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This week, we turn our attention to a country that continues to command worldwide interest: China.

 

China’s rise has profoundly reshaped the global economy. Once known primarily as the world’s factory, it has become a technological powerhouse, a major investor, and a central force in international trade. Its role is difficult to define in simple terms: rival, partner, model, or market and the answer often depends on perspective. Understanding China’s growing influence therefore requires moving beyond a single narrative and considering its economic, technological, and geopolitical dimensions together.

 

Today, China’s expanding capabilities are reshaping the global competitive landscape, as Sino-American rivalry extends far beyond trade and manufacturing into artificial intelligence, semiconductors, electric vehicles, batteries, clean energy, rare earths, and critical minerals; sectors that will play a decisive role in future economic growth, technological leadership, national resilience, and the global energy transition.

 

China’s technological ambitions are central to this transformation. Supported by long-term industrial strategies, substantial public and private investment, and a strong emphasis on technological autonomy, Chinese companies are rapidly expanding their capabilities. From artificial intelligence and digital platforms to advanced manufacturing and green technologies, China is narrowing gaps in areas once dominated by Silicon Valley and other Western technology centers. At the same time, its economic model is evolving. The country now faces the challenge of sustaining productivity and employment while rebalancing an economy long driven by manufacturing, investment, and exports toward services, innovation, and domestic consumption.

 

China’s growing influence is equally visible in global affairs. Rather than relying primarily on the military alliance structures historically associated with Western powers, Beijing has expanded its international presence through trade, investment, infrastructure, financing, and diplomacy. Through the Belt and Road Initiative and related partnerships, China has supported ports, railways, energy projects, digital infrastructure, and industrial development across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and beyond. In many developing economies, China has positioned itself not only as a commercial partner but also as an investor, lender, infrastructure builder, and increasingly important diplomatic actor. Its engagement responds to a genuine development need: access to infrastructure, financing, industrial capacity, and connectivity that traditional partners have not always been able, or willing, to provide at sufficient scale or speed.

 

Nowhere is this debate more visible than in Africa. China’s expanding economic presence has generated sharply contrasting interpretations, ranging from accusations of dependency and neocolonialism to arguments that Chinese investment provides much-needed infrastructure, employment, energy, and opportunities for economic diversification. Yet the relationship is becoming more complex than either narrative suggests. It increasingly encompasses renewable energy, industrialization, technology, institutional cooperation, and engagement not only from China’s central government but also from provinces, companies, financial institutions, and other actors. The central question is therefore no longer simply whether China is present in Africa, but what kind of partnership that presence can produce over the long term.

 

Much of China’s growing appeal also rests on the scale and speed of its own domestic transformation. In little more than four decades, the country has evolved from a largely agrarian economy into a leading manufacturing power and a major exporter of advanced industrial and green technologies. For many developing countries, this experience offers a compelling example of how coordinated investment in industry, infrastructure, education, and technology can accelerate modernization. China’s development trajectory has placed long-term planning, industrial policy, state coordination, and investment in productive capacity at the center of economic transformation. However, China’s experience cannot be easily replicated. Its success reflects a distinctive combination of political institutions, demographic scale, manufacturing capacity, administrative coordination, and deep integration into global markets. Moreover, the country now faces significant pressures of its own, including slower economic growth, demographic change, debt vulnerabilities, technological restrictions, and intensifying trade tensions. These challenges do not diminish the scale of China’s transformation, but they will shape the next stage of its development and its future place in the international economic order.

 

This edition explores these complexities: how China is reshaping global economic and technological power, what its development experience can, and cannot, teach other countries, how its relationship with Africa is evolving, and how Asian economic integration may offer wider lessons for a world increasingly marked by fragmentation and strategic competition.

 

China’s rise is neither a story of inevitable dominance nor one that can be reduced to rivalry alone. It is a story of transformation, adaptation, ambition, and growing interdependence, one that will remain central to understanding the future of the global economy.

CHINA’S ECONOMY AND ASIAN ECONOMIC INTEGRATION

The Limits of Asia’s Two Major Growth Models

 

Hinh T. Dinh & Karim El Aynaoui

 

This article compares China’s manufacturing-led growth model with India’s services-led path and finds that neither offers an easily replicable blueprint for developing economies. Drawing on a decade of data, the authors show how China faces a disconnect between industrial output and job creation, while India’s high-productivity services remain too narrow to absorb workers at scale. The central lesson is that successful development requires homegrown strategies that align industrial policy with skills, infrastructure, institutions, and stronger links across sectors... Read more

 

Asian Economic Integration Led by Trade Liberalization: A Lesson for Other Regions

 

