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Book: The Dragon's Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa

(2018-04-15 21:24:24) 下一個

Video: Deborah Brautigam on China and Africa | US-China Institute

Why China's footprint in Africa worries the US - CNN.com

China in Africa is not 'neocolonialism.' Here are the numbers to prove

Will Africa Feed China? - Deborah Brautigam - Oxford University Press

Is China the World's New Colonial Power? - The New York Times

China in Africa is not 'neocolonialism.' Here are the numbers to prove

Video: Deborah Brautigam On China And Africa

 
Deborah Bräutigam, one of the world’s leading experts on China and Africa, explores China’s evolving global quest for food security and Africa’s possibilities for structural transformation.

Youtube Video:

Deborah Bräutigam - Will Africa Feed China?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71jDW3ha6Qc&feature=youtu.be&list=PLEAC41A08E1EE341A 

 
 

Is China building a new empire in rural Africa? Few development topics are as controversial and emotionally charged as the belief that the Chinese government is aggressively buying up huge tracts of prime African land to grow food to ship back to China. In Will Africa Feed China?  Deborah Bräutigam, one of the world’s leading experts on China and Africa, probes the myths and realities behind the media headlines.

Chinese farming investments are in fact surprisingly limited, and land acquisitions modest. Defying expectations, China actually exports more food to Africa than it imports. Why is the reality of Chinese investment so different from the headlines? Is this picture likely to change? What role will China play as rural Africa moves from subsistence to commercial agriculture, and China builds a portfolio of tools to allow its agribusiness firms to “go global”?

Will Africa Feed China? answers these questions as it sheds new light on China’s evolving global quest for food security and Africa’s possibilities for structural transformation.

Presenter: Deborah Bräutigam is the Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of Political Economy, Director of the International Development Program, and Director of the China Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. Her most recent books are The Dragon’s Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa (2010) and Will Africa Feed China? (2015). Before joining SAIS in 2012, she taught at Columbia University and American University. Bräutigam’s teaching and research focus on international development strategies, governance, and foreign aid. Journalists, government agencies, and international organizations frequently turn to her for analysis and advice.

Discussant: Shaun Breslin is professor of politics and international studies at the University of Warwick. His books include China and the Global Political Economy (2007), Mao(2000), and China in the 1980s: Centre-Province Relations in a Reforming Socialist State (1996). He’s also the editor of a number of books and has written recently on Chinese ideas on human security. He is frequently cited in the press and among his op-eds is one on Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s 2015 visit to the United States. 

Deborah Brautigam - "The Dragon's Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa"USC U.S.-China Institute

美媒:美政客對中國在非洲看法全錯
2018-04-14 04:00 環球時報  
By 黛博拉·布羅蒂加姆 Deborah Brodygam, Professor at Johns Hopkins University

