Comparing the aid diplomacy of the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union in Africa, 1959-1971

Thesis

Against the backdrop of the Sino-Soviet Split, the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China began leveraging their disparate resources and expertise to achieve their different aims in Africa, independently adopting distinct approaches to what this thesis calls aid diplomacy. This is defined as the provision of any kind of material, technical, military, or cultural assistance intended to achieve a given diplomatic aim or otherwise further a country’s foreign policy. The thesis compares Chinese and Soviet engagement with Africa during the first full decade of decolonisation, the 1960s. By anchoring that comparison on the two socialist countries’ aid diplomacy, the thesis explores differences in their official ideologies, questions surrounding their competing national interests, disparities in their capacities as foreign policy actors and aid providers, and the divergence in their revolutionary strategies during the 1960s. The thesis will reflect on why scholarship examining the Soviet Union’s actions in Africa focuses on matters of strategy and pragmatism, whereas works which examine the competition of the two powers and on Mao-era China’s efforts in isolation highlight ideology. It further seeks to incorporate the agency and initiative of African political leaders, underscoring how two providers both faced a steep learning curve in the pursuit of their discrete policies in Africa. In so doing, it sheds new light on the Sino-Soviet Split and contributes to scholarship which sidesteps the conventional East-West axis of Cold War history. In addition, the thesis analyses how Chinese and Soviet interpretations of Marxism-Leninism and their respective strategies were experienced on the ground in Africa, opening up another perspective to the field of comparative communism and thus complicating previous narratives about the Soviet Union’s and China’s engagements with Africa and the wider developing world during this foundational era.

Authors: Burnham, TC

• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: africa; sino-soviet split; aid; people's republic of china; foreign relations; soviet union; cold war
• Subjects: History, Modern; Cold War