Howard French is the author of two books on Africa and three books on China, with one of those books being about China's booming ties with Africa. The more recent Africa book, "China's Second Continent," is about the million Chinese who have emigrated to the African continent since the 1990s and what they mean for China and for Africa. His newest book, “Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China’s Push for Global Power,” is a meditation on China's historical self image and what that means for China's current political leadership. In this interview, he talks about post-reform China's interaction with Africa. Currently a professor on the faculty of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, French for many years was a senior writer for The New York Times. From 2003 to July 2008, he was the newspaper's Shanghai bureau chief. Before his China assignment, French headed bureaus in Japan, West and Central Africa, and for Central America and the Caribbean.