China’s development and its aid presence in Africa: A critical reflection from the perspective of development anthropology

Abstract

This paper is a preliminary reflection on China’s domestic development and its aid presence in Africa. “Development” had its day before the 1970s but then encountered de-constructive and re-constructive critics in the field of Development Anthropology. China’s conceptualization of development has not only drawn a lot from Western development discourse but also evolved with its own features, which deserve a critical reflection in terms of an “elusive discourse” and the “practical pursuit of welfare”, a seemingly paradoxical dichotomy. It follows with China’s foreign assistance or aid presence in Africa, which, the author holds, is imprinted with China’s development practice concepts and illustrated by a case of Chinese development aid in Ethiopia. The paper eventually discusses the would-be roles of Chinese anthropologists, who have been surprisingly absent in recent years, in contrast to Western academia’s intellectual tradition of widely reflecting development issues.

Keywords

Africa China development foreign aid anthropologists’ role

Introduction

China’s ascendancy at the beginning of this century has attracted the interest and vigilant concern of many Westerners. Scholars of different disciplines have flocked to such research topics as China’s economic, political, social and cultural regimes as well as its negative or positive influences. The latter is explicitly embodied as a “China Threat Theory” that is consistently articulated within Western academic or even public discussions on China’s internal development practices and external presence on other continents, especially in Africa. In light of such zealousness, China’s aid in Africa has emerged as one area of focus.

The aid¹ relationship between China and Africa is usually traced back to as early as the 1960s when China sent its first medical team to Algeria (Li, 2011). Later on, mutual cooperation was largely increased when the first PRC Premier Zhou Enlai visited African countries in 1964 and enunciated his famous “Eight Principles of Foreign Economic and Technological Assistance” in Ghana and Mali (King, 2009), which constructed the foundation of China’s foreign policies towards Africa. Since then, China–Africa relations are seen as having gone through four decade-stages starting from the 1960s to the present (Li et al., 2012), or simply two periods, that is, one under Chairman Mao before the 1970s and post-Chairman Mao after the 1980s.² No matter what periodization Chinese and Western scholars employ, it is clear that aid practices related to China (as a donor or as a recipient) are seemingly hard to categorize in terms of Western aid discourse, both practically and theoretically. It is embedded in its own development philosophy and therefore requires indigenous Chinese anthropologists’ practical involvements and academic reflections.

My argumentation of the triangle connectedness of development, aid and anthropologists’ role will correspondingly be framed upon three core presuppositions as follows.

First, the very concept of an aid relationship between China and Africa is fundamentally based on a notion of “development.” Supposing this notion is enlightened with an evolutionism that features a hierarchical movement from backward to advanced, from primitive to civilized, from poor to rich, or to use American ex-President Truman’s terms, from “underdeveloped” to “developed”, are there any disparities between Chinese and Western development discourses? How far away is the Chinese one from its Western counterpart, and what Chinese philosophical traits does it take on in the Chinese context?

Second, Chinese aid in Africa has its own uniqueness associated with its development experience and philosophical mode of thinking and doing. If so, how have Chinese aid policies evolved since the 1950s? How does China’s development experience influence its aid practices in Africa? To what extent do the Chinese cultural and philosophical ways of thinking and doing shed light on its aid policies? Do people need necessarily to highlight or even exaggerate the divergence between Western countries and China in the theory and practice of aid?

Third, development anthropology as a sub-discipline of modern anthropology forged in a Western context has furnished profound and on-going reflections on and critiques of anthropologists’ roles in colonial administrations, in development projects implemented in the so-called third word,³ and in aid policy formulation and execution. It does offer a critical scenario in which indigenous Chinese anthropologists can reflect on their roles in light of the following questions: While seldom appearing in China’s aid practices, how do Chinese anthropologists, drawing a reference from reflections and critiques of their counterparts of the West, define their roles in China’s aid involvement in Africa? Specifically, to what extend can anthropologists’ involvement be welcomed in China’s aid projects? Within complicated networks of power, how do they extricate themselves from the contradictory position in which they are either as practitioners asked by donors to pragmatically ensure the smooth execution of aid projects and aggrandize the donors’ interests, or as academic researchers demanded, academically and morally, to protect the interests of local people?

There are three main parts to this paper in addition to the introduction and conclusion. First, a global view of the conceptualization of “development” will be taken along the on-going dominance of the West ideologies then zooming out to elaboration of China’s development realities since its emergence into the modernization process from the early 20^th century. Second, against this background, long-term regional engagement between China and Africa will be investigated in terms of aid and development and, from the perspective of China’s unique philosophical mode of thinking and doing as well as by a case of China-Ethiopia economic cooperation project, it is then argued that China’s aid in Africa slightly differs from the traditional one manipulated by the West. Third, in those characteristically different practices, indigenous Chinese anthropologists’ response and role-play emerge as an intriguing issue that urges more reflections in light of power relationships, and it will be illustrated with a state-to-state case about China’s education aid project in Ethiopia.

Development: An elusive discourse or a practical welfare pursuit?

Before the Age of Great Discovery as early as the 15^th century, “development” was a heterogeneous concept geographically and intellectually confined to the indigenous knowledge of each continent. But once capitalism unleashed the industrial revolution, European knowledge began its dominance over the world alongside military colonial conquests, and world society began to be seen as a racial hierarchy with peoples of different color ranked by their cultural competence (Hann and Hart, 2011). Consequently, instead of according itself with the universal properties of human nature, “development” in the 19th century gradually bore the distinctive feature of “evolution”, as widely disseminated by the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1859. This latter concept referred to a process that could only be approached by considering world history as a whole. Thus, an unequal world was explicitly described with almost sharp categorization of different levels of social, cultural and economic development, placing the West (especially Europe) and the non-West, as the East, the African continent, Latin America and so on, separately as civilized and uncivilized, or modern/advanced and primitive/backward. Radical critiques against the formation of such an unequal world have been advanced by many, including Marx and Engels, Eric Wolf, Sidney Mintz and Jack Goody. However, at the beginning of the 20^th century, people, including anthropologists, all over the world could not help but notice that the world had already been changing so rapidly and steadily that they – albeit someone who tried to stop the idea that this was the direction in which to develop – could not prevent the movement from agrarian society to industry. Even in China, whose “glorious” civilization could be traced back several thousand years, people of the time were desperately seeking out Western industrial technology and the thinking of what would later be called modernity, ironically in name of emancipation and liberty but without sensing that the Western concept of development was subtly tearing down their local traditional outlook. China was readily pushed into the queue of heading for a modern society that imitates the West, and “invited” to accept aid from the West, especially the then rising America, until the socialist regime assumed dominance of mainland China in 1949, breaking from the way it had learned from the West in the first half of the 20^th century. However, Marx’s socialist evolutionist thought, which features world history going through the five stages of primitive society, slavery, feudalism, capitalism and ultimately communism, became the official doctrine of the second-half of the last century and with this social evolutionism ideology that advocates progress by means of productivity enhancement, China’s ongoing pursuit of industrialization and modernization was never ever ceased, even though somewhat jeopardized by its domestic political movements like Culture Revolution (1966–1976).⁴

Thinking through how notions of development or progress have diffused throughout world history, Hann and Hart (2011) trace the shifting meanings of the term “development” starting from the 19^th century, with a critical view toward economy in an unequal world. Before (or during) the Second World War, “development” initially referred to the hectic dash of humanity from the village to the city, a process entailing economic growth and subsequent inequality, driven by the engine of “capitalism”. Later, “development” came to include attempts to understand both how capitalist growth is generated and how to make good the damage capitalism causes in repeated cycles of creation and destruction. The third meaning is “the developmental state of the mid twentieth century: the idea that governments are best placed to engineer sustained economic growth with redistribution”⁵ (Hann and Hart, 2011: 102). The authors, along with development anthropologists (Escobar, 1991/1995; Lewis, 2005) note that after the Second World War “development” came to its popularity and prominence as an ultimate goal for a better world involving the commitment of rich countries – represented by the United States, whose President Harry S. Truman in 1949 used the term as part of the rationale for post-war reconstruction in “underdeveloped” areas of the world – to help poor countries become richer based on the provision of international financial assistance and modern technology transfer. However, the 1970s witnessed a watershed moment in which the apparent failure of economically-oriented approaches provided anthropologists with opportunities to reevaluate Truman’s concept and practices of development. From then on, “development” encountered on-going “de-constructionist” and “re-constructionist” critiques within the circles of anthropology and development studies. Such critiques did not fail to include examination of the role of anthropologists in development (Escobar, 1991/1995; Ferguson, 1994). Within the context of these critiques, development has been reframed as a set of politically and economically unequal relations between rich and poor countries following the colonial period. It has therefore been also chided as “neo-colonialism”. But for most of the populace in the so-called “underdeveloped”, “less-developed”, or poor countries, development means a practical instrumental in pursuit of eliminating poverty⁶ and improving quality of life.

