Day: May 2, 2022
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The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor 2.0 — A New Risk Management Strategy
By Saniya Kulkarni With all eyes on Beijing’s response to the ongoing protests in China, it appears Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif is making headway in mitigating growing unrest in the southwestern province of Balochistan. The resource-rich region is home to ...
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Why It Isn’t China’s Fault Its Trade With Africa Is So Distorted
China is forecast to break another trade record with Africa this year, potentially even crossing the $300 billion barrier. While that sounds great, the big number masks a distorted trading relationship that is mostly concentrated in extractives among a small handful ...
WEEK IN REVIEW: Saudi Arabia to Mark Chinese President Xi Jinping’s State Visit Next Week With a China-Arab Summit
Saudi Arabia will mark Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit from 7 to 9 December with a China-Arab summit, according to Saudi diplomats. Invitations to Middle Eastern and North African leaders have reportedly already gone out. The summit will come at a delicate moment in U.S.-Saudi relations, which ...
Three African Countries Sign Canadian-led Joint Statement on Human Rights in Xinjiang
The bitter debate over human rights in Xinjiang flared anew this week at the United Nations when Canada's UN ambassador Bob Rae read a joint statement on behalf of 50 countries at a meeting of the General Assembly’s human rights committee. The joint ...
China Harbour Completes Construction of West Africa’s Largest Deep Water Port in Nigeria
The state-owned China Harbour Engineering Company completed construction of the $1.5 billion Lekki Deep Sea Port near Lagos and officially handed over the facility to its Nigerian partners. Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, said the new port will generate 200,000 jobs ...
South Africa’s Naspers Denies Rumors It Plans to Dump Tencent Shares
South African tech investment firm Naspers denied rumors that it is in talks with the Chinese state-owned investment company CITIC to sell its $70 billion stake in the Chinese tech behemoth Tencent. The Cape Town-based company issued a statement ...
China-Africa Trade via Hunan Province is Booming
Customs authorities in Changsha, the capital of China's southern Hunan province, reported $2.6 billion in two-way trade between the city and African countries in the first three quarters of the year. These robust trade figures for the city helps ...
Chinese Automakers Look to Developing Countries to Boost Sales and Production
The war in Ukraine opened new production opportunities for Chinese automakers in Central Asia, while growing demand in Latin America and South Asia for SUVs and EVs has sparked a new sales push in those regions by some of China's largest car brands:
Why Zainab Usman is Cautiously Optimistic About the New U.S. Policy For Africa
While U.S. officials have said for years that it's important for Washington to focus on Africa and step up its engagement across the board, there's been very little in the way of action. But this time, Zainab Usman, the director of ...
Metals Dispute Reveals Gulf Between U.S. Companies and Leaders on China
Amid the tensions and sniping surrounding the U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s possible visit to Taiwan, it’s revealing how the country’s corporations and officials seem to be pulling in different directions on China. U.S. officials frame China as Voldemort’s less charming cousin. ...
First Ford, Now Tesla Signs Major EV Battery Deals With Chinese Suppliers
The United States government's long-held goal to weaken China's dominance in the strategically important electric vehicle battery sector suffered another setback on Monday when Tesla announced two multi-year deals to source batteries from two of China's largest suppliers. Tesla signed agreements ...
Nigerian Automotive Magnate Diana Chen Wants to Assemble Cars in the DR Congo
Diana Chen, head of the Nigeria-based automotive group CIG Motors Limited, together with the DR Congo's Minister for Trade Julien Paluku announced a new deal to assemble cars in Kinshasa's Maluku Special Economic Zone. CIG will reportedly build the new ...
The Zhou-Kenyatta Road Show in Kenya
China's ambassador to Kenya, Zhou Pingjian, has spent a lot of time with President Uhuru Kenyatta recently, commissioning one new infrastructure project after another. On Monday, the pair led a ceremony for the grand opening ...
China’s Outspoken Former Ambassador to South Africa Trashes U.S. Policy in Africa Ahead of Blinken Visit
Even though the United States government seems to have gone out of its way to avoid any mention of China related to Secretary of State Antony Blinken's upcoming visit to Africa, Chinese media is nonetheless preemptively going on the attack. The task ...
China’s Increasingly Close Ties With Syria Are Making Israel Very Nervous
China's outgoing ambassador to Syria, Feng Biao, held what appeared to be a rather friendly meeting with President Bashar al-Assad on Sunday providing yet another indication of the increasingly close ties between the two countries -- a trend that's making observers across the border in Israel increasingly anxious.
