Abstract
China’s accelerated engagement in Africa is arguably the foremost single factor that has elevated Africa’s position in contemporary international relations. Following decades of comparative obscurity, China’s relations with Africa have become a regular feature of media coverage, academic research, and policy engagement, not to mention burgeoning business connections. Commentators from diverse quarters have ascribed varying perspectives about the nature and significance of the non-Western agency represented by China’s involvement. One widely articulated theme is that the Chinese engagement is transformative not merely in potential but also in concrete actuality. If it maybe premature to assert such grand proclamations as those that contend Africa is “undergoing a transformation as momentous as decolonization,” it can certainly be said that “the Chinese are penetrating the imagination of an entire continent.”1
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Notes
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© 2010 Jack Mangala
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Large, D. (2010). Africa’s International China Relations: Contending Imaginaries and Changing Politics. In: Mangala, J. (eds) Africa and the New World Era. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230117303_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230117303_6
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