Aesthetics and Politics of China’s Foreign Aid Buildings from the 1950s to 1970s

This chapter reviews the development of China's foreign aid and foreign aid architecture from the 1950s to the 1970s, focusing on the relationship between the aesthetics of foreign aid architecture and its political implications. It aims to interpret the connotation and meaning of the “Chinese model” in foreign aid through architectural lens. From the perspective of history of knowledge, it analyses the development and evolution of the design knowledge of China’s foreign aid architecture and the transnational knowledge flows, focusing on the influence of Western modernist architectural trends on Chinese foreign aid architecture from 1964 to 1976. Taking the Tanzania-Zambia Railway Terminus in Dar es Salaam as the primary example, it reveals the “Chineseness” of Chinese foreign aid architecture in the aspects of both aesthetics and politics, and discusses the contemporary value of Chinese foreign aid architecture of that period as an intellectual heritage.