Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Egypt this week. In the formal statement issued afterwards by the two governments, Beijing praised Cairo for what it called its policy of "strategic balance”.

I’ve heard this phrase often enough over the years and the pictures from Cairo also looked strangely familiar. The streets had been decorated with Chinese and Egyptian flags and portraits of Xi and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

I was in Cairo in February 2015 when Russian President Vladimir Putin came to town. I remember driving through streets lined with Russian flags and huge pictures of him. His face seemed to be everywhere. What struck me then wasn’t simply that Putin was visiting. Foreign leaders visit Cairo all the time. It was the effort Egypt was making to show that he mattered.

Relations between Egypt and the United States (US) were strained and Washington had suspended some military assistance following the removal of Mohamed Morsi, leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, as Egyptian president. It was difficult not to read something into Putin’s welcome. Egypt was making it very clear that it had other friends.

Russia did go on to become an important partner. It is now building Egypt’s first nuclear power plant at El Dabaa, while trade and defence ties between the two countries also developed. But it didn’t replace the US.

That is what makes Xi’s visit this week interesting. His first state visit to Egypt in a decade produced plenty of substance. Egypt and China agreed to deepen cooperation in manufacturing, renewable energy, artificial intelligence, data centres, semiconductors, cybersecurity, and critical-mineral supply chains. They also agreed to encourage greater use of their own currencies in trade and investment and further develop Chinese investment and industrial cooperation in the Suez Canal Economic Zone. Just before Xi arrived, Chinese and Egyptian aircraft had also been flying together in their second Eagles of Civilisation joint air exercise.

Gaining Ground

It would be easy to look at all of this and conclude that China is gaining ground in Egypt at America’s expense. But I think something more interesting may be happening, and it has relevance for South Africa.

Egypt calls its approach “strategic balance”. South Africa describes its approach to relations with competing global powers as non-alignment. The circumstances are very different, but the thinking isn’t entirely dissimilar.

China is South Africa’s largest bilateral trading partner and the US its second-largest. South Africa is a member of BRICS and has built an increasingly important relationship with Beijing, while the US and Europe remain important markets and sources of investment.

In February, South African Trade, Industry and Competition Minister Parks Tau and his Chinese counterpart, Commerce Minister Wang Wentao, signed a framework economic partnership agreement aimed at expanding trade and investment between the two countries. Since May, qualifying South African exports have also been able to enter China tariff-free under a temporary Chinese scheme, while negotiations on a broader trade agreement continue.

There is a real advantage for Africa in having these choices. African countries don’t have to look overwhelmingly to the West for investment, markets, infrastructure, or technology. China offers another source of all of them, as do the Gulf states, India, and others. A government with several potential investors, markets, and partners has more bargaining power than one with only one place to turn.

Limits

Egypt’s experience, though, suggests that there can be limits. In 2019, four years after Putin’s visit, it was reported that Cairo had agreed to buy more than 20 Russian Su-35 fighter jets in a deal worth about $2 billion. Washington warned that going ahead could expose Cairo to US sanctions and put future American military sales to Egypt at risk. Egypt was free to deepen its relationship with Russia, but suddenly Cairo wasn’t the only capital deciding where the limits of that relationship lay. That is worth remembering now.

Egypt remains an important American security partner and its military relationship with Washington stretches back decades. That makes the nature of its growing relationship with China significant. The cooperation agreed during Xi’s visit extends well beyond trade and investment into areas where technology, national security, and strategic competition increasingly overlap. These are precisely the kinds of relationships that may become harder to keep separate as competition intensifies between China and the United States.

We tend to talk about the emerging multipolar world as though it automatically gives countries such as Egypt and South Africa greater freedom. In many ways it does. But as China and America compete, their relationships with countries across Africa become more important. The more strategically important those relationships become, the harder it may be for governments to insist that what they do with one power has nothing to do with another.

Xi and el-Sisi made the African dimension explicit. The statement issued after their talks identifies strengthening China-Africa cooperation, defending the interests of the Global South, and giving developing countries a greater say in the international system. Xi has also said that countries in the region should be “masters of their own destiny”. I can see why that message appeals, particularly to countries that don’t want Washington, Beijing, or anyone else determining their foreign policy.

Egypt and South Africa aren’t comparable in every respect. Egypt is far more deeply tied into America’s military and security architecture, while South Africa’s pressure points are more economic and diplomatic. But both are testing versions of the same idea: that they can build important relationships with competing global powers while deciding for themselves how far each relationship goes.

That is why I keep coming back to those Putin flags I saw in Cairo 11 years ago, and to the pictures of Xi on Cairo’s streets last week. Egypt didn’t choose Russia then and it isn’t choosing China now. What it is trying to do is maintain relationships with both of them. South Africa is trying, in its own way, to do something similar. But having more choices is not necessarily the same as being free never to choose. What happens if choosing not to choose eventually stops being entirely your choice?

Paula Slier is an international journalist, war correspondent, and speaker whose work focuses on geopolitics, modern conflict, and information warfare.