1. China’s development and its aid presence in Africa: A critical reflection from the perspective of development anthropology.
- Author
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Niu, Zhongguang
- Subjects
AFRICA-China relations ,INTERNATIONAL economic assistance ,APPLIED anthropology ,ECONOMIC development ,HISTORY of economic development ,CHINESE politics & government, 1949- ,AFRICAN politics & government, 1960- - Abstract
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]
- Published
- 2016
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