The reason why I have highlighted the shifting meanings of “development”, reflected in terms of “an elusive discourse” or a “practical welfare pursuit”, is that longing or seeking out more and more wealth or property, which subtly implies economic growth nowadays, is a shared desire among all peoples of the world; although development is webbed within a globalization initiated by Western knowledge and ideology. From this perspective, one may consider another question, that is, when one feels sympathetic toward the people of the third world, who are widely considered as victims of “development” or “globalization”, has he/she neglected their agency? Have we ignored their active efforts to adapt or modify Western “development” in terms of the indigenous knowledge system? If “development” discourse with a Western bias were excluded totally from third world societies, could it still be legitimatized as a process of a practical welfare pursuit?

Until now, a review of the literature shows that harsh critiques of development usually refer to the third world’s weak position in the global economic system, seldom defending themselves from the West’s direct or indirect economic, cultural and social “invasions”. The targets of sympathy are often Africa, Latin America and Asia. However, as some new emerging markets in these areas, such as the BRICS, are entering the vision world citizens, could we change the long-lasting stereotypes of “development” or of the third world?

Let us temporarily leave aside the hectic African continent. Taking a careful look at China’s development, for instance, one may find out how development, even though it is also within a Western discourse, has been transformed into an indigenous power or knowledge system which contributes to Chinese economic growth and the improvement of human life.⁷

China’s discourse of “development”

“Beijing cough” originated as a popular newly-coined phrase among Westerners who visited China, later to be widely spread by Chinese local media and receive reflections by Chinese people on the “development-caused” pollutions around them. This makes one wonder if it is the destiny of the Chinese people to be victims of development marked by economic growth. From this perspective, could it be concluded that China’s development is completely a failure? Yes, absolutely, if it were evaluated by environmentalists or those who heavily oppose economic growth-oriented development. However, walking through the history of modern Chinese development – even if we disregard the very beginning of the 20^th century when China then was a semi-colony of Western powers, like other countries of the third world, and instead only focus on socialist China from its inception in 1949 – we clearly find how fervently eager China has been to develop its economy by all means, dreaming all the while of becoming as rich as the West.

Ironically, China’s decision to develop its economy after the then Civil War that ended up in 1949 coincided with Truman’s declaration of his ambition to help underdeveloped countries become developed. Fortunately or unfortunately, because of the Cold War, China cut off its direct connections with the West as well as later on with the Soviet due to political frictions and conflicts, and had to find its own way to achieve economic, social and cultural development. Whether China reached or failed to reach its developmental goals before opening its door to the West again in the 1980s, the Western discourse of industrialization had been insistently imprinted in its national policies. Two points deserve our attention. First, from the 1950s to the 1970s, China was excluded from what development anthropologists criticized about development in the third world in Truman’s terms. The features of China’s development were economic self-reliance and the political aim of uniting with the third world, especially African countries. It is known that the former caused China’s economic stagnation but the latter goal helped it maintain power in the international political arena. We will also see that it is the latter that affects China’s current development and its wide presence on the African Continent.

For this reason, the trajectory of China’s development provides a referent for us to reflect on its aid practices in Africa. I insist that without knowing China’s own concept of development and its practices, it is hard to understand its presence in Africa. Some scholars of Western countries have criticized China as a neo-colonialist, acting in a way similar to what Western colonialists did centuries ago. They may only see China’s economic power as negatively affecting the fragile African local market, and criticize it as they criticized 1980s’ development projects or aid from the West to Africa. However, they tend to ignore China’s development discourse and most importantly its attraction to African people or politicians, who mostly welcome China’s involvement in Africa.

What, then, is China’s development discourse? China, having been a semi-colonized country, has been incapable of escaping the dominant and influential Western path to development.⁸ Development in China always means modernization, which has been characterized by industrialization and later by marketization. Needless to say, Chinese development practices shifted during the pre-1949 Civil War between the Kuomintang and CPC (Communist Party of China), or even during the Great Leap Forward (1958–1961) whose distinctive nationalist slogan was to develop the economy through industrialization so as to overtake the USA as the world’s most powerful economy and nation. It was after the Cultural Revolution ended in 1976 and especially after the third Plenary Session of the 11th CPC Central Committee in 1978 that resolved to push the country on to the road of its historic reform and opening-up the drive that China’s development was re-targeted at economic growth by market-based methods so as to revitalize China’s economy and build an advanced modern China. The 13^th National Congress of the CPC on 25 October 1987 claimed:

The basic line of the Communist Party of China in the primary stage of socialism is to lead the people of all ethnic groups in a concerted, self-reliant and pioneering effort to turn China into a prosperous, strong, democratic culturally advanced and harmonious modern socialist country by making economic development the central task while upholding the Four Cardinal Principles and the reform and opening up policy. (Beijing Weekly, vol. 50, 13 December 2007)

At the 14th National Congress of the CPC on 12 October 1992, the target of the establishment of a socialist market economy system was officially formulated. Marketization within a centrally planned economy is one of the distinctive features of China’s development discourse and practice.⁹

Disregarding the exploitations and inequalities resulting from globalization that most critics point out are suffered by underdeveloped countries, including China, then, Chinese politicians from Deng Xiaoping onwards have believed that development through economic growth is the only way for China to escape from poverty and ultimately improve its people’s welfare.

Such state policies formulated within China’s state context, while also drawing Western market theories and practices, have helped Chinese people secure their food provisions in a subsistent sense, meanwhile driving China to emerge as an economic and political superpower widely recognized today by most Westerners as well as the third world. How has China realized this within more than 30 years rather than one or more century like other developing countries did or continue to do? As Doug Guthrie has argued:

The story that lies beneath (China’s development) is one of deep-seated national interests of the world’s most populous nation as it edges its way down the path of economic reform toward the hallowed land of capitalism, and of foreign investors that seek to find access to the world’s largest single-nation marketplace. It is a story of the forces of globalization, played out locally; a story of the complex political situation that saw a dying communist regime transforms itself, in part, by allowing foreign multi-nationals to set up shop in China for the first time since the Communist Revolution. (Guthrie, 2009: 3)

However, I am no more interested in probing the complex multi-layered causes and impacts beneath the Chinese story of development than in taking its historical colonial experience and internally-driven forward movement, in the sense of economic growth, as a paramount context for reflecting on its presence in Africa within the discourse of friendly assistance (not “aid”), equality, partnership cooperation and cooperative development (“win-win”).

China’s aid practices in Africa: A different philosophy?

