Analysis
Diverse voices, unique insights on key issues shaping China’s engagement throughout the Global South.
analysis
Why Africans Should Keep an Eye on the U.S.-ASEAN Summit
Nobody would blame Africans for not focusing on this week’s summit between the United States and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN.) After all, the continent is dealing with a few prior priorities: creeping debt distress in key states largely ignored by the international community, ...
African Legislators Make Vain Appeal For Debt Cancellation
Legislative leaders from across Africa issued a joint appeal on Tuesday for creditor nations to cancel some of the continent's outstanding debts. The parliamentarians are meeting this week in Abuja for the first-ever gathering of the Conference of Speakers and Heads of African Parliaments ...
Chinese Vaccines Shipments Around the World Plunge 97% Last Month and We Now Know Why
For much of last year, China was seemingly unstoppable in its drive to ship vaccines to developing countries around the world. Hundreds of millions of doses went to Africa, Latin America, and Asia, and then suddenly, beginning last fall, shipments came to a grinding halt. ...
Finding a Common Destiny in the Global South: The Role of China’s Regional Forum Diplomacy
One of China’s signature contributions to the diversification of the emerging world system is the use of regional forum diplomacy to promote the creation of Chinese-instigated regional organizations. Starting with the establishment of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in 2000, the Chinese government has built a network of ...
Can Shenzhen’s Special Economic Zone Miracle Offer Insights to Africa’s Economic Recovery?
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected every country and its citizens, though it has not impacted them equally, particularly those in the African continent. Makhtar Sop Diop, a Senegalese economist, and politician who has been serving as the Managing Director of the International Finance Corporation since 2021 wrote ...
Sorry South Africa, China’s Not Going to Finance a New Joburg-Durban High-Speed Railway
Chen Xiaodong, China’s ambassador to South Africa, recently caused a small flurry of press coverage by seeming to imply that China could be moving towards funding a high-speed rail link between SA’s economic heartland, Gauteng, and Durban, its most important harbor. ...
The Case for Cooperation Between Chinese and Western Development Finance Institutions
By Oyintarelado (Tarela) Moses Chinese lenders participating in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) conduct business within a broader ecosystem of financing for development. This complex web of actors work in a coordinated credit space, comprising development finance institutions, commercial ...
China and 22 Francophone African Countries Talk Democracy
China recently convened an online seminar 22 French-speaking African countries to discuss democracy. The online meeting, on “The Exploration and Practice of Democracy in Chinese and African Legislative Bodies” drew in members of China’s National People’s Assembly, and about 90 African representatives.
Does the Shanghai Outbreak Change China’s Image as a Global Public Health Leader?
By Hugo Jones and Lukas Fiala For nearly two years, China’s COVID strategy has been at the center of Beijing’s public health diplomacy, being regarded as uniquely successful at keeping case numbers close to zero. However, over the past few months, ...
Is it Possible to Keep Geopolitics Out of Development?
This week, my colleague CAP Editor in Chief Eric Olander unearthed a startling statistic: China’s trade with Africa so far this year already exceeds all trade between Africa and the United States for the whole of 2021. Think about that ...
$1.9 Billion in 11 New Chinese Loans to Africa in 2020
By Jyhjong Hwang and Oyintarelado Moses The 2022 update to the Chinese Loans to Africa (CLA) Database, managed by the Boston University Global Development Policy (GDP) Center, recorded 11 new loan commitments worth $1.9 billion from Chinese lenders to African government ...
China to Join Zambian Creditor Committee Says IMF Head Georgieva
After months of inaction, there's word now of an important breakthrough in restructuring Zambia's ballooning $32 billion debt. China, widely perceived as the lone holdout, has finally agreed to join a multi-party creditors committee, according to IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva during the group's Spring Meetings that took place last ...