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The Dragon's Gift

The Real Story of China in Africa

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About this listen

Is China a rogue donor, as some media pundits suggest? Or is China helping the developing world pave a pathway out of poverty, as the Chinese claim? In the last few years, China's aid program has leapt out of the shadows. Media reports about huge aid packages, support for pariah regimes, regiments of Chinese labor, and the ruthless exploitation of workers and natural resources in some of the poorest countries in the world sparked fierce debates. These debates, however, took place with very few hard facts. China's tradition of secrecy about its aid fueled rumors and speculation, making it difficult to gauge the risks and opportunities provided by China's growing embrace.

This well-timed book, by one of the world's leading experts, provides the first comprehensive account of China's aid and economic cooperation overseas. Deborah Brautigam tackles the myths and realities, explaining what the Chinese are doing, how they do it, how much aid they give, and how it all fits into their "going global" strategy. Drawing on three decades of experience in China and Africa and hundreds of interviews in Africa, China, Europe, and the US, Brautigam shines new light on a topic of great interest.

©2009 Deborah Brautigam (P)2018 Tantor Business Development Business Development & Entrepreneurship International Political Science Politics & Government Social Sciences World China Business Africa Capitalism Taxation Imperialism Socialism Latin American Imperial Japan China Africa
All stars
Most relevant
The presentation of the facts and the analysis by the author of the subject is first class and thoroughly examined. The description of the various key points is well put in a balanced way in the opposition of the western powers approach of the aid to Africa question against that of the PRC’s government. Unfortunately the narrator’s reading made it hard to enjoy fully.

A well researched and structured book but...

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Reads like a hack job dispersed with some truth! A lot of anecdotal stuff missing hard analysis

best skipped

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A real shame that the reader was really poor in her delivery of this otherwise interesting book. Unfortunately this really distracted from the text and made it hard to follow! There is no flow, as if the narrator has never seen the book before so sentences are often truncated. And the narrator definitely hasn’t been to China or probably much of Africa so pronunciation of simple names and places was pretty terrible. Shame since I really wanted to listen and learn from this

Pretty poor reading of what is actually an interesting book!

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