Analysis
Diverse voices, unique insights on key issues shaping China’s engagement throughout the Global South.
analysis
China E-Mobility Weekly Digest: China EV Boom, Local Assembly and Lithium Processing Reshaping Africa, Global South Supply Chains
This is a free preview of the upcoming Africa EVs Weekly Digest, part of the new CGSP Intelligence service. The 2026 Beijing Auto Show is underway this week, running until May 3. The rundown is highlighting pricing discrepancies between ...
analysis
Duty-Free Access to China Won’t be a Quick Fix for Africa’s Export Problem
There's been a lot of excitement this week in anticipation of tomorrow's start of duty-free access into the Chinese market for 53 African countries. By any measure, this is a big deal, particularly in this new protectionist era when more trade walls are going up then coming ...
South Africa’s Film Sets Swap Diesel for Chinese Solar in Green Energy Shift
By Kate Bartlett Solar panels are replacing diesel generators on some major film sets in South Africa, as streaming giants come under growing pressure to clean up one of the film industry's dirtiest habits — its addiction to diesel generators. ...
How China Block of AI Deal Could Stop ‘Singapore-Washing’
By Katie Forster, with Isabel Kua in Beijing When is a Chinese AI startup not a Chinese AI startup? When it's based in Singapore, or elsewhere, to distance itself legally and politically from Beijing. The ...
Chinese Protesters Demand Cambodia Unfreeze Accounts With Scam-Linked Firm
By Suy Se Waving their national flags, dozens of Chinese nationals protested outside Cambodia's central bank on Monday, demanding the unfreezing of accounts they opened with a financial services firm linked to cyberscamming. Some demonstrators ...
A worker at Sunripe factory in Limuru Town, Kiambu County, Kenya, arranges avocados on August 2, 2022. Image via Xinhua.
There's been a lot of excitement this week in anticipation of tomorrow's start of duty-free access into the Chinese market for 53 African countries. By any measure, this is a big deal, particularly in this new protectionist era when more trade walls are going up then coming down. ...
China E-Mobility Weekly Digest: China EV Boom, Local Assembly and Lithium Processing Reshaping Africa, Global South Supply Chains
This is a free preview of the upcoming Africa EVs Weekly Digest, part of the new CGSP Intelligence service. The 2026 Beijing Auto Show is underway this week, running until May 3. The rundown is highlighting pricing discrepancies between ...
South Africa’s Film Sets Swap Diesel for Chinese Solar in Green Energy Shift
By Kate Bartlett Solar panels are replacing diesel generators on some major film sets in South Africa, as streaming giants come under growing pressure to clean up one of the film industry's dirtiest habits — its addiction to diesel generators. ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
Delicate Extraction: Malaysia Offers Rare Earths Alternative to China
Bu Jan Hennop Workers load tonnes of rare earth minerals into bags ready for shipping at a refinery in eastern Malaysia, fuelling the global pushback against China's grip on the critical sector. Rare earths are a ...
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 ...
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, ...