Recent years have witnessed a sharp increase in speculation that China may provide a model for African states. This research seeks to directly examine the ideational influence of China’s development trajectory on the elites of two such states, namely Ethiopia and Kenya. It finds that these elites indeed look outside their borders for exemplars of development, but that they view China as only one source of potential’lessons’ and instead embed its experiences within a wider East Asian development model. African elites therefore engage in a process of demand-led lesson-drawing that lend them a greater level of agency than is often assumed. In addition, the content of the lessons drawn illustrates the recurrent popularity in Africa of many of modernisation theory’s key assumptions.