Today is a public holiday in South Africa – Human Rights Day. There’s a certain irony in spending the day focusing on China’s President Xi Jinping’s visit to Vladimir Putin, knee-deep in a human rights disaster.
What one makes of the Ukraine crisis increasingly maps on where one lives. This is made clear by a remarkable new set of polling data recently published by the European Council on Foreign Relations ...
Day: August 3, 2022
In Zimbabwe, An Aborted Quarry Shows Need for Community Consultation
By Deogracias Kalima At the center of Mutare in eastern Zimbabwe rises Dangamvura Mountain. Dividing the city center from its southern suburbs and home to a cemetery for state heroes, it is a revered landmark traditionally considered sacred by local communities. ...
U.S. Ambassador to Japan Accuses China of “Economic Coercion” Abroad, Promises New Measures to Counter Beijing in Asia
The U.S. Ambassador to Japan, Rahm Emmanuel, issued fresh accusations against China's international engagement, saying in an interview with the Associated Press that Beijing practices "economic coercion": “From intellectual property theft to coercion to debt dependency that China creates, the idea that ...
After Zambia’s Successful Debt Restructuring, Sri Lankans Hope China Will Also Take the Lead to Help Resolve Their Crisis
Now that Zambia's Creditor Committee reached a landmark debt restructuring deal with its bilateral lenders, there's new optimism that the same will happen in Sri Lanka. The South Asian island state is ...
Angola Set a New Standard For Infrastructure Contracting With the Lobito Corridor Concession (Which China Lost)
Angola's Ministry of Transport is receiving high praise for the way it handled the bidding for the $333 million concession to re-build and operate the colonial-era Lobito Corridor railway that connects the copper and cobalt belts in Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo ...
Hunan Province is Fast Becoming a Major Hub for China-Africa Trade and Logistics
Ethiopian Airlines launched a new cargo route between Addis Ababa and Changsha, the provincial capital of Hunan, the latest China-Africa aviation trade link. The first flight took off last week and is expected to ferry some 17,000 metric tons of goods. ...
Analysis from Cobus van Staden
Xi Bets on Global South in Moscow
It’s the West’s Fault, Not Russia’s There Are Food Shortages in Africa, According to Chinese State Media
Chinese state media is promoting the narrative that the worsening food crisis in Africa is due to Western sanctions against Russia rather than because Moscow invaded a sovereign country. CGTN published a short clip on Tuesday of an ...
The North-South Split in the World’s China Discourse
The discourse coming out of the U.S. and China around the visit of the U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan keeps reminding me of a particular stage direction in Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf: George: Stop braying!