A new generation of scholars is reshaping China-Africa research. More geographically diverse and digitally fluent than the field’s early pioneers of the 2000s, this cohort brings fresh perspectives and tools to the study of China’s engagement on the continent.
Yet deep structural barriers persist. African and Chinese researchers still face sizable obstacles in shaping research agendas, as U.S. and European institutions continue to dominate decisions about what gets studied, who receives funding, and which voices are amplified.
Solange Guo Chatelard, a research associate at the Université Libre de Bruxelles and the new executive director of the Chinese in Africa/Africans in China research network, joins Eric & Cobus to discuss the current state of China-Africa scholarship and where it’s going.
Show Notes:
- The China-Global South Project: A Display of Power, Not Partnership, in Washington by C. Géraud Neema
- The Chinese in Africa/Africans in China Research Network: https://caac.msu.edu/
- International Monetary Fund: Navigating the Evolving Landscape between China and Africa’s Economic Engagements by Wenjie Chen, Michele Fornino, and Henry Rawlings
About Solange Guo Chatelard:
Solange Guo Chatelard is a Research Associate at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB). Her research focuses on Chinese globalisation and Chinese migration, specifically Chinese engagements in Africa based on long-term ethnographic research in Zambia and China. In addition to research, Solange has produced two documentary films about China’s growing presence in Africa, “When China Met Africa” (BBC/ARTE) and “King Cobra and the Dragon” (AL JAZEERA).
Transcript:
ERIC OLANDER: Hello, and welcome to another edition of the China in Africa podcast, a proud member of the Sinica Podcast Network. I’m Eric Olander, and as always, I’m joined by CGSP’s Managing Editor Cobus van Staden from beautiful Cape Town, South Africa. A very good afternoon to you, Cobus.
COBUS VAN STADEN: Good afternoon.
ERIC OLANDER: Cobus, we’re coming to you at the end of a very busy week. There’s been a lot of buzz going on after Wednesday’s lunch in the state dining room of the White House with five West African leaders from Gabon, Liberia, Mauritania, Senegal, and Guinea-Bissau.
This was a little bit of a surprise. This was not something that we anticipated. We knew that Donald Trump wanted to have a U.S.-Africa leaders summit later in the year. They didn’t give us any specifics of that. Then, earlier in the week, they said that these five leaders would be coming to Washington to talk. It generated a lot of discussion.
It was a typical display of flattery for the president. They talked about his golf game. They praised him for his peacemaking capabilities in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
And they also said he would be an ideal candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize, which, of course, is something that he wants. And at the same time, they were angling for something, although we couldn’t really tell what it was. The Senegalese president said he wanted Trump to invest in a golf course in Senegal, which, okay.
But let’s not forget that four out of the five of these countries are on the proposed U.S. travel ban list. All five of these countries are suffering from the end of USAID’s support of health and development assistance in those countries. None of that was, of course, brought up.
But the Chinese issue loomed large in the background, although it didn’t come up in the conversation over lunch. We know that there were discussions with these five leaders, particularly about China’s growing influence in the Gulf of Guinea and those areas, and then also about the long-standing concerns that the U.S. Pentagon has about a base in West Africa. Geraud Neema, our colleague, wrote a scathing takedown of African leaders who participated in this.
I’m curious, and we did a whole, by the way, 20-minute YouTube video on this, and he’s got a column on our front page of the website, if you’d like to check that out. But I’m curious, Cobus, what was your takeaway from the events on Wednesday at the White House?
COBUS VAN STADEN: They weren’t great. They weren’t ideal. I agree with Gérôt that I think African leaders came out looking very weak, and that it replicated old colonial-style optics of essentially almost a tributary kind of situation, kind of fawning over this leader.
Very unfortunate optics, I think, all around. I think the big takeaway from all of this was that Donald Trump also congratulated the Liberian president for his good English, and then was surprised to be told that English is an official language in Liberia, and then pointed out that all the other West Africans, their English is not so good. It makes Donald Trump seem like a provincial, of course, but then also what it actually does is to heighten and to clarify just this very stark power differential between them, where Donald Trump comes off as a provincial because essentially he’s so powerful that he doesn’t have to care about anyone.
I think it is notable also to mention that the Africans weren’t the only ones going through this process. The Europeans, the Israelis, everyone has been genuflecting in similar kind of ways. Everyone has been praising his golf game.
It’s almost like this play-acting situation right now. It’s kind of a theater by now.
ERIC OLANDER: Everyone, of course, except the Chinese, who are taking a very different approach in all of this. One other point that Gérôt brought up in his column, which is worth mentioning, is the contrast in how many of these same leaders are greeted and dealt with in Beijing in very different ways. Full state visits, full displays of honor guards, one-on-one visits instead of group visits.
Donald Trump at one point signaled to the leaders with his fingers to wrap it up, and then he told them that the schedule was tight and he had to leave. Again, that’s the type of thing that the Chinese don’t do. Of course, to be clear, the Chinese demand quite a bit of flattery and quite a bit of praise and that kind of thing, but they tend to do it in private and not in the public way.
So once again, I would recommend everybody to check out Gérôt’s piece on the website and also our discussion over on our YouTube channel. Let’s shift gears today to go back to a topic that Cobus, you and I have talked about many times over the past 15 years of doing this podcast. It’s a passion of yours in particular about China-Africa research and scholarship and academia.
It is a very important part of this field, and it’s one that has changed considerably over the past 10 or 15 years. As you look back very quickly on where you started in this business, I mean, you can use your own experience, and where you see the field today in academia, give us your quick take in terms of how it’s transitioned over the years.
COBUS VAN STADEN: I should say that my position is a kind of a weird hybrid one, where I do spend a lot of time in China-Africa academic circles, but I’m not a full professional academic at the moment. But from my kind of perspective in this field, it went through an interesting evolution of starting off, I think, a lot of the early people in the field came from American and European academia. And there was an aspect there, and this is certainly not all of their work, but there was a certain kind of aspect there of essentially, you know, similar to the way area studies works, in a way kind of mapping, you know, what is happening in these different areas and the different kind of engagements between China and Africa, but not from the perspective of China and Africa.
I think that has shifted a lot. You know, there’s been a strong turn in the field towards a strong focus on both Chinese perspectives on the relationship, but particularly towards African agency in the relationship. And, you know, so to step away from this kind of area studies focus on Africa as a place where things happen, and particularly where other external actors act, you know, towards, you know, kind of Africa as a, you know, the fundamental kind of like, you know, stakeholder in the relationship.
And with that has come a real kind of widening of the field with a lot of African, you know, academics joining this conversation. So it’s a very interesting evolution, I think.
ERIC OLANDER: Well, let’s get a perspective now from someone who, like you, has been in it going back all the way, you know, decades now, and a long time. Many of you will know her from being on our show, also on Al Jazeera and various documentaries. Solange Chattelard is a research associate at the Université Lycée du Bruxelles in Belgium.
