China’s Africa trade and investment policies: review of a “Noodle Bowl”

Abstract

Increasing China-Africa economic integration has raised concurrent expectations for 20th Century goals of mutual development and fears of renewed African economic subjugation. Economic policies will be a key determinant of the degree to which either or both evolve. Given that importance, surprisingly few studies explore the composition, distribution and multipliers of African or Chinese economic policies on the evolution and outcomes of China-Africa ties, nationally or intra-regionally. A step toward addressing that shortfall and also serving to highlight the pressing need for more research, this paper reviews China’s current set of sovereign-level Africa-related trade and investment policies, their economic context and the associated impacts where known. Related policies are found to be a complicated cross-continental matrix, in turn inspiring us to re-apply the ‘noodle bowl’ phrase that has elsewhere been used to describe bilateral policy overlap between and within regions. A first attempt in the literature to our knowledge, this paper sheds new light on China’s Africa-related trade and investment policies, and offers a useful overview reference for policy makers, scholars and analysts alike.