Attention to Sudan's relations with China has overwhelmingly referred to northern Sudan, but the limitations of this approach and the need to appreciate a more complex, plural and fluid set of political dynamics within Sudan became increasingly obvious after the CPA. An important trend since 2005, long overshadowed by Darfur, has seen Southern Sudan develop relations with China. The CPA created a new political reality for Sudan's China relations by establishing a ‘one Sudan, two systems’ framework and including the people of South Sudan's right of self-determination to be exercised via a referendum vote on remaining in or seceding from a united Sudan. What started as a legal provision, and in the face of Beijing's natural preference for unity, had to be accommodated through practical politics and would see China's established relations with Khartoum continue as it sought to cultivate new relations with Juba, and respond to the prospect of an independent South Sudan and a two Sudans future.

This chapter offers a preliminary overview of South Sudan's relations with China. What follows first puts relations in context before considering China's role in Sudan's North-South civil wars as a continuing influence on its relations with the south. While the CPA in principle allowed governmental relations to develop, Chinese entrepreneurs were initially more active in the south after 2005. Moves to enhance political relations between the GoSS and Beijing came comparatively late, some two and a half years after the CPA, and subsequent links were directly related to the Southern referendum.