China’s presence in Africa has been enthusiastically observed worldwide, either in political circles or among academic researchers. Regardless of political interests, Western academia seems interested in understanding why China’s involvement in Africa, especially its aid practices, are so different from those of the West and why exactly China’s development mechanism seems to work in Africa. For instance, Deborah Brautigam clearly stated according to her fieldwork in Africa and in China:

China’s aid and economic cooperation differ, both in their content and in the norms of aid practice. The content of Chinese assistance is considerably simpler, and it has changed far less often. Influenced mainly by their own experience of development and by the request of recipient countries, the Chinese aid and economic cooperation programs emphasized infrastructure, production, and university scholarships at a time when the traditional donors downplayed all of these. (Brautigam, 2009: 11)

In fact, it would be a daydream to imagine China’s development or aid practices in Africa as identical to others. As a Chinese saying puts it, only those who wear the shoes know exactly whether they fit or not. Although we cannot say the recipients’ decisions on development or aid are all perfect, it is still better not to exclude them from aid policymaking or project formulation. Undoubtedly, after going through more than 30 years of practices, critiques and constructive improvements, development or aid has reversed many biased, irrational, unequal and imbalanced practices made by donors or projectors or even deliberately promoted by recipients. However, utopia is still far away. The long-lasting unbalanced international political and economic regime continues to erode the so-called third world’s wealth, reinforcing developing countries’ poverty and endangering their people’s subsistence level. One may readily recall the introduction of Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) designed by the World Bank and the IMF in the 1980s. In order to get relieved from the debt crisis of 1982, almost half of African countries had to come under SAPs until the early 1990s. But while SAPs were intended to improve the economies of the implementing countries, the required actions that included a package of actions including currency devaluation, privatization of public enterprises, and drastic cutbacks of govern expenditure on social services, actually resulted in impoverishing more people and made living conditions very difficult in almost all African countries like Ghana, Zambia, Tanzania, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Kenya (Konadu-Agyemang, et al., 2006; Ould-Mey, 1996; Oxfam, 1999; Stewart, 1995; Watkins, 1995; 1999). Besides, a concomitant of globalization is also claimed to be wealthiest countries’ exploitation of economically vulnerable developing or underdeveloped ones (Isaak, 2005; Stiglitz, 2002). Therefore, standing in the shoes of policy makers who are the facilitators of economic development, one cannot blindly promote economic growth. Meanwhile, one cannot deny everyone’s development rights while standing in the shoes of development anthropologists or scholars in other fields. All must continue to ponder the ways in which every stakeholder can keep development or aid progressing smoothly but for the sake of the recipients’ welfare, living improvements and avoidance of poverty. This seems to be a daydream in the current world of capitalists who are stereotypically thirsty for wealth or cash-like vampires. But nihilism is never a better way out, and what people need is to ensure, to an even larger extent, an equal win-win situation.

Today, the development or aid discourse has been transformed from simply “aid” to the broader term of “partnership”. Generally speaking, traditional or emerging inequalities will remain under the guise of so-called “partnership”, but it is better to put aside this shift in discourse and focus instead on its substance – that is, the counterforce of inequality or balance of development always comes from multiple power interventions, not just the one which over the course of centuries has been referred to as the West. Therefore, my reflections here on China’s presence or aid in Africa does not intend to criticize it like some scholars who charge that China’s aid or development projects are used instrumentally as a means of natural resource exploitation and neo-colonization, or who criticize China of ignoring local politicians’ poor governance by cooperating with local governments that have so-called “democratic stains”. Instead, I intend to help understand how aid or development in multi-dimensional practices contributes to helping improve the old aid or development regime and reconstruct a new one within the context of a multi-player game.

China’s different discourse on its aid in Africa

China has traditionally not been a donor but a recipient of aid in its modern history, especially during the 1950s or later in the 1980s or 1990s. However, world politics after the Second World War pushed China to get involved in aid projects in Africa. Li et al. (2012) have from a historical view elaborated four stages of China–Africa relations in terms of “strategic support”, a term the authors adopted. From the very beginning, roughly at the end of 1950s, China’s assistance to African countries was carried on without any political conditions attached. Until now, China still does not officially consider itself a “donor” in the sense that the West defines the term, but instead insists that its assistance to African countries is “a kind of mutual help and South-South cooperation among developing countries”, mainly a means of “the poor helping the poor”(He, 2010: 12). Prioritized as such a discourse is, China is always avoiding a total imitation of or only reluctantly participating in the aid system under the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Instead, it seeks a unique way of aiding Africa on its own.

Once as a recipient, it is impossible for China to exclude itself completely from the form and content of aid as it has been experienced in the West. For instance, it has been noted that the “project aid” mode China has been implementing, which focuses on infrastructure construction in Africa, highlights its role as a “donor”, behaving in a way similar to what most developed countries did decades ago. As Deborah Brautigam clearly points out:

What we do not realize is that China’s engagement in Africa often simply repeats patterns established by the West, and especially Japan in China. As China emerged from the chaos of the Mao years and opened its own door to foreign aid, loans, and investment from the West and Japan, Chinese leaders saw how aid could be mixed with other forms of economic engagement. They observed how wealthy countries ensured that aid would benefit both the donor and the recipient. The content of their aid reflects what they believe worked for their own development. And, surprisingly, much the way they give aid reflects what they learned from all of us. (Brautigam, 2009: 13)

But what we must be aware of most is that, although we easily admit China takes up similar aid forms as the West has in the past, aid still comes from many very different sides in many forms and is implemented under rather diverse conditions (Hoebink, 2009). Consequently, it is important to recognize that putting the same ingredients in the pot does not necessarily make it boil down to the same soup. China’s aid plays a role in producing a different “soup” but probably with same ingredients used by others. The disparity does not originate from form and content but from philosophical or epistemological concepts of aid project formulation and implementation. To be specific, immersed in their unique philosophical way of thinking, Chinese people, as per my personal observation and experience, prefer “outcomes” rather than “norms” or “procedures” as Western people emphasize (He, 2010).¹⁰ Therefore, while being committed to aid in Africa, China always chooses to learn from doing or practices and devises prescriptive “norms” for how African countries use aid. Moreover, doing is always believed to be done within a specific context and by means of metaphorically “crossing the river by feeling the stones”.¹¹ Seen from this perspective, China’s presence in Africa is closely related to its own development experience. As Deborah Brautigam states “the content of their (Chinese leaders’) aid reflects what they believe worked for their own development”. Besides, from China’s official discourse, for example, as the former special representative of the Chinese government on Africa Affairs, Mr. Liu Guijin, stated, “the most distinctive feature of China–Africa cooperation is equality and mutual benefit, and China never ever calls herself a donor but a partner for Africa”.¹² However, justifying differences of China’s aid presence in Africa in contrast to the so-called “traditional donors”, which are usually regarded within OECD or Development Aid Committee (DAC) Regime, does not mean to deny relative commonalities. It should be borne in mind that similarities actually exist among “emerging donors” (China is often categorized as one of them though it declines to acknowledge that on its own) and “traditional donors” (Dreher, Nunnenkamp and Thiele, 2011; King, 2010; Sato et al., 2011) though a myth of their comparative relationships will not be a theme to unravel in this paper.

