The flags of African countries were flying in Tiananmen Square. African leaders were welcomed by dancers, honor guards and flag-waving children. Escorted by a huge motorcade, they passed by flags with the words “China-Africa Cooperation with a Shared Future Starts a New Journey” hanging on both sides of the street, as well as giant flower beds carefully arranged.

This week, leaders and senior officials from more than 50 African countries gathered in Beijing, and China pulled out all the stops to welcome them with pomp and ceremony.

“After nearly 70 years of hard work, China-Africa relations are now at their best in history,” Chinese leader Xi Jinping said at Thursday’s summit.

Xi, who has portrayed his country as a champion of the developing world that can push the West to listen to the voices of poor countries, hosted a banquet for the summit on Wednesday after three days of bilateral talks with leaders from more than 20 countries, from impoverished Chad to Africa’s economic powerhouse Nigeria.

The three-day forum is intended to showcase Beijing’s global influence despite its growing tensions with the West. Xi’s efforts to please African nations are part of a geopolitical rivalry between the United States and China that has intensified in recent years over Russia’s war in Ukraine and China’s provocative posturing toward Taiwan.

“China is trying to take advantage of the vacuum left by the U.S. and Europe in Africa,” said Eric Olander, editor-in-chief of the China-Global South Project website. “China sees an opportunity to really increase engagement, and not necessarily just through money.”

As China faces slowing economic growth at home and accusations that it is dumping surplus products abroad, Beijing’s diplomatic efforts have taken on greater urgency this year to find new buyers for its goods.

“As China’s relations with the U.S. and Europe deteriorate, the African market, along with the rest of the global South, will become more important for Chinese goods,” said Chen Yunnan, a researcher at the Overseas Development Institute in London who studies China-Africa cooperation. This is especially true for new technologies such as solar panels or electric cars, she said.

Still, some African leaders say they want a more balanced relationship, with China buying more manufactured goods from the region, for example. “We want to reduce our trade deficit and address the structure of our trade,” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said during talks with Xi on Monday, according to official minutes of the meeting.

The forum was also an opportunity for China to defend its approach to Africa. It has been criticized for providing financing without environmental, financial or human rights conditions, leading to projects marred by corruption, pollution or abusive labor practices. China, one of the world’s largest creditors, has also been reluctant to offer debt relief to most countries, even though some are heavily burdened.

In the past, the triennial meeting has been a platform for China to pledge billions of dollars in huge financial and technical assistance to Africa. For example, Kenyan President Ruto wants funds to build a railway from the Great Rift Valley to Malaba, a town in western Kenya bordering Uganda. He is also seeking more investment to build roads and dams and to establish an industrial park for pharmaceutical companies.

China has adjusted its approach to new aid for the region. Rather than big rail and other infrastructure projects, Beijing now emphasizes lower-cost undertakings such as digital skills training — a useful contribution for a continent with a large young population — and so-called “small but beautiful” projects.

“We are in a period of recalibration where both African governments and Chinese banks are more sensitive to risk,” said Deborah Brautigam, director of the China-Africa Research Program at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

Chinese lenders pledged $4.61 billion in loans to African countries and banks last year, the most since 2016, according to Boston University. But that’s still far less than the nearly $30 billion a year they pledged in 2016, when Chinese financing to Africa was at its peak.

The shift is driven in part by changes within China, where its real estate sector is in crisis and local governments are in dire financial shape, and by rising interest rates in the wake of the pandemic, which has pushed up debt costs for African countries. Angola and Zambia now owe Chinese state banks billions of dollars.

“The world financial situation does not allow large-scale lending to developing countries,” said Tang Xiaoyang, an international relations scholar at Tsinghua University, referring to higher interest rates. “The cost is too high.”

Critics say past conferences have left African countries with huge loans that they cannot repay. (African countries also owe large sums to the World Bank and other international lenders.)

While Chinese lenders finance critical infrastructure on the continent, they also support coal-fired power plants and other projects that emit greenhouse gases.

In reports ahead of the summit, Chinese state media highlighted projects backed by Chinese lenders in rural Africa, such as solar panel installations and soybean farming techniques, as bringing direct benefits to communities.

Jana de Kruefoux, a researcher at the Pretoria Institute for Security Studies, said the emphasis on smaller, greener projects could help ease Africa’s concerns about unprofitable mega-projects. “The idea is to make sure that the China-Africa relationship, at least on a global scale, doesn’t look like a predatory relationship,” she said.

Although the scale of Beijing’s cooperation with Africa has changed or declined, “China has maintained the summit every three years for the past 20 years, which is a huge political achievement,” said Chen Yunnan, a researcher at the Overseas Development Institute.

The meetings are a way for Beijing to demonstrate its commitment to Africa. In contrast, the United States has held only one summit with African leaders in 2022, and the last one was eight years earlier.

Brautigam said the summit was the culmination of months of behind-the-scenes diplomacy by Central African officials. “This is in stark contrast to our approach in the United States, where our engagement is much more sporadic,” she said.

China officially says it does not view Africa as a region where major powers compete for geopolitical interests, insisting it is interested in working with the region to achieve so-called win-win cooperation. Meanwhile, Chinese aid, investment and diplomacy have helped it win support among Africans in international organizations such as the United Nations.

China’s stance on Israel’s war in Gaza has also won support from African countries. The Chinese government, which wants to play a bigger diplomatic role in the Middle East, has brought rival Palestinian factions together for talks. It maintains its long-standing support for Palestinian statehood and has criticized Israel’s bombing of the region.

China’s stance aligns with that of countries such as South Africa, which has called Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians “an extreme form of apartheid.” China and South Africa issued a joint statement on Monday saying both countries want an “immediate ceasefire and cessation of all fighting” in Gaza.

“China’s comprehensive support for the Palestinian cause is completely consistent with almost the entire global South,” Hollande said, adding that for many Africans the war “is very similar to the colonial wars that destroyed their countries.”