Howard W. French. (2014). China's Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Howard W. French. 2014. China's Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Howard W. French, China's Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2014.

Howard W. French. China's Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2014.

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1. • role: Author
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   • bioText:

     Howard W. French wrote from Africa for The Washington Post and The New York Times. At the Times, he was bureau chief in Latin America and the Caribbean, West and Central Africa, Japan, and China. He is the recipient of two Overseas Press Club awards and is a two-time Pulitzer Prize nominee. The author of A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa and co-author of Disappearing Shanghai: Photographs and Poems of an Intimate Way of Life, he has written for The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, and Rolling Stone, among other national publications. He is on the faculty of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He lives in New York.

   • name: Howard W. French

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2014-05-20T00:00:00-04:00

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title

China's Second Continent

fullDescription

A New York Times Notable Book 

Chinese immigrants of the recent past and unfolding twenty-first century are in search of the African dream. So explains indefatigable traveler Howard W. French, prize-winning investigative journalist and former New York Times bureau chief in Africa and China, in the definitive account of this seismic geopolitical development. China’s burgeoning presence in Africa is already shaping, and reshaping, the future of millions of people. From Liberia to Senegal to Mozambique, in creaky trucks and by back roads, French introduces us to the characters who make up China’s dogged emigrant population: entrepreneurs singlehandedly reshaping African infrastructure, and less-lucky migrants barely scraping by but still convinced of Africa’s opportunities. French’s acute observations offer illuminating insight into the most pressing unknowns of modern Sino-African relations: Why China is making these cultural and economic incursions into the continent; what Africa’s role is in this equation; and what the ramifications for both parties and their people—and the watching world—will be in the foreseeable future.

One of the Best Books of the Year at • The Economist • The Guardian • Foreign Affairs

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: The New York Times Book Review
   • content: "Extraordinary...French delves into the lives of some of the one million-plus Chinese migrants he says are now building careers in Africa...and the stories [he] tells are fascinating."
2. • premium: False
   • source: The Economist
   • content: "Riveting...As a massive transactional process, China's entry into Africa has been a dramatic success...but as an ideological and cultural undertaking, Mr. French's masterly account suggests that it is getting nowhere."
3. • premium: False
   • source: The New York Review of Books
   • content: "Howard French...let[s] the Africans and Chinese speak for themselves as he travels through fifteen countries. The result is a rich, complex, and satisfying look at this strange marriage."
4. • premium: False
   • source: The Christian Science Monitor
   • content: "In his important new book, French weaves a rich tapestry of anecdotes, interspersed with numerous interviews with Chinese migrants and Africans alike, offering readers an eminently fair, occasionally humorous and sympathetic, but always engaging account....A searing, trenchant, and entertaining study of how China, in both an individual and collective sense, is shrewdly and opportunistically maximizing its relationships with African nations in an effort to extend its economic influence across the world. "
5. • premium: False
   • source: Publishers Weekly
   • content: "China's trade with Africa has grown dramatically...But China's investments...are less significant for this rapidly evolving relationship, according to this 15-country survey by veteran African correspondent French, than the significant flow of new Chinese immigrants--often pushed out by the pressure and oppression back home as much as lured by opportunity. In vivid first-person reportage, French explores this momentous phenomenon, while challenging assumptions about China and Chinese immigrants...The book will appeal to students of China and Africa, and anyone interested in the shifting contours of the global economy and its geopolitical consequences."
6. • premium: False
   • source: Booklist
   • content: "Although several recent books have discussed...China's recent incursions into Africa in pursuit of resources and profit,...French has the advantage of significant personal experience in both Africa and China....Interacting with Chinese and Africans in Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Namibia, and elsewhere, French capably illustrates that although Chinese omnipresence in Africa may be a form of soft imperialism, it is also a result of the crushing pressures--lack of space, merciless business competition, pollution--of modern Chinese society."
7. • premium: False
   • source: Democracy
   • content: "Accounts of China's foray into African markets are often made with numbers; French goes beyond the statistics and illuminates the accelerating involvement of Chinese migrants....These candid moments are arresting, delivered via seasoned and sensitive reporting."
8. • premium: False
   • source: James Fallows, author, China Airborne
   • content: "Almost no other writer would have dared the reportorial and story-telling challenge Howard French has set for himself in China's Second Continent, and absolutely none could have pulled it off as well. This is foreign reportage and analysis presented as compelling human drama."
9. • premium: False
   • source: Evan Osnos, staff writer, The New Yorker
   • content: "Howard French has given us the most lush, fair, and expansive look yet at China's role in Africa. This is a tale not strictly about China or Africa; it is about the encounter of civilizations and the energy produced in the collision. Infused with thought and sympathy, this is a book with no agenda other than fidelity to facts that were so difficult to gather on the ground."
10. • premium: False
    • source: William Finnegan, author, A Complicated War: The Harrowing of Mozambique
    • content: "Is China's burgeoning empire in Africa a 'win-win' for both parties? For the most comprehensive, closely-reported answer to this question, read this book. It's full of surprises, from hard-driving frontiersmen looking for (and finding) countries with less corruption than they faced at home in China to healthy democracies constraining the more rapacious practices of extractive industry. I cannot imagine a better, more-qualified guide to this vast, fascinating subject than Howard French."
11. • premium: False
    • source: Stephen W. Smith, former Africa editor of Le Monde and professor at Duke University
    • content: "Howard French magisterially holds up both ends of his transcontinental bargain: fluent in the idioms of the two worlds, China and Africa, he reveals the variegated diaspora of the one million or so Chinese in Africa yet also drives home that Africa is awakening in tur
12. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      February 3, 2014
      Since Jiang Zemin’s state visit to Africa in 1996 and his subsequent call to Chinese businesses to “go out” in search of opportunities abroad, China’s trade with Africa has grown dramatically, today surpassing its trade with either Europe or the U.S. But China’s investments, including massive building projects, are less significant for this rapidly evolving relationship, according to this 15-country survey by veteran African correspondent French (A Continent for the Taking), than the significant flow of new Chinese immigrants—often pushed out by the pressure and oppression back home as much as lured by opportunity. In vivid first-person reportage, French explores this momentous phenomenon, while challenging assumptions about China and Chinese immigrants. Lively interviews with Chinese entrepreneurs, African workers, politicians, and others reveal an already advanced socioeconomic and political landscape. Casual racism, strife between Chinese employers and native African workers, grassroots protests against Chinese inroads into markets, and political demagoguery exist side by side. Contrary to China’s official disclaimers, this relationship—based on acquisition of resources but also the securing of new markets for Chinese goods—bears a striking resemblance to Western colonialism. The book will appeal to students of China and Africa, and anyone interested in the shifting contours of the global economy and its geopolitical consequences.

13. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      April 15, 2014
      Frank, straightforward reporting of a key, though largely ignored, element in African development, for better or ill. Former Washington Post and New York Times writer French (A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa, 2005, etc.), who was based in Africa for years, clearly sympathizes with underdeveloped, poverty-entrenched, war-torn countries in Africa like Mozambique and Liberia, whose enormous resources, cheap labor and "fire sale" prices attract entrepreneurs from China's own burgeoning economy. Are these restless Chinese immigrants, to the tune of approximately 1 million since the 1990s, helping Africa catch up to the West, or are they contributing to a new colonial-minded economy of exploitation and despoilment? While French skirts the question in his introduction, his hard-hitting interviews with various Chinese farmers, shopkeepers and factory owners reveal these entrepreneurs as brutally single-minded in the pursuit of profit, mostly ignorant of African history and racist in their views of Africans. The Chinese immigrants have spilled over from their overburdened, overcompetitive homeland, and they are often little-educated businessmen resolved to take up then-head of state Jiang Zemin's challenge to "go out" in search of new opportunity. They have certainly found it in Africa, which contains 60 percent of the world's uncultivated land, huge stores of natural resources in minerals and forests, newly democratic regimes and a per capita gross domestic product that is less than half of that in Latin America. Moreover, governments eager for the Chinese revenue and aid in building infrastructure and universities often overlook corruption and abuses, such as labor safety and fair wages for Africans. With his language skills, especially in Chinese, French was able to infiltrate both the world of African workers and that of their new Chinese bosses. A unique and unsettling study of what many in the West do not want to see.

      COPYRIGHT(2014) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

14. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      March 1, 2014
      

      Former New York Times bureau chief in Africa and China, French (journalism, Columbia Univ.) has traveled extensively in sub-Saharan Africa. Spending time in 15 countries, he sought to understand China's ties to Africa through the experiences of Chinese migrants and long-term residents. French interviewed friends, other contacts, officials, and perfect strangers on such subjects as resource depletion, infrastructure building, rapid growth, cultural dependency, and rampant colonialism. He learned that in the spirit of noninterference, China pays little attention to things like local laws, democracy, and human rights. With candor, French shows the sometimes shocking racism of the Chinese toward Africans but also toward Chinese from different regions. China is emerging as a major player in the global economy, and Africa's future may well be determined by its relationship with China. The author makes it easy to see imperialistic attitudes common in development of the West being played out on the African stage. VERDICT For those who have an interest in China or in Africa or who just like to see history repeating itself. [See Prepub Alert, 11/18/13.]--Bonnie Tollefson, Cleveland Bradley Cty. P.L., TN

      Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

15. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      Starred review from March 1, 2014
      Although several recent books have discussed, in variously alarmist fashion, China's recent incursions into Africa in pursuit of resources and profit, former New York Times journalist French (A Continent for the Taking, 2004) has the advantage of significant personal experience in both Africa and China. He also speaks Mandarin, so he can converse directly with some of the million or so members of the Chinese diaspora in Africa. They are a diverse lotdoctors, engineers, farmers, entrepreneurs, lobbyists, laborers, and prostitutes, among othersand accounts of their experience are often absent from analyses of Chinese-African relations, which typically focus on infrastructure building and resource grabbing. Interacting with Chinese and Africans in Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Namibia, and elsewhere, French capably illustrates that although the Chinese omnipresence in Africa may be a form of soft imperialism, it is also a result of the crushing pressureslack of space, merciless business competition, pollutionof modern Chinese society. For many Chinese, he suggests, Africa means opportunity and relative freedom that cannot be had at home. If French is sympathetic to the plight of many Chinese immigrants, however, he remains critical of their casual racism and general callousness about their African hosts. And as he laments the seeming inevitability of corruption and environmental degradation, French's disappointment in his cherished continent is palpable.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

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A New York Times Notable Book 

Chinese immigrants of the recent past and unfolding twenty-first century are in search of the African dream. So explains indefatigable traveler Howard W. French, prize-winning investigative journalist and former New York Times bureau chief in Africa and China, in the definitive account of this seismic geopolitical development. China’s burgeoning presence in Africa is already shaping, and reshaping, the future of millions of people. From Liberia to Senegal to Mozambique, in creaky trucks and by back roads, French introduces us to the characters who make up China’s dogged emigrant population: entrepreneurs singlehandedly reshaping African infrastructure, and less-lucky migrants barely scraping by but still convinced of Africa’s opportunities. French’s acute observations offer illuminating insight into the most pressing unknowns of modern Sino-African relations: Why China is...

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   • description: History / Asia / China
3. • code: SOC007000
   • description: Social Science / Emigration & Immigration