Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Habitat International journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/habitatint Architecture of “Stadium diplomacy” - China-aid sport buildings in Africa Charlie Q.L. Xue a,∗ , Guanghui Ding b , Wei Chang a,c , Yan Wan a a City University of Hong Kong, China b Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture, China c Tangshan University, China ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Stadium diplomacy China-Aid Developing world Architectural design Africa ABSTRACT In the past 60 years, China has constructed over 1,400 buildings in the developing world, many of them sta- diums. This study examines how China uses stadiums as diplomatic means to demonstrate its cultural, economic and socio-political engagement in less-developed nations. To address the Chinese economic, cultural and in- tellectual intervention, this article uses three representative stadium projects built in Africa as case studies. Firstly providing physical venue for sports activities and then creating institutional network for further eco- nomic, cultural and political engagement, the Chinese built stadiums became effective catalyst for enhancing bilateral relations between China and the receipt countries. China's stadium diplomacy revealed a soft, and ultimately progressive mode of cultural engagement in transnational architectural practice. The authors argue that the implication of this architectural engagement lies in the fact that the Chinese state played a mediating role in producing and delivering architectural forms with various political motivations. Notwithstanding, the involved architects and engineers took the cultural and technical challenges and experimented adaptable design in aid projects. 1. Introduction On 22 July 2018, during his two days' state visit to Senegal, Chinese president Xi Jinping handed over to his Senegal counterpart Macky Sall a “golden key” of the national wrestling arena built with Chinese aid, claiming that the project is a vivid reflection of the profound friendship between the Chinese and the Senegalese. Xi's attendance of an opening ceremony of a Chinese built stadium overseas implied multi-role of stadium in China's diplomacy. For the past decades, the number of Chinese built stadiums abroad steadily developed, with one stadium being constructed every one to two years in the period before 1978 and increased obviously afterward till the 1990s. Its number reached the peak around 2008 when Beijing was also busy in stadium construction for the Olympic Games. Even during the devastating Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), China did not stop the program, building two sports buildings in Tanzania (in 1966 and 1968), a 35,000-seat stadium built in Nepal, and a 40,000-seat stadium built in Uganda during this period. So far, China has managed to build more than 100 stadiums in the developing countries. 1 This reflects China's continual support of “Stadium Diplomacy” as one of the major pillars of foreign aid. The term “Stadium Diplomacy” does not exist in any official docu- ment. It was first referred as “friendship stadiums” by Copper (1979) in his report of China's Foreign Aid in 1978. With China's increasing number of stadiums constructed over the world, “Stadium Diplomacy” began to be initially proposed by the Olympic committee (Zou, 2015) and foreign scholars (Menary, 2015; Will, 2012). Stadium is one of many building types that China had exported to the less-developed countries, ranging from civic housings, office buildings to institutions such as hospitals, schools, theaters, parliament houses and presidential palaces to industrial factories, and to physical infrastructure like roads, railways and bridges. However, what makes stadium buildings remarkable is the fact that they are visually pre- dominant, large-scale in a city, normally become the landmarks and are closely related to social, political and daily life, and being frequently used by and exposed to the public. They were used both by normal citizens for attending sport/music events and by political elites for national celebration activities. In other words, they convey a sense of citizen health, political equality and emancipation. One prism through which to view Chinese-built stadiums is to think of them as an element on the spectrum of national interests. Most na- tions, while competing for influence, markets, relative perceived power and other markers of strength, will play to its unique political, social, economic, financial, cultural and military advantages. For the Chinese government, building stadium for less-developed countries was one of https://doi.org/10.1016/j.habitatint.2019.05.004 Received 30 November 2018; Received in revised form 1 May 2019; Accepted 11 May 2019 ∗ Corresponding author. E-mail address: bscqx@cityu.edu.hk (C.Q.L. Xue). 1 This number is from the authors' own collected database. Sources include government and design/construction companies' websites and news reports. Habitat International 90 (2019) 101985 Available online 17 June 2019 0197-3975/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T