Across economic, political, and security domains, the growth of China’s presence in Africa has been swift and staggering, which has fed both simplistic caricatures of China’s role on the continent and fears of renewed geopolitical competition. A closer look reveals a more balanced picture. This report examines how China’s growing engagement affects the United States’ role in Africa and offers policy recommendations for U.S. military leaders.
Focusing on economic, political, and security domains, this report examines China's rapidly growing engagement with African states, assesses the strategic ramifications for the United States, and offers policy recommendations for the U.S. Army.
Beginning in earnest at the turn of the twenty-first century, China embarked on a robust multilevel engagement strategy with a number of African states on three simultaneous fronts--economic, political, and military. The push was predicated by Beijing's need to secure energy and natural resources to fuel its booming economy and bolster its position as the world's manufacturing hub. The depth of China's engagement cannot be understated, and its increasing stakes in the security dimension of Africa's myriad conflicts is affecting the geopolitical landscape of a continent that has been in the past an exclusive domain of the West. C hina in Africa examines the multifaceted effects of China's engagement with the continent, both its many risks and opportunities. It provides critical and relevant information for understanding the strategic drivers, trends, and the potential impact of China in Africa. The book covers Chinese soft and hard power, energy and arms relations, and China's relations with individual African countries: Angola, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Ultimately, this volume serves to assist in improving U.S. policymakers' understanding of China's role in Africa and ensure that appropriate measures are taken to secure American interests in the region. Contributors include Mauro De Lorenzo (American Enterprise Institute), Drew Thompson (Nixon Center), Wenran Jiang (University of Alberta), Paul Hare (U.S.-Angola Chamber of Commerce), Susan M. Puska (Defense Group, Inc.), Ian Taylor (University of St. Andrews), Chris Zambelis (Helios Global, Inc.), David Shinn (GeorgeWashington University), Joshua Eisenman (American Foreign Policy Council), Yitzhak Shichor (University of Haifa), Greg Mills and Christopher Thompson (Brenthurst Foundation), Andrew McGregor (Aberfoyle International), and John C. K. Daly (United Press International).
Examines Chinese engagement with African nations, focusing on (1) Chinese and African objectives in the political and economic spheres and how they work to achieve them, (2) African perceptions of Chinese engagement, (3) how China has adjusted its policies to accommodate African views, and (4) whether the United States and China are competing for influence, access, and resources in Africa and how they might cooperate in the region.
This book investigates the expanding involvement of China in security cooperation in Africa. Drawing on leading and emerging scholars in the field, the volume uses a combination of analytical insights and case studies to unpack the complexity of security challenges confronting China and the continent. It interrogates how security considerations impact upon the growing economic and social links China has developed with African states.
This cutting edge book explores the role of the media in the highly disputed area of China-Africa relations, notably how various aspects of the issue have been portrayed, negotiated and contested in media and academic discourses. As Africa’s biggest trading partner and creditor, China explores Africa not only as a marketplace for importing primary commodities and exporting manufactured goods, but also as a preferred testing ground for its media and telecommunication sector aspiring for further internationalization. At a time when the influence from Global North has been on the wane in the continent, emerging powers are regarded as new inspirations for Africa’s development. China in particular tries to bolster multipolarity in Africa by factoring in media influence and facilitating the digitalization process of the continent. This book offers an up-to-date geopolitical analysis of China-Africa, examining the role of communication and telecommunication in the power shift, especially in constructing social and cultural realities in which the idea of “development” has been recurrently redefined and negotiated in the public domain. This volume tackles the issue from the new perspective of mediatization, considering how the media on the one hand shapes public opinion with its narratives and a logic of its own, and on the other hand simultaneously becomes an integrated part of other institutions like politics, trade, business as more of these institutional activities are performed through both interactive and mass media.
The geopolitical landscape of contemporary China-Africa relations has provoked wide media interest. After being conspicuously overlooked during the G8's purported 'Year of Africa', the topic generated wider debate in the build-up to the China-Africa Summit in Beijing in 2006. Despite this, China's deepening re-engagement with the African continent has been relatively neglected in academic and development policy circles. In particular, the concrete ways in which different Chinese actors are operating in different parts of Africa, their political dynamics and implications for African development as well as Western views of this phenomenon, have yet be explored in depth."China Returns to Africa" responds to this need by addressing the key issues in contemporary China-Africa relations. Taking its cue from the widely touted 'Chinese Scramble for Africa' and the accompanying claim of a 'new Chinese imperialism', the book moves beyond narrow media-driven concerns to offer one of the first far-ranging surveys of China's return to Africa, examining what this new relationship holds for diplomacy, trade and development.
As China and the U.S. increasingly compete for power in key areas of U.S. influence, great power conflict looms. Yet few studies have looked to the Middle East and Africa, regions of major political, economic, and military importance for both China and the U.S., to theorize how China competes in a changing world system. China's Rise in the Global South examines China's behavior as a rising power in two key Global South regions, the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa. Dawn C. Murphy, drawing on extensive fieldwork and hundreds of interviews, compares and analyzes thirty years of China's interactions with these regions across a range of functional areas: political, economic, foreign aid, and military. From the Belt and Road initiative to the founding of new cooperation forums and special envoys, China's Rise in the Global South offers an in-depth look at China's foreign policy approach to the countries it considers its partners in South-South cooperation. Intervening in the emerging debate between liberals and realists about China's future as a great power, Murphy contends that China is constructing an alternate international order to interact with these regions, and this book provides policymakers and scholars of international relations with the tools to analyze it.
This book considers the effect of China’s unprecedented economic growth and more prominent geopolitical role in the twenty-first century. Rising powers considerably alter international relations, leading to the emergence of a multipolar world order that impacts more traditional international players like the European Union (EU). China’s growing economic and diplomatic influence is particularly relevant in Africa, where it presents an alternative to conventional North-South relations and proposes a new type of South-South partnership. Stahl examines the EU’s foreign policy response regarding China’s growing presence in Africa, as well as the EU’s attempts to refocus attention on the African continent. Drawing on a rich body of evidence collected through fieldwork in China and Africa, and extensive expert interviews, the author sheds light on the novel trend of EU-China-Africa trilateral relations. The book offers a new analytical framework for the study of the EU’s foreign policy of engagement with emerging powers and will appeal to graduate students and scholars interested in the EU’s international role, international relations and development, as well as contemporary Chinese and African studies.