Special Economic Zone (SEZ): A miniature of China’s aid practice in Africa

As stated above, 1978 is portrayed as a watershed moment for China’s turn to the market and modernization. It also serves as a transitional point for its aid presence in Africa. Before 1978, political preferences led China to do all it could do, sometimes with complete disregard for economic costs and benefits, to assist African countries in different civil fields including civil construction, medical assistance and farming, with the exclusion of trade. During this period all aid was more humanitarian than clearly aimed at promoting development in Truman’s sense. Here it must be stated that “political preferences” of aid are not equal to the politicization of aid, as done by Western countries that required recipients to obey such political conditions as promises of democracy and good governance. The Chinese government did not touch any internal political issues of African aid recipients, but it did prefer to cooperate with African countries and gain support from them to defend its role in the international political arena. For example, China hoped African countries would keep their promises of supporting it over the issues of Taiwan and Tibet. Since the early 1980s, China has turned to put greater emphasis on its domestic economy. Its aid policies and practices have shifted to emphasize mutual benefit and common development, gradually moving from ideology to pragmatism and sharpening its focus on trade and investment. In particular, after the mid-1990s, China’s “two resources and two markets” tactic encouraged Chinese enterprises to enter and invest in Africa (Li et al, 2012: 13). In addition to traditional assistance including medical, technical and educational projects China engages in African development assistance featuring Chinese investments and bilateral trade in other fields and these have recently accelerated. For example, according to the State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China,¹³ China has become Africa’s largest trade partner, and Africa is now China’s second largest overseas construction project contract market and fourth investment destination. It is clearly stated that aid from China to Africa will be mobilized for trade so as to help Africa countries improve their customs and commodity inspection facilities, and to provide support for African counties to promote trade facilitation and push forward trade development within Africa. From 2009 to 2012, China’s direct investment in Africa increased from US $1.44 billion to US $2.52 billion, with an annual growth rate of 20.5%. Over 2000 Chinese enterprises are investing and developing in more than 50 African countries and regions, cooperation fields have expanded from agriculture, mining and building industry to intensive processing of resource products, industrial manufacturing, finance, commercial logistics and real estate. Take China’s involvement in Africa’s industrial manufacturing sector for example, from 2009 to 2012, Chinese enterprises’ direct investment volume totaled US $1.33 billion; by the end of 2012, China’s investment in this sector had reached US $3.43 billion. Ethiopia, Mali and other resource-poor countries have also attracted a large amount of Chinese investment. Specifically in Ethiopia, China’s aid presence unveils part of its distinctiveness in light of a SEZ, that is, “Eastern Industry Zone” (EIZ).

SEZ is a developmental model the Chinese government decided to introduce into geographic zones on the eastern seaboard of the country when China re-initialized her economic reform in the late 1970s. It was expected to serve as experiments for market liberalization to attract Chinese diasporas and foreign capital; it proved to be “very successful in fast-tracking China’s commitment to reform” and then “served as the model for market liberation across China” giving “credibility to Deng Xiaoping’s reform program” and laying “the foundation for the commitment to liberal market forces that the PRC continues to pursue to this day” (Davies 2008: 140).¹⁴ While African countries’ interests in China’s experience of rapid development encountered China’s eagerness to strategically “go global” (i.e. overseas investment) to help Chinese enterprises overcome the risk of protectionist trade practices against “Made in China” products and also assist them to promote industrial competitiveness¹⁵ (ibid. 141), SEZs as a successful developmental experience were chosen to be implemented in Zambia, Egypt, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Mauritius, Uganda and Ethiopia. All of these pilot zones are “official” ones receiving aid from the Chinese government under a program first announced in 2006 (Brautigam and Xiaoyang, 2011). EIZ in Ethiopia is one of them by which Ethiopia expects to kick up its industrialization in a full boom.

Here I will not elaborate more on the history and operation mechanisms of EIZ;¹⁶ rather, part of its distinctiveness will be nuanced to illustrate the argument that China’s development and aid presence in Africa is part of a difference.

First, EIZ is an economic cooperation project involving not only a private company’s market-oriented operation but also Chinese and Ethiopian governments” joint efforts. The latter may be, for example, manifested by a subsidy of over RMB 100 million ($14.6 million). Jiangsu province and Suzhou municipality provided for EIZ (Brautigam and Xiaoyang, 2011: 34) while from state level it involves Chinese government’s preferential policy support and its role-play in negotiating with Ethiopia to provide supportive policies for EIZ. For example, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s visit to Ethiopia and EIZ on 11 May 2014 encouraged Chinese entrepreneurs to envision further policy support both from China and Ethiopia in the near future.¹⁷ Clearly, Chinese enterprises’ involvement in Ethiopian economic development is featured with both market competition and state-to-state political power play. Besides, this may be revealed by the trilingual slogans (Chinese, English and Amharic) on red posters and banners hanging inside a shoe factory within EIZ, which indicate not only work discipline but also celebrations of Ethio–China friendship and China’s service for Ethiopian people. One of those trilingual slogans, for instance, is “to be a China–Africa friendly and harmonious enterprise, to win honor for the country” (Zuo Hao Zhongfei Youhao Hexie Qiye, Wei Guo Zhengguang).¹⁸

Second, the most materialized presence of China’s enterprises in Africa is associated with road infrastructure, often historically referred to as China’s first contribution to the continent infrastructure, i.e. the TAZARA railway, a railroad linking the port of Dar es Slaam in Tanzania with the town of Kapiri Mposhi in Zambia’s Central Province. Davies (2008: 151) clearly observed that “even Africa’s numerous former colonial powers did not have the commitment to invest so substantially in the continent’s infrastructure”, yet China, being backed up by its rapid economic development and growing manufacturing capacity, did it. However, he went further and attributed China’s deeds to that of a devourer who grabbed African resources and in turn dumped manufactured commodities, that is, taking China–Africa interrelation as completely as imitating a North–South regime regardless of African countries’ own perception and agency of actively pursuing China’s cooperation within a postcolonial and new cooperation context.¹⁹ Moreover, he failed to see infrastructure construction, for China, was regarded as a precondition for economic development, just like a Chinese rhetoric, “To get rich, first to construct road” (Yao Xiang Fu, Xian Xiu Lu). This concept has been widely spread among Chinese officials and populace, and imprinted in their minds. Then it was introduced into the African continent when China encountered Africa’s desire to drive its development forward. An interview with a Chinese manager in EIZ showed that one factor affecting their choice of location of EIZ was roads, that is, readily accessible transportation. So before its inception, what the Ethiopian government did was to smooth the roads from its capital city to different locations, as it is believed that improved road infrastructure has a favorable impact on the entry patterns and structure of the manufacturing sector in Ethiopia (Shiferaw et al., 2013).

Third, while making profits as all global enterprises do, Chinese enterprises in EIZ made “Made in Ethiopia” a trademark of more industrial products than the Ethiopian people had seen before in its long history. Interviewees from both China and Ethiopia, who the author met in Addis Ababa in July 2013, thought EIZ was remarkably in the spotlight in Ethiopia, and most of its employees were locals who earned more than double what they did before. I was then told by a Chinese manager that “almost all workers at production lines were local Ethiopians, and higher-level positions would be open to locals step by step since it took more time to transfer knowledge and skills”.²⁰ Brautigam and Xiaoyang (2011: 29) wrote, “ if those zones [including EIZ] end up as isolated Chinese enclaves; do not employ Africans or employ them only at the lowest levels; fail to transfer or diffuse technology and ‘know-how’ (including the knowledge of how to effectively market the zones) to local people; attract industries that are simply more polluting or adopt worker safety standards that are lower than those outside the zones; or serve as uneconomic ‘prestige projects’ offered merely in exchange for other benefits such as access to resources, fears about Chinese exploitation would be confirmed.” It is seemingly echoing such a “foresight” that the Chinese government clearly emphasizes one of the key priorities of China developing its economic and trade relations with Africa recently is to “integrate aid with technological cooperation and strengthen Africa’s self-development capacity”.²¹ It is also, as usual, assuming its role as ushering Chinese enterprises’ presence in Africa into a more sustainable stage, just as Chinese Premier Li Keqiang stated in his speech in the African Union Headquarters on 5 May 2014:

China–Africa cooperation…requires that we [China and African countries] base ourselves on our respective development stages…and constantly seek and expand the areas of converging interests. We should not limit our cooperation to energy, resources and infrastructure but expand it to industrialization, urbanization, agricultural modernization and many other areas, and put greater emphasis on green and low-carbon development as well as ecological and environmental protection.²²

Roles of anthropologists in development and aid: Pragmatic participants or unbiased critics?

