Analysis
Diverse voices, unique insights on key issues shaping China’s engagement throughout the Global South.
analysis
Multilateralism With Chinese Characteristics
"Multilateralism" is undeniably Xi Jinping's favorite word these days. If he's scheduled to give an address with even a hint of foreign policy in it, you can put money down that you're going to hear that word or some variant of it. Just this week, in his ...
The Message From the Global Financial System to Africans Seeking Debt Relief Is Clear: You’re on Your Own
Ghana's increasingly outspoken finance minister Ken Ofori-Atta is giving voice to the growing frustration across Africa that calls for urgent debt relief have largely failed. In an interview this week with Bloomberg, Minister Ofori-Atta said the global financial system is failing Africa and places ...
Meaningful Debt Relief Probably Isn’t Going to Happen. We Should All be Worried.
The Financial Times newspaper deserves a lot of credit for calling out the world's wealthiest governments for their glaring hypocrisy on the issue of African debt relief. While treasuries in the U.S., Europe, Japan, and China come up with new creative solutions to insulate their ...
Huawei in Africa: Problems? What Problems?
While Huawei is facing intense scrutiny in certain European countries, the United States, and parts of Asia, the Chinese telecom giant is seemingly unimpeded in African markets. Just as in the brewing political standoff between the U.S. and China, where African leaders are doing their best to ...
The Idea of “The West”
The current campaign by the U.S. government and its allies against the Chinese technology firm Huawei ends up being quite revealing. Ostensibly, Washington's pressure on its allies to step away from Huawei as a tech partner is all about concrete concerns: security, spying and external actors like ...
In the New Era of “China Against the World” Where Does Africa Stand?
Africa's political importance to China is steadily rising as Beijing's relations with a growing list of countries in Asia, Europe, and the Americas dangerously deteriorate. Conflict has already broken out between China and India, leaving Asia's two largest powers bitterly divided. Even more worrisome ...
Q&A: Judd Devermont on How African Governments Can Position Themselves in the U.S.-China Standoff
The overwhelming majority of African countries enjoy robust ties with both China and the United States but those relations are under increasing strain as Washington's relations with Beijing further deteriorate. In recent months, a number of African leaders have expressed their desire to stay out of what's ...
Excuse Me. Who Exactly is Mike Pompeo Referring to When He Talks About “The Free World?”
I'm afraid I've devolved into the kind of person who checks Twitter before even putting on my glasses in the morning. On good days it jolts me out of my lockdown torpor at least long enough to make coffee. On bad days it makes me want to ...
Why China-Africa Relations is Like a Geopolitical Rorschach Test
It's often said that analyzing China-Africa ties is a lot like looking at one of those inky splotches you see on a Rorschach test. If you think China's engagement in Africa is the worst thing that's happened to the continent in ...
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Zambian President Edgar Lungu might have been surprised to hear that the big takeaway from his call on Monday with Xi Jinping wasn't debt relief or anything to do with COVID-19. In the unlikely event that he opened a copy of the China Daily newspaper on Tuesday ...
Health Diplomacy or Health Dependency: A Critical Assessment of China’s Health Aid to Madagascar
Historically, foreign aid projects have long been criticized for creating dependency, prompting some critics to argue that normative foreign aid should be rejected by African recipients altogether for the seemingly inevitable outcomes of increased corruption and dependency. As more than 80% ...
The China-Mediterranean Observer: Trying to Make Sense of the Proposed China-Iran Deal
In this issue of the ChinaMed Observer, we cannot but pay great attention to how the discussion on the yet-to-be-finalized agreement between China and Iran has evolved in the Iranian media. Other important issues that we found in the media published in the wider Mediterranean region include ...