Few subjects appear less central to the intellectual legacy of Africa’s great conceptualizer, Ali Mazrui, than China. Unlike Islam, the West, Pan-Africanism, globalization, or the United States, China never occupied a sustained place in his scholarship. He never wrote a book devoted to China, nor did he establish himself as a specialist on Chinese politics or foreign policy. Yet such observations can be misleading. Mazrui possessed an intellectual curiosity that defied disciplinary and geographical boundaries. Throughout his career, he occasionally turned to China whenever broader questions of race, revolution, modernization, global power, and Africa’s international relations demanded attention. Although these interventions were relatively few and scattered (see for instance, Mazrui 1973, 1976, 2016; Mazrui and Adem 2013), they were rarely incidental. They often contained conceptual innovations and remarkably prescient observations that anticipated developments occurring decades later. Indeed, long before China’s spectacular economic ascent transformed global politics, Mazrui had already begun asking questions that have since become central to the study of Sino-African relations. Why was China attracted to Africa? Was race an important element in Chinese-African solidarity? Could socialist ideology overcome cultural differences? Would China’s rise resemble European imperialism or represent an entirely different historical phenomenon? Could China become a great power without reproducing Western hegemonic behavior? These questions had been at the center of Mazrui’s scholarship on China.

This article argues that Mazrui’s contribution to the study of Sino-African relations has been significantly underestimated. Although he was not a Sinologist in the conventional sense, he anticipated many of the major debates that now dominate the field. His importance lies less in the quantity of his writings on China than in the originality of his conceptual framework. We can approach Mazrui’s contributions to the study of Sino-African relations in two ways. The first examines Mazrui’s explicit writings on the subject, tracing the evolution of his thinking from the Bandung era through China’s economic rise under Deng Xiaoping. The second adopts what may appropriately be called Mazrui’s (1963: 122) own unique method. Rather than limiting ourselves to Mazrui’s texts explicitly concerned with China, this method extracts broader concepts developed elsewhere in Mazrui’s massive scholarship and applies them to contemporary Sino-African relations. Such an approach also reflects Mazrui’s own intellectual practice. He consistently transported concepts across historical and geographical settings, believing that ideas acquire greater explanatory power when liberated from the narrow circumstances in which they were originally formulated. Mazrui thus emerges not merely as an observer of China’s engagement with Africa but as an important theorist whose ideas remain highly relevant for understanding one of the most consequential international relationships of the twenty-first century.

Mazrui, the (Reluctant) Sinologist

As indicated above, Mazrui was not a Sinologist in the professional sense. He neither specialized in Chinese history nor claimed expertise in Chinese civilization comparable to such scholars as John Fairbank or Lucian Pye. Yet his engagement with China displayed precisely those characteristics that distinguished his scholarship more generally: comparative imagination, conceptual innovation, historical sensitivity, and a willingness to ask unconventional questions. For Mazrui, China mattered not primarily because it was China, but because it illuminated larger questions about Africa’s place in world politics. His writings on China span two distinct historical periods. The first covers the revolutionary era from Bandung in 1955 until Deng Xiaoping’s reforms beginning in 1978–79. The second examines China’s post-Mao transformation into an emerging global economic power. The transition from the first to the second period fundamentally altered both China’s international identity and Africa’s relationship with Beijing.

Mazrui (1967: 209-2011) regarded the Bandung Conference of 1955 as one of the defining moments in postcolonial international history. Bandung represented more than diplomatic cooperation among newly independent states. It inaugurated what Mazrui memorably termed pigmentation solidarity—a political consciousness rooted in shared experiences of domination by white imperial powers. This did not imply biological notions of race. Rather, it was a reference to a shared historical condition produced by colonialism. China occupied a unique position within this emerging coalition. Unlike European colonial powers, China appeared as another victim of Western imperialism. Having endured foreign occupation and unequal treaties, China could identify with Africa’s anti-colonial struggles from the standpoint of shared historical humiliation rather than imperial superiority. For Mazrui, this constituted the first phase of Sino-African relations.

Pigmentation solidarity alone could not sustain long-term political cooperation. Mazrui therefore identified a second stage which he termed pan-proletarianism. Here the basis of solidarity shifted from race to economics. China and Africa became, in his memorable phrase, “comrades in poverty.” Instead of interpreting Third World solidarity solely through ideology, he emphasized the sociological importance of shared underdevelopment. Both China and Africa occupied subordinate positions........

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