This was a very interesting and readable eye-opener about the increased Chinese presence in Africa. ( )

This is a grumpy cynic’s vacation journal, not an in-depth investigation of China’s involvement in Africa.

The book is a series of travelogue anecdotes and brief summaries of interviews with business people and politicians in various African countries. The author spent a great deal of time describing his hotel rooms, route, and African roads, but he didn’t bother with any academic studies. He wrote about who he knows and how things have changed since the last time he visited each place, but didn't share many personal insights or interesting analysis of what he saw.

The opening and closing sections of the book were the best parts because they briefly escaped the microscopic focus of the rest of it. I was am still interested in the subject described by the title of this book, and I'm confident the author could teach me a lot about it. Sadly, in this book he didn't. ( )

Excellent Writing and Interviews

"China's Second Continent" is an extremely well-written and easy to read book. It is a collection of anecdotes and data that comes together to create the complicated and very nuanced story of China's understandable overseas expansion.

French's style is pleasing to read. Traveling in different parts of Africa, he conducts interviews with a multitude of interested parties, including government ministers, small-time Chinese traders, prostitutes, heads of state-run Chinese companies, union organizers, and workers for Chinese companies. French never backs away from his own personal thoughts and opinions of the people he meets, which is quite refreshing. Throughout his travels, he keeps a running commentary of his thesis, that China's long-term relationship with Africa extends far beyond quid-pro-qua mineral extraction and is headed towards a relationship whereby African countries will contribute to China's bread basket. French believes that this is a new and different form of imperialism.

There are two relationships dealt with in this book: that of individual Chinese entrepreneurs who migrate to Africa, and that of state-run Chinese companies who seem to fly by night in order to build infrastructure in exchange for natural resource or transportation concessions. The entrepreneurs are all colorful characters, well-described by French. The state-run company managers and workers are all tight-lipped, giving the reader the impression that there are nefarious plans at work. While many Africans, Europeans, and Americans complain that China's infrastructure projects in Africa are ramshackle and poor quality, leaving Africans with white elephants that they must manage, they are at least helping to build infrastructure, something the managers and high-level government workers say. Without direct Chinese investment, projects would drag on and never materialize, or only materialize in the form of hard-to-see investments in education, property management, and so forth.

Is China's investment, both large and small, in the country helpful? There is no solid conclusion here, but the evidence French presents seems to suggest that because there is no "capacity development" to maintain the large infrastructure contracts, the large, official investment is unhelpful.

Beyond the academic and economic conclusions, French is an excellent writer. The chapters in "China's Second Continent" are good-sized chunks that give a good picture of each country he visits, concentrating on the theme of meeting Chinese migrants. ( )

Written as a travelogue, this book explores China's version of imperialism in Africa, to where many Chinese have immigrated, mostly to better their own personal situations (high or low), but bringing with them, high and low, an insular cultural arrogance that threatens to mimic the West's looting of the continent in the 19th and 20th centuries. ( )