Over the past decade, China’s meteoric rise on the continent has raised a drumbeat of alarm. Few topics are as emotionally charged as the belief that the Chinese government is aggressively buying up huge tracts of prime African land and sending Chinese farmers to grow food to ship back to China. Deborah Brautigam, one of the world’s leading experts on China and Africa, probes the myths and realities behind the media headlines. Her careful research challenges the conventional wisdom; as she shows, Chinese farming investments are in fact surprisingly limited, and land acquisitions modest. What are the Chinese really doing in rural Africa? How did this myth arise? What does it say about our ability to sift the realities from the rumors when it comes to the story of China in Africa?