Ghana’s March 6, 1957 independence celebrations in Accra drew prominent leaders from the major Cold War powers, including US Vice President Richard Nixon and Chinese Vice Premier Nie Rongzhen. Scholars have used Nixon’s visit to explore American diplomacy and the relationship between race and foreign policy. But what— if anything — can Nie’s visit tell us about China’s initial engagements with a decolonizing Africa? Drawing on Ghanaian, Chinese, and US records, this talk uses Nie’s participation in Ghana’s independence celebrations to examine how diplomacy,
race, and ideology shaped the People’s Republic of China’s initial understanding of postcolonial Africa.
This event is co-sponsored by the Department of History and the East Asian Studies Center.
