China's Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building

China's Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa

An exciting, hugely revealing account of Chinaâ€™s burgeoning presence in Africaâ€”a developing empire already shaping, and reshaping, the future of millions of people.
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A prizewinning foreign correspondent and former New York Times bureau chief in Shanghai and in West and Central Africa, Howard French is uniquely positioned to tell the story of China in Africa. Through meticulous on-the-ground reportingâ€”conducted in Mandarin, French, and Portuguese, among other languagesâ€”French crafts a layered investigation of astonishing depth and breadth as he engages not only with policy-shaping moguls and diplomats, but also with the Â ordinary men and women navigating the street-level realities of cooperation, prejudice, corruption, and opportunity forged by this seismic geopolitical development. With incisiveness and empathy, French reveals the human face of Chinaâ€™s economic, political, and human presence across the African continentâ€”and in doing so reveals what is at stake for everyone involved.
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We meet a broad spectrum of Chinaâ€™s dogged emigrant population, from those singlehandedly reshaping African infrastructure, commerce, and even environment (a self-made tycoon who harnessed Zambiaâ€™s now-booming copper trade; a timber entrepreneur determined to harvest the entirety of Liberiaâ€™s old-growth redwoods), to those just barely scraping by (a sibling pair running small businesses despite total illiteracy; a karaoke bar ownerâ€“cumâ€“brothel madam), still convinced that Africa affords them better opportunities than their homeland. And we encounter an equally panoramic array of African responses: a citizensâ€™ backlash in Senegal against a â€œTrojan horseâ€ Chinese construction project (a tower complex to be built over a beloved soccer field, which locals thought would lead to overbearing Chinese pressure on their economy); a Zambian political candidate who, having protested Chinaâ€™s intrusiveness during the previous election and lost, now turns accommodating; the ascendant middle class of an industrial boomtown; African mine workers bitterly condemning their foreign employers, citing inadequate safety precautions and wages a fraction of their immigrant counterpartsâ€™.

Frenchâ€™s nuanced portraits reveal the paradigms forming around this new world order, from the all-too-familiar echoes of colonial ambitionâ€”exploitation of resources and labor; cut-rate infrastructure projects; dubious treatiesâ€”to new frontiers of cultural and economic exchange, where dichotomies of suspicion and trust, assimilation and isolation, idealism and disillusionment are in dynamic flux.
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Part intrepid travelogue, part cultural census, part industrial and political exposÃ©, Frenchâ€™s keenly observed account ultimately offers a fresh perspective on the most pressing unknowns of modern Sino-African relations: why China is making the incursions it is, just how extensive its cultural and economic inroads are, what Africaâ€™s role in the equation is, and just what the ramifications for both partiesâ€”and the watching worldâ€”will be in the foreseeable future.
Country USA
Brand Knopf
Manufacturer Knopf
Binding Hardcover
ItemPartNumber 9780307956989
ReleaseDate 2014-05-20
UnitCount 1
Format Deckle Edge
UPCs 884666176343
EANs 9780307956989

Country	USA
Brand	Knopf
Manufacturer	Knopf
Binding	Hardcover
ItemPartNumber	9780307956989
ReleaseDate	2014-05-20
UnitCount	1
Format	Deckle Edge
UPCs	884666176343
EANs	9780307956989

China's Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa

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