China’s Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Issues Angry Denunciation of the West and Argues Beijing Should Be Kingdom’s Preferred Partner
Any time a senior U.S. official like the President or the Secretary of State travels to a region where the Chinese have a strong interest, one can expect the publication of a scathing denunciation of the "West" (typically they're mostly referring to the U.S.) accompanied by a ...
What the Redwood Business is Like in Africa – Risky But Worth It
Although the world is aware of the Chinese private sector’s growing influence in African markets, there is rarely any information on Chinese people’s experience being an entrepreneur on the continent. The Congo Online WeChat Account (微信公众号 刚果在线) - a WeChat channel ...
The Stereotypes Are Untrue – Africans Are Not Lazy, Greedy, or Deceitful
Mainstream Chinese perceptions of Africa and Africans are largely very rudimentary, even crude in some instances. In fact, many of the caricatures that are now widely seen in Chinese media are reminiscent of the blatant racism that was prevalent in 20th-century Western movies and television shows that ...
My Work Experience in Africa
There’s a lot of international media coverage of Chinese mining operations in Africa, but we rarely read about Chinese mining employees’ experiences in the African countries where they spend years living and working. An interesting article was recently published on the ...
Can PGII Tell a Compelling Story?
By Hugo Jones and Lukas Fiala At this year’s G7 summit, a new acronym joined the ranks of competing development finance initiatives. Forget the B3W – the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII) is the G7’s latest “joint offer to narrow ...
Wang Yi’s South Pacific Tour Didn’t Go as Well as Planned… But That’s OK, He’ll Be Back
Wang Yi's controversial tour of the South Pacific will finally come to an unceremonious end on Saturday. PR-wise this wasn't Beijing's finest moment. My guess is the post-mortem next week at the Foreign Ministry in Beijing is going to be very ...
China’s About to Buy a Lot More Russian Oil and That’s Bad News for Iran
Iran's once steady business of selling large quantities of oil to China's independent refineries may soon become the latest casualty of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. For years, China provided Iran a vital cash flow by supplying the Chinese with as much as ...
Republican Senators Find New Reason to Hate the Iran Nuclear Deal… China
Conservative Republicans in the U.S. Senate are well-known for their disdain for Iran. They're also equally opposed to the Communist Party of China. So, it's a no-brainer then to combine the two into a single piece of legislation. Tennessee Senator Marsha ...
China Tried (and Failed) to Intimidate Israeli Newspaper Editor Over Interview With Taiwan Foreign Minister Joseph Wu
Chinese diplomats around the world have a well-earned reputation for personally calling journalists and their editors (including this publication) to express their objections, often rudely, when there is coverage they don't like -- usually about a red-line issue like Taiwan, Hong Kong, or Xinjiang among others.
Chinese, Algerian Legislative Leaders Meet
The head of Algeria's National Assembly, Salih Gojil, met on Tuesday with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yang, chairman of China's rubber-stamp legislature known by its acronym CPPCC. Based on the read-out from the official Algerian Presse Service, it appears that the meeting was more about relationship building ...
China’s Tecno Brand Dominates Kenyan Mobile Phone Market
Kenya's mobile phone market shrank by 9% in the first quarter of the year, according to new data from technology consultancy IDC, but even a drop that large didn't budge Transsion's Tecno brand from the top spot in the market. Tecno led ...
The Chinese-Built Standard Gauge Railway Turned Five This Week
This week marked the five-year anniversary of the Chinese-financed and built Standard Gauge Railway that officially launched on May 31, 2017. The milestone was largely ignored by the Kenyan press but was noted with some enthusiasm in the Chinese media. (AFRICA DIRECT -- Chinese)
The Chinese Government Is Almost Giddy About the Prospect That U.S. Summit of the Americas Is Going to Be a PR Disaster
The U.S. Summit of the Americas is set to get underway in Los Angeles on Monday and no one seems more eager for the event to get started than China. Chinese state media outlets are relishing the controversy over the U.S. refusal ...
Tussle Underway Among China, South Africa, and France to Co-Chair Zambia’s Creditor Committee
Sharp elbows are out among countries vying to help lead Zambia's newly-energized debt restructuring process, following China's announcement last week that it plans to join a new creditor's committee. Soon after Chinese officials announced their intent to join the committee, they indicated ...
Ed Cropley: There’s a Lot More at Stake For China in the Zambian Debt Talks Than Just Getting Repaid
While Zambia's $5.8 billion of outstanding debts to Chinese creditors is indeed a lot of money, getting fully repaid may not be the primary concern for policymakers in Beijing, said Reuters Breakingviews columnist Ed Cropley in his latest opinion video: "The ...
