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This paper expands upon a hitherto underexplored finding by Rich and Banerjee's 2015 model which finds that Taiwan has done comparatively better with non-democracies in Africa. The paper proposes that democratisation makes an African state more responsive to domestic economic imperatives and thus more likely to form relations with the demographically and economically larger People's Republic of China because of the prospective trade, aid and investment gains to be made once such a switch is affected. Seven case studies conducted over the 2001–2018 period yield results which are in line with this hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines depictions of Africans in China during the period when China moved to establish diplomatic relations across the African continent – the foundation of what would become Africa–China relations today. Chinese posters were early forms of mass visual interaction with (the image of) foreign nationals. They reflect how Chinese society viewed itself in relation to others as it developed a global awareness through domestic mobilization. This study investigates how Africa and Africans are depicted in Chinese posters and how they shaped and/or reflected discourses of the period. It also examines motivations behind the inclusion of Africans in Chinese posters, arguing that this largely had a domestic rationale. By historicizing the meaning-making process of the image of Africa in 20th-century Chinese posters, this paper demonstrates that Chinese posters informed public opinion by defining friend and foe, focused more on China and her Cold War entanglements than on Africa, and simultaneously challenged and reinforced some widely held stereotypes about the continent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 analyses responses from Chinese university students to China's most successful blockbuster to date, Wolf Warrior 2. Responses revealed racialized language objectifying the black African Other and affirmation of existing scepticisms towards Sino-African relations. It is argued that these responses must be understood within the context of trust these students have in the mediated messages they encounter, the Chinese leadership, the hearsay of social networks, and film industry standards established by Hollywood, all of which precondition Chinese student understandings of 'Africa' and 'Africans' that informs their viewing experience. Trust in the nation's film industry, however, also suggests Chinese cinema may have the ability to improve racial awareness among Chinese audiences. To do so though, would require a shift in the film industry's objectives from its current efforts in patriotic education, to portraying China and the Chinese as one of many within an interconnected global community. [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]

Informal institutions are important platforms for renegotiating global governance, but there is disagreement on how they operate and challenge the United States (US). Realists view some informal institutions like Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) as counter-hegemonic entities, while rational institutionalists focus on their structure and performance in specific areas. However, neither approach explains the internal dynamics that make these institutions robust and potentially counter-hegemonic. To fill this gap, we first develop a new convergence approach for analysing informal institutional dynamics, and then we apply this approach to examine BRICS robustness and BRICS–US relations. Our BRICS Convergence Index measures policy convergence of the BRICS states using a novel data set of BRICS cooperation on 47 policy issues between 2009 and 2021. Using data on US policy preferences on the same issues, we also identify the key sites of BRICS–US contestation. We find an overall increase in BRICS policy convergence and limited divergence from US preferences across a wide range of policy issues. However, since BRICS has engaged with more security issues after 2015 and substantively deepened its cooperation, its capability to counter US influence has grown. Our convergence-focused analysis of informal institutions embraces members' agency and pathways for institution building, while identifying the issues that bind rival countries. As such, it helps explain how informal institutions gain robustness and provides empirical insights into the rise of new powers and global governance reform efforts. [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]

This article uses a case-study approach to discuss the effects of Chinese economic engagement on three dimensions of human capital development: local employment, training and skill building, and knowledge and technology transfer. The study findings suggests that Chinese economic engagement can and does contribute to human capital development in Africa; however, this is dependent on certain sectoral factors and contextual conditions. This study advances a working hypothesis that the human capital development impact of Chinese economic engagement will vary across countries and sectors of the African economy. This working hypothesis seeks to guide further research towards developing a theoretical framework for the study of Chinese economic engagement in Africa and its effects on human capital development. The article also identifies research areas that should be further explored in order to gain a deeper understanding of the impact of Chinese economic engagement in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) as an alternative force to the West has ignited a debate within the discipline of international political economy on the nature of the group's rise. Global governance scholars either debate the role of the BRICS in transforming the world order (playing the game) or focus on the domestic sources of the BRICS nations' preference formation (the position of states within the game). This article goes beyond the game-versus-player debate, by focusing on the structural power of the BRICS to 'change the rules of the game'. The article investigates how the BRICS-created New Development Bank as an alternative circuit for actors to exchange goods in the area of development finance has been integrated into global governance. The article argues that the New Development Bank does not grant the BRICS the structural power needed to change the rules and norms that underpin the game. