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Scholz Looks to South America to Reduce Germany’s Dependence on Chinese Critical Resources

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has spent the past few days crisscrossing South America in a bid to find alternative sources of critical minerals, notably lithium, that his country's powerful auto industry now relies predominantly on China to supply.  Over the weekend, ...

Africa’s Largest Mining Conference Set Against Backdrop of Rising Competition Between China and the West

Attendees at next week's Mining Indaba in Cape Town, Africa's largest mining conference that gets underway on Monday, say they're expecting a new sense of urgency from U.S. and European stakeholders who are keen to find ways of breaking China's grip on critical resources like cobalt and ...

Given How Unreliable Electricity Service is in South Africa, It’s Not Surprising Huawei’s New Power Wall is Generating Buzz

Huawei may be under mounting pressure in the United States, where the government will reportedly expand sanctions against the Chinese tech giant to block all American technology transfers, but in South Africa, it's a totally different story. On the same day ...

U.S. Bid to Challenge China’s Dominance of the Battery Metal Supply Chain in Africa Faces Two Key Hurdles

Widely perceived as a major and concrete U.S. move to counter China in the supply chain of critical minerals in Africa, the U.S.-DR Congo-Zambia MoU signed last December in Washington, D.C., will confront significant challenges, mainly for the DRC and Zambia.  Both ...

Sovereign Sustainability: How China’s Overseas Development Finance Responds to Varying Environmental and Social Protections Around the World

By Rebecca Ray Do high standards for environmental and social protections deter Chinese overseas development finance? New data from the Boston University Global Development Policy Center shows that China’s borrowers have the policy space to ...

Analysis from Cobus van Staden

China Tries to Maintain Mideast Diplomatic Momentum With Summit Planned for Later This Year

China will host a summit between Iran and the Gulf Cooperation Council later this year, reports the Wall Street Journal. The summit with the six-country bloc (made up of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait) will further solidify the normalization of diplomatic ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia, brokered by China this weekend.
The announcement follows December’s first summit between China and Arab states, where GCC leaders welcomed President Xi Jinping’s ...