More than Realpolitik:

China’s Co-constitutive Multilateral Relations with Africa

                                 Liu Haifang, Peking University

The sever uncertainty and the desperate fear it has caused are haunting the whole globe, probably unprecedentedly in 2 or 3 generations of the humankind’s life experience since the end of WWII. The transforming global order has been so real since Brexit referendum and US American election in 2016, and debate about the long-term or immediate reasons has never been ended. Early in 2008, famous scholar like Fareed Zakaria expressed his finding clearly that it was more to do with factual “the Rise of the Rest”, and the decentralized international orders (FareedZakaria, 2008); likewise, Acharya suggested that US American-led order has more given away play to regions, regional powers, and regionalisms (Acharya, 2014b), and (t)“he emerging world order has multiple layers of governance, global, inter-regional, regional, state, and substate (Acharya, 2014a). In his second silk road book series, the famous Oxford historian Peter Frankopan crystal- clearly put forward that while the West was seeing Brexit in UK and Trump ascending to power, world economic center has been gradually shift away from Atlantic to Asia, though largely neglected until a rather populistic approach of reaction finally awoke to demonize China along with Trump I era and in Europe partially (2018) .

As a matter of fact, since Trump 1.0 era, more people are convinced that the future global order will be shaped by the collectively rising Global South, while the more devastating roles the North has played would only reinforce the determination of the Southern states to go together and to be more self-sustained. The collaboration that the African continent usually received from the outside has been less of those Western powers, but of Global South during this transforming and unfolding new global order with a swarm of Asian players and other new emerging powers already coming with new capitals, technologies, know-how, ways of thinking, alternative development modes, as well as leverages against its traditional partners (Liu, 2014, Liu 2024); in his book on Africa’s economic transformation, Carlos Lopez, former General Secretary of UNECA, strongly confirmed the alternative and even substitutive roles that the emerging markets players have had along with the declining Western financial support since the financial crisis, echoed by Afrobarometer’s survey result of 2020 round about China’s ascending into the number one external influencer, ahead of USA (Afrobarometer, 2020). Among all these active new players, for example, countries of BRICS are definitely worthwhile to pay more attention, be individually or collectively with this joint platform as a mechanism to engage Africa, as since Durban Summit hosted by South Africa in 2013, many African countries have been engaged and African Development as one of the key themes was clearly included in the BRICS declarations. Hence it was noticeable that the first branch of New Development Bank was launched on African soil, and many projects have be financed; while since the 2017 Summit the BRICS has been dubbed as BRICS+ and more members and partners have been included from the continent. Africans not only have more space to voice their ideas, but also are seeing more specific supports and even direct solutions to their long-term troubling problems, therefore it is fair to say Africa could finally feel the chance has come to escape from the external-dominated destiny, and gradually transforming towards “self-oriented” as there are ever-increasing more partners for Africa to choose to work with.

Negative views towards this new trend of more Asian players’ presence in Africa, however, have been strong, such as “the new Scramble for Africa” suggesting that more multiple external players might trap Africa again as 1884’s Berlin Conference era especially given that hunger of mineral resource as driving force behind of the new Asian players (Pádraig Carmody, 2011). Understandably, the African vulnerable experience during the four hundred years of history of colonization explains this concern of uncertainty consequently, but the more important underlying reason of this type of discourse becoming vocal is the general blindness of interactions among Global Southern countries, which has been there historically long before the European Navigation and “finding” new continents”, and has gradually increasing since Bandung Conference as newly independent nation states from former colonial powers’ occupation. Without a theory or a school of literatures to interpret the nature of Afro-Asian countries’ engagement way back to ancient history up till now, narratives of the sudden emergence of BRICS and their active engagement with “weaker sides”, namely Africa, are easily through the lens of the conventional mainstream international relations theories that are mostly based on the American and European experience (Archarya & Buzan, 2019), as if the emerging Global South players would sooner or later trapped in the same real politics games, formalizing the similar exploitative pattern of relationship with Africa as the west has done. Thus there is enough reason to reconstruct the evolving Afro-Asian connectivity to revolutionize the conventional ideas by filling in the epistemological gap, and then to better understand the nature of hot and often controversial China-African relations by situating it in the scope to analyze the core glue bringing them ever closer and long-term impact for Africa as the weaker side of the relationship.

