Examining the South Africa-China: agricultural trading relationship

In recent years, Africa has emerged as a dominant region in China's foreign policy. As an emerging center of economic growth in the world economy, China is striving towards establishing a stronger footprint in Africa than ever before. The need to understand this rapprochement has been exacerbated by the current financial crisis.

With focus on agricultural trade, this book uses empirical data spanning up to year end 2007 to explain the potential benefits of China growing trade in Africa on South Africa's economy. The studies cover both China and South Africa's positions as importer and exporter of agricultural products in each other's markets. In doing so, they have carefully analyzed data from Chinese and South African sources. In order to give a fresh perspective to the analyses, a section of the work has been devoted to the nature of non-tariff barriers that face South Africa's exporters into the Chinese market.
RON SANDREY is Research Associate at the Centre for Chinese Studies (CCS), Senior Research Fellow at the Trade Law Centre of Southern Africa (tralac), and a Professor Extraordinary at the Department of Agricultural Economics, all based at University of Stellenbosch, South Africa.
HANNAH EDINGER is Economist at the Centre for Chinese Studies (CCS) at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa and Senior Manager at Research at Frontier Advisory (Pty) Ltd, a leading research and strategy firm that specialises in emerging markets.