December 7, 2015

The Chinese Invade Africa

Ian Johnson
September 25, 2014 Issue

In early May, China’s premier, Li Keqiang, made a trip to Africa that raised a central question about China’s rise: What effect will it have on the world’s poorer countries? As a big third-world country that has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty in just a few decades—and has risen so fast that it’s easily the only serious challenger to the United States’ superpower status—China has enormous cachet, with lessons that many countries are eager to learn. But as the trip showed, those lessons are complex and ambiguous.

Premier Li visited four countries and the headquarters of the African Union in Addis Ababa. He pledged billions of dollars in new aid, promised to share technology, and unveiled a series of much-publicized deals, including a nine-hundred-mile railway line in Nigeria and a research center to help link major African capitals by rail. Li urged African leaders and Chinese companies that China—already Africa’s largest trading partner—should double its trade with Africa by 2020 and quadruple its investment there.

Click on Link:

https://www.chinafile.com/library/nyrb-china-archive/chinese-invade-africa