UROP student researchers will work on a longstanding project about links between China and Africa. The project has involved fieldwork in a dozen African countries and the Chinese mainland by co-investigators, Barry Sautman, a political scientist and lawyer at HKUST, and Yan Hairong, an anthropologist at Tsinghua University. The main research focuses have been the political economy of China/Africa links, especially Chinese investments, infrastructure building and finance, the grassroots relations between Chinese and Africans in Africa and in China, and the international media treatment of "China-in-Africa." Students will collect and analyze data from blogs, social media, company and NGO reports, newspaper and academic journal articles, etc. They can do the research using Chinese-language or English-language materials or both languages. In 2024-2025, much of the research will be two topics: how China and African countries sanctioned by the US manage Belt & Road cooperation; 2) Chinese acquisition of land in Africa (and elsewhere, for comparative purposes), mainly for agricultural projects; and 3) the localization of Chinese and their enterprises and products in African economies and societies