                  Afro- Asia connectivity: Organic originality and cultivating efforts

Undoubtedly,Afro-Asian connections are historical and could be retrieved till long time ago, and there have been indeed ever increasing efforts to reconstruct in recent years---such as the special endeavor to “eliminate the clichés about Africa”(NAB, 2015:20) and to nurture an Afro-central perspective through rewriting African world histories and the published research series on cosmopolitan nature of pre-colonial African societies, to which the busting ancient Indian oceanic trade routes extended from Asia to the long necklace- like cities along the Eastern African coastal (Trevor Getz, 2013). Chinese scholars’ archeological findings on Silk Trade Routes have also helped to reconstruct Asian-African historical connections before European expedition to Africa beyond Mediterranean (Qin Dashu, 2015). Recent book of Yale University’s historian Hansen, in her latest publication of ancient Afro-Asian engagement even went further to suggest at least a semi-globalization already formalized way ahead of the European navigation till around AD 1000 with China producing goods in factory’s form for remote markets like Europe as well as Africa, and not only rich families but average people in Chinese society were consuming goods from these places in exchange (Hansen, 2022). Even the historical link was rather discursive with many actors moving around in different directions at different time though, the commercial goal, probably, could be suggested as one common driving force.

The modern-time (or precisely after colonization) Afro-Asian connectivity obviously differs, because it started as a part of whole “process of decolonization with deep roots originating with the act of initial colonization itself”, which made a ubiquity across many parts of the world, and alike for individual people, communities and nation-states (Lee, 2007:5). However, noticeably, so far what have been written on modern Afro-Asian connectivity have been rare, a few publications about Bandung Conference in 1955 indeed, but has been normally interpreted as both cause and result of anti-colonization sentiment across the two continents, and long gone with “the Age of Revolution” with the completion of independence of almost all colonies.[i] Thus in mainstream IR studies, Bandung was widely regarded as a failure as it “did not give any alternative to the hegemony of superpowers it denounced”, and its second convention in 2005 was cynically dismissed as it seemed immediately transforming into another time’s expediency to play a market game among the Afro-Asian countries(Darwis Khudori, 2014).

Out of realpolitik perspective, existing literatures of Afro-Asian connectivity therefore have been dominated by China’s presence in Africa since the first Sino-African Summit held in 2006; and following the same logic, there are a lot about the “competition” between China and India in Africa since 2008, and that between China and Japan since former leader Abe amplified Japan’s African agenda in 2013, and a decisive number of publications emerged about potential “confrontation” between US and China in Africa since Trump firstly appeared into power and bluntly announced an agenda aiming at containing China globally (Liu, 2014; Zhang Hongming, 2019). This “singling-out China” approach of course is not reflecting the real picture, at least unfair for many other Asian countries that have even developed their close connections with African partners not later than China in late 1950’s and somehow even more intensified than China due to the interruption of China’s “Cultural Revolution” and Taiwan’s “silver bullets” that had gained back some diplomatic advantages for a period of time. For the whole scope of continent, some descriptive narratives on contemporary “new coupling of African and Asian economies (thus the decoupling between Africa and Europe) appeared (Martyn Davies, 2009); but systematic academic work thoroughly elaborating the historically-embedded and mutually-inspiring relational dynamics of Afro-Asian countries still are missing. Generally, dominate narratives of modern world history for too long have been still very much Western-centered with the more capable White people navigating, exploring, trading and civilizing “pagans” and also playing the water-shedding role in connecting the whole world as the dominant epistemology. Therefore, unsurprisingly, literatures of contemporary Afro-Asia connectivity have been representing a rather fragmented, disoriented, passive and contingent relationship, without enough consciousness of historical agency from either continent. This is why publications of the emerging Afro-Asian interaction often have been using the same prism of zero-sum game and the realpolitik logic that Africans used to suffer from external powers for the past 5 centuries, and that is why new Afro-Asia interaction has been either ignored as something insignificant or cynically dismissed as mimicking neo-colonial power relations.

Essentially, the historical experiences of peoples of Asian and African descent have been deeply intertwined for centuries, even more so in the context of United States as both have suffered as the victims of the racist ideology, such as ‘yellow peril’ steming from white fears and anxieties over Asian immigration, persisted from 19cn well into the twentieth century and extended beyond national borders (Mullenn, 2004; Raphael-Hernandez, 2006; Mullenn &Ho, 2008). Inspired by Japan's defeat of Russia in the 1904 territorial war, Du Bois declared in 1906 that “The Russo-Japanese war has marked an epoch”, the magic of the word ‘white’ is already broken, and “the Color Line in civilization has been crossed”; the awakening of the yellow races is certain, that the “awakening of the brown and black races will follow in time” (Mullenn & Walson，2005:VII). In this way, the great African American intellectual associated Asia’s destination with Africa’s, which made the earliest cornerstone of Afro-Asian solidarity in fighting imperialists since the beginning of the 20^th century.

