Sino-African cooperation has been increasing more intensively in the past few decades, not just on an economic scale, but also on a political scale and on the level of intercultural exchange. China, which not long ago shared the status of a developing country with other African countries and was regarded as a peripheral country in the capitalistic world order, has managed to change its role in this world system through vast economic improvements and its very successful development model. During my thesis, I am focusing on the ways in which China is expanding its soft power in Africa, among which the main topics are definitely its economic power and the expansion of its development model. However, for this thesis, more subtile ways of cultural expansion, that don't arise from plain economic cooperation, are of greater importance. In Africa in the 21st century, the latter are most expressed in three areas, through the Confucius Institutes and Confucius classrooms, through the expansion of Chinese intelligence agencies and by offering study scholarships to study in China, and their success is the main research issue of this thesis. I will thoroughly describe the original soft power concept, how soft power differs from hard power, as well as how Chinese foreign-policy professionals understand this concept, eventually linking this understanding with the characteristics of modern Sino-African cooperation. With the understnding of these methods of spreading Chinese influence in Africa, we can therefore assess what actually is the reason behind the desire to expand its influence in Africa.
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