ABSTRACT
During the struggles for independence, Beijing’s policy towards Southern Africa was basically opportunistic, and was dependent on China’s perceptions vis-à-vis the Soviet Union’s ambitions. As such, China’s links with the Zimbabwean nationalist movements were tailored more to Beijing’s needs than the liberation organisations per se. Beijing’s involvement, however, did have the positive effect of transforming the tactics and ideology of the main liberation organisation, ZANU. As ‘China’s most important link in southern Africa [was] with ZANU’ (Legum, 1979: 15), whose military wing conducted over 80 per cent of the fighting during the war (Martin and Johnson, 1982: viii), the study of China’s involvement in pre-independent Zimbabwe is thus of particular interest for students of China’s African policy. Equally, developments post-independence reflect the themes that have dominated China’s activities in Southern Africa. And today, China is increasingly active in Zimbabwe, despite – or rather, because of – the ongoing economic and political crisis in that country.
