The attraction of South Korea as an emerging donor and a new partner for African countries stems from its own development experience. African countries like Ghana and Kenya focus not only on China, but also on East Asian and South Korean investors for their infrastructure projects and foreign investments, trying to conduct their ‚Looking East‘-policies. Other countries like Ethiopia try to model their own country after the idea of the development-led state as seen in South Korea.

The conference “Imagining Globality: China’s Global Projects in Culture," held at the China Institute of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, dealt with a number of projects which China uses globally to engage with the world through culture.

Some observers refer to Africa’s intensified relations with China as colonialism or neocolonialism insinuating exploitation. In an article in the newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau published in March 2013 titled “Afrikas zweite Kolonisierung” (“Africas second colonization”) the author Johannes Dieterich...