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In recent years, no aspect of the People's Republic of China's (PRC) foreign relations has captured the public's interest more than Sino-African relations. It is to this topical subject area that Ian Taylor's new book, China's New Role in Africa, seeks to contribute. It is worth pointing out that the recent (more populist) literature on Sino-African relations has often originated from the United States and is written in the context of increasing anxiety - particularly since the rise of anti-American sentiment that resulted from the George W. Bush administration's unilateralist policies - that the USA is on the decline and about to be replaced by China as the new hegemon. This literature has thus (not surprisingly) tended to offer myopic analyses that vastly exaggerate the 'threat' that the PRC poses to American and Western interests in Africa.
Taylor, who is one of the few long-established observers of Sino-African relations, is justifiably critical of the often hyperbolic nature of the recent...