While it is commonly recognised by scholars that there is not a monolithic definition of socialism, the term has also become increasingly irrelevant following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Although the great dispute regarding ‘true’ interpretations of socialism affected the Communist bloc throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Africa, considered as a test field of Western philosophies and theories, received little scholarly attention from Marxist writers who considered African societies as too underdeveloped to host any substantial proletarian revolution led by working class. Based on archival resources, newspapers, interviews and official records from Kenya, Zambia, and China, this paper will place African socialism at the centre in understanding Communist China’s respective relations with Kenya and Zambia.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Chinese Communist leaders under Mao Zedong sought to develop relations with African ruling parties (KANU in Kenya and UNIP in Zambia) and political elites (e.g. Kenneth Kaunda, Oginga Odinga) on the basis of Afro-Asian solidarity and non-alignment. Both were said to arise from African ‘traditional’ values, Zambian Humanism advocated a person-centred Christian society, while Kenya’s African Socialism aimed to reform the colonial economy through Africanisation and foreign investment. This paper argues that China pursued them in a similar manner but the quite contrasting diplomatic gains may be explained by their different patterns of party-state nexus, and the interactions between the ruling government and the press.
This paper argues that the presence of Communist China in Zambia was less controversial than in Kenya. Surrounded by white-minority regimes, Zambia was identified as a frontline country in support of the Southern African liberation movements, a cause that China also supported actively. On the other hand, Kenya became entangled in the global Cold War, as part of which China financed the opposition in its political struggles against President Kenyatta.
Research keywords: African socialism, Kenya, Zambia, China, Cold War