BEIJING — Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged more than $50 billion in funding and at least 1 million jobs for Africa at a summit in Beijing on Thursday, as the United States and China vie for influence in the fast-growing continent.

More than 50 African leaders are in the Chinese capital this week for the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, a summit held every three years, alternating between China and Africa.

China has pulled out all the stops to welcome the visiting dignitaries, with African flags flying around Tiananmen Square and multiple guards of honour, red-carpet ceremonies and performances staged for what China has called its most important diplomatic event since emerging from three years of pandemic lockdown. Banners and billboards across the city carry slogans celebrating “A shared future for China and Africa.”

Xi Jinping has pledged nearly $51 billion over the next three years, including $30 billion in credit lines, $10 billion in investment by Chinese companies and other amounts including military aid, while promising mutual cooperation with Africa to achieve “modernization.”

“Modernization is an inalienable right of all countries,” he said in a speech at the summit on Thursday. “But the Western approach to it has inflicted immense suffering on developing countries.”

Xi Jinping also proposed that bilateral relations with all African countries that have diplomatic ties with China be elevated to the “strategic” level, saying that “China-Africa relations are now at their best level in history.”

The forum, which began in 2000, is an opportunity for China to strengthen its influence in Africa as it seeks to challenge the U.S.-led global order and revive a flagging domestic economy. It includes all African states except Eswatini, which is one of 12 remaining governments in the world that maintains diplomatic relations with Taiwan, a self-governing island democracy that Beijing claims as its territory.

“For China, this is about reforming the international system in a way that is favorable to its interests,” said Alex Vines, director of the Africa program at Chatham House, a London-based think tank. “And China should be commended for shaking the West out of its complacency about its partnerships on the African continent.”

With its rapidly growing population of 1.5 billion and abundant natural resources, Africa is strategically important to the United States and other world powers. But the continent also feels left behind by major economies as it struggles with poverty, climate change and geopolitical turmoil.

“These challenges affect all nations,” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said in a speech after Xi Jinping’s address on Thursday, “but they are most often felt acutely on the African continent.”

Senegalese President Bassirou Diomaye Faye, co-chair of the forum, praised China’s long-standing commitment to Africa’s development.

“Trade volume has increased,” he said, adding that China was the first to provide Africa with masks and vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic and helped African health authorities better cope with diseases in general.

African leaders are not, however, immune to criticism of China, with many expressing a desire for a more balanced relationship. Nor have they forgotten China’s unfulfilled commitment at the last summit in 2021 to buy $300 billion worth of African goods.

“We would like to reduce the trade deficit and improve our trade structure,” Ramaphosa told Xi during bilateral talks earlier this week, according to a transcript of the meeting released by Ramaphosa’s office.

To this end, Xi Jinping said on Thursday that China would further open its market to African agricultural products and that products from most of the world’s poorest countries, including 33 in Africa, would be exempt from all tariffs.

Xi Jinping said China would carry out 30 infrastructure projects across the continent as part of its Belt and Road Initiative, which has been criticized for adding to countries’ debt burdens.

But China also appears to be moving away from such megaprojects, with Xi Jinping promoting 1,000 “small and beautiful” projects across Africa, such as the Addis Ababa streetlights that have transformed the Ethiopian capital’s nightscape.

“The big infrastructure projects that China had invested in were overexposed. They were bad loans,” Vines said. “But the new relationship with China is more clinical and strategic in that respect.”

China, a world leader in green technology, is also eyeing Africa as a potential market for its exports as it faces increasing restrictions in the United States and elsewhere.

China, which overtook the United States as Africa’s largest trading partner in 2009, has stepped up its overtures to the continent, approving $4.61 billion in loans last year, the first annual increase since 2016. Xi also met with several African leaders last year when he attended a summit in South Africa of the developing bloc known as BRICS.

While President Joe Biden has stressed Africa’s importance to global issues and hosted Kenyan President William Ruto for an official state visit earlier this year, he has not visited the continent since taking office in 2021.

“It all starts with one step, and China extends its hand,” said Abra Kafui Tsolenyanu, a journalist attending the summit from the West African country of Togo.

“So, like all other countries, Togo began to march towards China.”

Janis Mackey Frayer reported from Beijing and Mithil Aggarwal from Hong Kong.