China’s development and aid presence in Africa is apparently in its heyday, no matter what critiques and accusations China encounters from the West, for example as above mentioned, China taking advantage of aid to exploit African natural resources, make adverse balances of trade and implement neo-colonization (Brookes, 2007; Kelley, 2013; Rotberg, 2008; Yadav, 2010), or Chinese enterprises making profits at the cost of environmental destruction and pollution, and pouring Chinese labors into Africa (Alden and Alves, 2009; Naidu and Davies, 2006; cf. Zhao, 2013). Furthermore, not blinded as both China and African countries are to those critics, top-down governmental concerns about emerging problems have been constantly going on; and academic research done by both indigenous Chinese anthropologists also emerge. But compared to Western anthropologists’ frequent reflections on aid and development in Africa (Ferguson,1994; Gardner and Lewis, 1996; Mosse, 2004/2005), Chinese anthropologists’ contributions are up to now still rarely seen. Most of the literature on aid to Africa continues to emerge out of the fields of political science, history and economics though some scholars within these fields might employ moderate anthropological methodologies. What’s more, there has been surprisingly little investigation of the roles of Chinese anthropologists in development and aid to Africa against China’s great involvement in long-term and multi-layered assistance to Africa.

Why, then and now, have no Chinese anthropologists shown concern about this important phenomenon? One reason might be the prohibition of anthropology from the 1950s to the 1970s and the confinement of its foci to China’s domestic issues since its rehabilitation in mainland China in 1979.²³ It was only in the late 1980s and 1990s that “anthropology” began to be widely used in related institutions and some then young anthropological scholars showed enthusiasm toward introducing Western anthropological theories and conducting critical academic communications with anthropologists abroad. (Hu, 2006: 182) Since then, over approximately 20 years, Chinese anthropological studies have been expanded, to include sub-disciplines like development anthropology. However, Chinese development anthropology is still in an unbalanced, developing stage, and its focus remains mostly on ethnographic investigation of the economic development of ethnic minority regions in China (Chen, 2001; 2009; Luo, 2006). In contrast, development studies in China are done mostly by sociologists who show special interests in China’s urban commercial development and urbanization of suburban villages, rural development, and rural poverty alleviation (Zhu, 2004) as well as reflections on developmentalism with a reference to China’s development (Ye and Sun, 2012). Another reason why Chinese anthropology pays no attention to development critiques may be due to China’s intellectual tradition of the earliest time of anthropological development in the 20^th century (Jianmin and Young, 2006), its identity as a member of the third world or a developing country, its successful practice of development in economy and also its experience as a recipient of Western aid, which make Chinese officials and populaces believe in “development” as panacea and hectically head for it. Under such a circumstance, Chinese anthropologists, like intellectuals in other fields, are expected to be “useful” in helping to develop urban and rural economy rather than find a relatively neutral position to critically reflect on “development” alongside Western academic discourse. However, these days when rapid economic development in China has encountered an environmental bottleneck as well as an endangering loss of indigenous traditional knowledge historically accumulated and environmentally harmonized, development anthropology, as an analytic instrument or perspective for reflection, is beginning to voice more concerns than before Chen, 2009; (Liu, 2007; Luo and Huang, 2006). The same can be said for China’s aid or development projects in Africa, which have also begun to meet more thorny challenges concerning the local environmental, as well as cultural, political and social issues.

Against more than 40 years’ accumulation of development anthropology knowledge, I argue that Chinese anthropologists would benefit from reflecting upon their roles whilst facing the complex issue of China’s presence in Africa. Specifically, what do they think of the current status of Chinese domestic development? What is the substance or essence of China’s development? Is it completely subsumed within the Western development discourse regime? Are anthropologists welcomed by the Chinese government or aid program managers? How do they define their identity when they are required by the Chinese government to conduct studies in Africa? How do they view the current transplanting of China’s concept of “development” into African contexts? If these steps were taken, would Chinese anthropologists be pragmatic participants or unbiased critics or, ideally, balance their roles to assume both? In light of these questions, it is worth reminding all that the terms “pragmatic participants” and “unbiased critics” I employed in this paper are coincidental with a conventional dispute within anthropology concerning “academic”, “applied” and “practicing”. This theoretical fact of anthropology is clarified in that most anthropologists in Western academic circles believe keeping a distance from inside necessitates a relatively neutral stance, and to this extent they differ from those anthropologists who become a real practitioner of projects in which they use their “know-how” to help. As such, anthropologists are claimed to come into three broad categories, i.e. academic anthropologists, applied anthropologists and practicing anthropologists (Nolan, 2002). Their relationship for at least the 20^th century was labeled as a “dance of distance and embrace” (Fiske and Chambers, 1997; cf. Hill and Baba, 2006) and has been more “distance” than “embrace” in first world countries. Such a schism, however, is “relatively mild or even nonexistent” in some countries (Hill and Baba, 2006: 8). China is also such a country whose anthropological tradition emphasized “the value of applied research” as “traditional Chinese intellectuals believe that learning is for use” (Jianmin and Young 2006: 70). What I mean for development anthropologists are applied ones who both are “academically employed in most of cases” and “operate as a temporary consultant outside the university at times and in situations of his/her own choosing” (for more see Nolan 2002: 68–71 or Venkatesan and Yarrow, 2012). Besides, the literature I made reference to may be based on both academic and applied anthropologists’ works.

Lack of reflective awareness may well (but not necessarily) lead Chinese anthropologists to slip into a paradox stance that Western anthropologists widely criticized last century. Chinese anthropologists, therefore, should first of all be cautious and aware of avoiding the roles that Western anthropologists occupied during the colonial period or during the post-1950s period of development aid, which remained under the hegemonic dominance of the West.

A lesson from Malinowski

In fact, the instrumentality of anthropology as a serving discipline was widely proclaimed by Malinowski in the early 20^th century, when the colonial administration by England and France was a hotly-debated issue. According to Malinowski, the “practical man” needed anthropologists’ involvement into colonial administration “as regards knowledge on savage law, economics, customs and institutions”, “without which he often gropes in the dark” (Malinowski, 1929: 22). “Only when the practical man becomes aware that he must not flounder and grope in the dark, that he needs anthropological knowledge, can he become useful to the specialist, and in turn make the latter useful to himself”(37). Then, “the anthropologist must move towards a direct study of indigenous institutions as they now exist and work, he must also become more concerned in the anthropology of the changing African, and in the anthropology of the contact of white and colored, of Europe culture and primitive tribal life” (22) Specifically, anthropologists “must enlarge his interests and adapt them to the practical requirements of the man who works with and for the Native” (22). To be fair, Malinowski’s efforts to promote anthropology’s involvement in colonial administration contributed not insignificantly to the establishment of applied anthropology. However, it also received severe critiques against its then role as co-conspirator of colonization.

Reiterating Malinowski (1929) here presupposes that it is of significance to reflect upon the Chinese anthropologist’s role as a mediator between different stakeholders, rather than a co-conspirator of one side. Since Malinowski’s time, colonization has been done away with for more than half a century and anthropology has gone through several paradigm shifts through self-reflection and critiques from others. Anthropologists today do not naively choose to serve one single target group, especially one that has administrative or institutional power, like local governments or international aid providers, to manage indigenous “development”. They have already become aware of the importance of probing into every aspect of a development project to see whether it makes sense. However, no matter how people try to fight for an equal world, up to now, unbalanced political power still permeates the global world into which anthropologists are inevitably interwoven. Malinowski’s deeds do serve as an alarming reminder before Chinese anthropologists stepped into studies of Africa and performed specific investigations into the effects of China’s aid policy and practice or Chinese private enterprises’ presence in Africa continents. They had presumably to be aware that properly positioning themselves in researches and observations of China’s practices in Africa required a moral, pragmatic and relativist stance against predominantly harsh criticisms from the West. While they witness and argue mutual cooperation and equal communication as a mainstream of China–Africa relations, they do not deny China’s currently pragmatic pursuit of political and economic interests involving the African development process. For example, in the conference entitled “China’s Overseas Studies” held in Guangzhou, China in 2009, Chinese anthropologist and socialist Professor YAN Hairong to a relativist extent not only refuted the West’s misperception of China–Africa relations and criticized negative consequences of China’s presence in Africa, but also argued China’s aid to Africa was due not a non-interest donation (Liu et al., 2010). Realities may be more complex than expected. While more and more non-official Chinese people including private company labors, traders and illegal migrants, flood into Africa and cause increasing conflicts with the locals, the Chinese government has begun to realize that their administrative power cannot so readily control the positive image of a Chinese presence in Africa as they had in the past.²⁴ Academic exchanges and research on issues of this kind are coming on the agenda in an accessible way, attracting Chinese social scientists, including anthropologists (Shi and Niu, 2013; Xu, 2013).²⁵ For more emerging Chinese anthropologists who are tending to step into Africa studies, how do they deal with their relations with the Chinese government? When informal Chinese enterprises become aware of seeking help from anthropologists to avoid or solve conflicts with the locals, how will they define their roles? Putting aside all but one role must be carefully avoided, i.e. becoming a co-conspirator of some bad aid or private commercial projects that might sacrifice local people’s interests.

