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Bloomberg Asks Zhao Lijian the $4 Billion Dollar Question About Its Zambian Loans: “Will China Opens Its Books?”

Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian faced questions yesterday by a Bloomberg reporter as to whether Beijing would do more to help alleviate investor concerns over the lack of transparency of China's loans to Zambia.  Zhao echoed a brief comment published on ...

New AidData Research Explains Why China Isn’t Fully Participating in the DSSI and Not Interested in Seizing Assets

Bradley Parks, executive director of AidData, discussed the preliminary findings of a new investigation into the terms and conditions of Chinese loan contracts around the world. AidData researchers studied 83 Chinese loan contracts to 21 low-and-middle income countries. The contracts involved the ...

U.S. Government Targets African Twitter Users With Paid Campaign Criticizing Chinese Fishing Practices

Senegal-based freelance journalist James Courtright noticed an interesting paid tweet from the U.S. government's official French language account that appeared in his feed this week. The "promoted" post (that means "paid" in Twitter's vernacular) attacked China's distant fishing operations around the world: ...

Wow! Whoever’s in Charge of the Chinese Embassy in Somalia’s Twitter Account Really Went on a Tear

In the space of two hours yesterday, the social media manager at the Chinese embassy in Somalia published an impressive 32 tweets in what was a disjointed stream of Chinese propaganda's greatest hits. They covered a lot of ground:Alleviating Chinese ...

When It Comes to the G20’s DSSI, China’s Playing by a Different Set of Rules

There's an enormous disconnect between how the Chinese are approaching the debt crisis in poor countries and the expectations of the world's legacy donors. People like World Bank President David Malpass seem befuddled as to why China is not fully supporting ...

Analysis from Cobus van Staden

The G20 Summit and the Half-Life of a Joke

When it was announced in 2023 that the African Union would become a full member of the G20, I darkly joked on a podcast that the AU’s entry into the body could very well mark the moment the G20 lost its status as one of the most important global coordination forums. Mark my words, I said, soon The Economist will be like “Uhhh, the G20 is OVER – it’s the ...

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