Shaping the Future of Power. Knowledge Production and Network-Building in China-Africa Relations

Connections. A Journal for Historians and Area Specialists. 2022. Vol. 63. No. 6. P. 202–204.

Dontsov A.

This is a must-read book as it questions the classical Western understanding of how Chinese foreign policy is conducted in Africa. The author, Lina Benabdallah, is an assistant professor of politics and international affairs at Wake Forest University. In this book, she expounds on China’s foreign policy in Africa via the lens of increasing relational connections between China and the African continent. The main argument is that in contrast to the “traditional understanding” of power, as well as to the Western view of international relations capital, China’s African strategy cannot be accurately measured with the same instruments and concepts because its investments in human resource development programmes achieve results by different means, and therefore understanding power as relational and social will allow for a better examination of China’s foreign policy. To analyse her argument, the author introduces a framework to comprehend the role of social networks and relational capital in foreign policy-making.

Keywords: actor-network theory, knowledge production and diffusion, China-Africa relations