An example of a Chinese educational aid project in Ethiopia: An unavoidable power game?

When it comes to a specific aid program or development project, China’ presence in Africa finds a genealogical connection with Western scholars’ long-term discussions on international aid policy and theory, as well as on mechanisms or regimes behind aid practice. As for the question of the roles of anthropologists in aid or development projects, much literature is based on anthropologists’ reflections on their actual involvement as frontline practitioners or on their participatory observations in aid projects or organizations. However, a glimpse of China’s aid in Africa impresses with its surprising lack of Chinese anthropologists’ involvement in projects or their critical studies of China’s aid practice in Africa, as their counterparts have done in the West. Thus, my analysis here will have to refer to my own experience as a frontline worker who acted as both a teacher of foreign assistance, which is a term officially employed by the Chinese Ministry of Education (CME), and an employee of the Ethiopian Ministry of Education (EME), according to the employment contract I personally signed with the EME. In all honesty, I was not aware of the significance of reflecting on this aid project while I was working in Ethiopia, for then I was still a layman vis-à-vis anthropology. But now a retrospective reflection of the whole educational aid project may help reconfirm the importance of anthropologists’ positive role either as a pragmatic participator or as an unbiased critic.

I find it unnecessary to narrate the story of the project in detail, for my focus will be on the intertwined social networks of all actors involved, including intermediary actors and frontline workers. Specifically, I will analyze organizations on both sides (see Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Chinese experts and workers, and Ethiopian local trainers and staff.

The aid project consisted of two stages. The first one was to build construction and infrastructure of the ECPC compound, which was a gift from China to Ethiopia; the second one was follow-up human resource aid, couched within a discourse of educational cooperation. The Ethiopian government provided basic salaries to Chinese workers while the Chinese government provided additional allowances. According to the agreement between the two sides, after the completion of the first stage, China donated all buildings in the compound to Ethiopia, who then had total ownership of them. When the second stage was formulated, upon request of the Ethiopian ministry of Education, the Chinese side decided to continuously donate teaching and training equipment and facilities, as well as to provide human resources support. Within this context, Chinese frontline workers had dual responsibilities: they needed to satisfy both the Chinese side and the Ethiopian side. While under the administration of both sides, they were also under the control of different organizations, and their actions in ECPC were obviously constrained by negotiations of different stakeholders who had different demands. To some extent, the educational aid project operated within a rather complicated “power game”.

First of all, within the discourse of Chinese aid, on the one hand, Chinese experts and workers were regarded only as technological transferors who, with reference to China’s Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET experience) assisted the Ethiopian side to train TVET trainees; on the other hand, the different levels of the Chinese government, shown in the above figure, had expectations on Chinese frontline workers to be “ambassadors” who could enhance people-to-people communication and friendship between the two countries. Therefore, although the aid is said to be free of political conditions, or “no strings attached,” political expectations penetrated into every aspect of the aid project.

In contrast to the Chinese side, the Ethiopian side had slightly different expectations. Their primary purpose was to invite Chinese experts to transfer know-how that might enhance Ethiopian TVET quality and ultimately serve Ethiopian industrial needs and economic development. Additionally, the other hidden purpose might be that they wished to have more aid from China to ensure smooth operation of the TVET college. For example, in order to meet the needs of the Ethiopian labor market for construction and infrastructure workers, the EME was trying to persuade the CME to help them set up a construction department in ECPC. Efforts through different channels were made in vain concerning this follow-up aid quest. Later on, the EME decided to upgrade the ECPC, whose mission is to train TVET trainees, into a TVET institute aimed at provision of trainings for current TVET teachers.²⁶

Apart from these top-level exchanges and communications among governmental organizations, the lower-level actors, mainly frontline workers from both sides, were also in a game of power intervention. As for Chinese workers, their agency pushed them to implement educational aids based on their own professional understanding, while the top leaders from the Chinese side seemed put more emphasis on their roles as intermediaries to reinforce China’s presence and purify China’s image as a friendly partner primarily concerned with Ethiopian educational enhancement and economic development. How could the Chinese workers fulfill both missions? All Chinese-related governmental organizations insisted that control of financial and personnel power in ECPC would be the best way to exert greater influence; however, they overlooked Chinese workers’ official identity as employees of the Ethiopian side, which meant they needed to obey the EME’s direct appointment and leadership. The official agreement between the two countries therefore might only serve as a guideline framework.

At last, although the college was opened and saw its first batch of graduates, it was still considered a failure on unofficial occasions by some related Chinese officials who criticized the frontline workers they assigned to Ethiopia for unsuccessfully maintaining the predominant relationship they expected over the ECPC. But the frontline workers held opposing views that the would-be outcomes the Chinese side had anticipated and emphasized were only conceptualized from the angle of China’s development status quo instead of from the Ethiopian side. As one Chinese frontline worker put it,²⁷ “Ethiopia is now in an infant stage of economic development in which only a pacifier is need; if you insist on giving it a walking stick, it is doomed to be problematic. Ethiopia is developing and newly emerging problems are unavoidable.” Besides this, it is unavoidable that power interventions from different directions interact to have unintended consequences.

What if anthropologists were present in the aid project?

Classic anthropologists have often been criticized for their role at the service of power. However, the above analysis demonstrates that power games were only played amongst participators or stakeholders. What surprises me most, from the external, holistic perspective of anthropology, is that from its inception until now there were no anthropologists or other experts invited to evaluate the educational aid project’s effects. All judgments made about it, such as those mentioned above, were restricted to informal or unofficial formulations. As I know, from the Chinese side, the so-called official evaluation was done only as an executive report made by each Chinese frontline participator.

The aid project is currently still going on as per what the EME plans for its educational development as well as the Chinese aid presence, but there is still no hint from either side to invite involvement from anthropologists. It is true that anthropologists are not omnipotent in aid or development projects but are usually confronted by many critics. However, what if there were anthropologists involved? Or, is it necessary for either the Chinese side or the Ethiopian side to invite anthropologists’ participation into the educational aid project?

As a matter of fact, no intellectuals have been welcomed by politicians to participate in a development aid project, in the sense of the analysis here. Michel Foucault in his “Truth and power” (1980) elaborates on two kinds of intellectuals – the “universal” and “specific” intellectual, which refer respectively to what a Chinese academic calls “intellectuals beyond any dominant political system” and “intellectuals within the dominant political system” (Ye, 2011: 10-11).²⁸ This classification operates mainly in the context of questions regarding the political status of science and its potential ideological functions. The latter intellectuals are said to belong to one part of the power system that may often require their timely involvement so as to help formulate certain policies and secure their smooth execution and implementation. Small wonder that in this capitalized world the latter constitute a larger proportion, for their whole physical and meta-physical existences are constrained within a certain ideological system that claims dominance in comparison to the other. Currently, the most obvious example is the frequently criticized Western ideology of development or aid. Despite this reality, most intellectuals including anthropologists continue to make great efforts to hold their critical positions, expecting to achieve a relatively equal, diverse, and mutual respectable society rather than the current one characterized by implicit or explicit inequality and exploitation.

Within such a dilemma or paradox, how can anthropologists position themselves within development aid projects like the educational one I have illustrated here?

