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The Dragon's Gift China Summary

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The Dragon's Gift China Summary
In the past few years, the question of the rising influence of China in Africa has been raised multiple times by newspapers such as The Economist1 and even in the European Union2.
The activities of China in African countries bring forward many concerns and suspicions over the real reason for Sino-African interactions. Those questions include: Does Africa actually benefit from Chinese investments?, What is China really doing in Africa?, What does this mean for the future of aid?, Will China’s activity in Africa threaten Western efforts to improve human rights, good governance and democracy?

In “The Dragon’s Gift: the real story of China in Africa”, Deborah Brautigam tries to demystify China’s involvement in Africa. Brautigam uses empirical evidence as well as anecdotes to imply that China and Africa mutually benefit from China’s …show more content…
This is very well portrayed by the case of Angola.
Despite being a country full of natural resources, Angola has suffered decades of instability due to the Cold War resulting in a corrupt government, an important debt and damaged infrastructure.
China was accused by the International Monetary Fund of worsening the situation by offering a « no-string attached » deal, putting the intentions to improve Angola’s transparency and corruption in jeopardy.
The reality is that China’s loan was meant to rebuild Angola’s damaged infrastructure; rebuilding bridges, building roads and schools. It was however a low-interest loan guaranteed by oil revenue. One the other hand, Western banks gave high-interest loans to Angola in no way intending to ameliorate its transparency and corruption.Those banks even exported Angola’s oil effectively supporting its already corrupt and oil-rich government.
An other claim regularly made, is that China only invests in African development to export Africa’s ressources back, again Brautigman uses the case of Angola to counter this
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