Still scrambling

SINCE the late 1990s China has been hoovering up the world’s oil and mineral deposits to sustain its rise to the top table of world manufacturing. The resource-hungry Asian country gets its raw materials from wherever it can, and asks few questions along the way. Nowhere has this been more true than in Africa; many noted the moment in 2006 when Angola surpassed Saudi Arabia as China’s largest supplier of oil.

In this short and readable book, Chris Alden, a British academic who specialises in Asian-African relations, provides a clear overview of China’s involvement with Africa, a relationship that is having a huge impact both on the country and the continent.


Some themes, such as China’s acceptance of human-rights abuses by several African regimes that it supports, have been aired before. But Mr Alden has been lucky with his timing here; he has been able to record the beginnings of what could be a significant shift on this, and other issues, by China, particularly in regard to Sudan.

China has prided itself on a policy of non-interference in the countries that it does business with (unlike those nasty old Western imperialists). But in the last year it is clear that it has been forced to review this attitude; China has joined the Western chorus in pushing Sudan into accepting a big UN force in Darfur, whereas before it spent years shielding the government in Khartoum from Western pressure, especially at the Security Council.

The Economist