Also, and very important now, executive director, the new executive director of the Chinese and Africa Africans in China Research Network, which is the largest independent research network focused on the field. And it’s wonderful to have Solange back on the show with us, an old friend. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your incredibly busy schedule.
It was difficult to get you to join us because of your hectic schedule. So we’re so grateful to have the chance to see you again.
SOLANGE GUO CHATELARD: Hi, Eric. Hi, Cobus. It’s wonderful to be back on the show again.
Lovely to be here.
ERIC OLANDER: Fantastic to speak with you. Let’s dive into it. Ten years ago, when you were doing King Cobra and the Dragon for Al Jazeera, there was Deborah Brautigam at the China Africa Research Initiative.
Cobus, at that time, was at the South African Institute of International Affairs as a China-Africa scholar. Harvard had a program for China-Africa studies. All of that has gone away.
There’s been a lot of change in the space over the years. Maybe you can give us, like the question I asked Cobus, the landscape as you see it right now, has this field expanded, contracted? How has it changed in the 10, 15 years that you’ve been in it?
SOLANGE GUO CHATELARD: Well, I think a lot of things have changed. The field has certainly matured in the sense that there’s a generation of a younger generation who have had the opportunity to have more sort of stronger theoretical training combined with long-term exposure to the field. So, you know, work that’s really grounded in deep ethnographic observation.
And that’s really come to fruition in recent years. And that generation is now sort of, a lot of them have attained tenure positions in different universities across the world in America, in Europe, in China, in Africa. And so I do think that that reflects a maturity in the field to some extent.
And then these people will be training a new generation of scholars, who will have the kind of guidance that our generation, for instance, didn’t have.
ERIC OLANDER: And what’s the difference between this newer generation and the older generation in how they frame and understand the issue and how they’re teaching it?
SOLANGE GUO CHATELARD: So I think the fact that they are part of a wider community now and that they’re connected. When we started, nobody was interested in it. I mean, to give you a very concrete example, I had several scholars at Sciences Po in Paris when I started my PhD who, you know, incredible China scholars, who actually said to me, said, I won’t touch this topic because it’s got Africa involved.
They just couldn’t see it. You know, I couldn’t sell it to anyone. They just couldn’t see.
I was originally working on rural change, rural, you know, policies and Chinese modernization policies in the countryside. And they absolutely loved all of that work. When I said, I kind of want to do similar type of study, but in Africa, because actually, I think if you understand the rural to urban migration issues, what’s fundamentally underlying those issues, you really get a very clear picture of what’s going on in Africa as well.
I think that that’s part of the private story, at least in any case. But it was a very hard pitch, you know, at the time, and not only at Sciences Po, but at the EOSSS, where, you know, which is filled with extremely wonderful, like, you know, Thierry Perrault, Yves Chevrier, you know, Joël Touraval, you know, that generation. But again, you know, I remember at the time, they just thought I was this kind of, you know, this alien.
Why would anybody be interested in what, you know, China’s doing in Africa? Like, it’s just such a sort of remote, marginal topic. Also, partly because of things like the CAC, this network, this research network that’s also, you know, taking two decades to grow.
It’s just, you know, students now have more of a sense of a community. There’s a lot more guidance. You know, I was really thrown in the deep end.
When I landed in Zambia 20 years ago, it was not, you know, it was just, you’re out there, you’re in the deep end, you know, and there’s no one to tell you what to do, how to do it, what, you know, and I had to learn it sort of the hard way, including the, you know, very high political stakes, you know, the media exposure, the just, you know, I mean, Eric, you’re a veteran journalist, and you know what it’s like. But if you’re trained as a scholar, and then you end up sort of traveling around with presidents and former presidents and being on, you know, international media broadcasts, and, you know, with no sort of apparent training, there’s a lot you just have to kind of pick up as you go along.
And I kind of wish I had a heads up for certain things, because you get into a pretty sticky situation sometimes, as you can imagine. But I mean, I was very lucky, it was great. But I think these are the sort of lessons that we can then sort of pass on to a next generation.
So the field has matured in a way, you know, theoretically, it’s more exciting, there’s a lot more actually grounded data, more sort of deep place knowledge. But at the same time, it’s still a very uneven playing field, if you like. So in terms of the of knowledge production, we’re still seeing that most of the research, at least in terms of the publications, as far as the publications, the big conferences, etc, are concerned, it’s coming out from Europe, it’s coming out from the US predominantly, a lot of these authors are Chinese, are Africans are from all over the world, but their institutional homes are still sort of in the global West, if we can even use that term anymore. And then there’s the other issue of language, of course, it’s still heavily Anglo dominated.
And we all know that. And, you know, the irony is, Eric, when you and I met sort of many moons ago, we were both in Paris, right, just beginning at Sciences Po, you were based at France 24. And so we had a French connection, initially, you and I, and I think you’d been in the DRC as well.
So the irony is that we all started up with a very strong French connection. And actually, it’s all sort of the work, the publication, the commentary, the media coverage, that’s not to say that there’s nothing being done in other languages, there is, it’s just very little still, I think, even in the French space, the French publication and the French speaking the French scientific space, it’s still very little, it’s kind of the usual suspects, if you like, there are a handful of people, like a dozen names that kind of go round and round and round. And I think there’s, yeah, that’s a problem, in a way, you know, we haven’t really gotten out of that and bring sort of different languages, different voices, but the most fundamental problem, I would say, and well, this actually is an excellent example. So Caitlin Barker, who’s now just finished, if not mistaken, a PhD at MSU is currently a scholar at Yale, and will be moving to Boston College.
And she was at Dakar, there was a recent wonderful conference, Asia-Africa conference in Dakar last month, and we had a panel precisely on the politics of knowledge production. And she made a very important point saying that the agenda is still West, it’s about the West.
ERIC OLANDER: Cobus, you’ve been saying that for a long time, that it’s still very Western dominated.
SOLANGE GUO CHATELARD: Well, we’ve been saying this years and years, but still she, you know, she’s actually part of our network, and she’s an active, a very active member of it. But, you know, she has a nice bird’s eye view, she sort of just summed it up and said, it’s still about the West, what we’re interested in. So it’s about infrastructure, it’s about energy, it’s about critical minerals, it’s about power, it’s about global diplomacy, it’s about strategy and security.
And so I think Cobus is really right when he said that, you know, we have this, we have a lot of the mapping of what’s going on, what these engagements are, what the pledges are versus what the reality is, that’s always very interesting. But we still lack the studies from the lens of African actors, and Chinese actors. And I think that’s really what’s lacking, you know, at different stakeholders.
