Dragon’s Abacus: Developmentalist Strategy and Economic- Social Consequences of Chinese Companies in Africa

Abstract

This study attempts to find out why Chinese companies boosted African economy through investment there while received negation evaluations generally. Different from the three existing views, “neocolonialism”, “state capitalism” and “continuation of inefficient aiding policies”, in this paper, a new explanation based on developmentalist strategy and group interaction was proposed: the developmentalist strategy formed domestically by Chinese companies effectively resolved the benefit disagreement in interaction with different social groups, however, it no longer applied in a cross-cultural context, and thus triggered complicated “economic-social” consequences and negative evaluations.