Du Bois in his best vocally advocated political collaboration and solidarity between peoples of African and Asian descent, and together with lots of other black American activists promoting Afro-Asian solidarity as a radical political response to global white supremacy. Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese War and Japan’s withdrawal from the League of Nations in 1933, therefore were both highly considered a direct refutation of Western control, and a symbolic triumph against global white supremacy. Many of these activists, such as some members of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) —the largest and most influential global black nationalist movement of the twentieth century, even overlooked Japan’s aggressive attempts to colonize the Chinese and other people in the region since 1930s, but rather argued that Japan’s rise would still benefit people of African descent, especially those who advocated political self-determination (Blain, 2015). Given the influence of African intellectuals like Du Bois and Garvey, the Afro-Asian solidarity, together with Pan-Africanism, was naturally promoted and disseminated in the Africa continent and those places where African diaspora stay.

Afro-Asian solidarity as an instrument against white supremacy promoted by Du Bois and other African intellectuals started from color line obviously has a lot to do with the context of US America brimmed with all types of racist discourses as instrument of racial exploitation. With the limited knowledge towards Africa and other parts of Asia and much even less real contacts since Chinese people started to open minds to the world in 1840’s, the Afro Asian affinity geminated in China rather late and it was more due to the sense of shared destiny of being colonized, and rather than color line. Seclusion from the world had been the major response after the Western attack starting from the Opium War in 1840; only since 1896, to go to Japan to study modern education had been a choice for the Chinese intellectuals and a statistics recorded over 25,000 Chinese leaving for Japan till 1911, the year that the Qing Dynasty was overthrown (D. Reynolds, 1993). In 1897, in the fifth petition submitted to the Qing Emperor, famous intellectual Kang Youwei referred to “African slaves” as the status that China might be tossed into by the Western powers that used to regard China as civilized country (Geng Yinzeng, 2014: 275).[ii] Only a few African countries’ names were listed in the first modern Chinese literature text book published in 1901, such as Egypt as an early civilization (Liu Shuping, 1901),[iii]a telling evidence of Chinese limited knowledge towards the world at that moment, and main theme of the book was to call awareness of the threat brought by the European powers, Russia was the same as the other colonial powers, Britain, Germany and France, behaving “as presumptuous guests that were usurping the host’s role in Asia”; as for Africa, even though Qing Dynasty was supplying labours to countries like Congo and South Africa, was rather only known as a reference of a colonized status for China to wake up to avoid. In general, at that moment, the Chinese knowledge about the whole world was still very limited.

The sense of solidarity with like-minded people in the world, therefore has grown in the  scope of nation-state, originally more against invaders from outside. In 1946, Mao Zedong published his famous “intermediate zones” theory via the interview given by Ms. Anna Strong, an American journalist. He suggested that the colonized Africa as part of this zone should automatically be united to jointly fight against colonists.^[iv] Later on, anti-colonialism became core driving ideology to push bilateral relations with Africa, as the newly-established Chinese government tried to explore its first major independent foreign policy operation outside Asia in the beginning of 1950’s while most part of African continent was struggling for its liberation movements. For all the struggles and movements such as those in French West Africa area, Mau Mau’s movement in Kenya, Coal Mining workers’ Strike in Nigeria, Somaliland and Libya’s independent struggles within United Nation, there were simultaneous reportages from the main newspapers and journals in China;^[v] and altogether there were 540 pieces of news, audience letters and essays reporting these independent movements in the beginning of 1950s’ according to a Chinese scholar’s statistics. (Lu Ting’en, 2005: 551-2). Organizations such as trade unions, youth leagues or women associations also played an important roles in establishing direct contacts with the counterparts from Africa and Middle East Countries to show the moral support from Chinese society. In January 1952, All China Federation of Trade Unions telegraphed Tunisia Trade Union, stating that “Chinese working class show respect to Tunisia striking workers and clerks, to object French colonial regime; and we wish you win the battle”(People’s Daily, February 2nd, 1952). At the same year, while Egyptian Students started to fight with British colonial power in Suez River Area, China Democratic Youth Association also telegraphed Egyptian Youths, showing “fraternal salute”, and willingness to fight imperialism together” (People’s Daily, February 22nd, 1952). As a matter of fact, these “fraternal salutes” did not serve for lip service, but turned to be larger scale of spiritual support from both the Chinese society as well as the material support of the Chinese government, such as on 26^th of July, 1956, when Suez war broke, a half million people from Beijing and 100 million people all around China assembled for three days to denounce France and Great Britain to invade Egypt. Besides medical materials presented by the Chinese Read Cross organization, the Chinese government at the same time provided 20 million Swiss Francs to the Egyptian government. According to the statistics from OAU, Organization of African Unity, between 1971 and 1972, 75% of the weapons used by African liberation movements were provided by the Chinese government (Lu Gengmiao, 2010).   

