Purpose of the project and changes
The purpose of the project was to investigate the impact of Sino-African relations on transformations of the People's Republic of China's (PRC) and African countries' conceptions and practices of state sovereignty; on South-South cooperation; and on aspects of the foreign policy process in China. When I did the first round of fieldwork, I realized that China was about to launch a comprehensive media strategy in Africa, aiming to explain to African audiences the meaning and non-threatening nature of Chinese investments. This entailed establishing a new television channel, CCTV-Africa. Therefore I decided to investigate this effort of public diplomacy, rather than changes in China's foreign policy process. Moreover, due to the independence of South Sudan in July 2011, I also decided to devote time to fieldwork about China's role and economic activities in this new state as well. And in addition to popular worries about landgrabbing in Zambia, I decided to investigate and compare with the situation regarding land issues in Mozambique too.

The three most important findings of the project:
First, this project has contributed empirically and theoretically to contemporary debates about state sovereignty. Investigation, fieldwork, and analysis of the evolving Chinese and African conceptions of state sovereignty, have uncovered a practice of "negotiated" and "segmented sovereignty" in a stable Zambia, where the Chinese state-owned company China Nonferrous Metal Mining Ltd has been allowed to manage a MFEZ in a way that breeds discontent among agents of the local administration of the Copperbelt Province and worries among small-scale farmers about pollution and lease of land. In less stable Sudan, and a South Sudan that has been plagued by civil war since 2012, Chinese companies have acted much more cautiously regarding the principles of non-interference and sovereignty. However, interviews with Chinese officials and readings of key Chinese texts on state sovereignty indicate that China's principle on non-interference is no longer sacrosanct – it is developing to become commensurate with a growing Chinese presence and proliferation of PRC interests globally.

Second, building on the empirical evidence collected from 2011 trough 2014, the project has generated theorization on the evolving nature of so-called South-South cooperation, showing how new economic practices and policies entail a further watering down of older notions of solidarity between developing countries. Contrary to "old" ideological South-South cooperation, which focused on ideas of dependency, anti-imperialism, and equal sovereignty between states, "new" South-South relations are becoming more differentiated and variageted. They have transformed from advocating socialist solidarity and the establishment of a new international economic order (NIEO), to instead incorporate pragmatic notions of capitalist efficiency, formulated as a project of "win-win."

3) Third, a Chinese counter-discourse to refute a prevailing mainstream Western discourse on "neo-colonialism" has begun in PRC state media outlets, such as the new television channel CCTV-Africa. This counter-discourse is an effort of public/media diplomacy, which seeks to defend contemporary Sino-African engagement as a joint project of 'mutual benefit,' 'equality' and 'South-South cooperation' to combat negative portrayals of Western media. Interviews with managers and journalists at media outlets such as CCTV-Africa and China Radio International (CRI) have yielded new knowledge about an increasing professionalism in news reporting and the making of documentaries. Thus, it is not through old-style propaganda that the counter-discourse on "Africa and Chinese neocolonialism" is intended to work. The rhetoric is surprisingly sophisticated compared to domestic news making in China, and compared to the outreach media diplomacy of, for example, Russia Today.

New research questions generated by the project
One new and significant question has been generated by the project. First, competition for natural resources, markets and allies intensify the competition also among the major powers of the Global South. The issue of competition and cooperation in the relations between China, India, and Brazil regionally and globally is an important problematique that could not be covered within this project, but it has become clearer over time and merits future studies.

International cooperation
I have presented research papers at both national and international conferences. Most notably twice at the International Studies Association (ISA) annual convention (2011 och 2012); a onference on global civil society at Uppsala University (2012); a conference on 'soft power in the Global South,' University of Westminster (2013); and at two workshops at Swedish Institute of International Affairs (2011 och 2013). Through participation at these conferences the project has generated significant spin-off effects in the form of new contacts and new cooperation. Most important is the cooperation with the historian Jens Sörensen at the School of Global Studies in Göteborg and He Wenping of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. Together we are working on new project proposals on the development of civil societies in African countries and how major powers of both the Global North and Global South impact on that development. Cooperation has also been initiated with researchers at Danish, Candadian, and Australian universities: Peter Kragelund and Johanna Jansson of Roskilde University; Megan Pickup at Carleton University, and George Karavas of University of Queensland.

Participation in media and the press
During the project time I have been interviewed by media organizations on a number of occasions. For example: "God morgon världen", "Studio Ett", "P3 nyheter", of Swedish Public Radio (SR) and in Danish Radio 1, by the Swedish news agency TT, and live on Swedish public television's main news programme "Aktuellt" on 31 oktober 2012 about China's launch of the news channel CCTV-Africa. I also wrote a longer article for the popular science magazine "Forskning & Framsteg", No.1, January 2013.

The two most important publications of the project
1) Forthcoming monograph: Routledge (in peer-review): Sovereignty, non-interference, and the Challenge of Chinese Authoritarian Capitalism in Africa. In my forthcoming book I theorize the concept of "negotiated and segmented sovereignty" and "enclavization" and how it has become a template of the Chinese developmental experience, only recently transferred to a vastly different sociopolitical context in African countries (although on demand by African governments and elites) that has brought forward a process of "segmented sovereignty." In seven chapters the main findings of the research project, outlined above, enable a thorough theorization about China's advance in African countries as fundamentally a program of state-promoted neoliberal capitalism, although it, in Chinese counter-discourse, marches under the traditional flag of 'mutual benefit,' 'equality' and 'South-South cooperation.'

2) "As China returns: perceptions of land grabbing and spatial power relations in Mozambique," (peer reviewed), Journal of Asian and African Studies. This article argues that the research literature has yet to fully account for, and unpack, the very real challenges that Chinese economic activity presents to African states – beyond the obvious hypocrisy of designating China as the only predatory capitalist state at work, and apart from the undeniable benefits that it certainly also brings in the form of material infrastructure. This article investigates how perceptions of China in African civil societies, using the National Association of Small Farmers (UNAC) and other social actors as an example are affected by entrepreneurial activity and bilateral cooperation between China and Mozambique – real, imagined, visible and legal as well as clandestine and illegal in the agricultural and forestry sectors. The article argues that coinciding with China's large-scale return to Africa, an already tense dynamic between civil society and the state is picking up speed. To avoid negative discourse formation, both China and host governments need to become more open on and transparent about bilateral agreements.

Publication strategy
The project will generate a number of forthcoming articles, some of them in open access journals and forums.