China's Aid and Soft Power in Africa: The Case of Education and Training

摘要

Written by an expert on education for development in sub-Saharan Africa, China's Aid and Soft Power in Africa is a very timely and valuable addition not only to the scholarship on human resource development in Africa but also to the fast-growing literature on Sino-African relations, which, despite the magnitude and speed of its development, still sorely lacks empirically grounded studies. The book analyses critical aspects (modalities and motivations) of China's support for human resource development in Africa. King takes into consideration official discourses and real practices in an attempt to explain how concepts as disparate as aid, cooperation and soft power are articulated and how they can - if at all - co-exist in the context of education and training exchanges. King presents a very detailed comparative analysis of primary sources and then sets it against extensive fieldwork findings focusing on five main issues: higher education partnerships (chapter two); African students in China (chapter three); Chinese enterprise and capacity development (chapter four); China and traditional donors (chapter five); and soft power (chapter six). The red thread is an ultimate comparison between traditional donors' modus operandi that is geared towards "poverty reduction" whereby "the rich help the poor, as a charity" (p. 4) and China's own view of aid, one that evolved out of South-South cooperation and is aimed at helping African nations to "embark step by step on the road of self-reliance and independent economic development" (p. 4， quoting from the PRC ministry of foreign affairs publication Premier Zhou Enlai's Three Tours of Asian and African Countries, Beijing, 2000).