Overview
Is China a rogue donor, as some media pundits suggest? Or is China helping the developing world pave a pathway out of poverty, as the Chinese claim? In the last few years, China's aid program has leapt out of the shadows. Media reports about huge aid packages, support for pariah regimes, regiments of Chinese labor, and the ruthless exploitation of workers and natural resources in some of the poorest countries in the world sparked fierce debates. These debates, however, took place with very few hard facts. China's tradition of secrecy about its aid fueled rumors and speculation, making it difficult to gauge the risks and opportunities provided by China's growing embrace. This well-timed book, by one of the world's leading experts, provides the first comprehensive account of China's aid and economic cooperation overseas. Deborah Brautigam tackles the myths and realities, explaining what the Chinese are doing, how they do it, how much aid they give, and how it all fits into their ""going global"" strategy. Drawing on three decades of experience in China and Africa, and hundreds of interviews in Africa, China, Europe and the US, Brautigam shines new light on a topic of great interest.China has ended poverty for hundreds of millions of its own citizens. Will Chinese engagement benefit Africa? Using hard data and a series of vivid stories ranging across agriculture, industry, natural resources, and governance, Brautigam's fascinating book provides an answer. It is essential reading for anyone concerned with China's rise, and what it might mean for the challenge of ending poverty in Africa.
Full Product Details
Author: Deborah Brautigam (Professor, School of International Service, American University)
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.80cm
, Height: 2.40cm
, Length: 23.40cm
Weight: 0.641kg
ISBN: 9780199606290
ISBN 10: 0199606293
Pages: 416
Publication Date: 07 April 2011
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: To order
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.
Reviews
<br> The Dragon's Gift looks behind [the] media hype. It offers surprising insights and challenges us to take a new look at Africa's development.... thoughtful and well-researched...the basis for a well-informed, interesting dialogue with Chinese actors. --The Huffington Post<p><br> Brautigam's lively and thoroughly documented account buck[s] the conventional wisdom. --Foreign Affairs<p><br> Deborah Brautigam's superb book The Dragon's Gift offers a window into how China's foray into Africa is playing out on the ground. Rich in vivid anecdotes and informed by the author's three decades of academic work on both China and Africa, the book does many things, and does them all well. It describes how Chinese engagement in Africa has evolved, identifies its drivers, and assays its emerging impact on both economics and governance in nearly two dozen African states. It also looks behind the noble-minded rhetoric to the realities of aid-giving--Western as well as Chinese. The result is a fresh and compelling assessment of China in Africa... --The American Interest<p><br> The Dragon's Gift's strength is its extensive and varied array of interviews with Chinese government officials in Africa, Chinese factory managers, and other Chinese, African, and third-country participants and observers. Through these interviews, she conveys a rich sense of Chinese perceptions of how their own experience could benefit African countries. --Finance & Development<p><br> Now comes a timely book by American academic Deborah Brautigam, an observer of Africa and Asia for three decades, which uses personal experiences combined with powerful research to puncture myths and fears that cloud understanding of one of the most important geopolitical shifts since the fall of the Berlin Wall. --The Independent<p><br> Stands as the key booklength analysis on the subject. ...The Dragons Gift will be for a long time be the lodestone of informed discussion of how China and Chinese interact with Africa and Africa
Deborah Brautigam has produced a superbly written and exquisitely researched book on a hotly debated topic ... The book is particularly strong on addressing the question of what the Chinese are doing in their new wave of aid and economic cooperation across Africa. Jane Golley, The Economic Record
Author Information
Deborah Brautigam is the author of Chinese Aid and African Development (1998), Aid Dependence and Governance (2000), and co-editor of Taxation and State-Building in Developing Countries (2008). A long-time observer of Asia and Africa, she has lived in China, West Africa, and Southern Africa, and travelled extensively across both regions as a Fulbright researcher and consultant for the World Bank, the UN, and other development agencies. She is a professor in the International Development Program at American University's School of International Service in Washington, DC.