  美國《華盛頓郵報》4月12日文章,原題:美國政客對中國在非洲的看法完全錯誤 

  華盛頓的政客普遍把中國視為在非洲的新帝國:對非洲人是壞消息。但確實如此嗎?那些一直研究中國在非角色的學者認為,我們的政客對中國在非活動的許多看法實際上都不正確。
  一、就業和培訓。“非洲人正受邀就讀中國高校。中國提供獎學金”,研究中國對非洲人力資源發展項目投資的美國維克森林大學政治學教授班納伯達拉說,“當非洲人考慮技術(和)技能時,就會想到中國是可行選項。”對中國在非項目用工的調查反複發現,3/4或以上的工人都是當地人。這符合商業邏輯。與過去曾把工廠遷往中國的美歐廠主一樣,如今中國企業也正將生產外包給成本更低國家。
  二、中國在進行掠奪性借貸嗎?對這個模糊課題,波士頓大學和約翰·霍普金斯大學的學者不辭辛勞地為中國2000年以來的貸款搭建了數據庫。在非洲,我們發現2000年至2015年中國至少借出955億美元。總的來說,被納入數據庫的中國貸款都在發揮有效作用:為非洲嚴重的基礎設施缺口融資。在這個超過6億人沒用上電的大洲,40%中國貸款被用於發電和輸電。另30%被用於讓非洲支離破碎的交通基礎設施實現現代化。我們還發現,中國提供的貸款利率普遍相對較低且償付期較長。
  三、“侵占土地”的說法。這類謠言此起彼伏。我們在國際食品政策研究所和約翰·霍普金斯大學的團隊收集了57個據稱中國企業(或政府)已收購或擬收購大宗非洲農田(500公頃以上)的案例。倘若(西方)報道都是真的,那這將占到非洲所有農田的1%,達到驚人的600萬公頃。從馬達加斯加到莫桑比克、津巴布韋和讚比亞,我們花3年時間追蹤每個案例後證實:近1/3都是地地道道的假新聞。中國人的收購總量僅約24萬公頃,僅為上述報道總量的4%!事實證明,所謂大規模侵占土地和中國農民正被運往非洲種地的說法,都是謊言。
  其實,我們(通過研究)發現了一個有關全球化而非殖民化的故事。在莫桑比克,筆者結識了紮伊迪·阿裏這樣的投資者,他曾前往巴西學習種植大豆並在那裏遇到收購大豆的中資企業。阿裏邀請他們到非洲投資大豆,但長期幹旱導致雙方成立的合資企業倒閉。中國投資者已回國,但阿裏表示這是一種“淨收獲”,“我從他們那裏學到很多”。
  誠然,同中國與日俱增的交往正使一些當地人麵臨挑戰,但中國貸款正為非洲供電,中資企業正為非洲人創造就業崗位。中國對非洲農業的投資規模遠沒西方報道的那麽大,而且受到非洲人歡迎。(作者黛博拉·布羅蒂加姆為美國約翰·霍普金斯大學高級國際問題研究院國際政治經濟教授,王會聰譯)

Book review: “The Dragon’s Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa” by Deborah Brautigam

 By   15 Aug. 2011

http://www.postwesternworld.com/2011/08/15/book-review-the-dragons-gift-the-real-story-of-china-in-africa-by-deborah-brautigam/?

           Dragon

Book review: The Dragon's Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa. By Deborah Brautigam. Oxford University Press, 2010. 416 pages (R$28,32 ebook, www.amazon.com.br

My frequent visits to Southern Africa in the 1990s (part of my extended family lives in South Africa and Zimbabwe) are among the most vivid memories of my childhood - whether it was driving a car for the first time in the outskirts of Bulawayo (Zimbabwe) as a thirteen-year old, or listening to the Soccer World Cup Final between France and Brazil on via satellite radio in Botswana. Back then, Chinese-owned shops existed in larger cities' markets, but seeing Chinese people in the countryside was a rarity.

When I returned to the continent in 2008, after a decade-long absence, the most striking difference was China's presence in everyday life - not only in commerce, but also in infrastructure construction, tourism and the political debate. In Ethiopia, driving up north from the capital to the Eritrean border, it seemed to me as if the Chinese single-handedly sought to fix the country's entire road network. In the capital, Addis Abeba, Chinese-built hospitals, schools and offices caught every visitor's attention.

China's growing influence in Africa is, without a doubt, the most important event in African history since the end of the Cold War. Given the rapidity of events, our understanding of this complex phenomenon is still limited, and very basic questions remain unanswered:  What is China really doing in Africa? Do Africans benefit from Chinese investments? Will China spur economic development or deindustrialization? Will China integrate into today's aid regime, or will it disregard established structures such as the DAC, the Paris Declaration and the Working Party of Aid Effectiveness? What does this mean for the future of aid? Will China's activity in Africa undermine Western efforts to promote human rights, good governance and democracy? Given scant available data and China's unwillingness to be transparent about their activities and intentions in Africa, the discussion is often based on anecdotes, rough estimates and rumors. For example, there exists a general confusion about what constitutes Chinese aid, loans and investments, and these figures are often thrown together, creating an uninformed debate.

Deborah Brautigam has studied China in Africa for decades, and her latest book arguably provides the best analysis on the market. In a very well-structured and data-rich compilation, Brautigam is able to dispel popular myths; for example about China's supposedly negative influence on governance in African states.

