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Topic

Soft Power in Stitches: China’s Fashion Projection in Nigeria

Department of Pacific and Asian Studies

Date & location

• Wednesday, November 26, 2025
• 2:00 P.M.
• Clearihue Building, Room C116

Examining Committee

Supervisory Committee

• Dr. Andrew Marton, Department of Pacific and Asian Studies, ӣ��Ӱ�� (Supervisor)
• Dr. ann-elise lewallen, Department of Pacific and Asian Studies, UVic (Member)

External Examiner

• Dr. Feng Xu, Department of Political Science, UVic

Chair of Oral Examination

• Dr. Ulrich Mueller, Department of Psychology, UVic

Abstract

While contemporary Sino–African relations are most often discussed in economic terms, the role of fashion culture in this wider discourse is largely unexplored. This study seeks to further the conversation on China’s soft power projection in Sub-Saharan Africa through the lens of fashion, by focusing on the China Cultural Centre Nigeria (CCCN) as a pivotal site for transcultural interaction. This study investigates the CCCN’s initiatives, particularly its highly publicized fashion shows, as a soft power tool and space for cultural negotiation where Chinese and Nigerian identities and power dynamics intersect. By highlighting the identity shifts and cultural representations negotiated on the runway and beyond, this research offers new perspectives on China's soft power strategies in Africa. The analysis goes beyond aesthetics on the fashion runway to focus on China’s growing cultural influence in Nigeria by examining how fashion mediates the complex interplay of power, identity, and indigeneity in a globalized world. Integrating Nye’s soft power theory with Pratt’s concept of contact zones and Hall’s cultural representation framework, this study analyzes how material culture mediates power and identity. Key research questions address the roles of Chinese governmental and corporate entities, interactions with Nigerian fashion stakeholders and consumers, and how these exchanges intersect with and reflect Nigeria’s post-colonial identity. Findings reveal that the CCCN’s fashion events strategically stage Chinese textile heritage alongside Nigerian fabrics to showcase China’s long-standing sartorial expertise and to foster transcultural dialogue. Off‐runway, Nigerian designers incorporate Chinese aesthetic elements into everyday garments, illustrating bottom‐up negotiation and local agency. These transcultural fashions invoke historical memories and cultural dimensions of colonial dress politics, generating ambivalent responses that underscore postcolonial tensions between authenticity and cosmopolitan aspiration. This study contributes theoretically by foregrounding the embodied performance of fashion as a soft power tool and empirically by providing an in‐depth analysis of Chinese‐led fashion diplomacy in Sub‐Saharan Africa. The study concludes with practical recommendations for cultural institutions to design more reciprocal exchange programs, and by highlighting possibilities for future comparative research on material‐culture diplomacy in diverse geopolitical contexts.