China's Power Surge in Africa: Explaining Chinese Rules of Engagement and its Penetration across Africa

Abstract

This paper casts a critical view on the problem of expansion of the People's Republic of China (PRC) on the African continent. It examines the impending implications and consequences of the engagements of African countries with the PRC by and large as the PRC continues to amass influence in the African continent. In order to assess this problem comprehensively, as well as address the neo-colonial theories often employed by Western leaning scholars to characterize the nature of Sino-African relationship, an analysis of the prerequisites for cooperation between the PRC and African countries is carried out. Pragmatic and quantitative methodologies were employed to demonstrate the peculiarities of trade, economic and humanitarian relations between the PRC and African countries. The use of the methods of dialectics and comparative analysis allowed contrasting the model of the foreign economic strategy of the PRC and some Western countries with regard to African states. The most promising areas of relations between the PRC and African countries in the framework of implementation of global geoeconomic strategy of the PRC – the New Silk Road and Maritime Silk Road were established. The mechanisms of the expansion of the PRC on the African continent through direct trade with further penetration of Chinese capital into key sectors of African economies have been revised. This gives grounds for further studies of Chinese-African relations, as well as for strengthening the role of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation and the role of the PRC in regional African organizations.

Keywords: China-Africa relations, Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), foreign trade balance, investment, trade expansion.