China often assures African countries that they won’t be made to ‘choose sides’ in a new cold war. However, a recent op-ed by a prominent Africa-focused think tanker makes clear that Beijing increasingly sees the continent as a stage for geopolitical competition. 

Yao Guimei, the director of the Center for South African Studies at the China-Africa Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a key government-linked think tank, recently published an op-ed that laid out China’s views of how its direct competition with different global powers shakes out in Africa.