Needless to say, what anthropologists like Malinowski did under colonial administrations, or those development projects in the 1970s and 1980s that have been criticized by post-modernists or de-constructionists, is not possible in the contemporary moment. Nowadays, it has been proven that anthropologists’ role in development projects or aid programs have never toppled down or discarded the projects themselves but rather re-formulated them with holistic analysis, whose object includes all participants instead of only the locals whom anthropologists’ fieldwork had targeted in the past. Therefore, anthropologists working on development or aid projects must now be prepared to assume two roles. On the one hand, they need to be participants capable of rational problem-solving or trouble-shooting, directly scrutinizing the whole project to find out how social and cultural elements shape the way it goes. This is not simply recuperation of anthropologists’ role as “co-conspirator” of colonialist-like political powers, especially the power of donors, but an emphasis on applicability of anthropological knowledge to facilitating the implementation of aid projects for every stakeholder’s good. On the other hand, while participating in development or aid projects, anthropologists need to hold a critical view that sees even within the aid discourse of partnership, equality and no political conditions stringed, etc., “a rationalizing discourse concealing hidden purposes of bureaucratic power or dominance, in which the true political intent of development [or the educational aid I took as an example in this paper] is hidden behind a cloak of rational planning” (Mosse, 2004: 641). Moreover, there is a further need to elaborate that the hidden political intent is to some extent not harmful or exploitative, like what the First World imposes on the third world, but sometimes related to the donor’s own national interests or sometimes only a result of some influential participant’s personal preferences. However, the influential participant’s personal preferences in affecting the development project conception, execution and evaluation seem not to attract the attention of development anthropologists whom I suggest taking centralized/hegemonic authority (I used in this paper a term “the influential participant”) as a key to unfold China’s aid mechanism in Africa.

Mosse took the dominance of two opposing views, i.e. instrumental and critical, on development policy as an obstacle to understand the relationship between policy discourse and field practices. As he stated, “these contrasted instrumental and critical views have blocked the way for a more insightful ethnography of development capable of opening up the implementation black box so as to address the relationship between policy and event”(Mosse, 2004: 643). However, I don’t think these two views are irreconcilable. It is not impossible for anthropologists to take both of them while getting involved in a development or aid project. No anthropologists deny the significance of “cultural relativism” in forming their anthropological perspectives and insights while receiving academic trainings within ivory towers and fieldworks. They readily listen to stakeholders from different levels, especially to indigenous people’s appeals more than other professionals, and primarily take into consideration “non-technical” cultural factors (Pan, 2009: 122). Take the educational aid project again. Instrumentally, anthropologists have a chance to find their space in the project because China’s development (here education) experience does to some extent shed light on African development, for both of them share similar historical encounters and have same motives of poverty alleviation and economic prosperity. The aid is also implemented with a high expectation in such a sense. However, compatibility, that is, whether the Chinese way of development would fit for African countries, is always a primary concern. Anthropologists’ scrutinizing comparative analysis of all stakeholders involved will help a lot in the process of the aid implementation and evaluation.

Conclusion

Is it possible to conclude that China’s development provides counterevidence against what development anthropologists have criticized for decades? Could anthropologists’ roles be refined as per the emerging or successful economic growth of some countries in the third world?

Not surprisingly, China’s economic growth exerts increasing influence on the developing or underdeveloped countries, especially on African countries whose national economic targets are also aimed at eliminating poverty, pushing economic development forward and achieving prosperity. It is true that most of them gain confidence and momentum to develop their own economies by looking at China’s development experience within this unequal global market regime. China’s globally acknowledged economic power cannot conceal its miseries as a victim of development/progress (Bodley, 1982), for apart from its ostensible prosperity, luring economic growth and visible capital power, China is also fatigued with serious problems that development anthropologists or scholars in other fields have been discussing, such as environment pollution and deterioration, widening inequality, rural marginalization, etc. Therefore, it is hard to say whether China’s development serves as an alternative model for global development. In many ways, its development towards modernization and economic growth has not escaped the dominant Western discourse of development or other epistemological regimes and to a certain extent it has been practicing the development road of the West (Ye, 2011). This notwithstanding, what China’s successful economic growth offers as new or meaningful to African countries is a break from the stereotypical image of the third world that development anthropologists have also argued against; i.e., that third world or underdeveloped countries find no way to develop within the dominance of Western developed countries and will inevitably fall victim to the unequal global economic system dominated by the first world.

The paper is not intended to discuss what specific measures, different from the West, China has taken to successfully develop its economy, and it would also be premature to conclude that China’s socialist market and the West’s capitalist market have become one and the same thing (Hann and Hart, 2011: 139). Otherwise, China’s presence in Africa would not be encountering increasing criticisms from the West, since rivalry between socialist discourse and capitalist discourse remains a sensitive issue even after the fall of the Soviet Union. What I highlight in this paper is how China’s development practice attracts African countries, what its aid discourse is in Africa, and how Chinese anthropologists define their roles while perhaps being involved in China’s aid projects in Africa. Admittedly, Chinese anthropologists are not completely removed from Western anthropologists’ critical attitude toward the development discourse of Truman. But while China’s “development” as a developing or underdeveloped country, in Truman’s definition, encounters African development in the same sense, the former’s development aid to the latter may bear more implications that deserve further study and critical analysis by Chinese anthropologists. Just as Escobar (2011) has stated, China’s profound transformation and reform, initialized at the end of 1970s, demands China’s own interpretative framework as well as its indigenous research perspective.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the two anonymous referees for their constructive criticisms and suggestions. I feel indebted to Professor Shi Lin who led me into China-African studies and provided critical support for my second research visit to Ethiopia. Special thanks go to Professor Mariane C. Ferme for her insightful comments on the earlier version of the paper and offering me a one-year visiting in the Anthropology Department of University of California, Berkeley. I appreciate Cheryl Mei-ting Schmitz’s twice reviews and helpful editing of the earlier version, and thank Professor Roberto Malighetti’s lectures that ushered me into the field of development anthropology. Finally, I thank all my former colleagues who spent two years with me in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author biography

Zhongguang Niu is a PhD candidate of anthropology from Minzu University of China, and a Visiting Researcher (2013-2014) of the Department of Anthropology of University of California, Berkeley. His research interests include Ethnicity, African Immigrants, China-African Relations, Linguistics. He once worked as a lecturer of linguistics at Tianjing University of Technology and Education in Tianjin, China and as a head of student affairs in Ethio-China Polytechnic College in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

References

Alden

Alves

(2009) China and Africa’s natural resources: The challenges and implications for development and governance. SAIIA occasional paper, no. 41.

Bodley

(1982) Victims of Progress. California: Benjamin/Cumming Publishing Company, Inc.

Brautigam

(2009) The Dragon’s Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Brautigam

(2011) China in Africa: Seven Myths. The Elcano Royal Institute/Real Instituto Elcano, Analysis of the Real Elcano Institute (ARI) 23/2011, Madrid, Spain, January 8.

Brautigam

Xiaoyang

(2011) African Shenzhen: China’s special economic zones in Africa. Journal of Modern African Studies 49(1): 27–54.

Brookes

(2007) Into Africa: China’s grab for influence and oil. Heritage Lectures 1006: 1–5.

Chen

(2009) Development anthropology’s perspectives of eco-cultural tourism: A case study on Lugu Lake in Yunnan. Guangxi Ethnic Studies 97(3): 163–171.

Chen

(2001) Introduction to Development Anthropology. Kunming: Yunnan University Press.

Davies

(2008) Special economic zones: China’s developmental model comes to Africa. In: Rotberg

(ed) China into Africa: Trade, Aid, and Influence. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, pp. 137–154.

10.

Dodds

(2014) The Third World, developing countries, the South, emerging markets and rising powers. In: Desai

Potter

(eds) The Companion to Development Studies. New York: Routledge, pp. 10–15.

11.

Dreher

Nunnenkamp

Thiele

(2011) Are ‘new’ donors different? Comparing the allocation of bilateral aid between nonDAC and DAC donor countries. World Development 39(11): 1950–1968.

