Ethiopia and China have built strategic diplomatic relations over the
last three decades. However, before growing to build arguably one of the most
fruitful diplomatic relations of the twentieth century, the diplomatic
relations between the world’s second-biggest economy and the country with the
fastest economic growth in Africa knew a “dark” period between the 1950s going
through the late 1960s. Incidentally, that was when China established fruitful
diplomatic relations with many African countries. The present study analyzes the foreign
policy model put in place by the then Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie, a model
established from the 1940s, solidified in the 1950s going until the decay of
Haile Selassie’s hegemony in the late 1960s, and how this model did not fit the
model adopted by their Chinese counterpart. The foreign policy implemented by
China from the 1950s was incongruent with Haile Selassie’s dream for Ethiopia’s
modernization inspired by the capitalists of the West. The paper examines the
dynamics of the Sino-Ethiopian relations during the period that both China and
Ethiopia strived to gain international recognition and explores the reasons
that hindered China and Ethiopia from building fruitful diplomatic relations.
From the perspective of the history of the Sino-Ethiopian diplomatic relations,
the paper analyses the current state of the Sino-Ethiopian relations in
Ethiopia under conflict.
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