ABSTRACT
China has gone from being a supporter of fringe Maoist regimes in the 1960s to providing more financial assistance to the region than the World Bank (Cheng, 2015). But the idea that China would be crucial to African development is neither new nor accidental. In fact, Chinese policymakers have been aware of this notion for quite some time. China’s Ya–Fei–La Strategy, literally meaning Asia–Africa–Latin America, was conceived during the Maoist era in the 1960s (Myers, 2012) in an attempt to promote the advancement of developing country goals in a new world order. Since then, China has played an active role in promoting South–South cooperation, Africa–China cooperation being an important part of that equation.
