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Title: | The 'Captive States' of Southern Africa and China: The PRC and Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland |
Author: | Taylor, Ian |
Year: | 1997 |
Periodical: | Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics |
Volume: | 35 |
Issue: | 2 |
Period: | July |
Pages: | 75-95 |
Language: | English |
Geographic terms: | Botswana Swaziland - Eswatini Lesotho China |
Subjects: | foreign policy international relations Politics and Government Economics and Trade |
External link: | https://doi.org/10.1080/14662049708447746 |
Abstract: | Relations between the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the southern African States of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland (BLS) through the 1960s until the early 1990s were in essence dependent on the largesse of the regional hegemon, South Africa. This was particularly so in regard to landlocked Lesotho and the vulnerable Swaziland. Though Beijing's antihegemonic posturing and rhetorical support for BLS had some effect, particularly in Botswana, where a mutually satisfactory relationship was developed, relations with the three countries have been relatively restricted. Lesotho's highly vulnerable position regarding South Africa and its internal politics have meant that its ties with Beijing have been unstable and unpredictable. Swaziland, by contrast, has had virtually no links with the PRC. Of the three, Botswana has been the most susceptible to Beijing's posturing of its 'independent foreign policy', and it is in Gaborone where the PRC may be said to have conducted a relatively successful policy in maintaining linkages. However, China's success or otherwise in developing ties has always had far more to do with the domestic agendas of the respective countries and the response to the regional hegemon than with any particular policy pursued by Beijing. Notes, ref. |