The paper is an exploratory analysis of the emerging relations between China and the Western great powers in relation to the African continent. Great power management has often been understood as an ahistorical phenomenon based on an ideal-typical representation of the post-Napoleonic settlement. The paper takes great powerhood and great power management as evolving practices of international society, and traces these changing and competing forms of human conduct through the way great powers and responsibility are linked. The analytical grid thus developed is then used as a guide to explore the interaction between China and the Western great powers with regard to the African continent since around the year 2000. By taking into account both the actual practice of interaction as well as the different ways it has been framed by the actors, the paper aims to show how a pattern of interaction emerged where great power management is an essentially non-sovereign administrative practice, its intelligibility is linked to a managerial language, and where the legitimate participants are identified through their quantitative preponderance and “responsible” behaviour.
