Author: Suzanne Franks, Kate Ribet.

The international economic upheaval of 2008 has led many to ask more searching questions about the role of China and other ‘BRICs’ (Brazil, Russia, India and China) in the global economic context. The role and influence of China in the contemporary development of Africa has become a topic of wide significance. Sino-African diplomatic and economic relations have expanded dramatically in the last decade in response to the Chinese economy’s growing need for energy and commodities, as well as validation of its global ascendancy. For many observers the distinctive Chinese approach to large parts of the African continent, which differs so markedly from current Western attitudes and initiatives, raises new and interesting questions. In response to this, a number of scholarly enquiries have focused on this growing relationship, the majority of which derive from a political economy or foreign policy perspective. 1 These embrace a wide spectrum of opinion within which China’s current intervention in Africa is either a reinvention of old style colonialism, or exploitation, or a refreshing new kind of geopolitical relationship, which is helping African development, free of the constraints often attached to Western aid. Criticism of China has come from a right-wing American perspective that interprets Chinese economic expansion as a threat to US interests. Yet there are also those on the left who are hostile towards China’s apparent willingness to ignore human rights abuse and argue that the Chinese cynically use development aid to ‘buy’ support from despotic leaders. Darfur and Zimbabwe are typically cited as prime examples of this. Meanwhile other voices applaud the pragmatic and effective nature of Chinese backing for African economic development. They argue that it is single-handedly doing more to improve living standards than years of well-meaning aid projects and efforts towards liberal democratic practices, thereby rejecting much of the criticism as a paternalistic hangover from colonial times.