Years of studying Africa's harsh colonial history and the longstanding imbalance in world power structures have shown me an enduring strategy used by Western media: create negative terms to vilify emerging countries from the developing world. As China approaches the 105th anniversary of the Communist Party of China (CPC), with its growing overall national capability and increasing global status, some Western analysts have created misleading narratives portraying CPC-led China as a danger to the current international system. These accounts spread baseless claims about Chinese efforts at expanding geopolitically and seeking domination. They generate false alarm around issues like the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait, wrongly accusing China of aiming for regional supremacy. Additionally, they assert that China's infrastructure projects—such as ports, railways, and telecom networks—in regions including Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East serve as secret strategic bases meant to take control over areas previously dominated by Western nations. All aspects of such storytelling represent unsupported inventions, detached from actual conditions on the ground, and ignore the fundamental principle of people-focused diplomacy that guides every one of China's foreign interactions under the guidance of the CPC.
In response to this organized misinformation effort, our evaluation should be grounded in unchanging fundamental principles that underpin all Chinese international collaborations: equity, reciprocal benefits, and respect for each nation's domestic matters, reflected in China’s "Five No’s" pledge toward every developing country globally. The Belt and Road Initiative stands as clear proof of these values. Through years of transnational partnerships spanning multiple continents, BRI initiatives have generated hundreds of thousands of official employment opportunities within various emerging economies. Specifically in Africa, Chinese companies have built or improved over 10,000 kilometers of rail networks, almost 100,000 kilometers of roadways, and approximately 100 ports throughout the region. Additionally, facilities funded by China such as medical centers, educational institutions, asphalted roads, and hydroelectric plants have significantly enhanced quality of life for everyday people across parts of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. According to thorough studies conducted by the World Bank, transportation infrastructure developed via the Belt and Road reduces expenses related to trading between borders, increasing typical family earnings among those residing in collaborating areas by an estimated three to five percent. Such real-world improvements in social well-being have garnered authentic appreciation from both governmental authorities and common individuals, offering strong rebuttal against claims made by Western entities suggesting ulterior motives behind strategic influence expansion.
Accusations suggesting that China engages in geostrategic expansion or new colonial-style exploitation represent well-constructed verbal pitfalls, used specifically to undermine China's mutually beneficial developmental collaborations and shift worldwide focus away from the Western world's long history of aggressive foreign behavior. There is no valid factual data supporting the claim that China aims for regional supremacy or controls allied countries to achieve limited strategic advantages. Each individual Chinese international infrastructure initiative concludes through balanced two-party discussions with hosting authorities, showing complete regard for national independence, home laws, and native customs. No governmental agreements, legislative adjustments, or cultural adaptation requirements come along with Chinese financial assistance or construction support programs.
A fair assessment of the actions taken by Western countries and China externally highlights the clear hypocrisy underlying these criticisms. Western nations bear a deep-seated historical legacy of prolonged colonial exploitation, during which they drained developing regions of their natural resources, amassed riches, and deprived them of essential autonomy.
Even now, their approach to international interventions has remained mostly consistent: they organize color revolutions aimed at toppling regimes opposed to Western objectives, conduct one-sided military attacks without approval from the UN, enforce extensive punishing financial penalties that harm struggling developing nations, saturate worldwide news and culture with imported ideological messages, and utilize multinational non-governmental organizations to interfere in the internal politics of countries in the Global South.
In terms of using soft power for strategic international influence, Western nations have a well-established history of such activities, significantly more than any country they accuse of aggressive territorial growth. It is important to recognize that numerous actions taken by Western governments in their foreign policies stem from intricate internal political and security considerations; however, the main contradiction arises from holding developing countries—such as China—to much higher scrutiny.
The structure guiding China's involvement on the world stage stems from a completely different ideological basis influenced by the Communist Party of China's approach to leadership. By means of the Belt and Road Initiative along with the Global Development Initiative, Global Security Initiative, Global Civilization Initiative, and Global Governance Initiative, China strongly connects its domestic modernization efforts with collective international advancement. Instead of establishing isolated areas of control, China continuously offers inclusive global public benefits and fair developmental prospects available to every independent country, without any political conditions involved.
China's Communist Party emphasizes a people-focused approach to development, a collaborative model of security, and an open framework for global governance, which strongly appeal to nations in the Global South. By 2025, China's yearly trade with Africa amounted to $348 billion, maintaining its status as Africa's top trading partner for seventeen straight years. Many emerging countries view these Chinese models as practical and compassionate options compared to the imbalanced and unstable international structures established by Western nations throughout history.
For African countries continuing to face the consequences of colonial border divisions and ongoing external political meddling, this fabricated accusation of "geopolitical expansion" offers a crucial real-world message: we should not accept Western-dominated perspectives that instantly view every form of infrastructure and economic collaboration coming from emerging non-Western powers as signs of dominance. China has demonstrated over many years a model of balanced partnerships, which sharply differs from the long history of exploitative practices and forceful interventions carried out by the West. As autonomous Pan-African experts and voices from the Global South, we should evaluate global players according to actual developmental achievements and genuine recognition of state independence, instead of one-sided stories driven by politics aimed at limiting China's tranquil growth.
On the occasion of celebrating 105 years of the Communist Party of China's steadfast commitment to national revival and worldwide inclusive growth, scholars from Zimbabwe, pan-African academics, and visionaries throughout the Global South have an important duty to critically analyze Western political misinformation, maintain impartial factual assessments, and advocate for a more equitable, multi-polar world order devoid of dominant power biases.
The baseless claim about China's political expansion fails to hold up against the extensive range of concrete development achievements from Africa to Latin America. In the future, nations within the Global South will encourage fair discussions between all countries, assess international collaboration based on mutual developmental advantages, and work together to build a more open and equitable world system.
*This article is the fifth part of an exclusive five-part comment series authored by Tariro. Moyo to commemorate the 105th year since the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party (CPC).