Table Of Content“Irene Yuan Sun provides a memorable and challenging narrative of the
industrialization of Africa and the China-Africa relationship, two of the most
important trends in development today. Combining first-person research, a deep
understanding of development theory, and an encyclopedic grasp of the African
landscape, this is the one book to read if you want to understand both the
opportunities and the hard choices Africa faces.”
—JONATHAN WOETZEL, Senior Partner, McKinsey & Company
“Irene Yuan Sun uses vivid stories of private Chinese entrepreneurs in Africa to
make complex topics of development, investment, governance, and public health
accessible and compelling to the reader. This is a refreshing and beautifully
written book.”
—WILLIAM C. KIRBY, T. M. Chang Professor of China Studies, Harvard
University “By shifting the focus from Chinese trade to productive
investment in Africa, Irene Yuan Sun opens a critical frontier with
potentially profound impact. This is a pathfinding book that should inspire
more work.”
—MUKHISA KITUYI, Secretary-General, United Nations Conference on Trade
and Development “Irene Yuan Sun is a remarkable and astute observer, and
her refreshing and exciting perspective on the new Africa is well worth
reading—and remembering.”
—RICHARD LEAKEY, world-renowned paleoanthropologist and conservationist
“There are very few scholars who understand the nuances of Africa’s
complicated relationship with China as Irene Yuan Sun does. In a writing style
full of flair and dynamism, she provides thorough analysis and relevant insights
to help readers understand Africa’s industrialization journey and the role China
plays in it.”
—ISAAC K. FOKUO JR., cofounder, Sino Africa Center of Excellence
Foundation; founder and principal, Botho Limited; and former CEO,
African Leadership Network
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Copyright 2017 Irene Yuan Sun All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior
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School Publishing, 60 Harvard Way, Boston, Massachusetts 02163.
The web addresses referenced in this book were live and correct at the time of
the book’s publication but may be subject to change.
First eBook Edition: Nov 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63369-281-7
eISBN: 978-1-63369-282-4
For Merry, who believed as if it were obvious
CONTENTS
A Note on Names
INTRODUCTION: From the Current Factory of the World to the Next
Factory of the World
PART ONE: REALITIES
1. A Human Chain Reaction
2. The Life, Death, and Rebirth of Factories
3. Cloth and Clothing, Steel Rods and Steel Sheets
4. Taking a Gamble
PART TWO: POSSIBILITIES
5. On the Line
6. Two Steps Forward, One Step Back
7. Good (Enough) Governance
8. “If We Could Do It, Then So Can This Place”
EPILOGUE: Feeling the Stones
Notes
Index
Acknowledgments
About the Author
A NOTE ON NAMES
Names in this book are generally introduced in the full form if known.
Thereafter, each person is referred to as I would address him or her in real life.
Hence some people are referred to by English first names; others by Mr. or Mrs.
followed by the family name; still others by their full names, as is Chinese
custom between people of similar ages. I have occasionally changed names or
redacted them altogether to protect people’s privacy; such cases are noted.
INTRODUCTION
From the Current Factory of the
World to the Next Factory of the
World
I remember the first time I rode in a car. Not many people in America can say
that, cars being as prosaic as they are here. But this was in China, where I was
born and where I lived until age six. Up to that moment, my conception of the
Chinese word qiche consisted entirely of crowded buses onto which I was
squeezed by my parents and heavy-duty trucks that children were definitely not
allowed in. This car was something very different: there was no one in it I didn’t
know, and everything was effortlessly clean. The leather of the seats was smooth
and cool to the touch and gave off the calming, sterile smell of newness. I was
used to having to clutch my parents’ hands on standing-room-only buses or to
wrap my arms around their midsections as they pedaled a bicycle. None of that
was necessary here, so I wasn’t quite sure what to do with the unexpected
freedom of my limbs. I wanted to rub the dark-tinted windows to see if they
would get lighter so that I could look outside. But I had been told it was a special
occasion to sit in such a qiche, which probably meant I should keep my hands to
myself.
Our family did not own the car, of course. It was the early 1990s, and almost
no one in China owned a car. We took a spin in it as a treat from a family friend
who was a government official. Four linked rings declared the car to be an Audi
—one of the few models that existed in China at that time, and for years
afterward the only car brand I could name. China had four carmakers in total, all
founded in the 1950s in a fit of central-government-directed investment in heavy
industry. The Soviet Union had advised that one of the firms be based in my
hometown of Changchun because of its proximity to eastern Russia, the theory
being that this nascent car plant could learn from its Soviet counterparts. The
resulting firm, FAW, mainly made giant industrial trucks, and over the years, its
blue and white logo became ubiquitous around town. But by the time I got to sit
in one of its cars, the Chinese government had long ago severed any cooperation,
in automobiles or otherwise, with the Soviet Union. In 1990, FAW turned instead
to Volkswagen for investment and technical help in a joint venture agreement.
FAW continued to make industrial trucks, but it also started making sedans under
Volkswagen’s Audi brand. That’s how it came to be that a year or so later, my
family—father, mother, daughter—was sitting together in a car for the first time.
It bears repeating that this happened just twenty-five years ago. I’m only
thirty, but I personally witnessed a time when China’s now car-clogged streets
were full of bicycles instead. Such has been the rapidity of China’s
transformation, sparked by the rise of Factory China. In the quarter century since
I first sat in that car, China has gone from producing 2 percent of global
manufacturing output to 25 percent.1 Over that time China’s GDP grew
thirtyfold, and 750 million people were lifted out of poverty—the most ever
achieved in a single period in the history of the world. China went from being
poorer than Kenya, Lesotho, and Nigeria to rivaling the United States for the
title of largest economy in the world.2 But as impressive as these statistics are, to
me, the real signs of development are all the small, everyday occurrences that
can only delight people who have known life without them. My favorites: Sprite
is no longer considered a rare treat, just a mundane soft drink. People now stand
in lines at the airport instead of jostling one another relentlessly. Stores now
provide toilet paper in their bathrooms. And no one thinks it’s anything special
to ride in a car anymore.
As these changes were unleashed by China becoming the current Factory of
the World, I grew up in the United States, and then went to live in another part of
the world. After college, I taught eighth-and ninth-graders in a village in
Namibia, in southwestern Africa. During a staff meeting, the principal of my
school strong-armed me into running the school shop. Having no clue as to what
I should be selling there, I asked at the end of one of my classes if any students
would like to go with me—in my car—to the wholesaler an hour away to buy
things for the shop. A burst of shouts was accompanied by an eruption of arms
into the air. Every single kid wanted to go. More than a few trailed me home,
begging me to pick them. I thought it was funny—and familiar. I knew this
longing to sit in a car, and the novelty of actually doing so. Cars—and Sprite and
toilet paper—may sound like very materialistic ways of defining development,
but people who have these things tend to forget how much they are markers of
modernity to those who don’t. Americans and Europeans can be casual about