COBUS VAN STADEN: So over the last while, you know, over the last 10 years or so, like that, you know, as we saw the rapid development of the field, we’ve also seen a very strong pressure on kind of Chinese connections to academia, particularly in Western academia, like a lot of pressure on Chinese researchers, a lot of, it’s much harder to get visas now, you know, and also a general kind of like retreat from a lot of these kind of these fields within academia. How does that look from within the network?
SOLANGE GUO CHATELARD: I think we’re all struggling, I think. So I was actually at a China studies in Europe conference, I can’t remember, was it might have been actually already earlier this year, organised here in Brussels, and they really sort of brought in together the major China studies centres in sort of different universities across Europe, you know, Cambridge, King’s, and the ones in Germany and France. And, and, you know, we, we all kind of suffered the same thing, you know, it was a bit like an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, really, it’s like, hi, you know, I’m Anshat Lar and I’m a China scholar.
And everyone had to sort of, you know, talk about the pains. And, you know, you’re really walking a tightrope now. And it’s, that’s absolutely true.
So I’ve been in Brussels for about 10 years now. And I’ve witnessed and physically and mentally and intellectually seen and experienced this window for that, for the possibility of speaking about China issues in, in a broadly, let’s say, trying to be analytical, trying to rise above the politics, trying to rise above the ideologies, trying to rise above, you know, these mental prisons that we seem to enjoy locking ourselves into. And that’s become impossible.
It’s become an absolute minefield for for obvious political geopolitical reasons. But it’s made it very hard, I’d say for people who are seriously interested in trying to find out what’s going on to move, you know, as you were saying, so, you know, I think half of my friends who are incredible China scholars in different disciplines, they can’t go back to China. Many who are currently sitting as heads and directors of China studies programs in European universities haven’t been back to China in, I’d say, close to five to six years, maybe a decade.
And it’s madness. It’s absolutely madness. I mean, I was in Berlin not long ago, and we were having a meeting with, I think, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
And someone there said, I find it absolutely crazy that we’ve got like a bunch of China experts and half of them, which who can’t go back to China anymore. And they said that themselves, you know, and that’s basically the reality, the context that we’re in. And it’s become really painful.
It’s become really tiresome. And not just for the scholars who can’t have access to China, whatever, but it’s also we can’t get us, you know, people are not interested in. And this is what’s crazy is that, you know, you’re in a space where China is the stage of the world, the future stage of the world, the theatre, the main theatre, the main stage of the world is in Asia.
Yeah, we all know that it’s going to be China, it’s going to be Asia. And at the same time, we’re less and less interested in all things China related. And this is absolute madness.
Why are we doing this to ourselves?
ERIC OLANDER: And that’s not just in Europe. I mean, I was at a dinner party with the head of Chinese studies for the University of California, Berkeley. I’m an alum there.
And she said that they’ve contracted their Chinese studies programs, their Mandarin language training, there’s just no interest. He said most of what the program is now is training Chinese language for second generation Chinese immigrant kids, basically Chinese Americans. It doesn’t really extend beyond that.
And that’s not a bad thing. But they’re taking Chinese for very different reasons than people who are pursuing it for academic scholarship. And so it’s just though this is not a uniquely a European thing.
You talked about the westernization of this field that still remains the pole in many respects. An adjunct to westernization is the whiteness of it. I mean, we are very much a part of this.
I’d like to talk about that. And the difficulty is in de-centering both whiteness and westernization from these discourses in order to make African voices and Chinese voices the center. The challenge that we face in this, and I’m sure it’s very similar for scholars as well, is five, 10 years ago, when I would reach out to Chinese scholars to come on the show and to contribute and work with us, no problem.
We had Chinese diplomats, Wu Peng, the current ambassador to South Africa when he was the head of the African Affairs Department in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, no problem. We had lots of Chinese scholars, diplomats, you name it. Today, I send four to maybe five emails a week, and I do it religiously just because I feel like I have to keep doing it.
They are either refused outright or ghosted. So the opportunity of centering these voices is very, very difficult now because of the environment. And that’s not, by the way, just a Chinese thing.
Last week, I probably sent out 10 emails to African journalists, analysts, and others, and I’m getting very similar things. That may in fact be because people are reluctant to show up on podcasts to say things that can be then taken out of context, and there’s worry about lots of different things in social media, and they just figure, ugh. But it is more difficult now to get some of those voices into the foreground.
And so how does that amplify the whiteness and the westernization issue?
SOLANGE GUO CHATELARD: Well, it certainly doesn’t help. It certainly doesn’t help if people are not interested in having the right kind of conversations with the right people. And I guess this has been part of our job, and this is obviously what you guys have been doing for years and years, is just to try and push through the important conversations, despite what’s happening in the bigger world.
And what you’re describing there about certain Chinese people being reluctant to speak out, it’s absolutely true. And as you said, it’s really mirroring the fear that we’re getting here in Europe. So often in these periods of Cold War, when you have this sort of polarization of the world, what happens is a mimesis effect.
The two enemies become very, very similar, in fact, much more similar than they think they’re becoming different. And so they’re sort of hiding behind these walls and afraid. But actually, at the same time, what you’re seeing is a lot of very outspoken former journalists, you know, like Pekingology, you know, a lot of these subtract websites that are popping up, tons of them now.
Like, you know, a lot of these guys who used to be with Xinhua, used to be even in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, used to be in major state-owned enterprises, are actually coming out and trying to be some sort of voice or window into the Chinese system. So the question is how to sort of, you know, identify the interesting voices and be able to navigate that. So it’s interesting because there are pockets of it, and you know how it works, that if you know where to find those pockets, where it’s kind of easier to knock on the door, and then you go through and you get through to the right people.
And again, so it kind of boils down, and I would say probably similar in the African context, is that it’s really about personal relationships, you know, like everything. People, once they know you and they know what you represent and what you stand for, they’ll be more willing and open to speak. And that’s certainly the case, you know, like everywhere.
There’s an element of trust. I think if you sort of come out of the blue, particularly when it comes to certain stakeholders, you know, certain decision-making levels, they don’t want to sort of speak to just anybody. They need to know that it’s legit.
Whether it’s in politics or business, I see that across the board. But once you’re sort of, you know, in that trust circle, like I think people are quite willing.
ERIC OLANDER: Yeah, that hasn’t been our experience, because we know a lot of these people, and people you and I know in common, they’re just afraid of speaking publicly for the repercussions. And one of the things that’s been explained to me is that, say, at a Chinese think tank in Beijing or Shanghai, in the West, think tank scholars are praised, and it’s a good thing if they make a lot of media appearances. And in their annual reviews, they say, wow, you really helped get ideas out.
You raised the profile of the think tank. That’s fantastic. In China, their metrics are more about publishing, not about public appearances.
