Pragmatic, Strategic and Wide-Reaching: The CCP’s Party Diplomacy in Africa

But China’s party diplomacy is unique in terms of the scope and density of its network as well as the scale of the political and administrative resources invested.5 This is made possible by the structure of the Chinese party state in which power (including the field of foreign policy) is concentrated in the CCP. [...] In the early 1990s, the collapse of the Soviet Union and regime transitions in Africa consid- erably changed the context for China’s party diplomacy in Africa. [...] The 14th CCP National Con- gress in 1992 no longer highlighted the importance of relations with communist parties, but instead proclaimed that it valued relations with all political parties in all countries.10 At the same time, according to Zhong Weiyun, Deputy Director-General of the Africa Bureau of the CCP-ID, political openings in Africa in the early 1990s had a negative impact on the CCP’s re. [...] Once a country has switched its relations from Taiwan to the PRC, the CCP regularly meets with the ruling party in order to ensure continued compliance with the One China policy, as happened for instance in the case of Burkina Faso and Benin. [...] Party diplo- macy in Africa has allowed the CCP to collect positive statements on the situation in Xinjiang or the origins of the Covid-19 coronavirus and China’s domestic response to the pandemic, both of which help boost external and internal legitimation.