In Chapter 1, the author reviews the origins and history of Western and Chinese aid and the conceptual frameworks that guide them. This analysis shows that the two are by no means as different as one would assume. In fact, China's approach is often based on its experience as a recipient of Japanese and Western aid. In addition, she shows that China has been a donor country for decades, complicating the term 'emerging donor'. In fact, in many African countries China was a more important donor than the Soviet Union in the 1960s, which eventually led to a UN General Assembly vote that gave Beijing the seat on the UN Security Council in 1971, until then occupied by Taiwan. What is notable is that even at the height of Maoist fervor, when China gave aid to over seventy countries (making up a whopping 5% of China's GDP), it rarely advised African recipients to adopt its economic model.

Chapter 2 analyses how China's transformation under Deng Xiaoping affected its aid strategy: Opening its economy to the world, China carefully studied how industrialized nations such as Japan entered the Chinese market - offering technology and taking China's natural resources in exchange. This experience turned out to be instrumental in shaping China's strategy in Africa. In China's early aid projects in Africa, one can witness the interweaving of aid and trade, a concept still alien to the West. This chapter reveals that trilateral cooperation is by no means a novelty - as early as the 1980s, China made serious efforts to win projects in Africa financed by other donors.

In Chapter 3, Brautigam shows how China's accession to the WTO helped integrate China into the global economy. At the same time, she details how Western aid underwent a shift from manufacturing and infrastructure towards social development, symbolized by the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs). This created an historic opportunity for the Chinese. In the late 1990s, many Chinese state-owned companies operating in Africa were privatized, and often former aid projects turned into profitable business operations. By "crossing the river by feeling the stones", the Chinese aid strategy devised in 1995 often helped Chinese companies enter previously unknown markets. The fascinating difficulty to categorize China's activities in Africa as either aid or trade is the key theme of the first part of the book. Providing one of many instructive examples, Brautigam writes: "In a pattern that would become standard for the mix of aid and business, the Chinese company ?nanced a share of the cost (about a quarter, in the Benin case) in return for the right to run the center for ?fty years, after which it would be turned over to the host country."

Chapter 4 provides a meticulous overview over China's aid system, including its youth volunteer program. The Chinese government's three key institutions involved in aid are the Ministry of Commerce, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the China Eximbank, again reflecting the multi-purpose character of its aid program. In traditional donor countries such as Germany, on the other hand, such activities are centralized at the altruistically-sounding Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. While China's aid system is certainly complex and "fragmented", Brautigam's analysis allows the reader to  see that a certain logic prevails - quite to the contrary to other emerging donors such as Brazil and India, where aid is often provided after ad hoc declarations, seemingly lacking an overall coherence. This does not mean that China's aid structure is problem-free; quite to the contrary. Given that China has both political and economic interests in Africa, there is a constant tension between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Commerce, the latter of which is more interested in the projects' profitability. According to Brautigam, the Ministry of Commerce is increasingly calling the shots, taking decisions jointly with the powerful Eximbank, by far the world's largest credit agency, which is at the center of China's strategy of "going global." The CDB (China Development Bank), much larger than Eximbank, has traditionally focused on domestic projects, but is also slowly moving into the African market. This chapter also shows how China invests in "soft power" in Africa - every year, it provides scholarships for more almost 20,000 African students to study in China - the West, by contrast, is slowly disengaging from this practice.

Chapter 5 begins with an anecdote that shows that sometimes it is the small details that set China's activities in Africa apart from those in the West: In Sierra Leone, Brautigam meets Italian engineers who are working on a dam. They eat food flown in from Rome and live in European-style homes especially built for them by the site. The Chinese agronomists next door, on the other hand, grow their own vegetables and "slept in bunks in a building that would later be used to store rice." It is aspects like these which may partly explain why non-Western donors are often more popular in Africa than Western ones. While Chinese aid is very similar to Western aid in many aspects, there are key differences - agreements such as the resource-backed infrastructure loans, a model China used with several African countries such as Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, symbolize a typically "straight-to-the-point" Chinese approach: "You want infrastructure built? You have natural resources to guarantee a loan? We have a deal." Also, the analysis largely debunks the myth that the Chinese send "hordes of experts" that allow for no local capacity building, an common accusation in the West. In fact, both the West and China are still struggling to effectively transfer skills.

