China’s Resource Diplomacy in Africa: Powering Development?

Full text

China’s Resource Diplomacy in Africa: Powering Development?
Marcus Power, Giles Mohan and May Tan-Mullins
Basingstoke and NewYork, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, pp. xix + 329, ISBN 978-0-230-
22912-9
China’s growing African involvement has justifiably attracted prolific academic and media
attention. Any doubts that there is room for another book on the subject are quickly dispelled
as one reads the present volume, notwithstanding an unfortunate (and uncharacteristic)
blunder in the opening sentence, where citation from Peter Hitchens in the Daily Mail is
attributed to his late brother, Christopher. The authors have this right in the bibliography,
which is in itself a valuable resource: it runs to 44 pages and over 700 items.
One key to the original contribution made by the book is its authorship: all three authors are
political geographers, although Giles Mohan is now Professor of International Development
at the Open University and May Tan-Mullins, who did her doctorate at the University of
Singapore’s very globally-engaged Department of Geography, is now an Assistant Professor
of International Relations at the University of Nottingham Ningbo in China. They bring a
distinctive approach and perspective in terms of a willingness to ground each chapter in
particular areas of theory relevant to its concerns, in their attention to empirical detail and
their attention to environmental and geopolitical issues. The location of one of the authors in
China itself no doubt contributes to one of the book’s major strengths, namely a detailed
analysis of those aspects of China relevant to its African focus. The monolithic view of a
central Chinese state that is all-powerful in its African concerns is repeatedly and effectively
demolished in favour of a much more complex, nuanced reality. In Africa itself the authors
ground their arguments in case studies drawn particularly from Angola and Ghana.
The book begins with critical geopolitics and analysis of representations of Africa as a
uniform space for encroachment and exploitation and with symbolization of China by the
official marker of statehood as a single-minded monolith. Throughout the book the authors
seek to critique stereotypes of China by engaging with literature on Chinese political
economy. They also pursue a disaggregated analysis of China-Africa relationships that
includes differentiation of nation-states as singular actors, geographical sensitivity to spatial
differences in the operation of political and economic processes and also temporal
disaggregation. Chapter 2 places China-Africa relations in historical context, stressing a
significant history that is often ignored: especially noteworthy here are the 1955 Asian-
African Conference in Bandung, Indonesia and the establishment of the Afro-Asian Solidarity
Organisation in 1957; the Tazara railway; and Chinese involvement in Angola from the
1960s.
Recent Chinese policy changes towards China are explored in chapter 3, including concerns
over governance and environmental issues that have risen up the agenda in the past decade,
illustrated by the evolving Forum on China-Africa Co-operation. Increasing trade and

investment relations are analysed in the context of the contending discourses that surround
them. What drives China’s Africa interests is the focus of chapter 4, which examines the
country’s recent development experience, the supply-side issues and need for outlets for
surplus capital and goods (echoing here some theories of the original Scramble for Africa)
and identifying the multiple actors and motives present on the Chinese side of the equation.
The dangers for China of growing inequality and polarization in its socialist market economy
are recognised.
Chapter 5 addresses China’s aid diplomacy in Africa and its use of ‘soft power’ in relation to
those of other emerging donors, demonstrating through case studies that China’s aid allows
African states to ‘triangulate’ between donors. The authors are suspicious of the motives of
Western criticism of Chinese non-interference stance; whilst they may be right in this, they
largely ignore the case for conditionality and the failure of growth to impact the poor in much
of Africa, pointing rather to the advantages for international donors in engaging with
governance ‘in ways that fit their own specific mandates’. However the following chapter
concludes that a mixture of conscience (re. Darfur) and pragmatism is seeing enhanced
efforts to intervene in African governance and in chapter 8 the authors recognise that non-
interference is ‘becoming untenable’. In chapter 6 the authors argue that China’s economic
ties strengthen an illiberal model of involvement in Africa in which elite deals bypass
channels of accountability and make assessment difficult. Discussion of smaller-scale
businesses, which are often neglected in other studies, examines the patronage and graft that
tie entrepreneurs into local political processes. This chapter also examines civil society
responses from both international organizations, which have been most active in contesting
China’s African involvement, and from within Africa, where responses from the petit
bourgeoisie and labour aristocracy have reflected class interests.
The common view that China simply exports its poor environmental practice to Africa is
challenged in chapter 7, which uses a political ecology framework to examine new forms of
transboundary Chinese political practices to examine how the power relations between the
Chinese state, African agencies and international organizations are played out in the natural
resource arena. This chapter is rich in detail on specific sectors such as ivory, fishing and
forest products as well as mining. It stresses that China’s poor environmental record is only
part of the story: weak African regulatory environments and complicity on the part of African
decision-makers are also to blame.
The authors are particularly well qualified to examine the geopolitics of China’s engagement
with Africa, the subject of the final substantive chapter, in which they reinforce their call to
intensify the dialogue between critical geopolitics and critical development theory. They do
so in the context of China’s shift to a more international role in which the country propounds
a discourse of ‘harmonious rise’, claiming the mantle of a ‘responsible’ power, which
includes membership of international forums where it seeks to play a distinctive role as both
an ‘elite economy’ and a champion of the developing world: its Africa strategy is seen as part
of its development relations with the global south, symbolized in recent attempts to resurrect
the Bandung spirit. China is recognised to be only one of several rising powers seeking to
secure strategic influence in Africa, but the need to disaggregate ‘China’ is also important
when analysing its actions.

For anyone seeking to understand Chinese involvement in Africa this book is an essential
read. It is valuable for its application of a range of theoretical approaches in specific contexts,
its balanced judgements and detailed case studies. Above all, it will be seriously useful for
Africanists seeking to know more about the complexities of China itself as an actor, or
complex of actors, on the African stage.
Anthony Lemon
Mansfield College, Oxford