With the pace of trade and investment picking up, coupled with closer international cooperation with Beijing through the G20, FOCAC and BRICS grouping, South Africa-China ties are assuming a significant position in continental and even global affairs. At the same time, it is a relationship of paradoxes, breaking with many of the assumptions that underpin contemporary analyses of ‘China-Africa’ ties. This edited volume examines the South Africa-China relationship through a survey of its diplomatic partnership, economic ties, and broader community relations. These important aspects that are often conflated as a single relationship, yet what is important to explore are how these components reflect different China-South Africa relationship(s), and how they intersect.

This book investigates the expanding involvement of China in security cooperation in Africa. Drawing on leading and emerging scholars in the field, the volume uses a combination of analytical insights and case studies to unpack the complexity of security challenges confronting China and the continent. It interrogates how security considerations impact upon the growing economic and social links China has developed with African states.

In South Africa-China Relations: Between Aspiration and Reality in a New Global Order, Phiwokuhle Mnyandu analyzes South Africa-China relations in the context of South Africa’s quest to reduce unemployment and transform its economy to ensure lasting social stability. Mnyandu uses trade patterns, analyses of governmental organizations and initiatives, and other socio-economic data to determine the extent to which developmental change or stasis has taken place as relations between South Africa and China have deepened. Tracing South Africa’s changing attitudes and policies towards China’s involvement, the impact of programs involving commodities trades on unemployment, and the prospective outcomes of an endogenous developmental policy, Mnyandu concludes by proposing a quadri-linear model as a tool for more comprehensive analyses of China’s relations not only with South Africa, but other African countries as well to avoid disinformation on Africa-China issues.

The geopolitical landscape of contemporary China-Africa relations has provoked wide media interest. After being conspicuously overlooked during the G8's purported 'Year of Africa', the topic generated wider debate in the build-up to the China-Africa Summit in Beijing in 2006. Despite this, China's deepening re-engagement with the African continent has been relatively neglected in academic and development policy circles. In particular, the concrete ways in which different Chinese actors are operating in different parts of Africa, their political dynamics and implications for African development as well as Western views of this phenomenon, have yet be explored in depth."China Returns to Africa" responds to this need by addressing the key issues in contemporary China-Africa relations. Taking its cue from the widely touted 'Chinese Scramble for Africa' and the accompanying claim of a 'new Chinese imperialism', the book moves beyond narrow media-driven concerns to offer one of the first far-ranging surveys of China's return to Africa, examining what this new relationship holds for diplomacy, trade and development.

Explaining the determinants of China and India’s development cooperation in Africa cannot be achieved in simple terms. After collecting over 1000 development cooperation projects by China and India in Africa using AidData, this book applies the method of qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) to understand the motives behind their development cooperation. Mthembu posits that neither China nor India were solely motivated by one causal factor, whether strategic, economic or humanitarian interests or the size of their diaspora in Africa. China and India are driven by multiple and conjunctural factors in providing more development cooperation to some countries than others on the African continent. Only when some of these respective causal factors are combined is it evident that both countries disbursed high levels of development cooperation to some African countries.

The year 2013 marked 15 years of the phenomenal diplomatic relations between South Africa and China. Th e relationship between South Africa and China has been developing since diplomatic ties were established on 1 January 1998. Since then, South Africa-China's bilateral relations have undergone rapid and all-facet development. There were frequent high level and other kinds of mutual exchanges between the two countries. The bilateral relations within the space of fifteen years have evolved from a Partnership to a Strategic Partnership, and then to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. Furthermore, in the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, which was set out in the Beijing Declaration signed in 2010, the two countries expressed the desire to further strengthen and deepen cooperation in both bilateral and regional affairs by establishing a comprehensive strategic partnership based on equality, mutual benefit and common development. The agreements range from political dialogue, trade, investment, mineral exploration, manufacturing, and agriculture to joint efforts in the global arena, such as in the United Nations, the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), and Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS). In recognition of the aforementioned bilateral achievements, on 19 September 2013, an Ambassadorial forum was co-hosted by the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO), The Embassy of the People's Republic of China in the Republic of South Africa, and the Africa Institute of South Africa - Human Science Research Council (AISA-HSRC). The objective of the Ambassadorial Forum was to provide an opportunity for reflections on the past and outlook on the future diplomatic relations between South Africa and China. This book presents the official keynote addresses which provide strategic thinking and foresight into the bilateral relations between the two countries. The main substance of the book is a collection of the Ambassadorial Forum papers that were submitted. The papers evaluate economic and political progress from a national interest perspective. Progress is measured against variables such as trade growth, people-to-people development, partnerships, and the implementation of state agreements, all against the background of the theory of national interest.

China's growing engagement with Africa has major implications for both sides, and has added an important strategic context to South-South co-operation. In this volume, two leading South African scholars examine this dynamic which takes on added meaning because of the new Sino-South African axis.