Author: Karsten Giese, Laurence Marfaing.

China and Africa are two complementary sides of the same coin representing a specific commercial globalization. As we know, for fifteen years now, many small Chinese entrepreneurs have settled in Africa. What is less well known is that in the same period a large number of African economic operators have chosen China to look for business opportunities. The impact of this meeting of Chinese and African transnational entrepreneurs has not so far attracted much interest from researchers. Yet the opportunities that emerge have a stimulating effect on social adaptations and, with imports of products made in China, play an obvious role on the imaginary. The authors propose here a new perspective resulting from a rich body of empirical studies conducted in recent years, in Africa as in China, by researchers from Europe, Africa, China or North America, and come from various disciplinary backgrounds. By embodying globalization from below in their transnational economic practices, these entrepreneurs are transformative in their respective societies. And this in areas as diverse as the evolution of norms and practices, strategies for access to resources, consumption habits, fashions, tastes and ways of life. Commonly listed under the generic term "South-South mobility", the encounter and interactions between African and Chinese entrepreneurs are no longer considered solely from the perspective of integration into the host society. They represent a new phenomenon that reveals the contours of a particular meeting, introducing African entrepreneurs into a broader economic universe, beyond commercial relations with Europe.