Comrades-in-arms: the Chinese Communist Party’s relations with African political organisations in the Mao era, 1949–76

This study examines the evolution of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) motives, objectives, and methods vis-à-vis its African counterparts during the Mao era, 1949–76. Beginning in the mid-1950s, to oppose colonialism and US imperialism, the CCP created front groups to administer its political outreach in Africa. In the 1960s and 1970s, this strategy evolved to combat Soviet hegemony. Although these policy shifts are distinguished by changes in CCP methods and objectives towards Africa, they were motivated primarily by life-or-death intraparty struggles among rival political factions in Beijing and the party's pursuit of external sources of regime legitimacy.