The Grand Weiqi Board: Reconsidering China's Role in Africa

Abstract

China�s deepening engagement with Africa is attracting growing interest because it holds clues to the way in which China is managing its emerging power status. The prevailing analyses of the Sino-African relationship, however, tend to focus almost exclusively on its economic dimensions, identifying resource extraction and market access as the primary motivations for Chinese activities in Africa. While there is a confluence of interest between China�s need for raw materials to support its domestic economy and Africa�s desire for increased investment to fund development, it is argued here that China�s interest in Africa also derives from the role the continent plays in China�s grand strategy. China is structuring its relationship with Africa to erode the very axioms that underpin the current global order, posing a fundamental challenge to Western hegemony. China is strengthening its ability to achieve its broader strategic goal of crafting a Beijing Consensus that can successfully challenge, if not usurp, the prevailing Washington Consensus.