A Compelling Compendium

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Given China’s massive importance in the contemporary world system, the governance of the country is of broad and universal interest. Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is also General Secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, has provided a fascinating collection of his spoken and written works, offering both domestic and international audiences the tool to navigate through the issues, thinking and practices that are central to the governance of modern China. The fourth volume of the work, following the tradition of the previous volumes, follows the trajectory of clarifying and elaborating the issues that have an impact on the governance of contemporary China and the world.

While President Xi’s thinking is profuse and establishes him as an outstanding proletarian theoretician, the sheer breadth and depth of his work benefit from the expansive thought infrastructure of the Party accumulated from the spring of its wisdom and validated by the practice of seeking truth from facts. In the new era characterised by opportunities, challenges and even risks, the theoretical framework and outline of the “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era,” the latest development in the Party’s theoretical innovation, offers the framework for exploring modernisation in its total ramifications.

Against the background of the central role of President Xi in the modernisation and national rejuvenation, his written and spoken works captured in the fourth volume of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China provide an unassailable gateway to understanding modern China.

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Relevance for Africa

Africa is a crucial feature in China’s foreign relations and President Xi suggested early that China’s relations and cooperation with Africa should receive high level of attention. In his first foreign visit as president of China, he travelled straight from Russia to Tanzania and delivered the famous speech that provided guidance for the further development of China-Africa cooperation.

He noted in the speech that “unity and cooperation with African countries have always been an important foundation of China’s foreign policy. This will never change, not even when China grows stronger and enjoys higher international status.” He called Africa “a big family of shared destiny.” With an eye on the future of China-Africa cooperation, he remarked that “more than 1.3 billion Chinese are working hard to realise the Chinese dream of great national renewal and more than 1 billion African people are committed to the African dream of gaining strength from unity and achieving development and rejuvenation,” and added that “the Chinese and African people should enhance unity, cooperation, mutual support and assistance so as to make our dreams come true.” He also stressed that China and Africa should coordinate with the international community to realise the global dream of enduring peace and common prosperity and make a new and even greater contribution to the noble cause of peace and development of mankind.

In the fourth volume, President Xi further clarifies the development of China-Africa relations. Under the title Promote Friendly Cooperation Between China and Africa (pp. 517 - 522), he writes that the key to the close relationship and deep bond “lies in an everlasting spirit of China-Africa friendship and cooperation forged between the two sides, characterised by sincere friendship and equality, mutual benefit and common development, fairness and justice, openness and inclusiveness and progress with the times.”  

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Important initiatives

China-Africa cooperation has enjoyed considerable attention, and the works of President Xi have scaled up the momentum of the relations between the two sides. Since making a pivotal visit to Africa early in his presidency, he has introduced a good number of vital initiatives to drive the cooperation between the two sides.

In 2021, during the peak of the coronavirus pandemic when Africa was seen as the region with the most vulnerability, President Xi in his speech using a video link to the eighth Ministerial Conference of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in Senegal declared the two sides to be a community of shared future, standing together through thick and thin. Championing solidarity with his African counterparts, China provided support by donating 600 million doses of vaccines, to be jointly manufactured in Africa.  

In the expansive space of the 658 pages of the volume, President Xi demonstrates great perspective and thinking that is in tune with the times and aligned with the evolving trajectories of human development.  

The author is Director of Centre for China Studies, Abuja, Nigeria

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