Author: Liu Haifang et al.
Publisher: The Commercial Press, March 2025

Abstract

This book centers on the theme of “How South African-style modernization and China–South Africa cooperation promote South Africa’s transformation toward inclusive and sustainable modern development,” and is divided into two main parts.

The first part focuses on the 30 years since the advent of the “new South Africa,” highlighting the African National Congress’s efforts in political, economic, and social democratization. It examines how South Africa was swept into an unjust, Western-dominated global system following the discovery of mineral resources, resulting in a distorted “South African-style modernization.” Special attention is given to foreign relations: under the pursuit of a “better world” as a global diplomatic goal, South Africa has promoted the formation of a new international political and economic order, seized opportunities from the rise of emerging markets to expand development space, and advanced the common agenda of the African continent.

The second part analyzes the extensive practical cooperation between the new South Africa—as a country gradually strengthening its sovereign control—and China, particularly from the perspective of enabling South Africa’s inclusive sustainable development. It investigates how both sides work together in areas such as the construction of the African Continental Free Trade Area, sustainable power supply, and cooperation in science, technology, and human resources. The book also explores various factors constraining China–South Africa cooperation, including South Africa’s current mining policy influenced by neoliberalism, debates over deindustrialization sparked by the bilateral trade structure, structural security and development challenges facing Chinese investors in South Africa, and the need to improve mutual understanding and public communication between the two societies.

Through empirical research, the book attempts to provide a theoretical discussion of the similarities and differences in African-style modernization, rooted in colonialism but diverging by country. It adopts a long-term perspective to analyze how African nations, caught between “modernity (Westernization)” and “Africanness,” are, through new Bandung-style cooperation with emerging economies like China, gradually learning from diverse development models, drawing on their own historical and cultural foundations, and striving for sustainable development.

Author Biography

Liu Haifang holds a Ph.D. in African History from Peking University and is an Associate Professor at the School of International Studies, Peking University. She is Director of the Institute of Asian and African Studies and Director of the Center for African Studies at Peking University. Her primary research areas include African politics and international relations, international development cooperation, China-Africa economic relations (especially agriculture), people-to-people cooperation, race issues in international relations, global migration, and African sustainable development. She is the chief editor of Chinese African Studies Review (2015, 2018, 2021), and has authored and edited books such as Foreign Direct Investment in Zambian Agriculture: Opportunities and Challenges for Poverty Reduction and Development (Chinese-English bilingual edition), Transformation and Development of African Agriculture and South-South Agricultural Cooperation, and Opportunity in Crisis: Africa in a Changing World, among others.