An exciting, hugely revealing account of Chinaβs burgeoning presence in Africaβa developing empire already shaping, and reshaping, the future of millions of people.
A prizewinning foreign correspondent and former New York Times bureau chief in Shanghai and in West and Central Africa, Howard French is uniquely positioned to tell the story of China in Africa. Through meticulous on-the-ground reportingβconducted in Mandarin, French, and Portuguese, among other languagesβFrench crafts a layered investigation of astonishing depth and breadth as he engages not only with policy-shaping moguls and diplomats, but also with the ordinary men and women navigating the street-level realities of cooperation, prejudice, corruption, and opportunity forged by this seismic geopolitical development. With incisiveness and empathy, French reveals the human face of Chinaβs economic, political, and human presence across the African continentβand in doing so reveals what is at stake for everyone involved.
We meet a broad spectrum of Chinaβs dogged emigrant population, from those singlehandedly reshaping African infrastructure, commerce, and even environment (a self-made tycoon who harnessed Zambiaβs now-booming copper trade; a timber entrepreneur determined to harvest the entirety of Liberiaβs old-growth redwoods), to those just barely scraping by (a sibling pair running small businesses despite total illiteracy; a karaoke bar ownerβcumβbrothel madam), still convinced that Africa affords them better opportunities than their homeland. And we encounter an equally panoramic array of African responses: a citizensβ backlash in Senegal against a βTrojan horseβ Chinese construction project (a tower complex to be built over a beloved soccer field, which locals thought would lead to overbearing Chinese pressure on their economy); a Zambian political candidate who, having protested Chinaβs intrusiveness during the previous election and lost, now turns accommodating; the ascendant middle class of an industrial boomtown; African mine workers bitterly condemning their foreign employers, citing inadequate safety precautions and wages a fraction of their immigrant counterpartsβ.
Frenchβs nuanced portraits reveal the paradigms forming around this new world order, from the all-too-familiar echoes of colonial ambitionβexploitation of resources and labor; cut-rate infrastructure projects; dubious treatiesβto new frontiers of cultural and economic exchange, where dichotomies of suspicion and trust, assimilation and isolation, idealism and disillusionment are in dynamic flux.
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