And the concern is that they could say something that could be slightly misinterpreted, and that could have a real adverse impact on their career trajectory. So they go, you know what, I’m not getting any benefit professionally from showing up in media, and therefore, why take the risk?
SOLANGE GUO CHATELARD: I do think that the Chinese think tank ecosystem is fundamentally different. I would even say, I would even argue that the, you know, the European think tank ecosystem and the American ecosystem is very different. If you just look at the funding politics, it’s just fundamentally different in every way.
We don’t have any money flowing into think tanks compared to what the US is doing, you know. So they have a different role, you know, on the chessboard. So yeah, I mean, I think they value different things.
People who are working in China in this space, you know, are working under extremely challenging and constraining environments, you know, and it’s really hard. It’s really, really hard. And I’d seen it because they’re my peers, and they’re also some of my relatives, you know, half my family’s in China.
So, you know, I’ve seen it from very, very close up. And I give them a lot of credit for doing what they do. Some people manage to pull off incredible things, you know, despite sort of all the constraints and the protocols.
And I just hope that, I just hope that the new generation of scholars, particularly people like our children, you know, will at some point get the opportunities that we got. That we could go back and forth freely. We got to, you know, open doors and explore and get to know people how they are, you know, just to get to know people.
Because, you know, and this goes perhaps also back down to the whole China-Africa thing, you know, we work at a very high geopolitics level, you know, for better, for worse. But actually, a lot of my actual research is very micro. It’s very, very micro.
Because I do fundamentally think that at the micro level, that’s where you realize that there’s more in common with each other than there is different. You know, it’s like the people who don’t like small talk, but actually, you know, the small talk that when you actually see an individual and not the big geopolitical war or conflict and tension that’s behind, you realize that actually this person’s concerns are very relatable. And they, it makes a lot of sense.
They just want to better their lives. They just want to make sure their child has access to cancer treatment. They just want to make sure their kid can get into a better school.
Or they just want to make sure, you know, they’ve got access to better healthcare. It’s just quite basic, quite relatable. And so, I think that it’s really important to get the micro stories right.
And then in order to then sort of insert them within the bigger geopolitical story in the right way. And so, I think this is what’s missing. If we talk about sort of, again, what’s missing, I do still think that excellent ethnographies are still lacking.
We’re still very much at the macro level, which is fine, which is of course valuable and important. And we’ve all worked in different ways on the geopolitics of global China. But the importance of the micro is just, I can’t stress it enough.
And that’s what you get where you spend a year in China, or when you spend a year in the DRC, or you know what I mean? Or when you spend, you know, many years in Vietnam or in Southeast, that’s just that day-to-day level of interaction, of exposure, and just understanding what life means to the average man and woman and child on the street. And then you get a much bigger picture of actually what this is all about.
Then you can actually start grounding these big, abstract, intangible slogans, you know, the BRI and harmonious world, all this nebulous crap. You can start grounding it in real places, in real people, in culture, and in the value they give to their work, and in the value they give to what they strive for. And I think the more we have of that kind of local descriptive work and analysis, the better.
And I guess to some extent, it might be delivered better in a film. Maybe there are certain medias that can sort of tell that story better than others. I mean, you know, great ethnographies are wonderful, but we’re still lacking in very, very strong, you know, deep place knowledge ethnographies, so that any kind of more production of that is definitely welcome in the field.
And it’s going to be hard because there’s no more money.
ERIC OLANDER: Yeah. Cobus, could you reflect a little bit on what she’s saying? And I’d like to get your take on that, and just some reflections from you.
COBUS VAN STADEN: Yeah, no, I fully agree. The China-Africa relationship for me, you know, lives in two spaces at once. One, this kind of like real life, kind of very complex entanglement involving real people.
And then it lives in this other field of narration, you know, and the kind of meta kind of ideas, you know, about ideas like malign influence, for example, or this beneficial kind of modernization influence, you know, that you’re seeing from, you know, being propagated from China. So for me, I’m really bad at ethnography. I’ve never been able to do ethnography, like, it’s just not in my real house.
So I’ve enjoyed the textual aspect of it, like I do a lot of text analysis in my work. And so this kind of like narrative tracking around this is kind of why I’m happy to work. But at the same time, just in from, you know, consuming ethnographies, and from, you know, knowing people who’ve done amazing ethnographies, you know, in Africa-China studies, I fully agree that this is where the kind of wider field should be going.
I was wondering, you know, ethnography, of course, this kind of hardcore, like really on the ground ethnography is one of the oldest traditions in the field. I think, you know, there’s a strand of that kind of going from right from the beginning.
ERIC OLANDER: Sorry, can I interrupt you for a second? Some of us lay people may not be fully familiar with what ethnography actually is. And we’ve used the word a lot now, and maybe just lay it out for us.
COBUS VAN STADEN: It means literally kind of like going to be with people, you know, kind of as an academic, but also embedded in their lives, you know, navigating that very tricky kind of like, like a line between those two things. And then providing this kind of inside out view of you know, of what you saw of kind of real life life, you know, so a classic one, for example, is CK Lee’s, you know, investigation into that she spent like, like years in the Zambian copper industry. And she’s a UCLA professor.
Yeah, she’s now moved to a different university. I’m not sure where, but you know, kind of like she spent literal years kind of like, like in the mines, you know, looking at, you know, kind of looking at how these different systems work, for example, Mingwei Wang’s work is recently published in Chinatown, and who lived in Chinatown, Joburg and worked in China malls in Johannesburg is another example. Sorry, Solange, go ahead.
SOLANGE GUO CHATELARD: [Inaudible] has done incredible ethnographies, you know, back in China, in Zambia, she spent, it was months, she spent years in Zambia, but the access in the actual mines is more a matter of months than years. But she did spend many years in Zambia, but in the mines itself, it was not the bigger point is, yes, you’re really side by side, you’re getting down to the granular level data, you’re sitting by the worker, you’re interviewing them, you’re following them to their home, sometimes, you know, it’s and it’s, it’s the time being spent there. So it’s not you’re just, you’re not doing a journalist could have quick in and out, get a soundbite, run away, get it out.
It’s more sort of sit there, because, you know, the longer you stay there, the longer you realize that people’s lives are made up of Chinese whispers, right? So when you push you when you follow some someone’s life, these are big characters, you realize these are really important figures in the community, regardless of the community, you realize, well, they’ll have one version of their life, then if you ask somebody else, that other person will have another version of their life, etc, etc. And your sort of job is to, you know, work through these Chinese whispers, and try and find out, you know, what are the key points of why do these different groups see this person in this particular way?
And then you sort of start getting to what is important to people? What do people value when they describe an individual when they describe what happened, you know, a big event, and so you get, you know, a different view, it’s because of a ground up version, rather than the top.
