries”—the largest concentration of Chinese port investments in the world. More importantly, Chinese state-owned companies hold long-term operating licenses and concessions at several of these strategic ports, allowing them to influence cargo handling, terminal management, logistics support services, and maritime connectivity long after construction has been completed. It is therefore not surprising that Beijing reportedly generates nearly “US$13 in trade revenues for every US$1 invested in overseas ports,” illustrating that these investments are carefully designed to serve as strategic commercial gateways rather than a simple “brotherly” act of infrastructure diplomacy alone.

For South Africa, the implications are particularly significant. South Africa is home to the continent’s busiest container gateway at Durban and bulk-export hub at Richards Bay. It also commands the strategically vital Cape of Good Hope sea route, a weather-determined chokepoint along a strategic secondary corridor linking the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. As such, South Africa occupies a pivotal position in global maritime commerce. The attacks by Houthi rebels in the Red Sea since 2023 have shown the critical importance of the Cape of Good Hope as an alternative to the Suez Canal. When ships were diverted around southern Africa amidst attacks in the Red Sea region, the Cape of Good Hope Sea route re-emerged as a vital artery of international trade — a role it had catered for almost four centuries. From the Portuguese finding of the Cape route in 1488 until the opening of the Suez Canal sea route in 1869, virtually all the maritime trade and commerce between Europe and Asia transited along this route, which is precisely why the Dutch East India Company established its refreshment support station at the Cape in 1652 and why control of the Cape was so fiercely contested by European powers.. Thus, the Cape of Good Hope has further elevated South Africa’s geostrategic importance in supply chain resilience, especially for safeguarding the free flow of energy, trade, and other critical resources. In this regard, modernizing ports, roads, railways, and other logistical support infrastructure is essential to advance Pretoria’s industrial ambitions. The challenge before Pretoria, however, is not whether to engage China, but how to ensure that such engagement is fair, just, and transparent, strengthening South Africa’s industrial capacity and strategic autonomy rather than embedding it within a Sino-centric supply-chain architecture.

The strategic significance of this arrangement, and the well-crafted dependence it creates, extends far beyond port infrastructure. China is slowly and progressively embedding itself and its digital systems across the entire maritime supply-chain ecosystem by supplying port and logistics operating systems, automated cargo-handling technologies, artificial intelligence-enabled logistics platforms, customs digitization, cloud-based port management systems, and cybersecurity architecture. Increasingly, Beijing is also re-shaping the regulatory, technical, and human dimensions of maritime security and governance through continued professional training exercises and exchanges, institutional partnerships, technical cooperation agreements, and capacity-building programs. In essence, China is no longer merely investing in infrastructure; it is integrating itself within the operational and functional architecture through which African trade is conducted.

This integration is further reinforced through the export and adoption of China’s wider digital and technological ecosystem throughout Africa. Today, more than 30 African countries are using China’s BeiDou Navigation Satellite System for maritime traffic management, port and logistics operations, and fisheries and hydrographic survey services, gradually reducing their dependence on the US-operated Global Positioning System (GPS) and Europe’s Galileo network while diversifying away from the Western-controlled positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) navigation infrastructure. However in the process BeiDou’s receivers, ground stations, technical standards, and system upgrades run the risk of embedding the Beijing at the core of the digital infrastructure through which African ports, shipping, and fisheries are managed. Beijing also continues to simultaneously export its integrated “port–park–city” model aimed at linking ports with industrial parks, manufacturing zones, logistics and supply chain corridors, and urban infrastructure development under a single Chinese-financed, constructed, and operated framework. This model creates an integrated economic corridor stretching from mines and industrial clusters to roads, railways, ports, shipping networks, and ultimately Chinese processing facilities, creating path dependencies within resource-based value chains. While these projects promise win-win cooperation with improved connectivity and industrial development, they also generate long-term technological and economic dependencies, as the software, digital platforms, maintenance, upgrades, technical expertise, and operational standards remain overwhelmingly owned by Chinese state-owned enterprises. Over time, the import of Chinese industrial and technological systems risks extending dependencies beyond physical infrastructure into digital, technological, and institutional systems, undermining supply-chain resilience and diversification. In Africa (an infrastructure-deficit continent lacking a proper maritime governance and security architecture), Beijing is no longer content with just participating in maritime security and governance; it now seeks to reshape it. Through regular policy dialogues, maritime symposiums, university exchanges, technical training, and standard-setting initiatives, China is gradually aligning African maritime security and governance with its own technological standards and operational practices. This ambition is explicitly reflected in China’s latest Five-Year Plan document, which calls for a transition from “participation” to “leadership” in global ocean governance, signaling strategic intent rather than a coincidental policy choice.

