The Silliness Of "China In Africa"

So far (and still) African states are seen as exploited by China, a country whose political and economic power supersedes their own. In this way, they are relegated to passive actors in the relationship. Yet African states are not, and never have been, passive. Historically, the continent’s many countries have employed various diplomatic tactics to advance their political and economic agendas. French Africanist Jean-Francois Bayart famously argues that African governments participate in global affairs through ‘extraversion:’ academic parlance for a variety of precolonial strategies—coercion, mediation, appropriation, rejection, flight, trickery—aimed at remaking constraints brought on by unequal power relations into opportunities....READ FULL STORY