Chinese Images of Africa
Chinese Images of Africa
- Tara MockTara MockHonors College, University of Alabama
Summary
Africa and China have maintained relations for hundreds of years. The earliest known depictions of Africanity were informed by broad notions of difference that enveloped those originating from outside the known limits of Chinese society. The trajectory of Chinese racial consciousness formed during the Tang (618–907) and Song (960–1279) dynasties, as examples, cast African people and spaces as culturally different to the point of inferior. Though an influx of nonnative visitors to the middle kingdom hastened development of Han identity, the contemporary framing and tone of China’s relationship with the continent, and the individual polities within it, differs greatly from these earliest depictions of African people. During the “solidarity” period of the 1950s–1970s, negative feelings toward the African “other” were subverted as a result of Mao Zedong’s desire to unite revolutionary forces in the Global South against a common threat of imperialism. Contemporary Africa-China relations (2000–) since the First Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) signal a moment of confusion, whereby Chinese depictions of Africa reflect both unity and disharmony, as synergistic images of Afro-Chinese friendship, brotherhood, and solidarity cultivated during the 1950s–1970s are diffused by competing images of racial difference from nonstate actors reminicent of the Tang and Song dynasties.
Keywords
Subjects
- Image of Africa