From Friendly Solidarity to Mao Zedong Thought: Sino-African Sports Delegation Visits, 1962-1966

Amanda Shuman is a fellow at IIAS who received her Ph.D. in December 2014 from the University of California, Santa Cruz, USA.

Her talk will shed light on the ways in which Chinese leaders made efforts to spread their own political agenda through Sino-African sports delegation visits in the 1960s. Officially showcased to the public as “friendly” sports exchanges, these visits held significance far beyond sport by serving as manifestations of the Chinese leadership’s attempts to spread their influence in the Third World.

Chinese sports delegations visiting African countries did offer assistance in developing local sports programs, but they also paid homage to local cultural and historic sites in order to express their shared solidarity of historical struggle against colonialism and imperialism.

African athletes and sports leaders sent to China meanwhile received a heavy dose of Chinese socialism in the form of cultural performances, meetings with leaders, and visits to various cultural and historic sites, top sports facilities, peoples’ communes, and factories. In fact, although Chinese leaders emphasized a united, equal, and shared struggle, these soft power exchanges also promoted a specifically Chinese brand of socialism for African nations to follow.

This talk will cover the first major Chinese sports delegation visit to several African countries in 1962, a contingent of ping pong athletes, before then discussing several visits by sports delegations from Egypt, Tanzania, Mali, and Congo (Brazzaville) to China at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in 1966. Comparing the earlier visit with these later visits indicates a clear shift away from an emphasis on friendly solidarity to an increasing focus on promoting Mao Zedong Thought to Africans, while also highlighting a close interplay between Chinese domestic policies and international goals in these years.

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