Review of 'China into Africa: Trade, Aid and Investment' edited by Robert I. Rothberg

Rotberg’s edited volume is interesting in that it is evident from the contents page that effort has been made to include African, Chinese and Western contributors, both academics and practitioners. This immediately lends credence to the debate that the authors seek to stimulate.

The discourse surrounding China’s relations with Africa that had been slowly emerging at the turn of the 21st century received considerable impetus following the holding of the Beijing Summit of the Forum on China–Africa Co-operation (FOCAC) in November 2006, viewed by many as the ‘coming-out party’ of relations that had been quietly strengthening. This volume is the product of a conference at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government in June 2007.

As with most such compilations, there are chapters which stand out, and those that might be best left unread. Those contributions that distinguish themselves either bring new research to light or re-examine existing data to challenge conventionally held wisdoms.

Brautigam, in her chapter ‘China’s foreign aid to Africa: What do we know?’ (pp. 197–216), speaks with authority on a subject she has been researching for many years, clarifying what for many is a mysterious process. This is complemented by Paul Hubbard’s piece investigating Chinese concessional loans (pp. 217–29). Hubbard seeks to probe the claim that Chinese aid is deliberately secretive. He ventures where too few Western scholars can or will go, to the consultation of Chinese language sources. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he finds a considerable amount of data and concludes that the ‘apparent lack of transparency in China’s aid programme is not driven by a deliberate policy of secrecy’ (p. 226). Many would perhaps disagree with such a statement; the Chinese ministries in question have yet to adopt international standards on foreign aid and other such measures that would make their Western counterparts more comfortable. Nevertheless, his findings are perhaps a warning to those who blame Chinese obfuscation when the data they seek is not available in English.

Similarly seeking to turn convention on its head are Rupp’s (pp. 65–86) and Brown and Sriram’s (pp. 250–71) contributions. Tackling uncharted territory, Rupp seeks to unpack the contentious claim that China is in fact a ‘neo-colonial’ power in Africa. Her findings that ‘[f]undamentally, relations between China and Africa are neither colonial nor neo-colonial’, while inviting challenges to the contrary, point out how the indiscriminate use of certain words within the discourse have caused them to lose their meaning. Brown and Sriram’s investigation of China’s legal versus its moral culpability in several African country case studies illustrates the difficulty with which China can be held legally responsible for the human rights abuses that have occurred there. While this does not detract from the moral reprehensibility of some Chinese actors in these situations, the authors draw attention to the fact that an examination of actions on the part of the Chinese state in Africa are rarely placed in context with other international actors. It also illustrates the power of constructed discourse in the case of China–Africa relations given the disparity between China’s guilt according to international law and the popular portrayal of its role in these African countries.

Some of the chapters could have done with more rigorous investigation, particularly in the arena of fieldwork. Davies’s chapter (pp. 137–54) on the special economic zones (SEZ) that the Chinese government seeks to establish across Africa relies predominantly on newspaper articles and a total of three interviews, one of which was not conducted by the author. Given the scope of the article and the controversial nature of the SEZ, the chapter could have done with additional references and interview respondents in order to render its claims more robust. In a similar vein, the authors of the chapter by Obiorah et al (pp. 272–97) on China’s relations with Nigeria admit that their sample size is small (‘twenty-three Nigerian and eight Chinese businessmen in all’) and point to difficulties of communications with regard to Chinese respondents. Nevertheless, while it is perhaps expected that Chinese traders should be able to speak English in a predominantly English context, this is no guarantee that they can. Particularly in the context of Hubbard’s findings in the same volume, a Chinese-speaking researcher should have been incorporated into the team in order to expand the number of accessed Chinese respondents, rendering the survey more representative.

The book could have used some additional framing. The volume ends rather abruptly with Huang’s chapter on the implications for the US of China–Africa relations, with no concluding words by the editor. Although the consensus may be that there is no overarching conclusion to the contributors’ findings, this in itself is worth commenting on. Furthermore, it may have been useful to group the 14 disparate chapters into themed sections; although there are references between the pieces throughout the volume, it is at times difficult to understand the connection or indeed the flow between some of them.

On the whole this is a very interesting read. The volume has paid due attention to the need to advance not only fieldwork undertakings, but also theoretical investigations of the constructs we use to explain China’s relations with Africa. Many of the chapters break new ground and are worthy contributions to the growing body of knowledge on Sino-African relations.

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* School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and resident Macau Forum analyst for Fahamu’s China in Africa programme.
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