Chapter 6 is quite technical, but sheds light on one of the major confusions in the field: What counts as aid and what does not. Quoting the OECD, Brautigam shows that bilateral transactions, whatever their grant element, do not count as aid if their purpose is primarily export facilitating. As many Chinese projects contain such an element, OECD definitions are not particularly useful. In China's Statistical Yearbook, China publishes its aid figures, but it includes military expenditures, which the OECD excludes. Applying OECD definitions, Brautigam estimates that China spent about US$ 2.5 billion with development aid in Africa (compared to US$ 7.6 by the US), figures much lower than commonly assumed since they do not include Eximbank and CDB loans. The author cites a series of incidents in which exaggerated or simply wrong aid figures published in newspapers or magazines made their way into a World Bank report; which suggests that some journalists have an interest in artificially boosting China's influence as this easily makes headlines in the West. The author does confirm, however, that China surpassed the World Bank as Africa's top lender, although the types of loans differ. When counting all financial flows, both aid and commercial, Europe still dominates, ahead of the US and China.

Chapter 7 analyzes the impact China's presence has had on Africa's economy so far, questioning common assertions that Chinese investment is responsible for the deindustrialization of African economies. Brautigam shows that such a generalizing claim is not sustainable. In several cases, Chinese involvement has helped spur growth, although this is mostly if African businesses are competitive enough to benefit from recent developments. After surveying the autoparts industry in this chapter, in Chapter 8 she provides some interesting background information about the leather industry, part of which may soon move from China to Africa. Brautigam's basic argument is that evidence that Chinese competition had a negative impact on African industries is simply not conclusive. South Africa's textile industry, she notes, had been in decline long before the arrival of Chinese goods. Rather than pointing fingers, African producers should invest in increasing productivity - an advice commonly made to industrialists around the world who call on their government to adopt protective measures against Chinese competition. The same is true for China's supposed lacking willingness to employ locals. Data on the matter is scarce, but she estimates that at least 80% of workers employed in Chinese companies are local.

Chapter 9 details China's attempt to "export the Green Revolution" to Africa, challenging powerful corporations such as Monsanto in the field of agrotechnology. The rationale remains the same - helping African farmers and involving Chinese companies in hybrid seed multiplication in Africa eventually helps them turn into global actors. China's efforts are thus similar to those by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), supported by the Bill and Melina Gates Foundation. It remains to be seen whether China succeeds in turning African farmers into its customers of hybrid seeds. Potentially countering Chinese ambitions, AGRA seeks to promote conventional seeds. Chapter 10 makes clear that China, with 20% of the world's populations but only 7% of its arable land, also has a strategic interest in agriculture in Africa: In 2003, China turned into a net food importer, making it vulnerable and keen to establish a 'food storage' in Africa. As Brautigam's account from Sierra Leone shows, land is a sensitive aspect and Chinese large-scale farming may lead to political tension. While Brautigam argues that the numbers of Chinese who have permanently settled in Africa is often exaggerated, she agrees that poor governance makes the current land rush worrisome, especially considering Sub-Saharan Africa's history of land-based inequality.

In Chapter 11, the author methodically analyzes a list of "myths" about China's involvement in Africa. Rather than arguing that China's activities are entirely unproblematic, she nicely shows how black-and-white depictions of an altruistic West and an evil China are far off the mark. In the same way, Western assertions that China is only in Africa to "gobble up its natural resources" (as The Economist writes) ignore a much more complex reality. In some instances, the opposite is true: In Nigeria, Chinese companies are active in all sectors of the economy, while Western companies focus mostly on oil. The Western belief that Beijing somehow directs Chinese companies according to a master-plan is equally mistaken: Most Chinese companies are independent and free to sell their produce to the highest bidder. China's supposedly negative impact on human rights and democracy in Africa is also questionable: While it is true that Chinese investors worry little about such issues, neither do many Western firms. Regarding aid, the author rightly points out that Cameroon and Ethiopia, hardly beacons of democracy, are among the West's largest aid recipients. Similarly, tales that China alonehelped  Mugabe's brutal regime survive in Zimbabwe are hardly sustainable, although its sales of weapons to Mugabe were indeed deplorable. One may argue that rather than making certain problems such as repression and corruption in Africa worse, China has done little to make it better.

The book's overall assessment of the dragon's gift to Africa is thus ambiguous, but it has a strongly positive connotation. After all, she rightly notes, China has succeeded in lifting millions out of poverty at home (largely without foreign aid), something that decades of Western aid have failed to achieve in Africa. China may therefore offer some useful lessons to African governments.

