The impact of the Chinese engagement in southern Africa with a country focus on Nigeria (PDF)

Master's Thesis from the year 2010 in the subject African Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,0, Grenoble Ecole de Management, course: International Business, language: English, abstract: In the present 21st century the global distribution of power among countries seems to be changing. While since World War I predominantly the United States of America have begun to gain worldwide importance especially politically and economically, it is currently experiencing a slow loss of power due to a number of reasons. One of such is the development in Asia towards economic liberalization and linked with it the rise of China. In particular after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, the Asian country has introduced several reforms under its new political leader Deng Xiaoping that led to ongoing fast economic growth until today. Together with the increasing economic strength China aims for more international influence and recognition as a world power. A demonstration of such claim could be seen in the media on October 1st 2009 when China was celebrating the 60th anniversary of the finding of its People's Republic in the form of the biggest military parade ever.
In order to turn this signal of a new global distribution of power into reality, China can not solely rely on a strong economy but needs to establish international political ties too. One reason concerns the geological structure of the largest Asian country because it can be considered to be poor in natural resources. As a result it needs to secure its economy by importing those and hence in the search for international partners it decided to focus also on the African continent.
While in the beginning of the 20th century the European hegemony was unbowed in Africa and no country could withstand the traded goods from Europe this development changed drastically just six decades later. The former European dominance on the African continent yielded a rise in influence from other countries like China and India. Or more generally in the words of a Financial Times reporter: "Europe was the past, the US is the present and a China-dominated Asia the future of the global economy." If this quotation will come true remains to be seen, but China is certainly working towards that goal and among other things the (re)establishment of close relations with many African states is one part of the current governmental strategy.
The following master thesis shall be devoted to the phenomenon of China's return to the African continent since the mid 1990's. The research question which shall be answered at the end is "what is the impact of China's engagement in Sub-Saharan Africa with a country focus.