U.S. Internet Freedom Pledge Fails to Get Global South Support
Sixty countries signed a U.S.-led “Declaration of the Future of the Internet” late last week that called for greater online "openness and democracy." But who chose not to join is rapidly becoming the main story. But who chose not to join is rapidly becoming the main story. ...
Japan PM Kishida Tours SE Asia Amid Worsening U.S.-China Tensions
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida spent the weekend in Vietnam where he held separate talks with Prime Minister Phạm Minh Chính and President Nguyễn Xuân Phúc during a three-nation tour of Southeast Asian states. The Prime Minister's tour comes at a critical time as ...
What Does China Really Mean When It Says “African Solutions For African Problems?”
China's top diplomat for sub-Saharan Africa, Wu Peng, tweeted on Friday a version of Beijing's longstanding mantra "African Solutions for African Problems." The origins of that concept, at least in the Chinese context, are actually grounded in Asia where President Xi Jinping emphasized "Asia for Asians" early ...
Misinformation About South African Teacher’s Mysterious Death in Shanghai and Unsubstantiated Reports About Chinese Missiles in Zimbabwe
Speculation is now swirling on Twitter and other social media platforms about what caused the death of 29-year-old teacher Nomaqocwa Blackie who was found in her Shanghai apartment last Monday. There are a growing number of reports that she may have ...
China and 22 Francophone African Countries Talk Democracy
China recently convened an online seminar 22 French-speaking African countries to discuss democracy. The online meeting, on “The Exploration and Practice of Democracy in Chinese and African Legislative Bodies” drew in members of China’s National People’s Assembly, and about 90 African representatives.
Is China’s Lending Particularly “Aggressive”?
Amid the ongoing crisis in Ukraine and the bleakest prognosis on climate change yet, you may have missed the ongoing saga of Uganda’s Entebbe Airport. A quick recap: Uganda loaned $325 million from China Exim Bank to upgrade the airport. ...
Kenya’s Weakening Currency is Pushing Up the Cost of Imports and Debt Servicing Costs
The Kenyan shilling is rapidly devaluing against the dollar, breaking a record low of 114 this week and prompting fears that a potentially dangerous economic cycle is gaining momentum. There's growing concern that Kenya is spending more and more ...
Uganda’s Entebbe Contract is Aggressive, But Is It Unique?
Media coverage of the Uganda Entebbe Airport loan is focusing on what the research lead Bradley Parks has called China Exim Bank's "aggressive" loan tactics. Parks' unit at AidData showed that the Entebbe airport won't be seized in the case of ...
Equatorial Guinea’s New Cooperation Agreement with China Could be Sending a Message
Equatorial Guinea and China signed an agreement on Tuesday to promote development cooperation between the two countries. Usually, this kind of announcement doesn't draw much attention. But this one is sure to raise eyebrows in Washington because of ongoing rumors that China is planning to ...
Oil, Terrorism High on the Agenda During Chinese Ambassador’s Meeting With Nigerien President
China's ambassador to Niger Jiang Feng met this week with President Mohamed Bazoum for talks about Monday's release of two Chinese gold miners who had been held captive for the past nine months and the new 1,950 km Niger-Benin pipeline that Chinese ...
China’s New Special Envoy to the Horn of Africa Meets Regional Ambassadors
Ethiopia's ambassador to China, Teshome Toga Chanaka, hosted a lunch of Horn of Africa ambassadors at Ethiopia House in Beijing. Also invited was Xue Bing, China's new Special Envoy to the Horn of Africa, and Wu Peng, the PRC's top diplomat to Africa. ...
Museveni’s “OK Boomer” View of World Politics
Uganda President Yoweri Museveni's office published a quote from the septuagenarian leader that revealed an outdated view of world affairs where major global powers have what he terms "centers of gravity." While it's not entirely clear what he meant by "USA for ...
Nigeria’s Transport Minister Just Said the Quiet Part Out Loud: China’s No Longer Funding Large-Scale Railways in Africa
Nigerian Transportation Minister and likely presidential candidate, Rotimi Amaechi, publicly acknowledged what's been widely known: that China is no longer in the business of financing massive, multi-billion railway projects in Nigeria. “We are stuck with lots of our projects because we ...
Influential U.S. Group Calls on China and Other Creditors to Be More Transparent About Emerging Market Debt
An influential group of scholars and finance leaders in the U.S. appealed for a new "global consensus" on debt transparency in developing countries and described China's involvement as "critical." The Bretton Woods Committee said in a report ...