Otaviano Canuto & Hung Q. Tran

 

Developing countries have few options to deal with the ongoing tariff war amid unpredictable shifts in global supply chains. However, regional economic integration offers a strategic path of development in these uncertain and challenging times. Helped by geographical proximity and cultural familiarity, countries in a region can benefit greatly from promoting trade with one another, reaping the benefits of comparative advantages and economies of scale, if they are able to establish a large enough single market. Asia has successfully used regional cooperation and integration as steppingstones in its interactions with the rest of the world during its economic development. Asia can thus offer lessons that other regions, especially Africa and Latin America, can benefit from... Read more

 

China’s Services Transformation and the Local Services Trap

 

Hinh T. Dinh

 

This paper examines the evolution of China’s services sector between 2012 and 2022, analyzing the country’s structural transformation based on a novel three-tier taxonomy: knowledge services (KS), enabling services (ES), and local services (LS). Using sixteen quantitative indicators from OECD databases, the study evaluates China’s transition in comparison to the EU15 benchmark, highlighting three core challenges: manufacturing rebalancing, labor absorption, and global integration... Read more

 

China’s Economic Model and the Rewriting of Soft Power

 

Marcus Vinicius de Freitas

 

This policy paper explores how China’s economic development model, rooted in pragmatism, long-term planning, and civilizational renewal has become its most compelling soft power asset, particularly in the eyes of the Global South. While critically engaging with Joseph Nye’s original conception of soft power as a primarily cultural and normative force, the paper argues that China’s ability to transform itself from an impoverished postimperial state into the world’s largest trading nation constitutes a far more persuasive and concrete form of attraction... Read more

 

CHINA & AFRICA

The Impact of Chinese Investments in Africa: Neocolonialism or Cooperation?

 

Marcus Vinicius de Freitas

 

The paper examines the rapid expansion of Chinese investment in Africa and asks whether China’s growing presence should be understood as a new form of colonialism or as mutually beneficial economic cooperation. China-Africa economic relations have expanded significantly over the past two decades, with Chinese investment flows rising from about $75 million in 2003 to $5 billion in 2021. These investments have contributed to African development by financing infrastructure, creating employment, improving transportation and connectivity, stimulating trade, and helping some African economies diversify their production and exports... Read more

 

Chinese Energy Security: Africa’s Opportunity for a New Development Boost

 

Marcus Vinicius de Freitas

 

This Policy Paper explores the strategic intersection between China's energy imperatives and Africa's developmental aspirations. It argues for a relational cooperation model that transcends a narrow transactional approach, and champions an inclusive, sustainable, and future-oriented partnership. Historically characterized by overseas investments in oilfields, critical infrastructure, and renewable energy projects, China's engagement is examined against Africa's chronic energy poverty and industrialization needs... Read more

 

(FR) Paradiplomacy of Chinese Provinces in Africa

 

Redouan Najah

 

While Beijing remains the principal actor in Chinese foreign policy, China’s engagement in Africa can no longer be understood solely through the prism of the central state. Since the decentralization reforms initiated in 1978, China’s provincial governments have played an increasingly visible and influential role, emerging as actors in international cooperation. Their involvement spans, among other areas, trade, investment, infrastructure, technical assistance, and institutional partnerships... Read more

 

(FR) Assessing Chinese Parliament’s “Two Sessions”: Domestic Ambitions and African Projections

 

Redouan Najah

 

The year 2024 marked the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, a key milestone in achieving the objectives set out in the 14th Five-Year Plan. Against this backdrop, China’s annual Two Sessions in 2025, the session of the National People’s Congress (NPC), the country’s highest organ of state power and legislature, and that of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), its top political advisory body, drew considerable attention from the international community. The year 2025 also marked the 70th anniversary of the NPC and the 75th anniversary of the CPPCC... Read more

 

Is China a Reliable Partner for Africa?

 

Thembisa Fakude

 

In this episode, we explore China’s expanding presence in Africa, looking at investments in infrastructure, trade, and development projects. We discuss the opportunities these partnerships create, as well as the debates around debt, influence, and local impacts. Our expert shares diverse views on the benefits and challenges of China-Africa relations. The episode considers whether China can be seen as a reliable partner for Africa’s future... Watch

 

China’s African Playbook: Rethinking Presence and Partnership

 

Ana Cristina Alves

 

In this episode of Africafé, the discussion explores the evolving dynamics of China–Africa relations, highlighting their strategic, economic, and political dimensions. Featuring Dr. Ana Cristina Alves, the conversation unpacks how this partnership has shifted over time, from resource-driven engagement to a more complex and pragmatic relationship shaped by mutual interests and global power structures... Watch

 

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