In short, Afro-Asia solidarity was not only a diplomatic strategy for the Communist Party of China formalized before 1949; it actually has been deeply rooted into the society and reinforced via a cultivating process. To embed the idea of jointly with Afro-Asian people to fight with colonization became one cultural and social movement in the whole society and the intention of the government to publicize China’s voices and to seek for friendship through people to people relationship was quite clear. This kind of intertwine domestic cultural policy and external policy was exactly what Mao Zedong said in 1950’s, the function of culture served “two directions” (erwei fangxiang), namely “culture serves socialism, and culture serves the people” (Liu 2008:13-15).

It is not difficult to imagine, therefore, thanks to the intensive exposure of these independent movement Stories of the African countries, the sense of Afro Asia affinity based on the need of anti-colonization had been deeply rooted in Chinese society, let alone the autonomous empathetic feelings reflected by the Chinese intellectuals. Bing Xin, the leading female Chinese writer as well as translator renown since 1920’s, had been in 1950’s focusing on translating only Afro-Asian works, such as Kahlil Gibran (Lebanon), Rabindranath Tagore (India), Du Bois, Israel Kafu Hoh (Ghana); for her it was an automatic choice as she could “easily felt the deep souls of Afro-Asian writers” than those of the European-American writers (Bing Xin, 1990). As Chinese writers’ exchange with Asian writers had been undergoing, Bandung conference and Asian Writers’ Meeting in 1956 in New Delih obviously enhanced it so much and directly heralded in Afro-Asian Writers’ Conference in Tashkent in 1958. Interestingly, in 1957, Foreign Literature Translation, the first special journal launched in 1953 in China, expanded its coverage from socialist literatures of Soviet and Eastern European countries to Afro-Asian writers even though many countries were yet to be independent (Wang Zhongchen, 2002). As one Chinese writer rightly pointed, since then Chinese writers were able to break the limit of “two camps of the cold war” and reach out to Afro-Asian world, their collective horizon had been much expanded and in Chinese literature, one tradition was thus established, which is to have a deep concern of all oppressed people in the world (Wang ZhongChen, 2002) .

        Legacy of Bandung Conference: Southern Unity for a More Just and Peaceful World

The diasporatic-driven series of Pan-African Congresses (important actor was W. E. B. Du Bois) had grown up since 1900; 1945 saw 29 African participants among 90 in total coming from the continent to the fifth session held in Manchester, including Jomo Kenyatta, Kenyan independence leader,  Malawi's Hastings Banda, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, making pan-Africanist ideology transform from a cultural and racial ideology to the ideology of national liberation, and signaling, in an embryonic form though, “the idea of African Unity” (Shivji, 2015). The Universal Races Congress in London, the League Against Imperialism meeting held in Brussels in 1927, and the two Pan-Asian People’s Conferences held in Nagasaki (1926) and Shanghai (1927), all these events organized by intellectuals and activists had a shared common ground, namely the history of Western imperialism, in Asia, Africa and the Middle East since the Sixteenth century, which was also seriously cited on Bandung conference as foundation of their contingent solidarity (Lee Christopher, 2010:9-10).

The founding of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) sponsored by the United States in 1954 as a tool of intervention in Asia became the direct trigger for the newly independent countries to take the torch of Afro-Asia solidarity ignited by those great intellectuals for the sake of long-sought sovereignty, dignity, independence and equality. Indonesia, Burma, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), India and Pakistan, initiated the idea to invite the existing Afro-Asia group to respond to the western intervention, and the invitation was sent to Beijing, China as a newly independent state, instead of Taiwan that was sitting in the United Nations. From April 18th to 24th, 1955, official representatives dispatched by five African nations and twenty-four Asian countries, together with some others from remain colonized countries, convened in Bandung, Indonesia, and it was announced by President Sukarno of Indonesia himself on the conference, the “first intercontinental conference of coloured peoples in the history of mankind”, and it got more developing countries’ representation than UN San Francisco meeting, and it was such a “pivotal moment placed in mid-century between colonial and post-colonial periods, between the era of modern European imperialism and the era of the cold war” and it was not only the first time that the independent countries made a collective announcement of their political achievement of getting rid of the yoke of colonisation (Lee, 2007: 9), but also has “initiated the making of Non-Aligned Movement, an alternative way between the two blocs of superpowers of the Cold War” by laying down the basis of a world order of newly independent countries requesting equal rights with big powers, and five sets of mutually reinforcing principles, such as economic, social and cultural co-operation based on mutual interest and respect for national sovereignty, respect for fundamental human rights (in particular the right of nations and peoples to political and economic self-determination of all peoples, races and nations “freely to choose their own political and economic systems and their own way of life ... ”) are “still relevant”(Shivji, 2015). Further, Bandung conference has contributed “considerably to the evolution of humanity towards a more just and peaceful world” (Darwis Khudori, 2011), and playing a vocal role in the UN General Assembly, particularly since 1964 through the work of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), to raise the demand for a New International Economic Order (NIEO) to resist unequal international economic domination by the North (Shivji, 2015).

