Analysis
Diverse voices, unique insights on key issues shaping China’s engagement throughout the Global South.
analysis
The Tesla-fication of Vaccines
175 former heads of state, Nobel Prize winners and other illustrious eminences added their support to the call for the U.S. government to mandate a relaxing of intellectual property laws to allow countries in the Global South to mass-produce vaccines without fear of being sued. One of ...
Africa and the Suga-Biden Summit
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga left Tokyo today for a crucial summit on Friday with U.S. President Joe Biden at the White House. This is going to be an important get-together, not only because it's the first time that Biden will host a visiting leader as president ...
Even After Learning Chinese Vaccines Aren’t as Effective, Developing Countries are Committed to Using Them. Here’s Why.
The low-efficacy rates of Chinese-made COVID-19 vaccines emerged as one of the main reasons cited by Beijing's critics in the U.S. and Europe as to why developing countries should think twice about procuring too many doses of Sinopharm or Sinovac jabs.
There Isn’t Much Time Left if the U.S. Wants to Challenge China on Vaccine Distribution
With U.S. vaccination rates on the rise and predictions that the country will reach herd immunity by mid-summer, confidence in Washington's pundit and political circles has been steadily rising that the United States will finally be well-positioned to challenge China's early lead ...
Unpacking African Agency
Today the South African Institute of International Affairs is holding a webinar featuring new work focusing on African agency in the face of Chinese power. How much power African actors have to shape their engagement with China is one of the field’s most ...
China CDC Director’s Vaccine Efficacy Admission Could Have Profound Implications For Africa
Gao Fu, the head of China's Center for Disease Control, appeared to have inadvertently set off an international controversy when he admitted, for the first time by a Chinese official, that China's vaccines are less effective than the messenger RNA vaccines produced by Pfizer-BioNTech ...
COVID Complaints and the Issue of Soft Power
As an outfit tracking the Africa-China aspect of COVID-19 since its outbreak, we were aware from early on that the pandemic has laid down a new track in a global geopolitical race. So it’s very interesting to see more commentators in the Global North slowly waking up ...
How Would Africa Have Managed COVID-19 Without the Africa CDC? The Role of China
Two types of images have dominated the global media’s coverage of Africa the past year. The first has been pictures of cargo planes packed with medical supplies, framing Africa’s COVID response as handled through foreign aid by partners such as China. The other image has been of ...
What Will it Take to Realize Biden’s Vision of an Alternative BRI?
U.S. President Joe Biden's commitment to rolling out infrastructure domestically and internationally is setting up a fascinating race with China. After years of withdrawing from multilateral cooperation and refusing to engage with the realities of climate change, the current push raises ...
With China’s Vaccine Distribution Drive Now Running at Full Speed, Calls Grow Louder for the U.S. To Do Something, Anything, to Get in the Game
In the three weeks since the U.S. government announced it would release some of its surplus supply of Astra Zeneca COVID-19 vaccines to Mexico and Canada and indicated that Washington was finally ready to challenge China's dominance in global vaccine deliveries, there's been no visible ...
Tech Digest: With China’s Tech Giants Increasingly Shut Out of the EU & U.S., Africa Now Looks a Lot More Appealing
Oversaturation in China’s domestic tech market and a pandemic-fuelled cash crunch are driving Chinese firms to expand their African ventures. As 2021’s first quarter comes to a close, let’s take stock of the scoreboard: ...
The Pandemic and Geopolitics Have Created New Opportunities For South African Wines in China
Whilst COVID-19 disrupted trade flows across the globe and pushed industries into financial trouble, the South African wine sector has, somewhat remarkably, been spared. This is largely due to wine exports to China soaring by 50% after Beijing enforced a 212% tariff on Australian wines ...