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The China–Africa relationship has received increased interest over the past few decades as scholars critically examine the challenge that China, in its quest for a closer strategic partnership with Africa, poses to the norms governing the neoliberal world order (NLWO). One crucial aspect of this is international aid, and how Chinese aid to Africa differs from Western aid. This paper argues that Chinese aid reduces the power of traditional aid donors to shape the development route of African countries. This new development finance ultimately breaks the monopoly of Western aid to decide how poor countries in the global 'South' develop. In doing so, the Sino–African aid relationship is challenging the current world order as it offers African states the possibility to decouple (or delink) themselves from the global economy. By challenging assumed neoliberal economic development fundamentals, this relationship, if harnessed correctly by African leaders, can pose longer-term ideological questions around the very set of ideas that underpin development itself, while enabling African states the policy space needed to pursue more sustainable development from an Afro-centric perspective. It is this possibility to delink, due to changing ideological fundamentals concerning economic development, that is the challenge China and Africa pose to the NLWO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a preliminary reflection on China’s domestic development and its aid presence in Africa. “Development” had its day before the 1970s but then encountered de-constructive and re-constructive critics in the field of Development Anthropology. China’s conceptualization of development has not only drawn a lot from Western development discourse but also evolved with its own features, which deserve a critical reflection in terms of an “elusive discourse” and the “practical pursuit of welfare”, a seemingly paradoxical dichotomy. It follows with China’s foreign assistance or aid presence in Africa, which, the author holds, is imprinted with China’s development practice concepts and illustrated by a case of Chinese development aid in Ethiopia. The paper eventually discusses the would-be roles of Chinese anthropologists, who have been surprisingly absent in recent years, in contrast to Western academia’s intellectual tradition of widely reflecting development issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'Scramble for Africa' has historically been a concept used to describe the plunder of Africa by colonial powers, their subsequent economic capture of African resources, their political control and their racial domination of Africans. But, in recent times, many writers have pointed to Chinese 'Scramble for Africa'. Of these depictions, The Economist 's has been both categorical and relentless. But is the set of relationships between China and African countries imperial? Does it amount to a Chinese 'Scramble for Africa'? If so, what can be done; if not, why not? Neither content nor institutional analyses of 27 stories, sampled from 132 issues of The Economist from 2019 to 2021, show conclusive evidence that the relationship between China and Africa is imperial. Evidence of African indebtedness to China, Chinese opaque resource transactions in Africa, and the controlling effect of China's Belt and Road Initiative typically emphasised by The Economist is serious. But it does not amount to economic plunder, political control, military destabilisation or racial domination. The Economist 's characterisation of China–Africa relations reflects wider processes of Westernisation. Its features include the use of mainstream economic analysis, (mis)representation of the Global South to maintain Western hegemony and inhibiting Southern struggle to break the Western chokehold on global development. As an elite newspaper, The Economist 's 'frame analysis' not only presents news, but also produces views that caricature Global South agendas, especially those that threaten Western liberalism and imperialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As China’s economic and political presence in Africa increases, so does the need for its government to maintain a favorable image with African publics. Borrowing theories of soft power diplomacy and language planning, this paper analyzes, from the perspectives of African and Chinese policymakers, the impact of the Confucius Institutes on higher education in Africa and its intersections with language planning and cultural diplomacy. An empirical case study at the University of Nairobi Confucius Institute shows that policymakers and administrators anticipate that a competent group of Kenyans with Mandarin language skills will be able to engage with Chinese people and Chinese-owned companies on the ground in Kenya. However, Chinese diplomats are more concerned with China’s image and achieving its political and economic interests in Kenya than with effective cultural exchange and language instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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