Mitigated Scepticism as a Dispositional Affect: An Exploration of Nigerian Elites’ Discourses on China’s Soft Power and Sino-African Engagements

For many decades, Africa has been considered as the jurisdictional sphere of influence of western power blocs. However, this position has recently been threatened by China’s budding diplomacy with Africa. Although the interaction between China and Africa dates back to the 1950s, this relationship was of little or no global significance until a few decades ago when China’s unprecedented economic transformation thrust it into international spotlight. Within the years that the Sino-African interaction took off, the relationship has morphed from agro-trading, transcended economic partnerships, and has evolved into political and cultural diplomacy. Public diplomacy analysts and academic scholars posit that China, despite it’s neo-authoritarian disposition, is actively and strategically engaging soft and smart power tactics in Africa nations to two ends: one, to establish a solid and positive footprint on the continent, and two, to project itself as a better and more rewarding ally to Africa than the west (Edney, Rosen, & Zhu, 2020; Rawnsley, 2015). With the establishment of Forum on China-African Cooperation (FOCAC), Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) Summit, and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the continent is witnessing an unprecedented economic, technological, and infrastructural transformation through partnership with China, an engagement which has surpassed the hitherto unparalleled Afro-western economic partnership. In Nigeria, the newfound friendship with China, its vastly different economic models, and its unique diplomatic initiatives have had the country, slowly but surely, adjusting to the ‘Chinese way of doing business’. In spite of the prevalent scholarship on Sino-African relations, not enough academic spotlight has been shone on the way Africans respond to the subtle socioeconomic and socio-political changes that is attendant with China’s increased presence on the continent. Furthermore, given that the elite population in a society play vital roles in the policy making decisions of a nation, it is crucial to examine elite discourses about China’s soft power strategies in Africa, especially in a politically and culturally polarized nation like Nigeria.

This article begins with a critical analysis the nature of China’s increasing diplomatic engagements in Nigeria, how China communicates its diplomacy in Nigeria, and how Nigerians have been adjusting to the recent influx of Chinese people, businesses, and products in the country. This paper further explores the articulations of Nigerian elites about the impact of China’s soft power strategies on Nigeria’s economic and political landscape. Given the exploratory nature of this study and the peculiarities of the research objectives, grounded theory by Glaser & Strauss (1967) was employed as a methodological framework to explore how the Nigerian middle-class evaluate Sino-African relations and articulate their perceptions about the partnership. A sample of 20 individuals who are in the upper and middle echelon of the Nigerian society participated in an in-depth interview. The participants comprised of journalists, university professors, researchers, organizations’ top management staff, business executives, political office holders, and diplomats. Since the data collection was conducted concurrently with coding and analysis, responses elicited from an initial 12 interviews gave rise to the inclusion of other 8 participants until saturation point was reached. The data was coded and analysed using the three phrases of coding analysis comprising of open coding, secretive coding and theoretical coding.

Final analysis generated 7 major categories based on three 3 dimensions. The first dimension, Perception of China, highlights the perceptual orientations that Nigerian elites hold about China. The second dimension, Views about Sino-African relations, describes the evaluations of Nigerian elites about China’s relationship with Nigeria and Africa as a whole. The third dimension, Perceived impact of China on Nigeria’s Development, expounds on the assessments of Nigerian elites about the impact of China’s soft power tactics on Nigeria’s economic and political landscape. From a synthesis of the observed categories emerged a core category and final theory: Mitigated Scepticism as Dispositional Affect, which captures the major articulations and underlying disposition of Nigerian elites about issues relating to China’s increased involvement on the continent. ‘Mitigated scepticism’ in the context of this research, highlights the deep-seated doubt, the high degree of uncertainty and the harboured scepticism exhibited by Nigerian elites about China’s increased partnership with Nigeria, albeit tempered with a profound admiration for China’s strategic self-development and the guarded acknowledgement of a somewhat beneficial alliance between both parties. This core category encompasses the different perceptual processes engaged in by Nigerian elites, ranging from the disposition of ‘cautious optimism’ in their perception of China, to the disposition of ‘overt suspicion’ in their views about Sino-African relations, and finally to the disposition of ‘mitigated scepticism’ in their assessment of the impact of China’s activities on Nigeria’s development.