Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi gave a wide-ranging press conference in Beijing yesterday on the sidelines of the ongoing National People’s Congress, the annual rubber-stamp parliamentary event, that provided some of the clearest indications to date as to how Chinese foreign policy is going to evolve in the post-pandemic era, including towards Africa.

The most important message came right at the beginning of the event. Responding to a (likely choreographed) question by CCTV, Wang emphatically credited Xi Jinping and the CCP Central Committee for China’s diplomatic successes last year and for setting the priorities in 2021. The takeaway from this remark is that the president is very much in control of setting the foreign policy agenda.