ERIC OLANDER: Yeah, I mean, we saw a tangible example of this play out a few years ago, when you were on France 24, in live television, and France 24 sent a reporter to Lusaka to talk about the malign Chinese influence or the bad Chinese influence in the chicken markets. And that reporter, who is not a specialist in the field, spent only a few days there. And you you did what I can only describe as opening a can of whoop ass on this guy.
It’s really, I’ll put a link to it in the show notes. It was something magical to watch. And you were just like, it was a beat down that I haven’t seen on live TV in a long time.
And you basically were like, this is not true. This is not the way it works. This is a meme that is 10 years out of date.
Talk to us again, how that, you know, these journalists will come in, and again, parachute, we see this over and over again, because, you know, Cobus and I have been in this field for 15 going on 16 years now. And we’re still dealing with debt trap, imported labor, we’re still dealing with narratives that are deeply, deeply embedded. The chicken seller narrative in Zambia still comes up too, by the way, despite what your best efforts.
SOLANGE GUO CHATELARD: It’s just it’s just it’s just highly frustrating. But the you know, I think the bigger issue is that, you know, newspapers don’t sell really on on happy stories, you know, the media nuanced stories either, or nuanced stories, they just want to, you know, they want sensation, they want fear, they want to stoke fear, and they want to stoke, you know, and so whatever really works, my frustration is that, you know, France FanCat, I’ve worked quite a lot with them, and they, they have people who know better, you know, this is the thing, it’s like, don’t, you know, there’s integrity as well, there’s professional integrity. So if the BBC pulls off like a really bad report, which they have, by the way, and when France FanCat, you’re like, guys, come on, I mean, have a bit of, you know, professional integrity, do your work properly.
You know what I mean? Like, don’t undermine your own work. And this was kind of where I was coming from, I felt quite bad, because it was pretty aggressive.
And I sometimes…
ERIC OLANDER: No, no, no, it was great television. It was fantastic television.
SOLANGE GUO CHATELARD: I apologize. Okay, it made I think they actually flagged it, bless them.
And they really liked it, apparently, because it got lots of clicks. But I had to, it was just, it was just too easy. And it was just, it was just too, it was, it was just a blatant lie.
It was just wrong. It was just factually wrong. And it’s, and it’s frightening, because there’s not enough of us who have been around and who have some sort of, you know, global, you know, international presence or something, who can say actually, no, that’s not true.
And we have evidence of it, you know, for over the last 10 or more years, you know, to prove that it’s wrong. And that’s also the danger of the internet. It’s just, it really amplifies lies, you know, just things that are not true.
And that’s the problem with the internet. On the one hand, you get these wonderful things like, you know, you and I, and the great work that you guys do in bringing different speakers from all over the world. And that’s wonderful.
But at the same time, what is this compared to the mountains and the way the tsunami of that gets thrown, you know, the real fight, you know, we’re really rowing against the tide here. So that’s so, again, I sort of boil down to common sense, you know, and I try to elevate anyone who has any sort of modicum of common sense, because, you know, we’re talking critical minerals, but we also need critical skills and common sense seems to be rarefied, you know, in today’s world. So that’s really what you need a lot of if you’re trying to navigate the internet.
And this is perhaps something we haven’t mentioned, actually, is that this field, the whole China-Africa field has also blown up together with social media, together with the internet. And as the media and these forms of knowledge production and these new forms of media have come up, that’s enabled entire spheres of discourse that would never have existed, had this happened in the early 2000s, or the late 90s.
ERIC OLANDER:
Yeah, but to that point, Cobus, one of the things that you’ve been doing is you’ve been working with scholars to train them. And this is something that Yoon-Joon Park, the previous executive director of the CAAC and a legend in her own right in the China-Africa scholarship space, she’s pioneered this initiative to help young scholars write for impact outside of academia, but to write for social media, for newspaper columns. But Cobus, it’s been very challenging.
It’s not easy for these scholars to adapt to these new ways.
COBUS VAN STADEN: No, because it’s not how you’re taught to write in academia. You know, in academia, you have everything is riding on you being incredibly intentional, careful, kind of like point by point, systematic, you know, covering every single issue. And that’s just not how you write for journalism, right?
So for example, you know, it takes kind of getting people to move out of their comfort zone into a space of writing that’s unfamiliar to them, and a way of structuring an argument that’s unfamiliar to them. And some really take to it, and some don’t. And, you know, we’ve also seen, you know, kind of academics, some academics have really kind of like flourished in the substack space, for example, like someone like Ken Opalo, for example, you know, has done amazing work, you know, kind of like around the states, but it’s not for everyone.
Like, you know, kind of academia exists for a reason. And it’s one of the reasons is that it’s a lot of shy people who like to be in libraries, you know, so they don’t necessarily enjoy being in the limelight. And that’s not necessarily beneficial to their work.
You know, so Solange, I was wondering how you see younger scholars in, you know, kind of in of your acquaintance navigating these kind of like media and geopolitical pressures that are, so for us is increasingly is becoming sometimes impossible to navigate, you know, it’s like it’s the space is squeezed so hard on both sides, that frequently it feels like, you know, I mean, we routinely get accused of being CIA and working for the CPC in like the same common thread, you know, the same thread, by the way, the same thread.
ERIC OLANDER: And that usually comes my way, by the way, not you, Cobus. You’re the anti-American guy. I’m the pro-CCP, anti-CCP guy.
COBUS VAN STADEN: So how do you see kind of young scholars actually dealing with this?
SOLANGE GUO CHATELARD: Well, it depends which where they’re from, to be honest, it depends where they’re from. And very concretely, the kind of social capital, economic capital they have, you know, if they’re very often, if you are from a relatively privileged background or, you know, in certain fields, you feel protected anyway. You know what I mean?
There’s some sort of protection around you. You must have seen it in, you know, the Ivy League universities in the US and, you know, we see it, you know, in Europe, but we see it a lot in China and in Africa. You know, those students are a little bit different just because they’ve come out the gates, they’re confident and they’re they kind of not saying that they won’t be sort of subject to these constraints, but there’s just a sort of a level, a degree of confidence that you don’t have in other students.
I think everyone’s struggling. On the whole, I really see everyone struggling and I’ve seen a lot of dropouts. I’ve seen amazing people who’ve done incredible work sort of drop out.
And this goes to the bigger, the bigger question on, you know, how seriously do we take China and not even as academics? I’m not saying we need to become China scholars and live and breathe and die in a library writing about China. It’s just about being China literate and understanding the value of that.
Again, it’s common sense. If China is going to open, even not overtake, is going to sit as an equal or as a major pole of geopolitical security, military, technological, you know, all of that stuff. If they’re going to be leaders in all those fields, shouldn’t we have a little bit of China literacy?
