ABSTRACT
The chapter looks at the evolution of China–Africa relationships from the perspective of African agency. The question of how African actors shape the relationships with a variety of Chinese actors has recently received more interest from researchers. One analytical challenge in using the concept is that agency remains closely related to the structural environment, which both enables and restricts such agency. In discussing African agency vis-à-vis China the chapter argues that the domestic political environment of African states offers strongly varying contexts for state elites to exert agency. African states and regimes have followed different paths, either moving in a liberal–democratic trajectory, sticking to a more neopatrimonial and clientelist form of governance, or opting for a developmentalist authoritarianism. African elites will thus rely on traditional strategies of extraversion to secure short-term benefits derived from Chinese infrastructure in the neopatrimonial trajectory. In the democratic model, political accountability will create incentives for elected leaders to take into account legitimate or more populist grievances against Chinese living in the country, while in the authoritarian–developmental model, China will serve as a source of emulation and legitimization.
