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The increasing presence in recent years of China, India and Brazil, among others, in Africa, has challenged the dominance of the West on a variety of fronts. African nations today have simply more choice--from markets to sources of aid, from political support to models of economic development. Against this backdrop, it is also not surprising that writings on China-Africa relations have expanded rapidly--many are increasingly works that are the result of collaboration between Western, Chinese and African scholars and across disciplinary backgrounds and specialisations that are introducing complexity and nuance into China-Africa studies. The work under review is one such with the added feature of fielding an Indian author.
One of the editors Li Xing opens the book with an Introduction co-written with Timothy Shaw that is based on Karl Polanyi's theoretical formulation of the 'great transformation'--a source also for the volume's title. They note that '[t]he Polanyian era of market capitalism was remarkably different from the current era of transnational capitalism' (p. 3) that is founded on several varieties of not just capitalism but also of states, societies, economies and governance. And this, really, is the crux of the issue at hand--that China, and Africa, too represent these varieties in their respective growth and rise to prominence on the global stage. China-Africa relations in the post-Mao era have meanwhile, shifted from their previous ideological focus to imparting greater economic content (even as old political standards such as adherence to the one-China policy remain). And in this shift, not only have Chinese enterprises established themselves in Africa but so also have Confucius Institutes in an expression of Chinese soft power.
Against this backdrop, many Western observers view China's increasing presence in Africa not only as a threat to the West but also as damaging to the continent itself. Li and Shaw analyse this debate briefly suggesting that much of this view is based on unfounded assumptions even as the Chinese themselves have much to answer for due to their general lack of transparency and inability to fit their own working styles with generally accepted styles of working in Africa.
This takes us to the chapter on China's aid and trade in Africa by Ashley Kim Stewart and Li Xing which notes that despite their differences...