Surely, surely it’s in our benefit as Europeans or as Australians, even as Japanese, you know, as their neighbours, as Russians, as Africans, as Latin Americans, you know, have some sort of minimum amount of China literacy so we can sort of understand where the world is heading, you know, tomorrow. But right now we’re sort of in a state of denial. And these students, unfortunately, are working in this world where they come out and they’re very ambitious.
Some of them are extraordinary. I mean, the amount of work they’ve done, it’s just amazing. You know, it’s really admirable.
I get inspired when I see these, you know, PhD guys and it’s like, wow, but I think some of them who’ve been in the system for a while are quite disillusioned now and are just sort of bored and yet to move on. You know, I sort of bored with it. I’m tired with it.
It’s sort of going around in circles. And, you know, like you and, you know, me, if you’ve been in DC for 20 years, like I’ve been in between Brussels, London, Paris and Berlin for the last two decades, you know, you kind of hear the same thing and you’re just thinking, wow, so you’ve spent all this money, you’ve invested all the, and we’re back to square one, you know, it’s a bit like the Afghanistan syndrome in the US, you know, like you’ve sucked how many trillions and where are we at with Afghanistan? Back to square one. And it’s like, surely we could do better.
You know what I’m saying? Like institutional memory, surely we can do better. So it’s just more, it’s not, and I’m not accusing, I’m not pointing fingers and I’m not trying to sort of, you know, demonize the West.
I think everybody’s responsible for it really. There’s collective responsibility on all sides. Again, for some reason, humans really like to build these mental prisons, you know, and I really think we’re in a state of, you know, the world right now where a lot of people in China, just like I see in Europe, they’ve got these mental prisons and they’re quite happy living in them, you know, and no one wants to free themselves from it.
No one dares in a way to take off the mask, take off the glasses and see the world as it really is, you know, because learning about the world is also in a way learning about yourself, really. I think you’ve traveled extensively. Why do you guys love living around the world and traveling?
Because there’s something about being not at a home, being far from home, that somehow reveals something about yourself as well. And I think part of learning about the world, learning about the other, the ultimate other, if you like, it’s also revealing about who you are yourself. And I think a lot of these people just don’t want to admit who they are.
I think Europe has massive identity issues. Europe doesn’t really want to deal with questions of who they are. China’s wrestling with that.
It’s going through a really, really hard generational war at the moment. It’s going through a really, really hard period. I don’t think these countries, these people, these cultures, it’s a civilizational time where people are not really willing to sort of face up to who they are.
And so trying to be, you know, being honest about who the other person is forces them to sort of be honest about themselves. And I think that’s really tricky for a lot of people and for a lot of cultures. I think that’s the bigger problem.
ERIC OLANDER: Yeah. One of the trends that I’ve seen in this, in the Chinese scholarship over the years, and not just in Africa, but elsewhere as well, in terms of area studies, is that more and more things are being pushed into the U.S.-China competition. And so we see this in the Mideast quite a bit, that they frame everything in the context of the U.S., and the U.S. is being pushed into. And these are scholars and analysts who are area study specialists who in the past didn’t focus on the U.S. role in those regions. Now, more and more, there’s always a U.S. role. One of the questions that I have, though, about looking at from what you’ve seen from African scholars really goes back to a 2020 book that your academic colleague Lina Benabdallah, who’s one of the great professors in this field at Wake Forest University, and she wrote just a seminal book, Knowledge Production and Network Building in China-Africa Relations.
And she talked about the incredible effectiveness of bringing journalists and scholars over to China in these junkets. And then that has had a very important effect of shaping the narrative when they come back to Africa. And they tend to be very, very supportive and pro-Chinese.
And again, there’s not necessarily anything wrong with it, per se, but it has, in my view, just looking at this industry, it has had an effect in terms of how a lot of people see this world. Cobus has talked about over the years that African scholars and Africans in general oftentimes are future starved, and that the opportunities to go to Germany, to go to the U.K., to go to the U.S., even to travel within Africa. My colleague Geronimo, him trying to get a visa to go to South Africa, he has to give up his child and he has to sign over the deed to his house.
I mean, it’s just the most absurd thing you’ve ever seen. And so this mobility challenge contributes to that, and China makes it very easy. You come over, we’ll pay for your flight, you’ll come into a nice hotel, you’ll spend two or three weeks, we’ll tour you around.
Sometimes you’ll go to Beidao or you go to Tsinghua, you get to meet with great professors, and they really make everything accessible. So people come back with a very favorable view of China. This is something that Lina really documented with great elegance in her book.
And I’m wondering, have you seen that impact change the field over the years as well?
SOLANGE GUO CHATELARD: I wouldn’t say the academic field as such, no. But the wider policy and media field, yes, because I kind of overlap into the policy and the media field. And I myself have also been on several of the trips to China as part of a media delegation, but also part of a policy delegation and organized by different sort of Chinese hosts.
And so I’ve seen it, I’ve seen very close up how it works and how, and they’re getting better at it, let’s just say. I think about 10 years ago, it was quite random. They would sort of try and grab, they were kind of grasping at straws and not really sure who to invite, et cetera.
But sort of the last one I went to, and just to give you an example, there were about 13 of us on this delegation and they were, it was an extraordinary delegation. It was absolutely extraordinary. They were really great.
They really found the right people who had serious careers in their respective fields, most of them in the political field. And it was wonderful. We got to spend a whole week together.
But to be fair, we ended up learning a lot more about each other than we did about China, because a lot of them had already been back and forth to China. So we ended up tying very, very making, building very strong links. That said, I would like to highlight that within that specific trip, I was the only woman.
So there were 13 of us. I was the only woman. Everybody was from Africa, except for one scholar from the US and myself from Europe.
And I think the average age was about 55. So I was the only one under 40 and the only female. Everybody was basically 60 plus-ish.
That was a specific type of, they’re obviously trying to pull a specific kind of demographic for that trip. They also do much younger. But the bottom line is, I think what China’s trying to do is seeing is believing.
There’s as much media narrative, misinformation, disinformation, whatever you like to call it. But they realize that it’s only when you actually come to China and see it for yourself that you kind of have some sort of inkling of what’s going on.
ERIC OLANDER: But it is very impressive. I mean, they have a good story to sell. I mean, it is very impressive to see up front.
SOLANGE GUO CHATELARD: Well, they don’t have to sell it anymore. And this is what people don’t realize, is that I’ve spent a lot of time going around different campuses in China back and forth for years and years and years. They’re coming.
You don’t have to sell it to them anymore. People from Africa are like, my son is going to do his PhD in, not even in Hong Kong or Shanghai or Beijing or Guangdong. They’re happy to go to Jinan.
They’re happy to go to these first-tier provincial universities because they’re like, these roads are clean. Their public transports are good. The food is amazing.
I’m out in the street. I feel safe. I’ve got my mobile phone.
I can trade with, I’ve got these networks because things are happening. When you go there now, what you realize is you don’t have to sell it. They’re there.
