Author: Tareq Y. Ismael.

Chinese involvement in Africa may be conveniently dated from the Bandung conference of April 1955, which marked the initiation of a policy of Chinese Communist co-operation with the states of Afro-Asia. Inasmuch as the movement in Africa which resulted in the independence of many states in the next decade had hardly begun at that time, the most significant African contact made by China at Bandung was with President Nasser. The development of contacts between the two states led Egypt in May 1956 to become the first African country to give its official recognition to the Chinese People's Republic (C.P.R.). Thereafter the Suez crisis served to bring the two countries still closer together.