Chris Alden: China And ‘An Africa That Can Say No’

From the Daily Champion, via Allafrica.com

While the drive to secure energy resources is at the heart of Beijing’s renewed engagement with Africa, there is nonetheless a growing depth and complexity to relations that bears closer analysis. In particular, China’s role in the Sudan crisis, where it has supported a military regime accused of perpetrating a humanitarian crisis has cast a new and, for many, disturbing light on Chinese activities in Africa. [The United Nations released an investigation report on February 1 2005 on the situation in Darfur.]

The need on the part of Africans to understand China and its motives for engagement with the continent is now greater than ever before.