Oxford Studies in African Politics and International Relations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024. US$115.00, cloth. ISBN 9780198873037.
Wang Yuan, a Chinese doctoral researcher at Oxford University, has published a scholarly book about Chinese railway politics in Africa. Unlike dependency theorists who see China’s resource-for-railroad-infrastructure loans as a neocolonial and unsustainable burden on African debt (Ian Taylor and Tim Zajontz, “In a Fix: Africa’s Place in the Belt and Road Initiative and the Reproduction of Dependency,” South African Journal of International Affairs 27, no. 3, 2020) and unlike Sinophiles who see Chinese railroads in Africa as an anti-imperialist counterweight (Richard Hall and Hugh Peyman, The Great Uhuru Railway: China’s Showpiece in Africa, Victor Gollancz, 1976), Wang adopts a more fashionable extraversion theory of African studies that emphasizes the agency of African political leaders: “Chinese-financed and -constructed projects in Africa coincided with rulers’ strategies for political survival in the host countries” (171).
The book begins with a thorough examination of the role railways played in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Wang illustrates how the advent of railways dramatically altered power dynamics, enabling nations to project their influence far beyond their borders, playing a pivotal role in colonial expansion. In this she follows in the footsteps of historians like Clarence Davis, Kenneth Wilburn, and Ronald Robinson, whose Railway Imperialism (Praeger, 1991) used extensive archival research to show how nineteenth-century locomotives built by imperial powers had a unique propensity for integrating and annexing territory and for monopolizing resources. What makes Wang’s work original is her field research (elite interviews and participant observation) in Africa and China. Her identity as a female, Chinese, Oxford doctoral student, with Chinese government funding, allowed her to conduct some 250 unstructured “elite interviews” with journalists, lawyers, scholars, NGO practitioners, local citizens, Chinese contractors, state owned enterprises (SOEs), government officials, African railway companies, academics, media, entrepreneurs, and African government officials. Getting access to Chinese agents is not easy for Africanists: “Some Chinese informants considered my research as a channel for propaganda, precisely because of my nationality and government funding. Several Chinese managers from different SOEs told me that they hoped I would help promote their companies by writing good stories” (226). Fluent in both Chinese and English, she was able to conduct her interviews without interpreters (except in Angola), slowly putting together what she calls the “jigsaw puzzle” (219) of business and political relations between actors in railroad projects that are intended—both figuratively and literally—to link the East and the West.
Wang examines the current state of global railway politics and the resurgence of railways as a tool for geopolitical strategy, particularly China’s big “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI). She provides an in-depth analysis of this ambitious infrastructure project, which aims to connect Asia, Europe, and Africa through an extensive network of railways and other transportation links. She argues that railways are once again becoming crucial in global power plays, facilitating economic partnerships and political alliances. David Lampton, Selina Ho, and Cheng-Hwee Kuik, in Rivers of Iron (University of California Press, 2020) survey railways connecting China with its seven southeast Asian neighbours (Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam). Wang agrees with their conclusion that, despite all of these projects being Chinese, domestic politics have shaped their different outcomes.
Why this variety of outcomes? Not only do Chinese actors have to deal with different local actors (government, business, bureaucratic, NGOs, local communities), but local actors also have to deal with different Chinese actors (government, party, business, bureaucrats). When it comes to modern Chinese-African relations, no single China is dealing with any single Africa.
In chapter 1 Wang defines the focus of her research, what she denominates the “railpolitik” (a play on the geopolitical term “realpolitik,” a realist state-centred tool of foreign diplomacy). She argues that the agency of African leaders in Sino-African relations is a better explanation for different outcomes than either the “external agency theories” (neo-colonial and anti-imperialist) that argue state-owned enterprises use their higher technical strengths and political connections to effectively realize railroad projects in Africa, and/or the “bureaucratic capacity theories” that argue capable bureaucracies like state railway corporations are what make these projects effective. Successful implementation of railway projects occurs when they are coupled with a leader’s informal authority to build coalitions and push agendas. Among the main factors hypothesized are: a leader’s strong ownership of the railroad project prior to Chinese involvement, perceived salience of the project, follow-up actions to discourses, superior commitment to the railway over any other project, and generating missions that bypass obstructionist bureaucrats.
Three empirical case studies then systematically process trace the three theoretical models, structured as within-case examinations of the railway projects in Kenya (chapter 2), Ethiopia (chapter 3), and Angola (chapter 4). Wang shows how political championship was key to successful outcomes. Kenya’s Standard Gauge Railway, constructed between 2017 and 2019 by the China Road the Bridge Corporation, was the most successful. Linking the capital of Nairobi with the port of Mombasa, it was completed under schedule. Ethiopia’s renovation of the Addis-Ababa-Djibouti Railway was the author’s middle case, linking Ethiopia’s capital to Djibouti’s port on the Red Sea. It was plagued by delays and problems. Angola’s Benguela Railroad was the least successful, going overbudget and being delayed in its completion from two years to eleven years. The main reason for these different outcomes, Wang argues, was the role played by leaders. Uhuru Kenyatta owned the Kenyan railway project, and championed its rapid execution. Abiy Ahmed, who inherited the Ethiopian rail project from his predecessor Meles Zenawi, did not make it his priority. Eduardo Dos Santos similarly did not make the Benguela railway his priority.
This book has its limitations. In a sense, it does not resolve the larger debate of whether or not these Chinese railroads are good or bad for Africa, or just good for foreign capitalists and mineral-hungry consumers. Readers looking for more critical approaches might turn to another recent work studying Chinese railroads in Angola, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Zambia: Africa’s Railway Renaissance (eds. Tim Zajontz et al., Routledge, 2024.)
Douglas Yates
American Graduate School in Paris, Paris