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China Safari International Edition

By Paolo Woods, Serge Michel, Michel Beuret

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| Others | 9781568586069

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Book Description

China has now taken Great Britain's place as Africa's third largest business partner. Where others only see chaos, the Chinese see opportunities.

1 Review

For me, this book is quite an eye opener on the state of Sino - African relationship as well as to the power and reach of modern day China.The book is well written and in my view, "balanced" in its portrayal of China both as a partner and exploiter of Africa. However, I should also say that the auth ... (continue)

For me, this book is quite an eye opener on the state of Sino - African relationship as well as to the power and reach of modern day China.The book is well written and in my view, "balanced" in its portrayal of China both as a partner and exploiter of Africa. However, I should also say that the authors show a woefully and pathetically little understanding of Chinese culture and by extension, the Chinese psyche, which is understandable since the authors are journalists and not anthropologists per se. The authors first provided a micro view of China in Africa, which though balanced tends to be skewed to the negative either due to their personal bias or due to lack of understanding of Chinese culture. This is followed in the latter half (more like latter third) of the book which focused more on the macro aspect of the Sino - African relationship. This is the part wherein the views are more accurately balanced as the authors frame the relationship on a more historical and political - economic context. Because of such structure of the book, I wouldn't strongly recommend this book to the casual reader as the casual reader could be strongly influenced by the first part of the book. I would however, recommend that interested reader to first gain a rudimentary understanding of colonial and post colonial Africa so as to better form an opinion on the subject matter. On a more personal note, I find some of the descriptions of Chinese made by Africans regarding their attitude, their work ethics, their relationship with the locals to be eerily familiar being myself a descendant of Chinese immigrants. As such, I would rather view the comments both disparaging and praiseworthy on a social - cultural context rather than on a economic - political one as expounded by the authors

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Atlas said on Oct 14, 2011 | Add your feedback