Brautigam is a pioneer in the field (as well as a great adventurer, as her entertaining anecdotes attest), and her book has turned into a reference work indispensable for all those who seek to understand the momentous shift that is taking place in Africa.
Deborah Brautigam

International Development, Governance, China and Africa
https://deborahbrautigam.com/

Deborah Brautigam is the Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy and Director of the International Development Program (IDEV), and the China Africa Research Initiative (CARI) at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, DC.  A leading expert on China in Africa, Professor Brautigam is the author of The Dragon's Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa (Oxford University Press, 2010; Chinese version published by Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Press) and Chinese Aid and African Development : Exporting Green Revolution (St. Martin’s Press, 1998). She is also co-editor of Taxation and State-Building: Capacity and Consent (Cambridge University Press, 2008) as well as numerous articles published in academic journals and public affairs media. Professor Brautigam regularly advises international agencies and governments on China-Africa economic engagement. Her newest book, Will Africa Feed China?, was published in 2015 by Oxford University Press. It focuses on the question of “land grabs”, food security, and Chinese agribusiness investment in Africa.

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About OLIVER STUENKELOliver Stuenkel

Oliver Della Costa Stuenkel is an Associate Professor of International Relations at the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV) in São Paulo, where he coordinates the São Paulo branch of the School of History and Social Science and the executive program in International Relations. He is also a non-resident Fellow at the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi) in Berlin and a columnist for EL PAÍS and Americas Quarterly. His research focuses on Brazil’s, India’s and China's foreign policy and on their impact on global governance. He is the author of IBSA: The rise of the Global South?(Routledge Global Institutions, 2014), BRICS and the Future of Global Order (Lexington, 2015) andPost-Western World (Polity, 2016) (Amazon Author Page). He is currently writing a book on Brazil's role in Latin American politics. 
China and Africa: What the U.S. doesn't understand
By KEITH PROCTOR  July 2, 2013
http://fortune.com/2013/07/02/china-and-africa-what-the-u-s-doesnt-understand/

FORTUNE — Over the weekend U.S. President Barack Obama, on a three-country visit to Africa that concludes tomorrow, denied that America felt threatened by China’s rising influence on the continent.

Cue the eye-rolling.

Recent stories published by CNN (“Obama’s Goal in Africa: Counter China”), the Financial Times (“Obama’s trip to Africa is too little – and very late”), and the GlobalPost (“Obama in Africa: China 1, US 0”) share a theme: While American administrations dithered, or were tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Chinese have been setting up shop in the 21st Century’s next great growth region.

Seven out of the world’s 10 fastest growing economies are African. According to a 2010 report by consulting firm McKinsey & Company, the rate of return on foreign investments in Africa was, in the first decade of this century, higher than in any other region. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) projected that Africa is now growing faster than Asia.

MORE: Why President Obama is skipping Kenya

Sino-African trade volumes have grown accordingly. Negligible in 2000, trade hit $198.5 billion in 2012. By comparison, U.S.-Africa trade volume was $108.9 billon, and is slated to fall further behind: Research from Standard Chartered estimates that trade between China and Africa will hit $385 billion by 2015.

Dogged by criticism that Beijing is eating Africa’s lunch, China’s relationship with Africa is complex and too often distorted by myth. Here are five examples of how we tend to get it wrong.

“It’s all about oil”

Yes, Africa’s natural resources are important to Beijing. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, roughly a third of China’s crude oil imports come from sub-Saharan Africa. However, Chinese investment in Africa is far more diverse than some of the rhetoric suggests.

According to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in 2009 only about 29% of China’s foreign direct investment (FDI) went to the extractive industries. By contrast, in the same year, mining accounted for about 60% of U.S. FDI to Africa. Meanwhile, China — which was called out last weekend by President Obama for not building enough plants in Africa — invested more in manufacturing, and in African jobs, than the U.S.

“The new kid in town”

While the past decade has witnessed dramatic growth in Sino-African trade, Beijing’s engagement in Africa is nothing new. The modern association between China and Africa stretches back to the 1950s, when the People’s Republic of China competed with Taiwan for recognition as the “real” China. As African states won independence — and would come to populate about a quarter of the UN’s membership seats — Beijing was anxious to isolate Taipei while building development relationships.

