Paper short abstract:

The paper is going to examine the actors, mechanism and modality of China's agricultural investment in Africa, and to reveal how China has used agricultural investment in combination with other economic statecrafts, chiefly aid and trade, to achieve its foreign economic and diplomatic goals.

Paper long abstract:

The new millennium has witnessed a high-profile re-encounter and reunion between the African continent and its geographically distant Asian partner, China. Different from their earlier interactions during the Cold War period, the resurgence of the Africa-China ties has been remarkably characterised by its economic orientation, involving cooperation across a wide range of economic areas from resources exploitation, manufacturing, to infrastructure, telecommunication and so on. The bilateral agricultural connectedness, in this sense, has by contrast remained loose and marginal in the past decade particularly in trade and investment terms. However, with the deepening of China's agriculture "going out" as well as the adjustment of China's African policy, there are strong signs of increased focus on the continent's agricultural sector from the Chinese government and it may well become another prioritized area for China's African investment in the near future. In this light, this paper is mainly going to examine the actors, mechanism and modality of China's agricultural investment in Africa at the current stage, and also trying to reveal how China has utilized agricultural investment in combination with other economic statecrafts, chiefly aid and trade, to achieve its foreign economic and diplomatic goals.