For Richard Wright, a famous African-American writer who was able to attend it, Bandung conference was a meeting of the “despised, the insulted, the hurt, the dispossessed- in short, the underdogs of the human race”----a similar perspective based on racial battle inheriting the afore-mentioned points made by Du Bois and Garvey (Shivji, 2015). This was also echoed by many American scholars such as Mullen and Ho who defined the meaning of “Afro Asia” as “a strategic intersection for thinking through an internationalist, global paradigm”, and creating “an anti-imperialist, insurgent identity.... no longer majority white in orientation” (2008: 2-3). Interestingly, instead of dwelling on this American experience, ethnic point of view, Professor Samir Amin rather thinks of it high through the meaning of the formalization of the South, calling Bandung conference the first “Awakening of the South” in 2009; going further, another contemporary leading African intellectual, Prof. Shivji added “awakening and assertion” of the South on the world stage (Shivji, 2015).

In short, in retrospect of the path of the independent Afro-Asia after World War II, the importance of the Bandung Conference could not be overstated, though, as afore-mentioned, there are lots of skeptical and cynical comments of what had and would have achieved. Early in 1960, during the busy time of independence of African countries, Rayford Logan, an African American historian and Pan-African activist, published his paper Is There an Afro-Asian Bloc? through Current History, a renown academic journal, expressing a doubt on Afro-Asian Bloc in that the African countries already fragmented into different pieces, but also forecast that Afro-Asia solidarity would continue if the West still treated Africans newly independent country as second-level subjects and if UN was still manipulated by the West and practiced imperialist (1961:65) .

In another word, Bandung conference came into historical stage firstly as a consequence of Western intention to (continue) to wield hegemonic power towards the newly independent countries, a joint effort of the 29 governments to escape from being intervened destination. As long as the side of Western intervention exists in one way or another, this effort as the other side of a coin would naturally and surely exist now and then. Bandung thus functioned as a critical site for these leaders to promote Afro-Asian solidarity; “agitate for the end of colonialism”; and ultimately blaze a path towards liberation and independence. Through the Bandung conference, noninvolvement (later on morphed into the concept of nonalignment) made key foundation for Asian regional order, and later influenced the third world and powerfully diffused globally (Acharya, 2012) . As historian Penny Von Eschen and others have argued, the 1955 conference challenged the legitimacy of a bipolar, Soviet-U.S. world during the early Cold War. It self-asserted their independency, and successfully made a space for Southern solidarity by serving as the catalyst and laying the ideological groundwork for subsequent Non-Aligned Movement ultimately.

 As one of the key driver of “Afro-Asian solidarity”, India’s Nehru had been yearning a position of mediator between United States and Soviet Union, which made a different agenda from what Sukarno preached anti-colonialism, an active nonalignment to avoid war. In 1961, supported by Yugoslav, the first Non-Aligned conference was held in Belgrade. However, as more African countries joined, anti-colonisalism had inevitably become the leading issue of this new group since the Non-Aligned conference was held in Cairo in 1964. Till 1973, when the fourth Non-Aligned Countries Summit was held, there were already 75 member states in attendance; Algeria as host country guided a shift of the group to pay attention to economic issue, and international economic reforms were raised as a shared vision. This was coalesced by Group 77, formalized by the third world countries coordinated by regional groups (namely Latin American countries, Pan-African countries and Asian countries) to attend the first United Unions Conference on Trade and Development to talk about developing countries’ economic development issue. It was a critical moment that developing countries formalized as a unit, Southern Unity, and the Question of North and South became core question of the world, frequently and systematically discussed in UN platforms; the earlier Afro-Asian Unity was thus enlarged into the unity among the third world to fight for equality with the developed powers that were dominating the world political and economic systems, and obviously at the different stages different Asian and African countries have played leading role. The dichotomy of North and South, is not an analytic framework only based on levels of economic development to differentiate rich, industrialized noncommunist states and less developed states, but rather reflects the empirical experience of international politics, as both the groups encompassed by the terms South and the Northern countries have been forcefully coalesced as a diplomatic unit of actors in global politics (Roger, 1979: 4, 20, 21), and the often hard and bitter joint struggles of Southern countries in the process, together with the shared colonial experience, have accumulated into solid ontological foundation. This explained very well why China has been emphasizing its identity being member of a Global South.

As the earliest version of practice of inter-regionalism, Bandung conference set for a new direction for the newly independent countries, combining political independence with economic progress, industrialization and modernization, so-called ‘developmentalism’ (Samir 2014:63). There have certainly been limits for these newly established states to promote their developmentism, because it was deeply rooted in dominant schools of thought‌, namely Keynesianism, the myth of catching up through Soviet-style ‘socialism’, and the myth of catching up through third world interdependence, modernization and industrialization would certainly bring radical changes to Asia, Africa, and Latin America (Samir 2014:63-64). A dialogue was therefore opened between the Afro-Asian movement and that in Latin America, not based on the struggles for political independence and the affirmation of a non-European culture, but on the demands of modernization and industrialization. This movement not only formalized Unity of South as aforementioned, but even made some strategic alliance with the Soviet Union, which enabled the later to escape isolation (Samir 2014: 64).

