This safari to Africa with China and from Africa to China has been one of our main preoccupations for these last six years. In this final very short section, we raise just a few of the larger questions that will need more attention if we are to understand China's reach into Africa, both centrally directed and more or less completely uncontrolled.

We have discussed versions of soft power that are competitive, about winners and losers, about Hollywood versus Confucius. But there is a Chinese policy view about the world situation that recognises, in Zhou Enlai's terms, that we are all in the same boat. Greece is not Europe's problem; it is everyone's. In the words of the Chinese ambassador in South Africa: ‘Interdependency amongst countries is so deep and necessary. All countries are in the same boat. You suffer; we suffer’ (Ambassador to KK, 15.10.12).

This takes us beyond the special relationships of South-South cooperation into global cooperation. It is a timely reminder, after six chapters of FOCAC and China-Africa cooperation, that China is engaged with Latin America, the Middle East, Europe, North America, and Asia-Pacific, including with many small states. Our preoccupation with FOCAC should not blind us to SACF, the Sino-Arab Cooperation Forum, which has been in existence for eight years, or to the China-Latin America and Caribbean Cooperation Forum, which was being proposed in 2012, as well as the China-Central Asia Cooperation Forum.