Day: September 19, 2023
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The Incredible Shrinking Africa-China Relationship
After 2022’s COVID lockdowns, this year saw a return of China to the international stage. With it came prominent Africa-China events, notably the China-Africa Leaders’ Dialogue on the sidelines of the BRICS summit and the prominent presence of some African leaders at the Belt and Road Forum in ...
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Philippines’ Threat of New South China Sea Structure Inflames Beijing
China is lashing out at signals that the Philippines may be set to build a structure in what Beijing considers the most sensitive part of the South China Sea between the two countries. The developments are a potentially dangerous new step in what ...
Growing Chorus of Philippine Voices Calls for Calm in South China Sea
While China-Philippines tensions in the South China Sea are at their worst in recent memory, and both sides have dug in their heels, there have been sprouts of a Filipino contingency calling for Manila to rethink the costs of a potential conflict.
Ship Attacks Shift Attention to China’s Overland Routes
Attacks by Houthi rebel groups on commercial ships in the Red Sea are forcing the world’s largest shipping companies to reroute their shipments. About 10% of the world’s trade passes through the Red Sea, but the route accounts for 40% of ...
China Could Fund Kenyan Rail Through Public-Private Partnership: Kenyan President
Kenyan President William Ruto renewed his calls for China to fund the third stretch of the country’s Standard Gauge Railway (SGR). Speaking at a roundtable event in Nairobi during the weekend, Ruto said the project is currently being discussed in Beijing and could move forward as a public-private partnership. ...
A pedestrian reads a sign at a petrol station in Tacloban City, Leyte province, central Philippines on March 30, 2026. Photo by MARLON TANO / AFP
In response to Iran’s partial closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the United States has begun implementing a counter-blockade—leveraging naval patrols, sanctions enforcement, and selective interdictions to constrain Iranian oil exports and raise the costs of Tehran’s strategy. Rather than restoring stability, however, this tit-for-tat dynamic is accelerating fragmentation in global ...
Mapping the Emerging Africa-China Landscape
Boston University's Global Development Policy Center published a new policy brief tracking trends in Chinese financing to Africa. It notes the sharp decline in the size and number of loans compared to the 2010s. This point has been made before and ...
What Does Chinese Lending to Africa Look Like Now?
China has been one of the most important development lenders to Africa over the last quarter of a century. This has transformed the African development landscape in helpful and problematic ways. It is also changing very rapidly. A new report from ...
Chinese Loans to Africa by Region, 2000-2022
From 2000-2022, countries in Southern Africa and East Africa historically borrowed the most from China primarily due to large-scale loans in Angola, Zambia, South Africa, Ethiopia and Kenya. In 2021 and 2022, the regional composition is distinct from previous years; lending ...
Smaller and Greener? New Data Reveals a Shift in Chinese Loans to Africa
By Victoria Yvonne Bien-Aimé, Lucas Engel and Oyintarelado Moses A combination of economic shocks from the COVID-19 pandemic and the policy shift to a greener high-quality Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has translated into a substantial decline in large-scale Chinese loan ...
The Emerging Talking Points Restructuring the Africa-China Relationship
The last few weeks have been punctuated by both an alphabet soup of big summits (BRICS, ASEAN, G20) and much discussion of the optics of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s presence or absence from them. Amid the fray, a significant shift in Africa-China ...
G77 Gathering Reinforces the Talking Points of China’s Global South Diplomacy
China sent its most senior official in recent years to the G77 gathering in Havana on Friday. The presence of Li Xi, the CPC's seventh-ranking member and the head of the corruption watchdog, arguably signaled a continuance of China's recent focus on Global South diplomacy.
Coups in the Sahel: Where China, U.S., and EU Should Work Together
Niger's coup leaders have been unfazed by military threats and economic blockade of food and medicine by neighboring countries and have not returned to their barracks. The unfolding coup is the latest event in ongoing chaos across the Sahel. Sudan fights a civil war, jihadism menaces the ...