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews cooperation between the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and their collective efforts to promote reform of international financial institutions, shape global financial regulation and improve financial cooperation. The authors focus on the BRICS–G20 engagement for global economic governance reform. To assess the progress so far, the study employs original quantitative data on the BRICS and G20 commitments and compliance, and qualitative analysis of the BRICS and G20 discourse and the transformation of the international economic architecture. The results suggest that, contrary to the common perception of the BRICS as a challenger of the traditional western-dominated international monetary and financial system, it acts in a cooperative manner, seeking to make the international financial architecture and global regulation more representative and responsive to emerging markets and developing economies needs, and strengthen the stability and resilience of international and domestic financial markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Brokers have played important roles in the trade of green tea between China and Mali, from the 19th century when tea first came to Mali up to the present. They mediate between tea buyers and sellers, work on their own account, use soft skills, knowledge and networks and make a living from the commission they gain. This article examines the work of brokers in the tea trade, the social constellations in which they are active and the scope of their activity. Based on extensive field research in Mali and China, this article shows how brokers create their own jobs in a dynamic business landscape, which is often delimited by governmental policies, competing entrepreneurial activities and social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article makes the point that African states with significant strategic resources and democratic governance systems bargain better in economic and development assistance engagements with China and other partners. In democratic African states, non-state actors play critical complementary roles to the state, leading to multi-faceted forms of African agency. For non-democratic states, a significant limiting factor in their agency is the lack of working relationships between the state and non-state actors. Concomitantly, such states find themselves with weak bargaining and negotiating capacities. If African agency is to be assertive, then state and non-state actors should work together when engaging external partners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing presence of a diversifying group of Africans in China raises broader issues of their status and permanence. The politics associated with African transnationalism in China are evident in Chinese and African government responses and the transnational African voice. This article looks at facets of an African transnational presence and some key responses at a local, international and transnational level to suggest an evolving state of Sino-African relations in which African multilateralism and the transnational African actor play a greater part. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Africa’s interaction with China is beginning to be marked tellingly by Chinese architectural inscriptions on the African cityscape which need to be deconstructed. The furore in the African press and academia that greeted the building and handing over by China of the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa makes such an interrogation imperative. This study will attempt to offer some understanding of this nascent phenomenon using the Accra cityscape as an exemplary point of reference. In this regard this work seeks to locate the meaning of fortifications within contemporary global and local discourses on power, architecture, symbols, interests and international relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much current scholarship on ‘Chinese–African relations’ focuses on the monumental projects, the built walls, which are visibly transforming African landscapes, and on the increasing Chinese physical presence on the continent. Instead, this article argues that a focus on the material traces of consumer goods circulating in colonial and post-colonial markets, and in expert knowledge that shaped bodily practices, domestic habits, and rural landscapes over time, yields a more nuanced picture of Chinese–African entanglements. We examine elements of “Chineseness” that inform Sierra Leonean ways of dwelling – particularly of farming rice, and of intervening therapeutically on bodies – but often through intermediaries whose imprints mask Asian origins. Contemporary China-Africa friendship rhetoric stresses bilateralism and palimpsestic reinscriptions of earlier relations, but belies a history in which multiple Chinas struggled for global recognition through partnerships with African countries that articulated with colonial mediations and Cold War alliances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates how perceptions of China in Mozambican civil society are affected by entrepreneurial activity and bilateral cooperation between China and Mozambique – real, imagined, visible and legal as well as clandestine and illegal in the agricultural and forestry sectors. The research problem concerns how discourse on Chinese investors is formed in Mozambique. Two questions are posed. How does Mozambican civil society perceive their room to maneuver at a time of Chinese growing economic interest and ‘return’ to Africa? What views exist on the policy space for the national government? Using qualitative ethnographic interviews to answer these overarching questions about expanding/contracting maneuvering space, this article explains how Mozambique’s largest social group – peasants – the National Association of Small Farmers (UNAC) and other societal actors perceive Chinese investors. Informed by theoretical debates on civil society, the article argues that coinciding with China’s large-scale return to Africa, an already tense dynamic between civil society and the state is picking up speed. It is argued that this phenomenon is likely to have more to do with African governments accruing more power and policy space than through direct impact of Chinese economic activity on African social life. However, to avoid negative discourse formation, China and host governments need to become more open on and transparent about bilateral agreements. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]