Conference report "A Chinese scramble for Africa?" now available

The report from the conference ​“A Chinese Scramble? The Politics of Contemporary China-Africa Relations” held on 12 – 13 July 2006 at Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge is now available. The conference was organized by GPPi fellow Ricardo Soares De Oliveira (Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge) in cooperation with Daniel Large (PhD Candidate, SOAS) and Christopher Alden (Senior Lecturer in International Relations, LSE, and Research Associate at the University of Pretoria). It attracted a wide variety of speakers and participants from Europe, China, America, and different African countries.

The overarching aim of this conference was to deepen and broaden analysis of ​‘China in Africa’ beyond current media-driven preoccupations with a ​‘Chinese scramble’ or African variations on the familiar theme of the ​‘China threat’. It also aimed to bridge the prevailing academic divide between those who deal with African issues and those who study China. Exchange between these broad and eclectic communities has been generally limited to date, as much of the analysis by Africanists betrays an understandable lack of familiarity with the Chinese context and vice-versa. The conference report was written by Daniel Large and is published in the current issue of African Affairs.