Analysis
Diverse voices, unique insights on key issues shaping China’s engagement throughout the Global South.
analysis
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 ...
analysis
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 ...
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. ...
Why the Global South Will Become New Champions of Climate Action
To international visitors, Bonn—tucked along the Rhine River valley in western Germany—can feel like a time capsule. “Many things never change,” my local hosts told me, gesturing proudly toward the Bonn Minster, the Romanesque church that has anchored the city center since the Middle Ages. After more ...
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 ...
File image of the Coca Codo Sinclair dam in Ecuador that was financed and built by China. Image via amalavida.tv CC BY 2.0
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 under the condition that ...
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 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 ...
Iran War Promises Green Edge for Asia as Plastic Packaging Runs Short
By Minwoo Park, Kaori Kaneko and John Geddie An 'eco-friendly' range of paper tubes and pouches touted by Yonwoo, a South Korean maker of packaging for cosmetics, has reaped unexpected benefits from the Iran war, which has disrupted supplies of the ...
A 2015 Speech for a 2026 Crisis
Former U.S. ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns, on Saturday delivered the opening address at the Harvard College China Forum, where he presented the case for deeper engagement between the two major powers. The speech would have been great if it were ...
China Model Gains Appeal in Vietnam as Police Expand Power
By Francesco Guarascio Vietnam is increasingly edging closer to China's model of governance, tightening state control while embracing Chinese technology and regulation as its most powerful leader in decades heads to Beijing this week, according to internal documents, public ...