Month: May 2020
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Under Mounting Pressure From the U.S., Europe, and Australia, China Leans on Its Ties in Africa For Support
Hong Kong-based CNN journalist Jenni Marsh reports on the prominent role that Africa played in Monday's speech by Chinese President Xi Jinping to the World Health Assembly. Marsh, who's covered China-Africa relations for years, notes that amid mounting anti-Chinese sentiment in Washington, Brussels, and Canberra, Beijing's political ...
World Bank President Frustrated About the Slow Pace of Private Debt Relief for Africa
World Bank President David Malpass said in a conference call with reporters on Tuesday that he is disappointed that Africa's private creditors aren't doing more to provide badly-needed relief for poor countries struggling amid worsening economic conditions brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. (BLOOMBERG) ...
African Leaders Criticize Wealthy Countries For Lack of Progress on Debt Relief
Five African presidents, from Kenya, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Senegal, and Niger, decried the lack of meaningful progress by wealthy industrial countries on debt relief and financial assistance to the continent amid the worsening COVID-19 outbreak. The leaders took part in a ...
The Geopolitics of COVID-19
The COVID-19 crisis is proving an interesting case study in the impact of different ways of conducting public diplomacy. Any public diplomacy is dependent on two factors: staying on message, and making sure that message doesn't play into negative perceptions about you in the wider world.
Assessing China’s “Corona Diplomacy” in Africa
Even though China spends considerably less than the U.S. and Europeans on public health assistance in Africa, Beijing is seemingly dominating the narrative with its high profile donations of food, PPE, and medical missions.
Deborah Brautigam: Don’t Expect China to Cancel Africa’s Debts, They’ll Probably Just Reschedule Them
So long as there's no official word from the Chinese government as to how they specifically plan to address the $150 billion of outstanding debts that African governments owe Bejing, everyone's speculating as to how they'll likely proceed. Professor Deborah Brautigam, ...
African Countries Sign on To Global Inquiry Into COVID-19 Origin
All African countries under the banner "The African Group and its Members States" are now part of a group of 110 countries who signed a World Health Organization draft resolution on Monday that calls for an inquiry into the origin of COVID-19.
Evan Feigenbaum: U.S. Making a Strategic Mistake in Challenging WHO Just as China Announces New COVID-19 Measures
Evan Feigenbaum, vice president of the Carnegie Endowment and a leading foreign affairs commentator in the United States, said the timing of President Donald Trump's threat to permanently defund the World Health Organization just as China is stepping up support for ...
Africa Emerges as a Key Theme in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Address to World Health Assembly
Chinese support for Africa and other developing regions around the world emerged as a key message point in President Xi Jinping's Monday address to the World Health Assembly (WHA) meeting. The WHA is the World Health Organization's governing forum, made up of health ministers. The president spoke ...
It Looks Increasingly Unlikely Africa Will be Able to Negotiate Package Debt Relief Deals With Either Private Creditors or the Chinese
Hopes for a consolidated African debt relief package from both private creditors and Chinese lenders appear to be fading. On Friday, news came that a coalition, the Africa Private Creditor Working Group or AfricaPCWG, representing 25 large asset managers and institutions had been formed to negotiate with borrowers.
In These Polarized Times, Talking About China is Not Easy
University of London Ph.D. candidate Li Hangwei commiserated on Twitter with Stanford University Political Science Professor Yiqing Xu about the perils of talking about China, both on social media and when conducting research. Both scholars noted how they're stuck in between being pro-CCP "Panda Huggers" ...
Professor Carlos Oya: How Can Chinese Companies Create More and Better Jobs for Africans?
University of London Professor Carlos Oya is among the world's leading scholars on Chinese labor practices in Africa. Last July, he published a ground-breaking report that challenged widely-held perceptions about the quantity of Chinese imported labor in Ethiopia and Angola (90% of workers on Chinese ...