A recent research from China shows that since Bandung Conference China made lots of progress in term of establishing economic relations with Afro-Asian countries that had almost none before, and on one hand it helped with China’s own escape from the unfavorable international surrounding brought about by Korea War; and on the other hand, through some innovative trade schemes (such as barter trade) , China successfully showed to these newly independent countries the attitude of “peaceful coexistence and seeking for common ground while reserving the differences” by establishing economic cooperation before political relationship, even though most important intention for the trade schemes at this period of time was about to use economic diplomacy to enhance mutual political trust (Liu Lei, 2010). Road of building up diplomatic relation with Japan was such a typical case of “economic diplomacy (and cultural diplomacy)” and the trade negotiation started since the meeting of the representatives of the two countries coming to the Bandung conference.

 Afro &Asian Regional Multilateralism and New Momentum of the Trans-Regional connectivity

The world of today and tomorrow can no longer be what it was in the five previous centuries of capitalist deployment; Accumulation of capital on a world scale has taken on a new dimension (Samir 2014: 64). The Bandung era, with the triumph of the ideology of development, was extremely important for these Afro-Asian countries in term of following the political and economic roadmap set by Bandung Declaration as the third- world countries getting rid of the former colonial status and gradually gaining independence, especially so given the difficulties for many African countries that were even furtherly trapped in European new tactical games, such as French Union from 1946 till 1958 and then the “compulsory solidarity” through currency, and using Conceito Ultramarino Português ("Overseas Portuguese") to replace the concept of a "Portuguese colonial empire" in 1951, which all helped to keep them within Europe and made Nkrumah objected determinedly by saying “We are all Africans”, and “Africa could never be an extension of Europe” (Ali Mazrui: 1963). Similarly Asia was not leading an easy road to be really away from big powers’ control, and as afore-mentioned, exactly it was due to the specific geopolitical interests cast down from the US immediately after the WWII that triggered the four Asian countries to reach out for the initiative of an Afro-Asian conference to jointly guarantee their painstakingly acquired‌ independence.

By sticking to development agenda, Asian countries’ economic progresses have been self-evident, unevenly and even turbulently (such as the financial tsunami in 1997) though. In term of regional solidarity, due to the gap between capability and legitimacy, both big countries like PRC and India so far haven’t taken the leadership of the continent’s regionalism, while the ASEAN-led Asian institutions have made a significant normative contribution to regional order, though they have not proved to be effective instruments of regional problem solving. However, while Asian regional institutions remain weakly institutionalized and attract criticism as “talk-shops,” they have helped to ensure their relatively independent from too much control by the big powers during the Cold War era, and at the same time Asia does not degenerate into a hegemonic order or a concert of power（Acharya, 2012）.

Africa, however, was not as lucky and independent as Asia during the cold war era to escape from the US or Soviet Union dichotomy and some countries even fell into “the hot cold war” (Vladimir Shubin, 2008). Institutional inadequacy or failure have been regarded as one, if not the most, important reason for these African problems. Former President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, one of the founding fathers of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) created in 1967, ever derided it as ‘a trade union of [African leaders] with solidarity reflected in silence, if not open support for each other’ (Obonye Jonas, 2012). Recognizing the limit of this regional association, the African leaders determined to create African Union (AU) with a new Mechanism for Conflict Prevention, namely the Peace and Security Council (PSC), and the Constitution Act moving from the non-interference doctrine to non-indifference principle by enshrining “the rights…to intervene in a Member State” in respect of grave circumstances, namely war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity, in accordance with Article 14 (h) of the Constitutive Act” (E. Abdulai, 2010) . Even though several countries are still affected by terrorist attacks or political conflict domestically, majority African countries are showing strong evidence of rapid economic growth since the new century and most have been the least affected by European and American financial crisis since 2008 and only heavily resource-dependent economies have been undergoing challenges of decreasing commodities prices in world market since 2014. Collectively, sub-regional and regional initiatives have taken lots of real forms to make big stride for infrastructural building as well as free trade agreements and other ways of economic integration to unleash the great economic potential of the continent. What Senghor forecast about the longevity of the continent’s vertical relations with its former colonizers seemingly is finally shaken due to the ever-more diversified partners, so many so that an African scholar called it a moment of a buffet of Africa choosing its development models from (Thamsanqa Dangazela, 2018).

