某些国际媒体持续关注最近中非关系升温，再掀风潮，按照殖民主义和冷战逻辑，妖魔化中国与非洲的合作。这些媒体认为中国的入侵使得西方治理及规范非洲大陆的努力变得困难重重，为本已为贫困、无知和暴力所累的非洲雪上加霜。但事实表明，中国人与非洲的合作要比这些充满偏见的言论展现的景象积极得多。在西方势力眼中，中国既非自由民主，亦非白人国家，却对西方在非洲的影响构成强有力挑战。至少在许多非洲国家看来，中国参与国家开发为其提供了一种发展模式。

Two experts from Hong Kong have hit back at criticism of China's growing trade with, and investment in Africa. In an article on Yale Global online, a publication of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, the experts say the claims actually malign China's role in Africa.

International media have reported widely on the recent surge in China-Africa links.

It's been said the Chinese are in Africa only for natural resources, and also dump cheap, shoddy products in local markets. And Chinese investors pay Africans a pittance. They come to the conclusion that China can only be an obstacle to Africa's development.

Barry Sautman, a political scientist and lawyer at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and Yan Hairong, an anthropologist at Hong Kong Polytechnic University are among those who don't agree.

Most of what China buys from Africa is indeed oil and ores and metals. But so does the United States. China received nine percent of Africa's oil exports, but Europe and the US each took 33 percent.

Some critics also hold Chinese goods responsible for the decline in Africa's textile and clothing industry.

But according to the article, the continent's textile and clothing industry was already decimated by trade liberalization of the 1980s and 1990s, when Chinese goods first came en masse around 2000.

The article admits that working conditions are poor in some China-invested companies. But so are conditions in companies owned by western countries. In contrast to Western investments, many Chinese enterprises are equity joint ventures, sharing profits with locals.

Meanwhile, China has been training Africans to be doctors, engineers, agricultural experts and in other technical roles.

The article argues that the Chinese are getting a bad press in the West because they are from a country which the West describes as neither liberal, democratic nor Caucasian, yet are effectively competing with those who are.