In the past 60 years, China has constructed over 1,400 buildings in the developing world, many of them stadiums. 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 intellectual 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 economic, 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.

In the twenty-first century, Chinese cities tend to rely on cultural megastructures to define their new districts and reflect their aspirations. A grand theater, which is a complicated building type in terms of technology and has a striking image, is a central attraction and the focus of a new district. This paper focuses on Taiyuan City, a second-tier Chinese city with a brilliant history that has been gradually reduced to mediocrity. This paper aims to reveal the relationship among productivity, urban development, and theater construction in different historic periods; highlights the initiation, design, and implication of the latest grand theater designed by a French firm; and investigates the city and its performing arts spaces, stakeholders, and various forces that make the theater and its urban form. These affective forces may be typical in Central China, which is a generally backward area compared with the entire country. The paper presents proper descriptors for performing arts buildings in Taiyuan for three generations, and the lessons from Taiyuan can provide references for other cities that face similar problems and challenges.

Djibouti is a postcolonial African city that embraced neoliberal ideology after the country's independence, and yet still lags behind in the world's economy. With the fragmentation of both its society and space, the city has continued to be a playground for global powers, because of its strategic location for trade and global security. In the global era, Djibouti's aspirations for development have encountered China's "Belt and Road Initiative". Through a series of recent investments, China Merchant Group, a Chinese state-owned enterprise, has attempted to redeploy the successful model in Shenzhen in the horn of Africa. This study first delineates the history of Djibouti from the colonial to independence periods, and then examines how China's experience is being applied in African lands. The study is significant in revealing the processes and problems of global investment and planning in the developing countries.