The Grand Weiqi Board: Reconsidering China's Role in Africa

China's deepening engagement with Africa is attracting growing interest because it holds clues to the way in which China is managing its emerging power status. The prevailing analyses of the Sino-African relationship, however, tend to focus almost exclusively on its economic dimensions, identifying resource extraction and market access as the primary motivations for Chinese activities in Africa. While there is a confluence of interest between China's need for raw materials to support its domestic economy and Africa's desire for increased investment to fund development, it is argued here that China's interest in Africa also derives from the role the continent plays in China's grand strategy. China is structuring its relationship with Africa to erode the very axioms that underpin the current global order, posing a fundamental challenge to Western hegemony. China is strengthening its ability to achieve its broader strategic goal of crafting a Beijing Consensus that can successfully challenge, if not usurp, the prevailing Washington Consensus.