China''s Education Aid to Africa: Fragmented Soft Power

Chinas rise as an aid provider in Africa has caught global attention, with Chinas activity being viewed as the projection of soft power of a neo-colonialist kind in an international relations context. This book, which focuses on Chinas education aidgovernment scholarships, training, Confucius Institutes, dispatched teachers, etc., reveals a much more complicated picture. It outlines how the divide between the Chinese Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Education hinders Chinas soft power projection, how much of Chinas aid is bound up with an education-for-economic-growth outlook, mirroring Chinas own recent experiences of economic development, and how Chinas aidprioritized to reflect the commercial sectors interestsis out of step with most international development aid, which is dominated by education agendas and the campaigns of international organizations and traditional donors; this leaves China easily exposed to the charge of neo-colonialism. This situation also reveals insufficient knowledge production of China and in South-South Cooperation. Substantial production of Southern knowledge should recognize the international development cooperation architecture as an open system by which both traditional donors and Southern countries transform.