now exert more obvious influences in relations.
The outline maps of Africa and China on display in Beijing in November 2006 should be impossible now, given how much has changed since then, including China’s more conspicuous and consequential footprint in the continent and the many ways different African actors have used, benefited from and sought to shape relations in their own ways. Nonetheless, for all the official claims about friendship and development of closer ties since then, periodic episodes suggest continuing ignorance and generate new friction and politics. A far more widely seen and high-profile example than the maps on the fringe of the 2006 FOCAC came in February 2018, when the China Central Television’s (CCTV) Spring Festival Gala, known as the world’s ‘most watched national network TV broadcast’, with up to one billion viewers that year, broadcast a comedy sketch that was supposed to celebrate China–Africa relations. 23 Instead, it provoked a storm of controversy over the use of blackface by a Chinese actress, a black performer in a monkey costume and the use of tribal African dancers and female attendants from Kenya’s Chinese-built railway linking Nairobi and coastal Mombasa. The sketch reproduced a narrative that was representative of China’s general approach to Africa, in which China is seen as a solution to the continent’s backwardness, and behind the performance was ‘a consistent top-down, ego-boosting effort to see and represent China as a way for Africa to enter modernity’. 24 The ‘racist and insensitive portrayals’ of Africans in the sketch was criticized, and there were calls for China to ‘incorporate racial awareness and sensitivity to the production of content by all its media outlets’.25
China–Africa relations are prone to attracting grand statements. The 1960s saw claims that ‘Red China’ had moved into Africa, ‘a major revolutionary outpost in a Sinocentric world’, and intended ‘to stay there’.26 More recently, many have argued that China can transform African development. From the days of Maoist revolution to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, commentary has tended to overstate China’s impact and underplay the formative influences of African protagonists. Nonetheless, today China’s relations with Africa are based on long-term goals; but this is a very different China, combining with all manner of African protagonists to be more consequential than ever.
Notes
1 1 ‘Wang Yi, South-South Cooperation was Elevated to a New Level’, 11 December 2018 (https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/ce/ceus/eng/zgyw/t1621540.htm).
2 2 See Chris Alden, China in Africa (London: Zed Books, 2007); Li Anshan, ‘China and Africa: Policy and challenges’, China Security 3 (3) 2007: 69–93; Kweku Ampiah and Sanusha Naidu, eds, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon? Africa and China (Scottsville: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2008); Deborah Bräutigam, The Dragon’s Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa (Oxford University Press, 2009); Ian Taylor, China’s New Role in Africa (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2009); David Shinn and Joshua Eisenman, China and Africa: A Century of Engagement (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012).
3 3 Minxin Pei, ‘China’s expensive bet on Africa has failed’, Nikkei Asian Review, 1 May 2020.
4 4 Lauren Johnson, ‘China–Africa economic transitions survey: Charting the return of a fleeting old normal’, Proceedings of the 38th African Studies Association of Australasia and the Pacific Conference (February 2016), 10, citing Chris Alden, China in Africa.
5 5 See Chris Alden, Daniel Large and Ricardo Soares de Oliveira, eds, China Returns to Africa: A Continent and a Rising Power Embrace (London: Hurst Publishers, 2008).
6 6 Elizabeth Economy, The Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the New Chinese State (Oxford University Press, 2018).
7 7 Xi Jinping, ‘Secure a decisive victory in building a moderately prosperous society in all respects and strive for the great success of socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era’, Speech delivered at the 19th National Congress of the CCP, 18 October 2017: 9.
8 8 ‘China’s exports to its three major trading partners all increased by more than 10%’, Hellenic Shipping News, 24 August 2020 (https://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/chinas-exports-to-its-three-major-trading-partners-all-increased-by-more-than-10/).
9 9 UNCTAD, ‘Key statistics and trends in regional trade in Africa, 2019’, p. 1.
10 10 Irene Yuan Sun, The Next Factory of the World: How Chinese Investment is Reshaping Africa (Harvard: Harvard Business Review Press, 2017).
11 11 See, for example, Tatiana Carayannis and Lucas Niewenhuis, ‘China–Africa: State of the literature 2012–2017’ (New York: Social Science Research Council, December 2017).
12 12 Cobus Van Staden and Yu-Shan Wu, ‘Media as a site of contestation in China–Africa relations’, in Chris Alden and Daniel Large, eds, New Directions in Africa–China Studies (Abingdon: Routledge, 2019), pp. 88–103. See chinaafricaproject.com for up-to-date news and analysis.
13 13 See Derek Sheridan, ‘Chinese peanuts and Chinese machinga: The use and abuse of a rumour in Dar es Salaam (and ethnographic writing)’, in Alden and Large, eds, New Directions in Africa–China Studies, pp. 145–57.
14 14 See Alden and Large, eds, New Directions in Africa–China Studies. For broader Africa–Asia scholarship, see Ross Anthony and Uta Ruppert, eds, Reconfiguring Transregionalisation in the Global South: African–Asian Encounters (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).
15 15 See, for example, Bräutigam, The Dragon’s Gift.
16 16 Marcus Power, Giles Mohan and May Tan-Mullins, China’s Resource Diplomacy in Africa: Powering Development? (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); Alison J. Ayers, ‘Beyond myths, lies and stereotypes: The political economy of a “new scramble for Africa”’, New Political Economy 18 (2) 2013: 227–57.
17 17 Ching Kuan Lee, The Specter of Global China: Politics, Labor, and Foreign Investment in Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017).
18 18 Li Xing and Abdulkadir Osman Farah, eds, China–Africa Relations in an Era of Great Transformations (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013).
19 19 Algeria, Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cabo Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Republic of Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Saharawi Republic, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
20 20 Nic Cheeseman, Democracy in Africa: Successes, Failures, and the Struggle for Political Reform (Cambridge University Press, 2015).
21 21 John Ryle, ‘The many voices of Africa’, Granta 92 (2005).
22 22 Pang Zhongying, ‘China’s non-intervention question’, Global Responsibility to Protect 1 (2) 2009: 237–51.
23 23 Rebecca Lo, ‘Why ‘Chunwan’, China’s Lunar New Year gala, is the world’s most-watched TV show’, South China Morning Post, 1 February 2019.
24 24 Roberto Castillo, ‘What “blackface” tells us about China’s patronising attitude towards Africa’, The Conversation (online), 6 March 2018.
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