Short Biography

Mengshu Zhan is Doctoral candidate in the Center for Global Study at Bonn University in Germany, majoring in international relationship. Her research focuses on relationship between China and Africa. The topic of her dissertation is the Perception of South African Elite to China. From August to October in 2019 she joined the Centre of Africa-China Studies in Johannesburg University, South Africa, as visiting researcher for 3 months. Mengshu Zhan received the degree of Master of Arts with Merit in International Business and Diplomacy from University of East Anglia in the UK in 2014. Her master thesis is on Chinese and EU’s African Assistance Strategies: A Comparative Study. In 2012, Mengshu Zhan graduated in International Business from Qingdao University in China.

Project

Over the past three decades, China has developed rapidly, and world order has been significantly changed. The cooperation between China and Africa has impacted on China’s rising up and world order change crucially, not only in economic part but also in political aspect. Entering the 21st century, China also began to further promote its soft power in Africa. Along with the intensive cooperation between China and Africa an increasing number of Chinese and African Scholars are interested in this bilateral relationship. This project will choose Chinese and African Scholars as the targeted social group.

The proposed project aims to analyse the views of Chinese and African Scholars on world order. First of all, their perspectives about changes of world order will be investigated. Secondly, how Chinese and African Scholars look at the current positions of Africa and China in world order will be researched. The third objective is to examine, what kind of role the relationship between Africa and China plays in world order change from their standpoint, economically, politically as well as in term of soft power.

The perspectives of this special social carrier group on world order changing, the relationship between Africa and China and its impact on world order, their prospect of new world order and development of the Africa-China bilateral relationship in the future, will be key parts of the project outcomes.