Abstract :
China’s rapidly expanding role in Africa as an energy and
resource extractor reveals much of the dynamics and complexities of its
growing ties with the continent. Rather than studying the subject in the framework
of bilateral interactions, as most existing literature does, this article
explores the impact of China’s domestic development process on the behaviour
of Chinese foreign policy and business operations in Africa. Based on
the author’s extensive field research in Africa and China, the article argues
that much of what the Chinese government, Chinese companies and individual
entrepreneurs are doing today in Africa is an externalization of China’s
own modernization experiences in the past three decades. China’s interactions
with African countries are reflective of its own development contradictions,
and major patterns of Chinese behavour in Africa can be attributed
to complex motivations and objectives of the actors involved
