The role of civil society in environmental protection in the Africa-China relationship – The Global Dialogue Policy Briefing

October 2017

Published by the Institute for Global Dialogue: Towards an African Policy on China policy brief series

Environmental protection has become a major issue of debate in the evolving Africa-China relationship. There are numerous environmentally-sensitive sectors impacted through China’s engagement in the continent. However, this paper is focused on areas where NGOs have particularly been active. The policy brief examines the role of environmental NGOs in environmental protection in the Africa-China relationship, primarily focusing on NGOs monitoring EIA compliance, as well as illegal wildlife trade and its inclusion in the FOCAC summit. This paper is primarily interested in the agency coming from civil society and NGOs (bottom up) and how this has impacted state responses at the official level. Recommendations are then provided for both African governments and environmental NGOs.

Author: Meryl Burgess

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Routledge Handbook of Africa–Asia Relations – (Chapter: Navigating the ‘One China’ Policy: South Africa, Taiwan and China)

November 2017

The Routledge Handbook of Africa–Asia Relations is the first handbook aimed at studyRouteledge handbook of Africa-Asia relaitons 2017ing the interactions between countries across Africa and Asia in a multi-disciplinary and comprehensive way. Providing a balanced discussion of historical and on-going processes which have both shaped and changed intercontinental relations over time, contributors take a thematic approach to examine the ways in which we can conceptualise these two very different, yet inextricably linked areas of the world.

Authors: Yejoo Kim and Ross Anthony

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Book Review: China and Africa: A new paradigm of global business I 2017

Published bCCS_Image_Politikon_2014y Politikon South African Journal of Political Studies

China and Africa: A New Paradigm of Global Business, by Kim, Young-Chan (ed), Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, 291 pp., ISBN 978-3-319-47029-0

China and Africa: A new paradigm of global business is a comprehensive collection covering a broad range of political, historical and economic accounts in the field of China–Africa relations. The growing breadth and scope of scholarship on Sino–African relations in recent years reflects the increasing influence of China on the continent, with various volumes presenting cases for both optimism and pessimism. The sheer variety and number of engagements across the continent present a challenge to efforts to comprehensively map the relationship. Within this context, this volume’s multidisciplinary approach gives the reader a succinct overview of the field in a fast-changing global landscape. The book provides extensive empirical data, including case-study chapters and data captured from both qualitative and quantitative research. [Read full book review here]

Author : Yejoo Kim

Corporatism as a Crisis Response to Democratisation? Comparing the Rise and Fall of Corporatism in South Korea and South Africa I 2017

Published bCCS_Image_Politikon_2014y Politikon South African Journal of Political Studies

In South Africa and South Korea, the state adopted corporatism as a crisis response to the demands of democratisation. As a result, as social dialogue mechanisms, the corporatist institutions in South Africa and South Korea have failed to bring the actors together and to resolve the various issues as these institutions were expected to do. Labour in particular has been placed at a disadvantage in the overall policy-making process. Consequently, labour has become discontented, forcing it to withdraw from these processes. This article compares the rise and fall of corporatism in two seemingly very different cases, namely South Africa and South Korea by examining four similar reasons that prompted the adoption of corporatism and four similar conditions that also led to its collapse.

Author: Yejoo Kim

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Do country sizes matter? What motivates China’s trade decision in Southern Africa? I 2017


largecoverPublished by Journal of Chinese Economic and Foreign Trade Studies

This paper analyses the trade internationalization location decisions of Chinese trade in Southern African Development Community (SADC) from 2001 to 2014, using a generalized mixed model. Market-seeking determinants are first evaluated on Chinese trade data to observe their impact on SADC economy, and then we apply the mixture model to sort country clusters based on their posterior probability.

Author: Emmanuel Igbinoba

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