For the past three decades, Sino-African relations have attracted widespread coverage for the political, economic, and diplomatic engagements between African countries and China, as well as grassroots interactions and encounters between Africans and Chinese. Such engagements and interactions feature controversies, tensions, and biases fueled by the subjective viewpoints of various actors and observers. China in Africa examines these issues following interviews with African and Chinese policymakers, diplomats, professionals, and corporate managers. It also includes discussions, observations, and interviews with the members of the general public in Senegal, Namibia, and South Africa, as well as in China. It includes four key areas of Sino-African relations: economic relations, environmental and sustainable development issues, African migration to China, and Chinese migration to Africa.

Running like a red thread through this book are the manifestations of Sino-African relations dating back many centuries. In this way, The Rise and Decline and Rise of China: Searching for an Organising Philosophy takes forward the work MISTRA conducted on the Mapungubwe society, one of the advanced states that existed in southern Africa some 800 years ago, and which enjoyed trade relations with China and other centres in the East. Mapungubwe rose and fell, long before European colonial incursions. Other states emerged in the vicinity, but they also suffered the same fate. When do southern Africa and Africa at large rise again? Are there lessons that the continent can draw from the experience of the Chinese people? If - beyond material considerations - religion, culture and ideology do play a role in the rise, decline and resurgence of a civilization, what are the similarities and contrasts between these regions? Of course, such research cannot ignore the fundamental questions: whence does the current system of social, economic and political relations in China draw its resilience, how adaptable is it, and is it sustainable? As the outcome contained in this book demonstrates, a research exercise of this kind can only be exploratory. It serves merely as a genesis to work that should find new legs. What makes this research report unique, though, is that the treatment of these issues has been undertaken primarily from an African perspective.