1. The “China Dream” and the African Reality: The Role of Ideology in PRC-Africa Relations
- Author:
- James Barnett
- Publication Date:
- 10-2020
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Hudson Institute
- Abstract:
- The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) promotes its worldview and political and economic model overseas, particularly in the developing world, albeit in a very different manner than it did in the era of Mao Zedong. Under Mao, who fashioned himself the champion of Third World revolutionary movements, China exported a comprehensive, proactive, and universal ideology. Today the party’s theorists are struggling to develop a message of similar caliber. What they have produced so far has not translated into a particularly coherent or compelling “Xi Jinpingism” that appeals across cultures and societies. But this has not stopped the PRC from pursuing an ideologically grounded foreign policy. President Xi speaks frequently of a “Community of Common Destiny,” a still-vague vision for a Sinocentric world order in which the CCP’s model is lauded as a contribution to human civilization, liberal democracy is widely discredited, and the developing world looks to China above all others for inspiration.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Politics, Elites, and Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
- Political Geography:
- Africa, China, and Asia