Day: February 1, 2021
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FOCAC 8 Concludes With China-Africa Relations Now Heading in a New Direction
Senegalese Foreign Minister Aïssata Tall Sall brought this week's Forum on China-Africa Cooperation ministerial conference to a close on Tuesday at a press briefing with her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi. Sall conveyed what appears to be the consensus among attendees, both African ...
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African Analysts and Scholars React to FOCAC 8 Outcomes
The Atlantic Council, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, convened an online roundtable on Tuesday of senior-level analysts from across Africa to discuss the outcomes of this week's FOCAC conference in Senegal with a particular focus on the economic impact. ...
Did China’s FOCAC Financial Package Go Down? Stay the Same? Or Go Up? It’s Too Early to Tell
The main story from this year's FOCAC, at least according to Bloomberg and the Financial Times, is that "debt traps" and "debt concerns" prompted China to scale back the size of its financial assistance package. The ...
Surprise That China Did Not Commit More of Its IMF Special Drawing Rights Allocation to Africa
Chinese President Xi Jinping's pledge to reallocate $10 billion to African countries of its estimated $40 billion of Special Drawing Rights (SDR) that it received from the International Monetary Fund took some by surprise as being a bit, well, cheap. "What ...
China is Going to Force Other Donor Countries to Up Their Game When It Comes to Vaccine Shipments to Africa
China's FOCAC pledge to donate 600 million COVID vaccines to African countries and to jointly produce an additional 400 million doses on the continent is going to put new pressure on other donors, namely from the U.S. and Europe, to change how they distribute vaccines in Africa. ...
Cargo ships in the Gulf, near the Strait of Hormuz, as seen from northern Ras al-Khaimah, near the border with Oman’s Musandam governance, amid the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran, in United Arab Emirates, March 11, 2026. REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo
The Two Sessions, China’s most important annual political gathering, where leaders unveil economic targets and policy priorities, closed in Beijing earlier this month just as the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran was intensifying. The timing was not coincidental. The 15th Five-Year Plan had been in ...
Vaccines and the Changing International Order
The Chief Reporter for Germany's state broadcaster Deutsche Welle, Miodrag Soric, can't believe what he's seeing. China is turning the battle for access to COVID-19 vaccines into a tremendous soft power win in the Global South -- and they're doing it at the expense of the West!
From Africa to Asia to the Americas and Even Europe, Countries Scramble for Chinese-Made COVID-19 Vaccines
Countries across the Global South and now even in Europe scrambled this weekend to source COVID-19 vaccines from pretty much anywhere they could buy them -- which in many cases brought them to China's doorstep. Amid widespread shortages, the European Union ...
European Analysts Become Increasingly Worried About Geopolitical Consequences of China’s Global Vaccine Push
European international relations scholars are expressing mounting concern over the long-term geopolitical consequences of China's assertive campaign to provide developing countries with COVID-19 vaccines. It's clear the European foreign policy establishment, both analysts and in the media, seem to regard Chinese ...
Chinese State Media Gloats About Survey Results That Show China is More Popular Than the U.S. in MENA
Chinese state media outlets this weekend touted the findings of a recent Arab Barometer public opinion survey released in January, which showed much higher approval ratings for China compared to the United States. The survey in six Middle East and North ...
Pay-TV Giant StarTimes Increasingly Becomes Vehicle for Official Chinese Propaganda
The Beijing-based African pay-TV giant StarTimes announced last week it will broadcast a government-produced TV series that, according to the Chinese state-run news agency Xinhua, "seeks to boost Sino-Africa relations." This is the latest move by the ...
Webinar: China’s Becoming Increasingly Sophisticated In Its Use of Media to Drive Its Narrative
The Berlin-based think tank Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS) recently hosted a webinar that focused on how Chinese government actors are becoming increasingly effective in their use of media to drive their agendas in both Europe and Africa. The ...
Anti-Chinese Xenophobia Erupts in South Africa After Chinese-Born ANC MP Sworn Into Office
Naturalized South African-citizen Xiaomei Havard's swearing-in last week to become an ANC member of parliament sparked a strong backlash online under the hashtags #SArejectsXiaomeiHavard and #PutSouthAfricansFirst. Havard was named to replace the late minister in the ...