China occupies a special place in Henri Lopes’s writings ; it is a phantas magoria, associated with lost illusions. This essay focuses on Le Lys et le Flamboyant (1997) and Il est déjà demain (2018), while also taking into account a novel yet to be published, Petit Mao, and militant texts published in L’Étudiant d’Afrique noire and Etumba. Through the analysis of the references to China to be found in those texts, the goal of this study is indeed to consider all the different aspects of Henri Lopes’s life : that of the writer, of the Fédération des Étudiants d’Afrique Noire (FEANF) activist, and of the minister. Through their different modes of representation, the circulations between China and the Congo put into perspective a shared historical and ideological experience and a personal conception of literary creation .