The Debt–Autonomy Dilemma

China’s geoeconomic strategy is not only reinforced through infrastructure development and supply-chain integration but also through financing models used as leverage to gain market access and influence domestic political choices. Djibouti, for instance, offers the clearest illustration of the opportunities and vulnerabilities associated with Beijing’s model of strategic partnership. Over the past decade, Chinese state-owned banks have financed major infrastructure projects in Africa, including the Addis Ababa–Djibouti railway, the Ethiopia–Djibouti water pipeline, the Doraleh Multipurpose Port, and the Djibouti International Free Trade Zone. These projects led to an acceleration in foreign borrowing accelerated, which then led to public debt rising sharply. As such, both the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) classified Djibouti as at high risk of debt distress. By 2023, Beijing had reached an agreement with Djibouti to suspend debt-service payments on part of its obligations until 2027, acknowledging the country’s repayment difficulties. However, the actual terms of these restructuring arrangements remain largely undisclosed and opaque, reflecting a broader pattern of limited transparency surrounding many Chinese infrastructure financing agreements across the world.

Beyond Djibouti, the same dynamic reappears across the African continent. Zambia’s December 2020 Eurobond default led to a three-and-a-half-year debt restructuring under the G20 Common Framework in which Beijing again holds close to a third of the total external debt. Angola’s so-called oil-backed “Angola Model,” under which around 40 % of external debt is owed to China and is serviced directly in the form of crude supply, is another case that reflects a strategic design of debt diplomacy. The Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) roughly US$6 billion Sicomines minerals-for-infrastructure barter deal with Beijing delivered just US$822 million in promised infrastructure to DRC against nearly US$10 billion in profits to Chinese state-owned enterprises and banks until the deal was called off in 2024 for renegotiation. Similarly, Kenya’s US$5 billion loss-making Standard Gauge Railway, financed by China’s Eximbank against a take-or-pay freight guarantee scheme, is a classic case of debt diplomacy where China becomes the one-stop solution for all infrastructure needs, exporting everything from financing, to infrastructure building material, to technology, men and support, all of which are Chinese. The experiences of Ethiopia’s US$4 billion Addis–Djibouti Railway and the Republic of the Congo’s oil-backed borrowing are also cases that illustrate how large-scale infrastructure financing and development can gradually evolve into long-term strategic dependence on Beijing. In both cases, repeated debt restructuring and continued reliance on Chinese financing underscored the leverage that can accompany sustained financial dependence and how Beijing uses debt as a diplomatic tool to shape foreign policy choices of countries in the Global South.

The major concern, therefore, is not primarily one of infrastructural control, but rather the slow growth of structural dependence on Beijing. The secrecy and opacity surrounding many Chinese-backed infrastructure agreements limit transparency, parliamentary scrutiny and public accountability, while long-term operating agreement, management contracts, debt-to-equity swaps, and technological integration slowly and steadily expand Beijing’s strategic leverage without requiring any formal transfer of sovereignty. As these countries become increasingly reliant on a single external partner for finance, infrastructure, technology, digital systems, and logistics, their strategic room for external choice-making gradually narrows. Structural dependence, in this sense, is not created overnight. It is built incrementally through a series of individually rational choices that appear commercially and economically attractive in the short term, but collectively embed these nations into path dependency that is difficult to reverse over time.

South Africa, however, is undoubtedly in a stronger position than many other African economies in this regard. It possesses a sound and diversified industrial base, comparatively more robust and sophisticated financial institutions, well-established regulatory mechanisms, and far greater bargaining capacity and negotiation skills than many other countries in Africa. This was quite evident in the recent CADEPA negotiations, in which Pretoria secured duty-free access to the Chinese market without yielding reciprocal tariff concessions to Beijing, shielding South Africa’s sensitive domestic industries such as the automotive sector among others. Nonetheless, these strengths should not encourage complacency in Pretoria’s dealings with a Beijing. Structural dependence rarely emerges through a single agreement, investment or infrastructure cooperation; rather, it evolves and develops gradually as a web of complex dependence orchestrated through opaque and strategic financing, infrastructure development, digital solutions, logistics, supply chains, critical technologies, and governance standards becoming increasingly concentrated in the hands of one external partner. The critical question, therefore, is not whether South Africa can carefully manage and balance its relationship with China today, but whether it will retain sufficient strategic autonomy and flexibility to do so in the foreseeable future.

