Gestión de procesos de negocio

Overall, the established literature outlined in this section can be unified by several common factors. The Western discourse is unified by its negative image of Chinese policy towards Africa while the Chinese discourse unifies its statements through a positive depiction of China in Africa. The two forms of literature regarding China’s African activities can be characterised as a binary, symbolised by the conflicting images of Chinese initiatives as neo-imperialism and of them being of mutual benefit (Mei-Ting Schwartz, 2018, pg. 25). It is these images that are reflective of the wider battle for the construction of China’s image abroad and as a codification of the power relations between China and the United States. These issues and their relationship to the images of China in Africa have not been directly connected by the established literature, which reveals one of the main research gaps in the literature on China’s African policies.

It is from a preliminary reading of the established literature that it is possible to identify several potential research gaps. One of these can be seen in how none of the established literature attempts to define the connection between the past experiences of the U.S. and China with the discourses on Chinese policy towards Africa. The research project will attempt to fill this gap by exploring the possibility that such a relationship is present as well as how it serves to influence the creation of the American and Chinese discourses on the subject.

Another potential gap in the literature emerges over the question of the commonly used methodologies utilised here. From the examples of the Anglophone literature, most of these works are empirical in nature and examine a single case or phenomenon in Chinese policy, providing a detailed snapshot rather than a grand overview. The Chinese discourse appears to provide an overall depiction of China’s approach to Africa but seldom provides a concrete case study for it. In this sense, the proposed research will attempt to fill this gap by occupying the ground between these two different approaches. Both the Anglophone and Chinese approaches are unified by the fact that both forms examine what is being said rather than who is saying it. By applying a more theoretical and less empirical approach as favoured by Bourdieu and Foucault, to explore the creation of the discourses on Chinese policy towards Africa along with the factors that influence their creation.

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Regarding the discourse on the Chinese approach to Africa, it is again possible to identify another potential research gap. As previously illustrated, the works that explored the influence of China’s past upon modern Chinese strategy tended to explore Chinese policy as a whole. This focuses on strategies rather than utilising particular case studies of how these strategies are implemented abroad. It is possible to identify several points of overlap and contention between the two narratives. The first of these is the perceived rivalry between China and the United States over Africa. While the American discourse views this through the experiences of the European empires and the Cold War, the Chinese literature insists that this is simply a misconception about Chinese policies on the part of the Anglophone literature. it would initially appear that the two discourses observe the same subject rather differently.

Another point of contention between the two narratives has been the idea of the Beijing Consensus and China as a possible role model for Africa. This has often been perceived negatively in the American discourse since it poses a possible challenge to the “legitimate” American model as well as serving to potentially undermine American influence in Africa. On the other hand, the Chinese literature shows the Beijing Consensus more positively, serving to remedy the perceived failings of the American model of development. This can be seen as an example of how discourses serve to codify power relations in this regard.

In addition, while the established literature presents the common themes and images of Chinese activities in the African states, they do not cover how these images are created nor what they are reflective of. This raises the issue of how the knowledge on China in Africa is created and what it is symbolic of, which serves as one of the primary issues that the research will fill by applying the methodology outlined in the previous chapter to the corpus on this topic.

The other point of contention between the Western and the Chinese literature are the very policies followed by China in Africa. This can be seen in the example of China’s policy of non-intervention which is viewed in the Anglophone literature as facilitating bad governance and human rights abuses or as a reflection of China’s reluctance to play a more proactive role abroad due to the possible threat that this may pose for Chinese economic interests. On the other hand, China views this policy as respect for state sovereignty and the need to keep economic and political concerns separate. While most of the literature depicts the reasons why China is often accused of being a negative force in Africa, the majority, with the exception of a small number of Chinese theorists, do not explore how China responds to this accusation. This shows another gap in the literature that I intend to plug via a discourse analysis of official

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Chinese statements on China’s activities in Africa. To achieve this, my proposed discourse analysis will seek to underline particular phrases in the official Chinese discourse on this topic, particularly terms such as “mutual benefit” and references to Confucian concepts, particularly that of Tianxia, in order to determine how China’s experience of imperialism influences its approaches towards Africa as well as how it responds to the accusations made in the common American narrative.

In all, the established literature from both the American and Chinese sources have several commonly occurring constructs and themes, which reflect the images of Chinese foreign policy as well as of China itself. These are often overlapping which serves to create a unified image of China’s African policies in the literature on this subject. These constructs are what I seek to explore in the cases of the American and Chinese discourses on China’s African policies to explore how these are reflective of the constructs of the images of China abroad as well as how they are illustrative of two competing systems that codify the normative power relations between China and the West. It is this aim that raises the issue of how these constructs can be operationalized and applied to the corpus that I seek to examine.

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