China in Africa
Christopher Ransom

On October 24, 2013, Professor Deborah Brautigam, from the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, spoke on China’s impact in Africa. She began by discussing China’s thirst for resources in the area and how it was evident from her very first visit to Liberia in 1983. Professor Brautigam has written two books on the subject: Chinese aid and African Development and The Dragon’s Gift, so she seems to be a very reliable source of information. Initially one would think that the involvement is very big with twenty-five big dams built by Chinese funding, but a closer look shows that only five of the twenty-five were actually relevant operations of the Chinese. With that said, she did say that the engagement with Africa does present a very difficult situation with the tree and ivory demand of China. The high demand of both these goods makes for a very unhealthy and dangerous situation to the environment of Africa. Professor Brautigam then spoke on the partnership of China and Sudan and the deadliness of this. China is the largest supplier of guns to Africa. It goes without saying that this is not a good thing and results in a very dangerous atmosphere. Even with all of the downsides to the partnership of China and Africa Professor Brautigam did want to strip away all of the myths of the relationship. To begin she discussed how long they have been there, which has been since about the 1950s and has really ramped up the pressure since 2006. The next question answered was why is China in Africa to begin with? For the most part it is for resources but they also are there to promote strategic diplomacy, business, trade, and infrastructure contracts. China is one of the biggest providers of rebuilding conflict areas with infrastructure. It is very hard to determine who finances these projects because much of Chinese money is kept in offshore accounts and cannot be traced, but the biggest investment for the Chinese is South Africa’s Standard Bank, which is about 5.4 billion dollars. The main cause for all of these investments seems to be the fact that China is eating more meat and more imported foods. There is not really a concerted effort to acquire land and send it back to China. All in all, Professor Brautigam described the presence in Africa as a lot more like the United States and Japan’s approach to Africa. She went so far as to use a quote from John Pompert that, “inflating the challenge from China could be just as dangerous as understanding it.” This pretty much sums up what she is saying in the fact that we should not worry about the relationship, yet. The lecture was extremely informative and very entertaining.