Analysis
Diverse voices, unique insights on key issues shaping China’s engagement throughout the Global South.
analysis
China’s Strategy of Staying Out of Iran
By Felix Brender 王哲謙 When China and Russia vetoed the UN Security Council’s Strait of Hormuz resolution on 7 April, after weeks of increasingly plaintive calls for Beijing to “do more” over Iran, a familiar argument resurfaced: if ...
analysis
The Emerging China-Global South Energy Nexus
This month brought quietly momentous news: for the first time ever, the world’s share of renewable energy surpassed that generated by burning coal. China is one of the world’s biggest consumers of coal and is therefore partly responsible for bringing ...
The Chinese Electric Vehicle Boom Has a New Frontier, and It’s a Kenyan Cornfield
Kenyan electric vehicle innovators are harnessing Chinese EV technology to build solutions for day-to-day activities, including the country’s agriculture, the largest employer. In a small farming village in Embu County, about 130 kilometers northeast of Nairobi, a quiet experiment in ...
China Hands Over Ecuador’s Coca Codo Dam as Defects and Risks Remain Unresolved
By Julie Radomski Ten years after the Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric dam first came online, the Chinese state-owned construction company Sinohydro Corporation finally turned the project over to the Ecuadorian state last Friday. Yet Ecuador only agreed to accept it ...
China and the Iran War: The Logic and Limitations of China’s Middle East Diplomacy
Immediately after the U.S. and Israeli bombardment campaign against Iran began, some have claimed that the war was “all about China.” Others have been more cautious, arguing it shows the limits of China’s relationship with Iran and its regional diplomacy. Jonathan Fulton rightly points out that the ...
An Iranian flag is placed amids rubble and debris next to a destroyed residential building near Ferdowsi square in Tehran on March 3, 2026. Photo by ATTA KENARE / AFP
Immediately after the U.S. and Israeli bombardment campaign against Iran began, some have claimed that the war was “all about China.” Others have been more cautious, arguing it shows the limits of China’s relationship with Iran and its regional diplomacy. Jonathan Fulton rightly points out that the war “is not about ...
China’s Strategy of Staying Out of Iran
By Felix Brender 王哲謙 When China and Russia vetoed the UN Security Council’s Strait of Hormuz resolution on 7 April, after weeks of increasingly plaintive calls for Beijing to “do more” over Iran, a familiar argument resurfaced: if ...
The Chinese Electric Vehicle Boom Has a New Frontier, and It’s a Kenyan Cornfield
Kenyan electric vehicle innovators are harnessing Chinese EV technology to build solutions for day-to-day activities, including the country’s agriculture, the largest employer. In a small farming village in Embu County, about 130 kilometers northeast of Nairobi, a quiet experiment in ...
Delicate Extraction: Malaysia Offers Rare Earths Alternative to China
By Jan HENNOP As workers load tons of rare earth minerals into bags ready for shipping at a refinery in eastern Malaysia, they are fueling the global pushback against China’s grip on the critical sector. ...
China E-Mobility Weekly Digest: EV Demand Rising as Oil Disruptions Reshape Markets
This is a free preview of the upcoming Africa EVs Weekly Digest, part of the new CGSP Intelligence service. Several countries are racing to electrify their mobility sectors, driven by disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz following the attacks ...
China’s Digital Silk Road Quietly Rewires Southeast Asia, One Cable and Camera at a Time
China's economic footprint in Southeast Asia has two faces. The first is very visible: industrial parks in Vietnam and Cambodia, the China-Laos Railway, and the clusters of Chinese traders in the commercial districts of Sihanoukville and Mandalay. The second face does ...
China E-Mobility Weekly Digest: Chinese EV Gifts Rattle Government as Second-hand Market Surge Expected From Europe
This is a free preview of the upcoming Africa EVs Weekly Digest, part of the new CGSP Intelligence service. Irresistible! That was clearly the reaction from two South African politicians, whose acceptance of Chinese EV gifts has unsettled their ...
Why Has China Resumed Artificial Island Construction in the South China Sea?
After nearly a decade-long hiatus, China in October quietly resumed artificial island construction in the South China Sea, according to commercial satellite imagery. Rather than focusing on the Spratly Islands, where Beijing already has de facto control over seven maritime features with airbases on three of them, ...
China’s Sulfur Export Ban Exposes a Hidden Chokepoint in Global Metals Supply Chains
By Andy Home The Iran war has already caused turmoil in the global aluminum market, but now the fallout is spreading to both copper and nickel supply chains. The conduit is sulfur, a by-product ...
Amid Middle East Chaos, China Changes Tack on Taiwan and Japan
By Peter Apps As U.S. Vice President JD Vance returned to Washington last weekend after unsuccessful peace talks in Pakistan over the crisis in the Gulf, China’s Foreign Ministry was preparing for a bumper slate of visitors, including Russian Foreign Minister Sergei ...
Leading from the “Global Middle”: China’s Bid to Host the New Ocean Treaty
"China's financial commitments are simply more tangible and easier to grasp than those of Europe," one delegate from an island state remarked to me on a bright spring day in late March, as we both gazed out at the East River from the United Nations Headquarters. ...
China Moves to Block Entrance to Disputed South China Sea Shoal, Images Show
By Greg Torode and Karen Lema China is employing ships and a barrier to tighten control of the entrance to the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea amid roiling tension with the Philippines over the disputed feature, satellite imagery ...
The Asia-Pacific’s New Oil Order
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 ...