Chinese Naval Ambitions

The strategic risks are not confined to economics, infrastructure and resources geopolitics alone, as China’s commercial footprint is deeply integrated in its broader strategy of expanding its military presence, with both dimensions reinforcing one another. For instance, many of the ports developed or operated by Chinese state-owned firms possess inherent dual-use characteristics, built to support both commercial shipping and naval operations. Across the continent, several Chinese-built or operated ports have already hosted People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) vessels for port calls, logistical replenishment missions, and joint naval exercises. These activities illustrate how commercial infrastructure can gradually acquire strategic utility, providing China the strategic depth it needs in regions where it has limited military access but growing strategic interests. In this regard, China’s military facility in Djibouti, located adjacent to Chinese-developed Doraleh port infrastructure and a free-trade zone, remains the clearest example of how commercial access can evolve into a permanent strategic presence, providing tactical depth to PLAN in the region and promoting further counter-militarisation by competing powers as illustrated by sustained diplomatic pressure on Equatorial Guinea and Gabon by the US to reject prospective PLAN basing on the Atlantic coast, which AFRICOM’s commander described as his foremost great-power competition concern.

In this context, South Africa has already experienced the growing convergence between commerce and strategic security. Beyond repeated PLAN port calls to Durban and Richards Bay, Pretoria has also increasingly featured in Beijing’s broader maritime security engagement within the African continent. For instance, in January 2026, South Africa hosted the ‘Will for Peace’ multinational naval maritime exercise off Cape Town involving China, Russia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). While the exercise was presented as an initiative for maritime security cooperation, such multilateral maritime deployments and exercises also provide Beijing with valuable operational experience in distant blue waters that PLAN clearly lacks. This experience allows PLAN to strengthen its long-range logistical capabilities and operational familiarity with the strategically critical sea lines of communication (SLOCs) around the Cape of Good Hope. Many analysts also argue that these overseas deployments simultaneously enhance PLAN’s blue-water endurance and operational preparedness for potential contingencies in the near seas, including a conflict in the Taiwan Strait. Therefore, for South Africa, this created a complex challenge that needs careful consideration amidst mounting US pressure, further illustrating the complex geopolitical dilemmas that accompanies deeper strategic alignment with antagonistic, competing global blocs. The costs of these partnerships are not theoretical. They bear high diplomatic and strategic costs for Pretoria’s ability to manoeuvre in a polarized geopolitical environment. For South Africa, the challenge is how to efficiently modernise its critical maritime infrastructure without allowing deep commercial engagement to evolve into a web of strategic dependence that compromises its long-standing commitment to strategic autonomy.

What South Africa Should Do

In conclusion, the narrative emerging from Beijing is one of partnership, framed through so-called “brotherly” discourse to promote a win-win model of shared prosperity, and South-South cooperation. In reality, much of this engagement has already generated tangible outcomes for African development, both positive and negative. Nonetheless, China’s strategic partnerships will ultimately be judged not by rhetoric alone but by the distribution of long-term gains, risks, and transparent decision-making authority. It is evident that China, in pursuit of its long-term objective of realizing the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” by 2049, is expanding its engagement across the Global South. Within this broader strategic goal, Beijing’s engagement with the African continent is patient, comprehensive, and increasingly embedded within the continent’s infrastructure, supply chains, digital technologies, logistics networks, financial systems, and maritime governance architecture, which it uses to expand its sphere of influence through compounding effects accumulated over time rather than by a single transformative event.

In this context, the major policy challenge for Pretoria is not to disengage with China, but to negotiate from a position of strength and strategic clarity, ensuring that Chinese investment complements—rather than defines—South Africa’s long-term industrial strategy. This requires maintaining sovereign ownership and strong regulatory control over critical infrastructure—particularly ports, special economic and free trade zones, rail corridors, digital logistics platforms, and the software systems that increasingly govern supply-chain operations—with transparent agreements subject to parliamentary scrutiny, transparent procurement, and public disclosure. Equally important is the effective and efficient leveraging of Chinese investment to expand domestic industrial capacities and capabilities rather than deepening technological dependence, such as through binding commitments on local value addition, technology transfer, skills development, personnel training, and the fair participation of South African and African firms alongside Chinese state-owned companies in construction, development and operational management. Further, Pretoria must safeguard South Africa’s existing strategic advantages, including its maritime universities, engineering institutions, port authorities, and naval capabilities, South Africa’s maritime domain awareness and the protection of critical maritime infrastructure must be treated as core components of national security strategy rather than peripheral concerns. None of these initiatives require confrontation with Beijing. Rather, they require more balanced developmental and strategic partnership based on an “equity in development” philosophy. South Africa clearly possesses the institutional capacity and economic leverage to shape an equitable relationship that is mutually beneficial, as neither CADEPA nor expanding supply-chain cooperation with Beijing is inherently problematic. However, the real test lies in whether partnership with China strengthens South Africa’s industrial competitiveness while preserving its strategic autonomy, or whether it undermines both.Therefore, success will ultimately be measured not by the volume of Chinese investment that South Africa’s supply chain network attracts, but the degree of national control that Pretoria retains over its critical infrastructure, strategic industries, and future foreign policy choices.

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