Global and local challenges and opportunities : reflections on China and the governance of African natural resources

• Main Authors: Alden, Chris, Alves, Ana Cristina
• Other Authors: Grant, J. Andrew
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Palgrave Macmillan UK 2020
• Subjects: Social sciences::Political science; China; Africa
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/143852
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

China’s three decades of unbroken growth, transforming it from an economic backwater to the world’s second largest economy, has fuelled an ever-expanding demand for energy, strategic minerals and new markets (Downs, 2004: 21-41; Oliveira, 2008: 83-109). The promulgation of the government’s ‘going out’ strategy, whereby over a hundred restructured state-owned enterprises have been given the legal and administrative means, preferential access to finance, and diplomatic support necessary to break into markets outside of China, has been the main policy response to this need. Given the financial resources of what by 2006 had become the world’s largest holder of foreign reserves (over US$3 trillion as of mid 2012) and applying these to the problem of carving out a position in the energy and strategic minerals markets was, in retrospect, fairly straight forward solution to this dilemma in a capital-starved African environment.