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LINKING PEOPLE: A Chinese volunteer teaches at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia on January 17, 2006. Strengthened people-to-people and cultural exchanges are indispensable to the sustainable development of China-Africa relations (XIONG SIHAO) |
African studies are gaining prominence in China, as the country forges closer ties with Africa. At the end of last year, the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (SIIS), one of the leading think-tanks in China, issued a strategic report on China-Africa relations and submitted it to China's top leadership. Beijing Review reporter Liu Wei spoke to Li Weijian, Director of the Department of West Asian and African Studies at SIIS, who headed the strategic report project, on the evolving relations between China and Africa.
Beijing Review: How are China-Africa relations today different from those in the 1950s and 1960s?

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Li Weijian, Director and Senior Fellow of the Department of West Asian and African Studies at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (LIU WEI) | Li Weijian: China established diplomatic relations with Egypt in 1956, opening the door to its diplomatic relations with African countries. In the past 50 years, Chinese and African people have developed a profound friendship despite changes in the international situation. China-Africa relations have gone through continuous development and improvement over the years. Major adjustments have taken place since the early 1980s. In January 2006, the Chinese Government released China's African Policy, constructing a basic framework for these relations.
Compared with the 1950s and 1960s, China-Africa relations today exhibit the following features:
First, there are more areas for cooperation. China-Africa relations in the 1950s and 1960s were mainly based on traditional friendship characterized by political mutual support and assistance. Today, political relations and traditional friendship, which are, of course, still important, are no longer everything. Only if they take their converging interests into consideration can their traditional friendship endure the test of time. Today's China-Africa relations feature comprehensive friendly cooperation in the fields of politics, economy, culture, society and peace and security, or "a new type of strategic partnership" as defined in China's African Policy.
Second, they cooperate in a more flexible way. In the 1950s and 1960s, China provided Africa with free assistance, morally, materially and even militarily, to support Africa's national independence movement and African countries' efforts to develop their national economies. This was the main form of China-Africa cooperation back then. While free assistance is necessary under certain historical circumstances, normal cooperative relations should be mutually beneficial. Today, China has combined free assistance with mutual benefit in cooperating with Africa. It continues to send medical workers and agricultural technicians to African countries, help them with infrastructure construction and forgive their debts. At the same time, it conducts economic cooperation with them in areas such as trade, investment and project contracting. Such cooperation has borne abundant fruit, giving impetus to the development of China-Africa relations.
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