WASHINGTON—Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership struck a concerned tone over the state of the economy at its July Politburo meeting, calling for stronger efforts to expand domestic demand and accelerate the transition to new growth drivers. For financial markets, these signals fed expectations of short-term policy support following subpar second-quarter growth. But for China’s trading partners in Africa, Beijing’s pessimistic rhetoric only put the reality that times have changed for good into sharper relief.
China’s slowing growth and worsening trade imbalances are rapidly reshaping its economic relationship with the African continent on three fronts at once: as a demand market, as a supplier of manufactured goods, and as a competitor.
At the same time, the effects are highly uneven across countries and industries. Weakening demand for traditional commodities is hurting exporters such as Angola, while China’s clean-tech boom is supporting demand for minerals from countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). And surging manufactured exports are creating development opportunities alongside stronger pressures on local producers.
China’s slowdown is reshaping trade across Africa
A Rhodium Group–Atlantic Council report published in November 2025 laid out the channels through which China’s economic transition will affect African growth and development out to 2030. Since then, China’s property and domestic demand downturns have deepened, while its manufacturing trade surplus has expanded, intensifying trade spillovers.
Flat consumer spending and falling investment over the past year have left China’s economy ever more reliant on external demand. China’s manufacturing trade surplus has expanded to record levels, especially with emerging markets. Global reactions to that surplus are realigning trade flows, as US tariffs raise the threat of cascading protectionism and countries scramble for critical minerals and energy supplies amid resurgent resource nationalism.
China has sought to shore up its trade relations with African countries as its tensions with advanced economies rise. Beijing cultivates an image of China as a massive market for African exports, a source of global economic stability and growth in the face of repeated shocks, and a steadfast supporter of the multilateral trading system. But shifting trade dynamics are straining this narrative. China’s exports to Africa have grown faster than its exports to all other regions over the past year and a half, increasing by 25.7 percent in 2025 and by an additional 19.3 percent year to date in 2026.
While these imports may benefit consumers, African policymakers are increasingly calling for more balanced trade and onshoring of value-added activities. In May of this year, China took the notable step of zeroing out tariffs on the entire continent, but whether this can meaningfully promote more diversified imports remains to be seen.
As our prior report highlighted, African economies face highly varied exposures to these trade pressures depending on their developmental stages, industrial structures, and export mixes. Take the continent’s three largest exporters to China—Angola, the DRC, and South Africa. Each shows just how uneven this transition is playing out.
China’s changing demand: the export ‘winners’ and ‘losers’
As of 2022, most African economic activity tied to Chinese demand came from natural resource extraction, according to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development data. This means mining in the case of South Africa (39 percent) and the DRC (64 percent) and oil in Angola (72 percent) (Figure 1). By far the largest portion of these raw materials was ultimately absorbed by China’s construction sector, highlighting linkages to China’s property and infrastructure buildout.
Since 2022, however, investment and construction activity in China have collapsed, with property construction now down to the lowest level since 2000 by some measures. As shown in more recent customs trade statistics, structural shifts in China’s raw materials demand have caused African export performance to diverge depending on countries’ ability to supply China’s new growth industries.
Crude oil comprises over 99 percent of Angola’s exports to China, and those exports have fallen by half as a share of Angolan gross domestic product (GDP) over the past decade (Figure 2). This trajectory broadly tracks with the overall decline in Angolan crude output over the same period due to maturing oil fields and underinvestment. But slowing Chinese demand also plays a role: Rhodium Group estimates that electric vehicle charging in China is now displacing 1.5–2 million barrels per day of fuel consumption, reducing demand and thus dampening global prices.
At the same time, the DRC’s exports of minerals used in clean energy technologies are rising swiftly despite the broader Chinese investment slowdown. Copper ores, cathodes, and cobalt serve as critical inputs into China’s electrical grid buildout and clean-tech boom (Figure 3). Chinese demand has also helped sustain world copper prices at near-record highs. The country’s exports to China alone are now worth 25 percent of the DRC’s GDP, up from 16 percent five years ago.
Impacts on South Africa’s exports vary across mineral products. Exports of iron ore, the most important raw material for construction, are stagnating. Global excess steel capacity, which is also tied to weak Chinese demand, has depressed ferrous metals prices, affecting South Africa’s earnings from both iron and chromium ore (Figure 4). Meanwhile, South Africa’s gold exports surged from 2022 to 2024 as Chinese households sought haven assets and China’s central bank accumulated reserves via suspected covert purchases. However, China’s import volumes slowed considerably in 2025 as gold prices soared past $5,000/oz.
Cheap Chinese imports can support development—but squeeze local industries
The other side of China’s slowdown is an export surge that could lower the cost of goods for consumers but make domestic industrialization harder. Angola, the DRC, and South Africa are all receiving an influx of Chinese manufactured goods, especially electronics, machinery, automobiles, and plastics (Figures 2-4). This trend reflects China’s rising global competitiveness in high-tech products, continued dominance in low-skill manufacturing, and reorientation toward alternative markets as China seeks to sustain its export volume at lower prices in response to US tariffs.
Rising imports from China may help meet new demand for consumer goods or replace higher-cost foreign suppliers rather than displacing local producers. Industrial goods may offer even greater benefits: China’s real estate collapse has idled bulldozers, excavators, and loaders, leading to a rapid increase in construction machinery exports starting in mid-2021 (Figure 5). Prices of those exports have also come down considerably. This machinery—alongside a surge in solar photovoltaic technology and electrical grid equipment exports—could support infrastructure development, affordable electrification, and industrial upgrading in Africa, if projects can attract financing. For South Africa, a more reliable grid would lower production costs and help avoid rolling blackouts.
At the same time, Chinese exports have placed more established industries under greater competitive pressure, threatening to entrench the region’s dependence on raw commodity exports. South Africa has taken steps to defend its manufacturing base, including by imposing antidumping duties on Chinese steel and considering 50 percent tariffs on Chinese autos.
Third-market competition remains a smaller risk
Producers around the world are facing stiffer Chinese competition not only in China and at home, but also in third countries. The export similarity index, which captures the degree of overlap in two countries’ export baskets, is one way to measure exposure to this global competition.
This pressure is less acute for the sampled emerging markets. Angola and the DRC compete little with China in third markets because their exports are overwhelmingly concentrated in upstream commodities (Figure 6). South Africa’s exports overlap somewhat more with China’s, but the degree of overlap is only around half that of Germany, Japan, and the United States, for example. Advanced economies’ export overlap with China is rising quickly as China increasingly challenges them at the top of the value chain.
This piece builds on the findings of an earlier report published in November 2025 and was made possible thanks to the philanthropic support of Carnegie Corporation of New York.