They want to be there. So that’s what’s very, very interesting. They basically succeeded in the soft power.
People, they don’t have to pull anybody in anymore. These kids want, they’re dreaming. And I sat there and interviewed a couple of students from Morocco, these girls, and who were saying, and I asked them sort of, why are you here in the middle of this provincial town in Central China?
And they were like, China is the future. And I was like, we are interested in our future. If we go to Europe, that’s dead.
We don’t see our future in Europe. Our future is here in Asia. And that was two Moroccan girls at 19 years old.
You know what I mean? Who were hungry, who were doing a live stream, selling their Moroccan goods online to Chinese buyers. You know how it all works in China.
And just they feel it. They understood that there’s something happening there that would not be on offer to them in Europe. That’s not to say that there’s huge migration still obviously coming to Europe.
And I think migration is part of the issue to circle back to the Trump meeting with these five countries. I think migration, security, and all that was part of going to these countries as well. But don’t overlook the soft power.
It’s really worked. These kids, they want to go east. And I think that’s a big difference.
That’s completely changed.
COBUS VAN STADEN: How do you see the field developing from now on? Obviously, as you were pointing out, they face a lot of constraints, a lot of funding, institutional constraints, political constraints, and so on. But at the same time, it’s also, you know, the field made amazing strides over a relatively short time.
And in the process, in addition to China-Africa studies, an additional kind of adjacent field of global China studies is kind of developing as well. So yeah, I was just wondering how you see the road forward.
SOLANGE GUO CHATELARD: Well, I’ve always seen the road forward as going beyond your field, essentially. When you start talking to audiences beyond your field, when you’ve understood certain patterns, you know, or certain social dynamics, economic dynamics, and historical patterns sort of repeating themselves. And then you can take that and tell people why that matters, because it could be relevant beyond your specific case study.
So the future has to be post-China-Africa. And it has to be, in a way, post-global China, you know, because, you know, the problem is, you know, all these buzzwords. But, you know, if you’re a student of history, you know that it’s just plus ça change.
Plus ça change, plus voilà, the world, things stay the same, you know. So the more we can reach out and show that maybe what’s happening in the world is symptomatic of something else, it’s not just China, and not just the rise of global China, but it might just sort of be part of, you know, the pattern of, you know, empires that inevitably rise and inevitably fall, you know. And some declines might have a sort of more shallow slope, and they have a slow sort of decline and a soft landing, and some have a harder landing, you know.
But that’s clearly where we’re at now. And try to see the bigger picture. I mean, I think the problem is with the whole field.
I mean, I think I said this in one interview, you know, I told you, Eric, that I found this interview that I’d completely forgotten about that you guys did.
ERIC OLANDER: A long time ago, yeah.
SOLANGE GUO CHATELARD: Oh, grateful for that. I completely forgot about that. I was very grateful.
But essentially, I think the recommendation of the conclusion was that we have to go beyond China, Africa. And it made so much sense. And I was so pleased.
We really need to go beyond China, Africa. But the problem is, is because right now, it’s very presentist, as you were saying. It’s not just the African students are future starved, it’s that everybody is future starved.
I think we’re living in a time where it’s very hard to think about the future, you know, collectively, because we need each other. Essentially, we’re stuck with each other, like it or not, you know, we’re stuck with Russia, we’re stuck with Israel, we’re stuck with Iran, we’re stuck with China, we’re stuck with Venezuela, we’re stuck with Trump for now, you know, so how can we make it work? That’s what I’m interested in, right?
Like we and you know, when I take this question to some of these, these sort of high closed doors policy meetings, sometimes with the decision makers, I just say, if we could get it right, okay, we know how exposed we are, we know what the risk factor, etc. If we could get it right, what would that look like? What would we have to do to get it right?
You know, and often people haven’t really thought of that. You know, what would we have to do?
ERIC OLANDER: Because I think there’s so bogged down in the present and the problems that it’s hard to see past it.
SOLANGE GUO CHATELARD: It’s very hard. And so this, if anything, I would encourage people to root their work, not only in, you know, actual hard data, but look at the past, please, history, history, all about, I’m very, I’m a big fan of history. So history, and then sort of, you know, make it future oriented, not in these kind of, you know, wild prediction, you know, future AI doomsday apocalyptic, you know, not, but just, you know, try to be future oriented, because in a way, that’s, you know, that’s what we all, we all want a better tomorrow.
I think the reason that all of us are in this space is because nobody sees this, it’s no fun. If there’s a war, right now, there’s no fun, nobody likes war. It’s just not a good news.
And unfortunately, it’s we can’t rule it out. I can’t tell my son that I can’t rule out a, you know, a war with China within his lifetime. And that’s terrifying.
That’s absolutely terrifying. And we would all rather that not happen. So how can we make decisions and think about things in a way that would allow that to try and avoid that for everybody.
And it’s really sad that we’ve come to this point where you’re either a dove, you know, you’re a panda hugger, or you’re a hawk, you know, it’s like you’re dovish on China. It’s just that’s, you know, going back to your question, it’s been so politicized. So you know, as you’re saying, either, you know, you’re going to be nominated as the next ambassador, you know, you’ll be an honorary ambassador, Eric, of China to somewhere, you know, or Solange, you’ll be an honorary, you know, it’s not, it’s not about that, can’t we, again, it’s about these mental prisons that people, you know, live in, can’t we get beyond that and try to actually see things for what they are? And there are very few people who can do that very, very few.
And so as I would encourage for the future is that the more work that can do that, that can sort of, you know, transcend ideology, then the better, really, because that’s what we need.
ERIC OLANDER: Well, that is a wonderfully optimistic note or hopeful note for us to end this discussion. I hope it’s not going to be another few years before we have a chance to talk with you again, it’s always so enlightening. Solange Gros-Châtelard is a research associate at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, also Executive Director of the Chinese in Africa, Africans in China Research Network, which is really the most important research network in the China-Africa space.
I’ll put links to it in our show notes so that if you are a scholar, and you are in this field, and you want to be with your peers, we want to grow the network, definitely reach out to Solange and the team at the CAAC network. Solange, thank you so much again for your time today. We really appreciate it.
It was wonderful to speak with you.
SOLANGE GUO CHATELARD: Thank you, Eric. Thanks, Cobus. It’s always wonderful having, you know, sharing ideas with you guys.
It’s always wonderful to be here.
ERIC OLANDER: I was not sure if I should be hopeful or somewhat despairing from Solange’s assessment of the situation. It’s a complicated space. On the one hand, again, I like the fact that there’s this new generation that’s coming out, and that there’s some new voices in it.
But at the same time, we’re seeing real pressures, political pressures. We’re seeing a shrinkage of academic budgets. We’re seeing pressure on, in terms of just China studies, not just in Africa, but around the world, but also this difficulty that we’re having in engaging Chinese stakeholders.