A Rare Long-form Discussion in the United States Media on China-Africa Relations
It's extremely rare in the United States for a national broadcast media outlet to feature a nuanced discussion on China-Africa relations. In most instances, as was the case last year on the Daily Show with Trevor Noah, the issue is often framed using outdated ...
“Fishermen Are Suffering, Families Are Starving” Due to Illegal Overfishing by Chinese Trawlers in Sierra Leone, Says Report
Illegal overfishing by Chinese trawlers in Ghana's coastal waters has been well documented, but now stakeholders in other West African countries including Sierra Leone are sounding the alarm. “The Chinese fleet has been taking the profits of the fisheries for 30 ...
Does the Flurry of Chinese Mideast Diplomacy Point to a Shift in Policy and a Tilt-Away From Africa?
The frenetic pace of Chinese diplomacy with Persian Gulf countries in 2022 is prompting widespread speculation that Beijing is placing a higher priority on its relations with Mideast countries, possibly at the expense of Africa. Contrasting views on this issue emerged ...
Fact-Checking a Claim That Nigeria Threw Away More Than a Million Doses of Chinese Vaccines
The investigative team at the Chinese news site The Paper.cn published a fact-checking report that debunked accounts circulating on Chinese-language Twitter that Nigeria had destroyed more than a million doses of Chinese-made COVID-19 vaccines. Last December, Nigerian authorities did, in fact, ...
The Hidden Debt Problem Extends Far Beyond China
The global discussion of the growing debt crisis in some Global South countries has been frustratingly slanted around the assumption that Chinese lending is particularly opaque. This is not to say that Chinese lending isn’t opaque – it is. In fact, some Chinese loan contracts are so ...
Ren Hanjun, a visiting professor at Peking University, posted a commentary on WeChat that was shared tens of thousands times entitled "Wars are easy to start, difficult to end."
The following is a transcript of a commentary posted on WeChat by Ren Hanjun, a visiting professor at a Peking University think tank who also posts video commentaries on international affairs on his WeChat channel 老任财富故事会 (Lao Ren’s Wealth Stories). This particular post about the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran went viral ...
Tussle Underway Among China, South Africa, and France to Co-Chair Zambia’s Creditor Committee
Sharp elbows are out among countries vying to help lead Zambia's newly-energized debt restructuring process, following China's announcement last week that it plans to join a new creditor's committee. Soon after Chinese officials announced their intent to join the committee, they indicated ...
Ed Cropley: There’s a Lot More at Stake For China in the Zambian Debt Talks Than Just Getting Repaid
While Zambia's $5.8 billion of outstanding debts to Chinese creditors is indeed a lot of money, getting fully repaid may not be the primary concern for policymakers in Beijing, said Reuters Breakingviews columnist Ed Cropley in his latest opinion video: "The ...
U.S. Internet Freedom Pledge Fails to Get Global South Support
Sixty countries signed a U.S.-led “Declaration of the Future of the Internet” late last week that called for greater online "openness and democracy." But who chose not to join is rapidly becoming the main story. But who chose not to join is rapidly becoming the main story. ...
Japan PM Kishida Tours SE Asia Amid Worsening U.S.-China Tensions
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida spent the weekend in Vietnam where he held separate talks with Prime Minister Phạm Minh Chính and President Nguyễn Xuân Phúc during a three-nation tour of Southeast Asian states. The Prime Minister's tour comes at a critical time as ...
What Does China Really Mean When It Says “African Solutions For African Problems?”
China's top diplomat for sub-Saharan Africa, Wu Peng, tweeted on Friday a version of Beijing's longstanding mantra "African Solutions for African Problems." The origins of that concept, at least in the Chinese context, are actually grounded in Asia where President Xi Jinping emphasized "Asia for Asians" early ...
Misinformation About South African Teacher’s Mysterious Death in Shanghai and Unsubstantiated Reports About Chinese Missiles in Zimbabwe
Speculation is now swirling on Twitter and other social media platforms about what caused the death of 29-year-old teacher Nomaqocwa Blackie who was found in her Shanghai apartment last Monday. There are a growing number of reports that she may have ...
China and 22 Francophone African Countries Talk Democracy
China recently convened an online seminar 22 French-speaking African countries to discuss democracy. The online meeting, on “The Exploration and Practice of Democracy in Chinese and African Legislative Bodies” drew in members of China’s National People’s Assembly, and about 90 African representatives.