This paper examines the increasing role of Chinese companies in Africa as the main actor in China-Africa relations since the 2000s. The first half of the paper offers a brief history of China-Africa relations and explains how Africa has been increasingly important in China’s foreign policy. China has been engaging in Africa since the 1950s. During the first thirty years, the major driving force behind China-Africa relations was political motivations. China recognized Africa as a promising region to gain diplomatic recognition over Taiwan and its support in many international settings. China succeeded in gaining a seat at the United Nations with the support of 26 African countries in October 1971.

Since China adopted its Open and Reform policy in 1978, economic interests have been a major driving force behind China’s foreign relations. While China prioritized its relations with the Western countries, no significant progress had been made in China-Africa relations. However, China’s isolation from international society after Tiananmen Square Incident in June 1989 became a turning point in China-Africa relations. Africa has become the first travel destination for the Chinese Foreign Minister since 1991. In 2000 China established the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) as a framework of multilateral diplomacy. FOCAC has been convened every three years and has promoted regional economic cooperation between China and Africa. The Chinese government has been actively assisting Chinese companies in expanding business in Africa with state financing by its policy banks and other means since the 2000s.

The second part of the paper focuses on Huawei’s digital infrastructure development as a case of the increasing presence of Chinese companies in Africa. Huawei expands its engagement by receiving Chinese financial assistance and by building smart cities in many countries in Africa. This paper argues that Huawei’s involvement goes beyond traditional business activities. Huawei can win long-term businesses and gain comparative advantages vis-à-vis other countries after building digital infrastructure in Africa. Huawei’s smart cities also impact state governance. For example, Huawei trains intelligence and police officers in several countries. Huawei helped strengthen the political foundations of current leaders by assisting in arresting the opponents in Uganda and Zambia. Although the introduction of Huawei’s digital governance system could improve local security, it has the potential to significantly undermine the existing social and economic environment in countries without good governance and strong state institution.

The existing studies on China-Africa relations focus on states as the main actor for analysis. However, actors other than governments have played increasingly important roles in China-African relations. Therefore, this study stresses the importance of analyzing the role of Chinese companies to enhance our understanding of China-Africa relations that are changing at an unprecedented pace today.

This paper aims at empirically analyzing Huawei’s employee shareholding scheme behind its rapid growth to make it the leading Chinese communication manufacturer, with a particular focus on its governance aspect, which the literature has not revealed in depth. With a research question as “Who owns Huawei?”, it sheds light on the background and mechanism of the firm’s scheme and its role in the firm’s governance, drawing on publicly available sources, the preceding literature, and information provided by Huawei upon request. This paper contributes to the literature with following findings: Huawei Technologies is wholly owned by its holding company named Huawei Investment & Holding, which implements an employee shareholding scheme through its trade union, and it is owned approximately 99 % of the share by employees. Under the restriction from issuing regular stock to its employees, the shares held by the employees are designed as phantom stocks, which come with shareholder rights, including dividends, voting and property rights, as articulated in the Company Law. With Employee Shareholders' Representative Commission as the firm’s highest decision-making body, Huawei is employee-owned and controlled, with the founder having veto and its trade union, which is legally independent from the scheme, as the nominal shareholder.

The purpose of this paper is to summarize the background to Toyota’s platform strategy of the smart city concept, and to discuss the merits and demerits of the WTA (Winner Takes All) strategy in the field of urban operating systems by comparing it with the case of two competing companies. Firstly, this paper introduces the inevitability of Toyota’s choice of this strategy by sorting out the factors. As a result, this paper discusses the urban operating systems platform strategy from the perspective of the WTA formation mechanism and suggests that the success of a company’s WTA strategy does not necessarily lead to benefits for urban residents.

 This paper aims to discover the problems inherent in today's Japanese management and their solutions by comparing with Huawei, which is in sharp contrast to Japanese companies in its rapid growth, focusing on their credo-driven aspect. The first part of this paper examines Huawei's Employee Ownership Scheme to prove the company is wholly owned and governed by its employees. This governance system is also identified as the core mechanism to achieve a rapid growth as a credo-driven company by instilling the corporate philosophy among employees. In the next part, the literature review shows that credo-driven management improves financial performance, if accompanied by a sufficient mechanism to instill the corporate philosophy among employees, and that corporate philosophy is one of the major strengths of Japanese-style management, which however has not been sufficiently highlighted in the conventional research. The rest of the paper discuss, based upon the above, the credo-driven management with focus on its importance in general and specifically in the post-COVID-19 pandemic business environment, its potential to revitalize Japanese management, and its implementation.

 This paper has three major contributions to the literature as following. First, it first proved Huawei is wholly owned and governed by its employees under the relevant Chinese legal system, by examining its Employee Ownership Scheme and the governance system and rebuking other paper which negates its employee ownership and posits Huawei is owned by the trade union and, ultimately, the government. Second, the paper presented a new approach to the study of Japanese-style management with focus on its philosophical aspect as its strength. Leaving this subject less attended, the literature has focused on the labor practice, marketing and other aspects of Japanese-management in the past. Third, the paper clarified the way to revitalize Japanese management with credo-driven management and its implementation, with due emphasis on how to share and instill the credo with employees.

2018年から始まった米中貿易戦争とそれに続くCOVID-19は，トランプ前大統領による「米国第1」の対中政策によって米中間の対立を劇的に先鋭化させた。貿易赤字から始まった対立は，両国の追加関税の掛合いをエスカレートさせただけではなく，対立事項を知的財産権の侵害，不公正な産業政策，技術覇権問題，国家安全保障上のリスク，人権問題，そして国家の制度・イデオロギー問題などにまで広がった。2021年に誕生したバイデン新政権は台頭する中国を念頭に，民主主義陣営の連携強化に向っている。他方，中国は独力で国内の産業構造高度化を目指し，対外的には「一帯一路」を新たな装いの下で進めようとしている。こうして世界経済は，先端的戦略的産業と企業を中心に2つの陣営が競い合い，別々の経済圏の形成に向うと同時に，新たな経済圏を誕生させる可能性もうんでいる。政治的イデオロギー的対立は激化に向うが，世界経済の領域では，米中両陣営間の競合が「一帯一路」を軸にアフロ・ユーラシア経済のインフラ整備を進めることになるだろう。