In African Countries and the Global Scramble for China, Mbaidjol engages the reader, from African perspectives and African People’s interests, in a theme that is currently fuelling international relations debates.

Unnatural capital: Chinese state investment and its travails in Africa -- Varieties of accumulation: profit maximization and beyond -- Labor bargains: regimes of exploitation and exclusion -- Managerial ethos: collective asceticism versus individual careerism -- Contesting capital: aspiration and capacity from below -- Eventful global China -- Appendix: an ethnographer's odyssey: the mundane and the sublime of researching China in Zambia

Once marginalized in the world economy, the past decade has seen Africa emerge as a major global supplier of crucial raw materials like oil, uranium and coltan. With its share of world trade and investment now rising and the availability of natural resources falling, the continent finds itself at the centre of a battle to gain access to and control of its valuable natural assets. China's role in Africa has loomed particularly large in recent years, but there is now a new scramble taking place involving a wider range of established and emerging economic powers from the EU and US to Japan, Brazil and Russia. This book explores the nature of resource and market competition in Africa and the strategies adopted by the different actors involved - be they world powers or small companies. Focusing on key commodities, the book examines the dynamics of the new scramble and the impact of current investment and competition on people, the environment, and political and economic development on the continent. New theories, particularly the idea of Chinese "flexigemony" are developed to explain how resources and markets are accessed. While resource access is often the primary motive for increased engagement, the continent also offers a growing market for low-priced goods from Asia and Asian-owned companies. Individual chapters explore old and new economic power interests in Africa; oil, minerals, timber, biofuels, food and fisheries; and the nature and impacts of Asian investment in manufacturing and other sectors. The New Scramble for Africa will be essential reading for students of African studies, international relations, and resource politics as well as anyone interested in current affairs.

Chinese-African relations became an issue of increasing importance leading up to the 2006 China-Africa Summit in Beijing. Nevertheless, academics and policymakers have largely neglected China's expanding relationship with Africa. Scholars have yet to explore the concrete ways in which Chinese actors operate in different parts of Africa, and developmental policy advisors have yet to take the political dynamics and implications of this involvement into consideration when forming policy. China Returns to Africa addresses key issues in contemporary Chinese-African relations, examining the impact of this relationship in issues of diplomacy, trade, and development. Beginning with the assertion that China is engaged in a scramble for Africa and that we are now on the brink of a new Chinese imperialism, the essays in this volume transcend narrow, media-driven concerns and offer one of the first far-ranging surveys of the consequences of China's investment in Africa.

China, in the past five years, has developed a proactive global policy and is emerging as a new global power with particular focus on developing countries in Central Asia, Southeast Asia, Latin America and Africa. What is the role of Africa in China's emerging global foreign policy? In 1998, China's aid to Africa was $107 million. By 2004, it had reached $2.7 billion, 26% of its international assistance that year. In 2005, Africa-China trade reached $40 billion, 35% up from the previous year. China is interested mainly in four sectors: infrastructure projects, regional banks such as the African Development Bank, training of African professionals particularly in economic management, and institutions of higher education with the goal of establishing Chinese language programs. The human factor is also important. Chinese Diaspora is fast increasing. For example, in Zambia, it grew from 3,000 to 30,000 in ten years and, in South Africa, from practically none to 300,000. African countries constitute a new market for Chinese products. They also provide a source of raw materials. Today, the continent supplies 30% of China's import of oil and gas, Angola being the largest supplier with 522,000 barrels of oil per day to China. The last five years, Chinese oil companies spent $15 billion acquiring oil fields and local companies. The appetite for raw materials goes beyond oil and gas and China's foreign political strategy is primarily to solve its own domestic problems and protect its interests in the global arena. Will Africa be a pawn or a player in this emerging geopolitical game? Will China's deepening relations with the continent represent a new opportunity for African countries to negotiate a new partnership and skillfully use it to the best advantage of their citizens? These are some of the questions contributors to the volume have tried to answer by examining various facets of these deepening relations and underlining areas of concerns as well as the opportunities for mutually rewarding relations.

This book looks at China's role in Africa and the new scramble for Africa's resources, offering reflections on and insights to a current theme, which is widely and controversially debated also within Africa.

With China's rise to the status of world power, trade and political links between Africa and China have been escalating at an astonishing rate. Ian Taylor, an expert in this field, gives a comprehensive assessment of relations between China and Africa.