The Year 2005 and 2015 respectively saw the 50 and the 60 years’ anniversary of Bandung conference co-convened by Indonesia as the host and jointly by South Africa and Zimbabwe. Practically, many emerging Asian countries have seen Africa as a potential important economic partner and have designed many new collaborating platforms such as Tokoyo International Conference of African Development (TICAD), Forum of China-African Cooperation (FOCAC), Malaysia –African Business Council, etc, some scholar even called a time that “Asian tigers, elephants, dragons, all come to Africa”, depicting a vivid picture of Afro-Asian joining-hands for modernization and industrialization (Liu Haifang: 2015).

         Africa enhancing China’s Multilateralism: Jointly Gear Up Mutual Development

From African perspective, Asian Tigers’ development miracle has been the most important inspiration since independence as it showed a possibility of different development model, and smaller sized Singapore for instance, has been specifically an example to follow, while China, Vietnam, South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, etc, all have significantly shown some development knowledge and has jointly accumulated Africa’s Asian aspiration therefore “there was no reason for Africa to be poor”, because Asian countries have been successful (Mills et al., 2020). In this joint research carried by several African former leaders and a well-known think tank, Singapore’s engagement with Africa since 1960’s was recorded firstly for the Asia newly independent country to learn from Africa, and then increasing exchanges via platforms like Common wealth since 1990’s, and finally in a reversal way for African leaders frequently coming to learn from the Asian tigers for governance as well as development. Late 1990’s, the author of this paper was in charge of foreign affairs in the largest Think tank in China on African Studies, and has first-handedly observed the wide readership among African diplomats in China about Lee Kwan Yew. It is not a surprise therefore, to see that Rwanda, a country growing up from a thrilling tragedy in 1994, has officially announced its goal of an African Singapore. The author of this paper also witnessed in the first decade of 21cn, via visiting the embassy in Beijing for annual event like commemorating genocide, that Rwanda government started to finance its young students studying ICT in various Chinese universities, which obviously has prepared its communication service hub in the Eastern Africa region today.

As a matter of fact, early back to late 1990’s, various African official representatives one after another expressed their suggestions that China should establish its multilateral platform with the continent, referring to big powers’ similar mechanism and the TICAD as a new one since 1993 (Li Anshan et. al., 2011). Hesitating due to the fact that China never had such a mechanism before with any region and several African countries were not in diplomatic relationship though, China decided to do feasibility studies and serious consultation with African counterparts until finally the two sides jointly launched FOCAC in Beijing in 2000, and also at the strong request from African side institutionalize the mechanism from the beginning, making everyone believe the next session would certainly follow up in each three years’ time. China’s successful multilateralism with Africa has hence triggered many external partners to follow suit to work with Africa (Liu, 2019), and South Korea even had African leaders directly came up from Beijing after their China stop with Chinese leader in 2009, thanks to the smooth relations trilaterally. In retrospect of the rapidly development of China-African cooperation, the importance of this FOCAC multilateral platform could not be overstated, even all BRI projects are under supervision of FOCAC follow-up secretariat, unlike the other regions.  

China has become a more dramatic inspiring model for Africa in recent years, from upper -level elites, way down to the grassroots level society. Ethiopia is dispatching 12,000 annually human resources to be trained in China. For nationals like Zimbabweans, China in their minds used to be a much lower standard in term of infrastructure and people’s living style at the beginning of the 1980’s compared with that of Zimbabwe per ce, and how come a huge change in 30 years’ time? The question frequently addressed to the author of the paper in 2014 during her field research in the country, even the car driver of Zimbabwe University kept asked and he even expressed the strong willingness to save money for a trip to China to have a look with his own eyes!

China, at the same time, also has realized that there is a need to “tell China’s story nicely” in a more communicable way, especially from an ideological trap of so called “authentic socialism” to formalize a new consensus of “poverty is not socialism”, and the current stage of publishing “White Paper on the Right of Development” to summarize its people-centred comprehensive goal of development and to emphasize this same orientation to the world for its international cooperation (Xinhua, 2016). So far China has spent lots of efforts in enhancing its publicity and its capacity of public diplomacy, especially as part of its exchange programs with Global South partners; Institute of South- South Cooperation and Development, launched in 2016 at Peking University, was one of the initiative to bring young talents from developing countries to exchange experiences and generate more suitable knowledge for joint development. As well said by African elites that it was not betrayal to their former metropolitans without necessary gratitude as often blamed by the later, the real motivation for Africans to engage Asian partners is to seek for more suitable experience from these Asian partners that shared similar political economic situation since several decades ago to speed Africa’s development (Thamsanqa Dangazela, 2018).

