ABSTRACT
The increase in China's economic and political involvement in Africa has excited a lot of commentary, particularly in the media. One of the factors that have seemingly generated a lot of criticism against China in Africa is the claim that Beijing is pursuing a politico-economic model that is radically different from the West and thus threatens to destabilise Western capitalist interests. Bureaucratic interests, domestic politics, corruption and other pathologies of China's capitalist development, as well as the increasing diversity in Beijing's foreign-policy procedures, all coalesce to undermine the notion of a unitary Chinese state relentlessly pushing forward a single agenda in Africa. The idea of the strategic use of economic relations by Beijing as a means of achieving power-politics objectives thus needs to be treated with caution. It is important not to overestimate the degree to which the Chinese state has been able to control and direct the evolution of its international economic relations.