We’ve experienced this. Academics experience it. It’s difficult for some of us to go back to China to have that first-person experience.
That’s not something we experienced five, six, seven years ago. So again, there’s reasons to be hopeful, but there’s also reasons to be concerned.
COBUS VAN STADEN: Yeah, I think both are true. I think there is a lot of reason to be hopeful. I think people are really doing amazing work, and I think they’re going to keep doing that amazing work.
But we are in a very heightened geopolitical moment. And more broadly, we’re also in a moment where our very relationship with truth is shifting. We’re coming into an AI moment where a lot of people are already talking about a post-truth world we’re moving into.
ERIC OLANDER: I think we’re in a post-truth world. I mean, Cobus, we’re not going into one. We’re in it now.
I mean, listen, the United States president had 34,000, 35,000 lies in his last administration, and I mean, this is a post-truth era that we’re in now.
COBUS VAN STADEN: If it’s not only that information itself is kind of corroded, but that a lot of people seemingly don’t need a lot of truth, a lot of verified information, then it becomes a fight for those people who want to keep providing that information and who think it’s important. And so part of the challenge is to reconfigure what information brings to people, kind of like what its actual value is. And so that underlies a lot of the larger fights that are going through academia at the moment, because, of course, academia is where truth is produced and packaged.
It’s the record of the world. So that’s a very important job, but it’s increasingly also a very devalued job in lots of ways. And the challenge is for all of these people and the rest of the world, dependent on their information, to actually find a way of making it sustainable and making it important.
ERIC OLANDER: Well, and that’s not just a challenge facing academia, it’s facing media, it’s even facing us, and it faces quite a few. I’m interested in what she was talking about in terms of where China Africa Studies is going. And one of the things that we’ve seen is a lot more in the specialty spaces.
So we’ve seen some great research coming out on the energy space, on new energy in particular, out of the auto sector, but not all of it’s coming out of academics. And again, this is one of these questions about the role of academia that you talked about. I mean, it’s under a lot of pressure right now.
And are those the smartest voices in the room to be telling us about these things? And I say this in the sense that oftentimes academics have a very deep, but very narrow view of the world. And so many of the issues that we’re dealing with are transversal in nature.
So when we look at the China Africa relationship, if you’re only looking at one sliver of the China Africa relationship, but don’t understand tech or what BYD is doing, or what’s happening in Southeast Asia, what the Chinese are doing in Latin America, can you fully understand the context of what the Chinese are doing in your vertical? I contend no, but a lot of academics disagree with that and stay very, very loyal to their small vertical that they’re in. I think that’s a little bit of a problem.
COBUS VAN STADEN: I mean, it’s a problem for people who are looking for a large and well mapped and coherent information space. But academics are not rewarded for being generalists, right? They’re only rewarded to only get published and only get promoted by being the specialist in their field.
And there’s been so much academic work and non-academic work produced about various issues that the fields are necessarily getting smaller and smaller. You know, because if you’re going to be covering comprehensively everything that’s been said, you know, we know, right? Kind of like we cast our net very wide, and we proudly say we’re China Global South.
But when you actually look at what, like actually covering that space, even covering Africa, even covering a specific African country, even covering a specific African country only in relation to minerals, for example, that is still, when you really, really have to go down and make sure that you know everything in that space in detail and vetted, it’s impossible. No, I agree. So to a certain extent, you know, there’s, you know, kind of, you give up on the one side or you give up on the other side.
And, you know, and in the end, you need both. You need academics and you need journalists because they do different things.
ERIC OLANDER: And let’s also put analysts. There’s a whole range of analysts that are out there. Someone like Geraud is not an academic.
He’s not a journalist. He’s in this kind of more analyst space that’s out there. And I think that role is growing a lot more.
OK, so we said optimistic, kind of pessimistic. Where do you fit on that spectrum looking at the China-Africa space as you’ve seen it develop over the past 10, 15 years? Again, we’re transitioning from an older generation into a newer generation, and that is always very exciting.
Where do you stand right now? Let’s just kind of close our conversation there.
COBUS VAN STADEN: I think I’m optimistic about China-Africa work. You know, I think there’s, particularly because there’s more African voices coming out, I think there is really interesting stuff being done. I’m more wary and pessimistic, I think, about the future of academia itself, you know, because in lots of ways, the kind of ecosystem that is needed to support really good academic work, that ecosystem is eroding very quickly.
And it’s particularly eroding in the sense of people who aren’t fourth-generation academics, right, kind of people who are coming from the Global South, who are coming from the working class, who are coming from other parts of communities that aren’t, you know, represented in universities. Those people are finding it harder and harder to get into universities. So in that sense, it’s similar to the art world, right, kind of like increasingly all galleries are run by nepo babies.
And it’s very difficult to be a working class artist, making it in your own generation into that space. It’s very similar to academia. So the people who can live the kind of grad student life that it takes to become a real platinum-tip academic, the years and years of the non-stop reading and, you know, and so on that it actually takes, and then you’re not even talking about something like fieldwork, a lot of those people come survive in that space because they have family money who supports them, right.
The people who don’t have that find it much harder to survive in that space than they need to move into other things, you know. So at a moment when academia is also being pressurized, you know, kind of politically when it’s harder and harder for foreign students to get into elite universities even, and so on and so on, you know, kind of it adds up.
ERIC OLANDER: And of course, universities in many parts of the world, not just the United States, are also coming under intense political pressure. Parts of Eastern Europe and certainly in China as well, there is political control of the universities. And so China is one of these very sensitive subjects.
And so we’ll see if that too comes under pressure and becomes a factor. By the way, just want to remind everybody, if you are a student or a teacher, you can get half off to the China Global South project. Just go to ChinaglobalSouth.com and you’ll see everything that we have to offer you. And if you’re interested in a subscription, email me directly, eric at ChinaglobalSouth.com, and I will send all of our academic folks in both high school, college, university, if you’re a teacher, if you’re a student, let me know and I’ll send you links for a half off discount that just starts at $10 a month. And for everybody else, go to ChinaglobalSouth.com slash subscribe. Your subscriptions are what allow us to continue this important work and to be independent.
And, you know, that’s so important. And we, the work we do, hope to support what academics are doing to facilitate their research and the work that they’re pursuing. So I want to thank you, Cobus, for another enlightening conversation.
I’m going to be joining you next week from California. So we’re going to be back to some very weird hours. I’ll be out in California for a few weeks.
So if you’re going to be in Berkeley or in the Bay Area, by all means, let me know. And I’d love to hook up with people. It’s always fun to see everybody.
So we’ll be back next week with another edition of the China in Africa podcast for Cobus van Staden in Cape Town. I’m Eric Olander. Thank you so much for listening and for watching.
