Setting up shop: the far-reaching implications of China's burgeoning presence in Africa.

• Author: Corcoran, Michael R.

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

By Howard W. French

(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014), 285 pages.

In the past decade, China's investment in Africa increased from about $77 million to a staggering $2.9 billion. (1) Also, China-Africa trade has surged to about $160 billion per year, a twenty-fold increase from what it was ten years ago. (2) It is not surprising that the first-ever overseas trip of Chinese leader Xi Jinping was to Africa. (3) Today, more than a million Chinese migrants call Africa home, most of them laborers who first arrived in Africa to work on large, Chinese-backed construction projects. (4) Many of these Chinese companies employ far more of their own citizens to work in these laborious jobs than Western companies do. While the financial flow and migration figures from China to Africa are hard to pin down, what is clear is that Chinese people and money have surged into Africa over the past decade. Hunger for Africa's raw materials partially explains China's growing interest in the continent, but are there other intentions? What becomes difficult to understand is whether the Chinese movement into Africa is part of an organic movement sparked by Chinese individuals who merely seek greater wealth, opportunity, and freedom, or if it is instead part of a carefully designed foreign policy directed by Beijing to spread and strengthen "Chinese values" and dominate a resource-rich continent (as Europeans did in the nineteenth century).

In his fascinating book China's Second Continent, Howard French takes a worm's-eye view of the Chinese presence in Africa. Exploring the lives of some of the million-plus Chinese immigrants on the African continent, French brings to life what is really animating in this burgeoning twenty-first century relationship: the people. We see the real lives of Chinese who have uprooted to Africa and the growing African backlash against them. French is aptly placed for such a story, having served as the New York Times bureau chief in both West Africa and China. (5) He has a well-tested understanding of both African and Chinese life, and his fluency in Chinese lends true authority to interviews captured in his book. French invites the reader along as he follows various unpredictable journeys during a year-long excursion through nine countries across Africa. It makes for an exciting and evenhanded account, which effectively illustrates his points...