Clever communist capitalists

Remember the lurid warnings suggesting that China was on the march in Africa, busy providing foreign aid and long-term contracts designed to corner the market in strategic commodities? As Jeffrey Herbst and Greg Mills show here, such concerns appear to have been misplaced. Not only has the recent economic downturn been a disaster for African ...

Walt-Steve-foreign-policy-columnist20
Walt-Steve-foreign-policy-columnist20
Stephen M. Walt
By , a columnist at Foreign Policy and the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.

Remember the lurid warnings suggesting that China was on the march in Africa, busy providing foreign aid and long-term contracts designed to corner the market in strategic commodities?

Remember the lurid warnings suggesting that China was on the march in Africa, busy providing foreign aid and long-term contracts designed to corner the market in strategic commodities?

As Jeffrey Herbst and Greg Mills show here, such concerns appear to have been misplaced. Not only has the recent economic downturn been a disaster for African states dependent on commodity exports, it has also produced a rapid retrenchment on the part of Chinese investors. Money quote:

The market, not grand strategy, is the Chinese motivation in Africa."

Assuming China continues to develop economically, realist theory would lead us to expect the United States and China to become serious competitors at some point in the future. See here. But let’s not jump the gun, or assume that everything they do reflects some nefarious desire to gain the upper hand.

Stephen M. Walt is a columnist at Foreign Policy and the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University. Twitter: @stephenwalt

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