Whatever the 2005 and 2015 commemorating events are commented, such as these Afro-Asian states tried to reinvent Bandung or to recycle for their contemporary regional agenda, Indonesia has attributed its own initiative in leading these movements to two keywords, i.e., freedom and being active. Freedom was explained the freedom from the tyrant dichotomy of the two giants of the Cold War Era, and being active was said as a diplomatic gesture to be friendly co-exist with all peace-loving countries and to cooperate in an innovative way as time goes by (Huanqiu News, 2015).^[vi] Since 2005 commemorating event, the inclusiveness has been an obvious tendency in opening new Asian-African Strategic Partnership (NAASP) to more members within and outside of the regions. Consequently the participating countries of 2015 event reached 109, and more than 20 international organizations also participated. As the co-chairman of the summit of 2015, former Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe said that the immediate goal for Asian and African countries was still to pursue a fair multilateral trading system to contribute to investment and job opportunities, as well as promotes sustainable development. The maritime sector was recognized a central strategy and the importance of the Indian Ocean in bridging the economic development in Asia and Africa (Xinhua: 2015).

With development as shared goal for Asia and African countries at this new stage, China’s Belt and Road Initiative might practically help the dream fulfilled by intending on the eastern end to linkup the robust East Asia economic circle, on the western end to linkup a well-developed European economic circle and in the middle consists of many nations with enormous economic potentials. With new developmentism has been widely recognized and shared, new norms have emerged, such as mutual development, mutual prosperity and win-win collaborations, etc., and they are enriching or complementing, rather than, replacing, the liberal world order that has been rather dominated by Western security-oriented agenda and market driven system.

                                                                       Conclusion

Samir Amin stated, “If I define Bandung as the dominant characteristic of the second phase of post war period, it is not from any “third worldist” predilection, but because the world system was organized around the emergence of the Third World” (1994:14). As a historical movement that had been initiated and promoted inter-continentally by African American intellectuals, Pan-Africanists and Pan-Asianists in the beginning, and then was taken as an instrument for both African and Asian leaders and politicians to gain and to maintain independence from colonization, until most recent stage that joint development become new driving forces for both the political and economic elites and grassroots people to have more interactions as well as cooperation, Afro-Asia solidarity has also been undertaken different forms with different layers’ connotations. Due to this several stages’ transformation and visions of leaders of different generations, different Africa and Asian states as most important drivers may not apparently mention too much of the spirit of Afro-Asian solidarity, it could not shadow the ontology as former colonial countries and the ongoing many forms of Afro-Asian connectivity, such as the Afro-Asian Peoples’ Solidarity Organization (AAPSO) was a social movement created in Cairo as a direct result of Bandung in 1958, and it got a new constitution as a response to the changes in 2008 to celebrate its 50^th anniversary. Its active status and concrete impact could be seen from the active website and even themes that this transnational civil society looking at are constantly changing, such as the title of their tenth congress held in Morocco was Together against Terrorism (AASPO:2016).

Indeed the evolution of Afro-Asia interaction has shown an increasing tendency of multi-layers’ connectivity beyond governmental relations and business world, exactly as distinguished Indonesian scholar Darwis KHUDORI said, “While the government of Asian and African countries have united their forces to organise a unique commemoration in Jakarta and Bandung, transnational civil society movements have given birth to diverse initiatives of commemoration in all over the world in 2005 (such as in Porto Alegre, Cairo, Bandung, Yogyakarta, Jakarta, Bangkok, Kerala, Colombo, Tokyo …)(2005) . More importantly, under the efforts of Indonesia, at this new stage, the Afro-Asian connectivity has been institutionalized with a rotating co-chairmanship for each session, April 24 as Asia-Africa Day and Bandung as the capital city of solidarity of Asia-Africa (NAASP Declaration: 2005), and to strengthen people-to-people interaction, particularly in business, academia, media, youth and sports as well as society was identified by the Afro-Asian leaders as crucial to consolidate the relationship. This could be seen as a characteristic of this inter-regionalism between the two continents, because as afore-mentioned, the active interaction between official institution and civil society that has been in a good momentum could really mutually reinforce each other and make neither layer’s initiative superficial as multiple layers’ motivations are diversifies, and they look for one another to come hand in hand. This inter-regionalism has shown a very different governing structure from what EU has established with other regions and it is certainly well based on the history of Afro-Asian connectivity and is evolving into the goals highlighted during its first peak, the Bandung Conference, with basic principles strongly withheld, had shown the importance of not only substantive physical mutual helps whenever there is a need between the two regions, but also the power of aspiration to motivate each member state to go forwards autonomously as well as inter-dependently with like-minded countries, especially to weather the constant imperial storms that might have returned as the tariff war has shown since January 2025.

China African relations fit in this general Afro-Asian connectivity very well, and probably even have played an exemplary role since 2000 when Africa successfully motivated China to join hands to enter a closer relationship via the institutionalized multilateral platform and hence the historically embedded people-to-people’s affinity could uphold the officially channeled cooperation in a much smoother and guaranteed way.     .  

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