China's Second Continent ─ How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa

From the prize-winning investigative reporter: a trenchant, immersive account of the burgeoning Chinese presence in Africa-a developing empire already shaping the future of the world's incipient superpower and its fastest growing continent.

Former New York Times bureau chief in Africa and China, Howard W. French is uniquely positioned to tell the story of this seismic geopolitical development. Through meticulous on-the-ground reporting, French draws a nuanced portrait of China's economic, political, and human presence across the African continent. We meet a broad spectrum of China's dogged emigrant population, from those singlehandedly reshaping African infrastructure, commerce, and even geography (a timber entrepreneur determined to harvest the entirety of Liberia's old-growth redwoods) to those barely scraping by but still convinced of Africa's opportunities. French's acute observations offer illuminating insight into the most pressing unknowns of modern Sino-African relations: Why China is making these cultural and economic incursions into the continent and how extensive they are; what Africa's role is in this equation; and what the ramifications for both parties and their people-and the watching world-will be in the foreseeable future.

HOWARD FRENCH wrote from Africa for The Washington Post and The New York Times. At the Times, he was bureau chief in Latin America and the Caribbean, West and Central Africa, Japan and China. He is the recipient of two Overseas Press Club awards, and a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. The author of A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa, he has written for The New York Times Magazine,The New York Review of Books, and Rolling Stone, among other national publications. He is on the faculty of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and is a regular featured blogger for The Atlantic. He lives in New York.