ABSTRACT
Chinese contacts with the African continent stretches back centuries (see Duyvendak, 1949; Filesi, 1972). Chinese coins and porcelain fragments dating from the Sung Dynasty (960-1279) have been found at archaeological sites in Zanzibar, along the Swahili coast of eastern Africa and as far south and as inland as Great Zimbabwe. These discoveries indicate that contact, however indirect, between China and Africa has existed for a considerable period of time. It was the famed explorations by the Chinese Moslem admiral Zheng Ho during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) however that saw the first concrete manifestations of personal Sino-African relations. The admiral made seven voyages between 1416 and 1423, two of which reached the east African coast. Zheng Ho brought with him products to conduct commerce with the local people. Examples of these have since been found in Kenya, Tanzania, Madagascar, Zimbabwe and South Africa (Gao, 1984: 245). These efforts by Zheng Ho have since been regarded as the ‘climax of China’s efforts to develop relations with Africa’ in the pre-Revolutionary era (ibid., 245-246). China’s self-imposed withdrawal from the world under the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) coincidentally followed Portuguese navigational exploits along the eastern African coast, which effectively shut out further Chinese efforts at maintaining contact with Africa. However, the historical mission by Zheng Ho was symbolically useful for China, and was referred to by a number of China’s leaders in subsequent dealings with Africa. For example, Zhou Enlai on his tour of Tanzania in 1965 said ‘my colleagues and I do not find ourselves in a strange land. Intercourse between our countries dated back to nine hundred years ago. Some five hundred years ago, the Chinese navigator Cheng Ho reached East African coasts’ (New China News Agency, June 5, 1965).
