A “Great Steel Arm of China Thrusting Its Way into the African Interior”: The Tan-Zam Railway and the PRC Experience in Africa

This chapter explores the longstanding roots of PRC interest in Africa, which dates back at least to the mid-1950s. The Conference of Afro-Asian Countries, held in Bandung, Indonesia, in April 1955, and attended by Premier Zhou Enlai of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), then less than six years old, and other leaders from 29 African and Asian countries, issued a resounding declaration demanding the decolonization of all areas still under external rule. From this point onward, China became significantly involved in the affairs of the African Portuguese-speaking states, large and small alike. One major high point of China’s dealings with Africa was the construction of a railway linking Tanzania and Zambia, a project that took almost a decade to complete, from the mid-1960s until 1976, and that still ranks as China’s greatest overseas aid project of all time. International political as well as economic considerations drove both China’s decision to undertake the project, and the eagerness of Tanzania and Zambia to create a viable transport route linking their two countries directly. In many respects, problems and disputes of various kinds related to the construction of this railway resembled subsequent twenty-first-century controversies over the benefits and disadvantages of the later Belt and Road Initiative and other Chinese investment in Africa. This chapter therefore seeks to highlight and analyze elements of continuity and change from the mid-1950s in PRC policies toward Africa and the international reaction to these. A detailed examination of the transnational complexities surrounding the implementation of this project, bringing in the perspectives of Chinese, Africans, and external observers, including Western diplomats and aid workers, can provide sometimes surprising and unexpected insights into the ground-level operations of foreign aid diplomacy, which perhaps paradoxically often featured pragmatic professional collaboration as well as competition among representatives of rival great powers.