President Zuma has ‘a very strong special relationship, almost, with Beijing’.

 

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ALEC HOGG: Let’s go across to China now, where it's just past midnight. A warm welcome to Dr Martyn Davies, the chief executive of Frontier Advisory. 

    I guess it's a big day for South Africa in China, Martyn, with Jacob Zuma arriving for bilateral talks with the president, Hu Jintao. Much was said in a statement sent out by the presidency today of the comprehensive strategic partnership between the two countries, South Africa and China. What does it mean?

 

MARTYN DAVIES: Good evening, Alec, and hi from a very warm Beijing. We have these convoluted statements of how we define our relationship, and I think suffice it to say that President Zuma really does have a very strong special relationship, almost, with Beijing. We've seen in the last two years or so, really, South African foreign policy truly engaging China in a very different way from what it was under Thabo Mbeki. And I think almost the emulation to an extent of the China model through our – we call it the developmental state, the infrastructure spend, the sort of learning or the approach at least – has certainly been observed by our policy-makers and … to be implemented in South Africa.

    Jacob Zuma arrived today, had a meeting with Hu Jintao earlier and president-in-waiting if you line, Xi Jinping, and he’s been given an enormous amount of space, time here.

 

ALEC HOGG: And I suppose the relevance cannot be overestimated, given how much credence the people in the East put on relationships.

 

MARTYN DAVIES: Most certainly. And the Chinese do hold him in very high regard. He first came over here well, as president of the party in 2008, and struck up a very strong rapport I believe with President Hu Jintao at the time, and that’s only gone from strength to strength.

 

ALEC HOGG: Martyn, I also noticed in the announcement from the presidency that he’s going to be – this is Jacob Zuma – he’s going to be given an honorary professorship in international studies by Peking University. How relevant is something like that?

 

MARTYN DAVIES: It's a very big accolade. Peking University, or Beijing University as it's often called, is sort of the Harvard, if you will, of China. And there’ve been many other heads of state who have received these honorary doctorates from Beijing University. But it really is, it's a very prestigious thing over here in China. So it's certainly not something which we should dismiss.

 

ALEC HOGG: So it's good news all round?

 

MARTYN DAVIES: It is. We actually met earlier this evening, three minutes with him, and there’s a moderately sized South African business delegation. There could be a few more corporates perhaps in tow. But we are fairly well represented.

 

ALEC HOGG: Martyn Davies really is the go-to man on anything you want to know on China.