This paper considers Africa's place in China's 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. The Maritime Silk Road is a major component of the “Belt and Road” development framework announced by Chinese President Xi Jinping in late 2013. While the People's Republic of China has been actively engaged in Africa since 1960, the Maritime Silk Road promises an intensification of Chinese investment on the continent, especially in infrastructural projects including the construction of railways, airports and deepwater ports. The paper will contextualize these development projects in China's new normal of single-digit growth, and explain that the “Belt and Road” should be seen as one of China's new engines of growth. The paper will conclude with an examination of the question of whether China is engaged in neocolonialism in Africa.

While China's energy system is still largely a “black” system depending on fossil fuel inputs, the electric power system is greening at the margins. We demonstrate, using 2014 data on additions to China's electric power system, that the system is greening– with powerful implications for the future of the country's energy profile. We utilize three lines of argument: first, utilizing data for electric energy generated, where we show that China actually generated less energy from thermal sources in 2014 than in 2013, while increasing generation from water, wind and solar; second, examining capacity additions, we show that new capacity in water, wind and solar (WWS) exceeded new capacity for thermal; and third, in terms of investment. We argue that such data rebut claims made that China is getting blacker while its greening efforts remain small and insubstantial, or that China will become dependent on nuclear power rather than hydro, wind and solar as it cleans its energy system.

Furukawa Hideo's novel-length Umatachi yo, sore demo hikari wa muku de (Horses, Horses, In the Innocence of Light) is compelling and important for all the reasons that it can be exasperating and demanding. It is driven by the triple disasters of 3.11-the earthquake, tsunami, and then nuclear meltdown in northeast Japan, of March 11, 2011. Horses, Horses first appeared in the journal Shinchō in July 2011 and in book form shortly thereafter; it captures the shock and disorientation of that time. It is many things, but it is primarily a 3.11 document. It is hard to overstate the effect of 3.11 in Japanese society; its resonances to 9/11 are multilayered: it is a Japanese disaster and also a world event; many, many things are now measured as “before” or “after;” it is a semiotic event comprised of endless, horrific, film loops and digital images. In that context, Horses, Horses has become one of the most important touchstones for the disasters: raw, sometimes confused, multilayered, overwhelmed and overwhelming, forceful, personal; just like, that is, the disasters and the responses of those caught up by it. It captures the sense that all the important things of a day before-all the major novels to be written, for example-were suddenly meaningless, ephemeral, and, somehow, devoid of life. And each aftershock is a reminder; as this narrator relates, with each new jolt manuscript pages are destined for the trash.

A grand, and massively unequal, struggle over the future of Japan is underway. At sea, a miniscule flotilla of canoes and kayaks confronts a solid wall of National Coastguard ships and on land a few hundred protesters face off 24 hours a day against riot police outside Camp Schwab Marine Corps base, trying in vain to halt the delivery of materials for the construction of a new Marine Corps base on Oura Bay.