China-Africa Ties in Historical Context

 Oxford Scholarship Online has reprinted my chapter titled "China-Africa  Ties in Historical Context" contained in the book China-Africa and an Economic Transformation (2019) edited by Arkebe Oqubay and Justin Yifu Lin.  

Africa: Is the China Model the Future?

 The Interpreter published by the Lowy Institute in Australia posted on 21 June 2021 a commentary titled "The Battle for Africa" by Nadege Rolland.  

The author concludes that Chinese planners have since at least 2015 been defining a new Africa strategy, which includes reflections on why the Chinese model of political and economic governance can and should be transferred to African countries.

China-Africa Historical Documents

 The Washington-based Wilson Center has posted five historical documents titled "Iconic Moments in Foreign Policy: China-Africa Relations."

The translated documents from Chinese archives include:

--Mao Zedong: "Africa's Task Is to Struggle against Imperialism."

--Letter from PRC Ambassador in the Republic of Mali to the Government of the Republic of Mali.

--Record of Premier Zhou Enlai's Conversations with the President of Ghana Kwame Nkrumah.

--Record of Conversation between Premier Zhou and Tanzanian Second Vice President Rashidi Kawawa.

--Conversation between Mao Zedong and the Delegation of the People's Republic of the Congo.

The Role of Ideology in PRC-Africa Relations

 The Hudson Institute has just published a study titled "The 'China Dream' and the African Reality: The Role of Ideology in PRC-Africa Relations" by James Barnett.

The author argues that Beijing seeks to provide developing world elites with a malleable intellectual and practical program for advancing illiberal governance.  This ideological element is present in China's approach to Sub-Saharan Africa.  The Communist Party of China's overall impact on African politics should not be overstated, however.  Ideological affinities matter, but economic interests play a greater role in moving African states into Beijing's orbit.  

Are Xi Jinping's Big White Books Replacing Mao Zedong's Little Red Book in Africa?

 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?  

Imperial Ethiopia and Maoist China; Zambia and China

The Centre for Chinese Studies at Stellenbosch University in South Africa published two useful studies on China in Africa in its August 2012 issue of The China Monitor.

The first one is titled "Imperial Ethiopia's Relations with Maoist China" by Seifudein Adem, associate director and associate research professor at the Institute of Global Cultural Studies at Binghamton University in New York. The second is titled "A Survey of Zambian Views on Chinese People and Their Involvement in Zambia" by Gerard Van Bracht, a student at Renmin University in China.

Click here to access both articles.