'World of tomorrow' Afro-Asian solidarity and the Great Leap Forward of Culture in the People's Republic of China

This paper revises the bellicist theory of state-making by examining the interconnection between state-making and nation-building in the Third World. It argues that nation-building mobilisations for the purposes of self-preservation and aversion of unbalanced wars are equally crucial. By focusing on the People's Republic of China's involvement in the Afro-Asian cultural cooperation in the 1950s, this paper elaborates on how internationalism plays a role in the state-driven mobilisation of the general public for the purpose of nation-building in China. It looks at the role of transnational exchanges of cultural productions and cooperation in spurring social empowerment and nation-building in the post-World War II Afro-Asian world under the framework of the Afro-Asian solidarity movement. The Afro-Asian cultural cooperation was intended to create alternative visions to the West-centric narratives of modernisation among the general public. These visions in turn inspired the general public to be involved in nation-building movements in respective Global South nations. This synchronic relationship between national independence and internationalism in China is crucial in understanding the state-making in the Global South as a process of political, economic and, more importantly, cultural decolonisation.