Tang Xiaoyang

African Shenzhen: China's special economic zones in Africa

This article examines recent Chinese efforts to construct a series of official economic cooperation zones in Africa. These zones are a central platform in Chinas announced strategy of engagement in Africa as ‘mutual benefit’. We analyse the background, motives and implementation of the zones, and argue that they form a unique, experimental model of development cooperation in Africa: market-based decisions and investment by Chinese companies are combined with support and subsidies from an Asian ‘developmental state’. Though this cooperation provides a promising new approach to sustainable industrialisation, we also identify serious political, economic and social challenges. Inadequate local learning and local participation could affect the ability of the zones to catalyse African industrialisation. The synergy between Chinese enterprises, the Chinese government and African governments has been evolving through practice. A case study of Egypt provides insight into this learning process.

China's Engagement in African Agriculture: “Down to the Countryside”

Agriculture is a rapidly growing arena for Chinas economic engagement in Africa. Drawing on new field research in East and West Africa, and in Beijing and Baoding, China, as well as earlier archival research, this article investigates the dimensions of Chinas agricultural engagement, placing it in historical perspective. It traces the changes and continuities in Chinas policies in rural Africa since the 1960s, as Chinese policies moved from fraternal socialism to amicable capitalism. Beginning in the 1980s, the emphasis on aid as mutual benefit began to blur the lines between aid, south–south co-operation and investment. Today, Beijing has established at least 14 new agro-technical demonstration stations using an unusual public–private model that policy makers hope will assist sustainability. At the same time, a stirring of interest among land-scarce Chinese farmers and investors in developing farms in sub-Saharan Africa evokes a mix of anticipation and unease.

Models of Chinese Engagement in Africa's Extractive Sectors and Their Implications

WWW.ENVIRONMENTMAGAZINE.ORG ENVIRONMENT 27 I n recent years, China has sourced an increasing amount of oil and minerals from Africa. China’s imports from Africa have grown from US

Economic statecraft in China's new overseas special economic zones: soft power, business or resource security?

5.43 billion in 2002 to US

China’s Investment in African Special Economic Zones: Prospects, Challenges, and Opportunities

113.2 billion in 2012; this means a 20-fold increase within a decade. In terms of value, oil and minerals account for over 60% of the total imports in 2012. Angola, Sudan, and Libya were among the major oil suppliers for China during the last decade. Angola even became China’s largest oil supplier briefly in 2008 and 2010, surpassing Saudi Arabia. China’s rapid expansion in Africa’s extractive sectors has attracted global attention. People are eager to understand how China gets natural resources from Africa and how this will impact the continent’s development. Some critics are particularly concerned that China is becoming a neo-colonialist power in Africa by taking resources away and leaving nothing behind. First, we ought to note that the trade volume of natural resources between China and Africa is not equivalent to the presence of Chinese enterprises. While the figure of trading value looks immense, Chinese companies do not have control over many oil fields or mines. Using Angola as an example, though the export to China accounted for 43% of the country’s total production of oil in 2010, Sinopec was the sole investor from mainland China in Angola’s oil sector and had shares in merely 4 blocks out of 34 in total. Moreover, it has operatorship in none of these blocks. The major foreign shareholders and operators in Angola’s oil blocks are European and U.S. giants such as BP, Chevron, and Total. The reasons are the relatively late arrival of the Chinese enterprises in Africa on the one hand, and their weakness in exploring offshore oil fields on the other hand. Nonetheless, Chinese oil companies are actively looking for opportunities to invest in Africa’s oil sector. One approach is to tap the markets where other countries’ enterprises are not present. In Sudan, from which Western companies stayed away because of political reasons, the state-owned China Oil became the majority stakeholder in eight blocks. Yet the division between South COMMENTARY