12.

El-Gohari

Sutherland

(2010) China’s Special Economic Zones in Africa: The Egyptian Case. In: 21st CEA Annual Conference, University of Oxford, UK, July, pp. 12–13.

13.

Escobar

(1991) Anthropology and the development encounter: The making and marketing of development anthropology. American Ethnologist 18(4): 658–682.

14.

Escobar

(1995) Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

15.

Escobar

(2011) Preface to Chinese version. In: Escobar

, translated by Wang

. Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Beijing, China: Social Sciences Academic Press.

16.

Ferguson

(1994) The Anti-politics Machine: “Development”, Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

17.

Fiske

Chambers

(1997) Status and Trends: Practice and Anthropology in the United States. In: The Global Practice of Anthropology. Williamsburg, VA: Studies in Third World Societies.

18.

Foucault

(1980) Power and Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977 (edited by Gordon

). New York: Pantheon Books.

19.

Gardner

Lewis

(1996) Anthropology, Development and the Post-Modern Challenge. London and Sterling: Pluto Press.

20.

Goldman

(eds) (2004) Chinese Intellectuals between State and Market. London: Routledge Curzon.

21.

Guthrie

(2009) China and Globalization. New York: Routledge.

22.

Hann

Hart

(2011) Economic Anthropology: History, Ethnography, Critique. Cambridge: Polity Press.

23.

(2010) China’s aid to Africa: Development feature, functions and challenges. West Asian and Africa 7(1): 12–19.

24.

Hill

Baba

(2006) Global connections and practicing anthropology in the 21^st entury. NAPA Bulletin 25(1): 1–13.

25.

Hoebink

(2009) A Matter of Dishonesty. A Review of: Dambisa Moyo. Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How There is Another Way for Africa. Available from: www.ru.nl/publish/pages/523023/areviewofdeadaid.pdf (accessed on 20 May 2014).

26.

(2006) The Chinese Anthropology History. Beijing: Renmin University of China Press.

27.

Isaak

Robert A

(2005) The globalization gap: How the rich get richer and the poor get left further behind. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.

28.

Jianmin

Young

(2006) Applied anthropology in China. NAPA Bulletin 25(1): 70–81.

29.

Kelley

(2013) China in Africa: Curing the resource curse with infrastructure and modernization. Sustainable Development Law & Policy 12(3): 35–60.

30.

King

(2011) China’s Cooperation with Ethiopia-with a focus on human resources. Ossrea Bulletin 8(1): 88–112.

31.

King

(ed) (2010) Preface-New Actors-Old Paradigms? Norrag News 44, September.

32.

Konadu-Agyemang

Baffour

Arthur

(eds) (2006) The New African Diaspora in North America: Trends, Community Building, and Adaptation. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

33.

Lewis

(2005) Anthropology and development: The uneasy relationship. In: Carrier

(ed) A Handbook of Economic Anthropology. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 472–486.

34.

(2011) Chinese Medical Cooperation in Africa. With Special Emphasis on the Medical Teams and Anti-Malaria Campaign. Uppsala: Nordiska Afirikainstitutet.

35.

Liu

Pan

Zeng

(2012) FOCAC Twelve Years Later. Achievements, Challenge and the Way Forward. Uppsala: Nordiska Afirikainstitutet.

36.

Liu

(2007) Indigenous knowledge and its application in development practices – development anthropological perspectives. China Agricultural University Journal of Social Sciences 24(2): 133–141.

37.

Liu

(2002) The Otherness of Self: A Genealogy of the Self in Contemporary China. Michigan: The University of Michigan Press.

38.

Liu

. (2010) China’s oversea studies (1). Open Times 1(1): 5–65.

39.

Luo

(2006) The Price of Development. Beijing: Minzu Press.

40.

Luo

Huang

(2006) Development and Cost: Development Issues of Ethnic Minorities in China. Beijing: Minzu Press.

41.

Malinowski

(1929) Practical anthropology. Journal of the International African Institute 13(1): 22–38.

42.

Mosse

(2004) Is good policy unimplementable? Reflections on the ethnography of aid policy and practice. Development and Change 35(4): 639–671.

43.

Mosse

(2005) Global governance and the ethnography of international aid. In: Mosse

Lewis

(eds) The Aid Effect: Giving and Governing in International Development. London: Pluto Press, pp. 1–36.

44.

Naidu

Davies

(2006) China fuels its future with Africa’s riches. South African Journal of International Affairs 13(2): 69–83.

45.

Nolan

(2002) Development Anthropology: Encounters in the Real World. Cambridge MA: Westview Press.

46.

Ould-Mey

(1996) Global Restructuring and Peripheral States: The Carrot and the Stick in Mauritania. Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

47.

Oxfam (1999) IMF: Wrong Diagnosis, Wrong Medicine. Oxford: Oxfam.

48.

Pan

(2009) Introduction to Development Anthropology (Fazhan Renleix Gailun). Shanghai: East China University of Science and Technology Press.

49.

Rotberg

(2008) China’s quest for resources, opportunities, and influence in Africa. In: Rotberg

(ed) China into Africa: Trade, Aid, and Influence. Washington, D.C.: Brooking Institution Press, pp. 1–20.

50.

Sato

Shiga

Kobayashi

Kondoh

(2011) “Emerging donors” from a recipient perspective: an institutional analysis of foreign aid in Cambodia. World Development 39(12): 2091–2104.

51.

Shi

Niu

(2013) Ethiopian Ethnic Relations and Ethnic Governance Studies (Aisai’ebiya Minzu Guanxi yu Minzu Zhili Yanjiu). West Asia and Africa, No. 4, pp. 19–34.

52.

Shiferaw

Söderbom

Siba

Alemu

(2013) Road Infrastructure and Enterprise Dynamics in Ethiopia. Available from: http://www.soderbom.net/Roads_Enterprises.pdf (accessed on 20 May, 2014).

53.

Stewart

(1995) Adjustment and Poverty: Options and Choices. London: Routledge.

54.

Stiglitz

Joseph E

(2002) Globalization and its Discontents. New York: WW Norton & Company.

55.

Tomlinson

(2003) What was the Third World. Journal of Contemporary History 38(2): 307–321.

56.

Venkatesan

Yarrow

(eds) (2012) Differentiating Development: Beyond an Anthropology of Critique. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books.

57.

Watkins

(1995) The Oxfam Poverty Report. London: Oxfam.

58.

Watkins

(1999) Speech at IMF Global Forum, Washington, 24 September.

59.

(2013) Ethnic issues in Botswana (Bociwana Minzu Wenti Yanjiu). Journal of World Peoples Studies 34(2): 78–83.

60.

Yadav

(2010) China-Africa Strategic Engagement. New Delhi: Jnanada Prakashan.

61.

(2011) Development as a western discourse: Preface of the Chinese version of encountering development. Journal of China Agricultural University (Social Sciences Edition) 28(2): pp.10–11.

62.

Sun

(2012) Review of researches on developmentalism. Journal of China Agricultural University (Social Sciences Edition) 29(2): 58–65.

63.

(2010) Shenzhen speeches show divide on “political reform”. South China Morning Post, 7 September. Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_market_economy (accessed on April 19, 2014).

64.

Zhao

(2014) A neo-colonialist predator or development partner? China’s engagement and rebalance in Africa. Journal of Contemporary China, pp. 1–20, 28 April, DOI: 10.1080/10670564.2014.898893.

65.

Zhao

(2013) China–Africa development cooperation in the rural sector: An exploration of land tenure and investments linkages for sustainable resource use. Environment, Development and Sustainability 15(2): 355–366.

66.

Zhu

(2004) New strategy of poverty alleviation: From “impossible mission” to managing the poor. Sociological Studies 2(1): 98–102.

67.

Zhu

Tan

(2010) Reflections on researches on China’s “development” and “development intervention”. Sociological Studies 4(1): 175–197.