Three out of Five stars
Running time: 75 mins

A documentary that intimately explores the impact of Chinese economic investment in Africa on both an international but also a local level.

What’s it all about?
The title of this documentary from Marc and Nick Francis – the brothers behind the coffee market exposé Black Gold – is a little misleading about scope of the film. When China Met Zambia would have been more appropriate, given that the brothers focus specifically on China’s economic investment in that African country rather than the continent as a whole.

The directors do however aim to give both the big and the little picture, as the film follows the progress of a Chinese-corporation-managed road construction project as well as the attempts of Zambian trade, commerce and industry minister Felix Mutati to encourage new development at Chinese trade fairs. But at the other end of the financial scale, the film also chronicles the problems encountered by Chinese emigrant Liu Changming on the Zambian farm that he has set up.

The Good
Human faces often get lost in fact and narration heavy docs but Mark and Nick Francis’s patient, observational approach ensures that this doesn’t happen here. Their camera avidly searches out the reality and hardship of life in Zambia for both it’s impoverished citizens as well as its new visitors, pausing to focus on the smaller, everyday details: Chinese emigrants struggling with the climate and the language, or in one eye-opening scene Zambian labourers gathering around a small oil spill with plastic cans eager to scoop up every last drop. The film’s cinematography is undoubtedly its strength, emphasising the grueling nature of daily life whilst also subtly pointing out the vast distance between the shiny Chinese streets and skylines and the dusty, makeshift Zambian equivalents.

The Bad
The slow-motion celebratory summit scenes of politicians handshaking and backslapping which start the film promise an in-depth exploration of the forces of neo-colonialism that never really appears. The Francis brothers do admirably shoot from the ground rather than the pulpit, but while their film demonstrates the effects of Chinese economic investment, it never exposes anything unexpected – simply that the Chinese are hungry for profit, with the Zambian government happy to welcome them, while ordinary Zambians, eager for work, don’t have much of a choice as to who employs them.

Worth Seeing?
When China Met Africa is a documentary that tries to demonstrate rather than preach to its viewers, but despite some interesting footage highlighting the difficulty that native Zambians (as well as recent migrants) face in trying to make a living in the country – the filmmakers don’t really bring anything new to the debate about China’s economic involvement in Africa.