The Beijing Review Africa Bureau and Independent Media Group and Global Max Media Group recently hosted a seminar in Cape Town to discuss volume III of Xi Jinping's The Governance of China. At the end of the event, the audience received copies of the large, hardback, white volume.
The reminds me of my Foreign Service assignments in Africa during the 1960s and 1970s when Chinese embassies were often best known for distributing Mao Zedong's "little red book." This miniature, softcover book titled Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung published by Peking's Foreign Language Press in 1966 blanketed the continent and was often available free of charge.
While Xi Jinping's glossy and much larger three volumes with a white hardcover are far more expensive to produce, can Africans expect to find them in the coming months throughout government offices, universities, bookstores, and media outlets?