Deborah Brautigam, a Johns Hopkins China scholar, contends that Beijing’s “one-China” policy continues to shape its African investments. Aid is primarily a diplomatic tool. As a consequence, Beijing offers development aid of some sort to every country with which it maintains relations (oddly including countries, like South Africa, which has a higher per capita GDP than China). Aid is part of a historical and diplomatic narrative, not simply a stratagem for snapping up Africa’s resources.

“Africa for sale? Sold, to Beijing.”

One might have the impression of Beijing as evil mastermind: marshaling state resources for the colonization of Africa. From reading some reports, one might think that’s already happened. There are two points to make.

First, the scope of Beijing’s investments in Africa are often grossly embellished. Good numbers simply aren’t available. Beijing does not release aid figures, and China Exim Bank and China Development bank, the main lenders, publish no data. Most estimates are exaggerations, resulting from double counting and over-broad definitions that count all state-sponsored economic activity as “aid.” According to Brautigam, the AidData estimate that Chinese aid to Africa is around $75 billion — widely reported — is rubbish.

MORE: Solar energy: African economies’ secret weapon

While China’s African aid data may be exaggerated, Brautigam writes that in 2010 the U.S. disbursed more in official finance to Africa than China. Furthermore, according to U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) data for 2007-2011, American FDI to the continent was bigger than Beijing's.

Second, Chinese aid and investment actors are organizationally stove-piped. Often the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. Rather than acting in a unitary fashion, China in Africa is made up of many little actors. And those actors don’t coordinate aid-investment policy. In other words, China doesn’t build a hospital to win a mining concession.

This is not to say that Chinese dealings in Africa should be generalized as benign — only that it’s hard to generalize at all. The spectrum of Sino-African interactions is broad. It ranges from a Chinese commitment to build dozens of malaria clinics across the continent, to Chinese managers opening fire on protesting miners in Zambia. In Africa, China has many faces.

“Patron of pariah states”

One of those faces: patron of authoritarian regimes. Beijing has a reputation for supporting tyrants much of the West wouldn’t touch. For its part, Beijing invokes a “non-interference” policy to excuse itself from domestic entanglements. Non-interference is a fiction — while one may claim neutrality, investment always props up, insulates, and enriches the elites.

Yet the West should be careful of invoking a double standard. As documented by the Human Rights Watch, Ethiopia — an autocratic, one-party state — has not only been supported by Western aid, but used that aid as a tool of oppression: by withholding it from dissenters and non-party members.

Even where Western donors, like the World Bank or IMF, make loans conditional on good governance, Western trade and investment actors are more freewheeling. Unless official sanctions prevent them from doing so, American and European commercial banks extend loans where they see an opportunity for profit. Such loans do not hinge on good behavior.

“Those poor, helpless Africans”

Africans are not passive victims. Often they are savvy brokers and, in their dealings with Beijing, secure good deals. When they can, they shrewdly play outsiders against one another. For example, there is abundant international competition in resource-rich Angola, whose president famously warned his Chinese counterpart, “You are not our only friends.”

Occasionally, perhaps, African states get the short end of the stick — yet more often it seems they are simply overwhelmed by the volume of new business. As the Economist recently reported, rules in African countries may exist to protect workers and the environment, but institutions are often too weak to enforce them. Undoubtedly, some Chinese entrepreneurs take advantage, and occasionally that results in violent flare-ups, as it did last year over illegal mining in Ghana.

MORE: Welcome to the Great, Global Business Revolution

Yet despite concerns that Beijing antagonizes locals, there is no data to suggest xenophobia in Africa is on the rise. Reports that Chinese firms don’t hire African workers appear to be unfounded. And while extensive polls are not regularly conducted, a 2007 Pew Center Research survey found that in a range of African countries — Ivory Coast, Mali, Kenya, Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Ethiopia — between 67% and 92% of respondents held a favorable view of Beijing.

Africa: Prepped for Takeoff

This one isn’t a myth. By many estimates, including a recent study by the World Bank, Africa is primed for impressive economic growth. After decades of poor health, epidemic underdevelopment, and political instability, the continent may finally be positioned to join the global economy. This would be cause for celebration. And regardless of the U.S.’s role in Africa’s rise, we can surmise this: Beijing is committed to be more than a spectator.

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