Related Posts

What China’s Friends Can Actually Expect From Beijing

In recent months, amid U.S. military interventions in Venezuela and Iran, questions about how China responds to threats facing its “allies” –  if they can be described as such – have resurfaced with increasing frequency in policy circles worldwide, including across the Global South. ...
Africa Editor
The China-Global South Project

Related Posts

The Rise of “Bully Diplomacy” in Critical Minerals

If U.S. President Donald Trump’s cold, realpolitik, interest-driven critical minerals diplomacy is unlikely to fundamentally shake China’s dominance of the global critical minerals supply chain, it may nevertheless begin to shift certain fault lines and push Chinese interests into spaces where they had previously gone largely unchallenged. ...

China’s Export Surge to Africa in 2025 Complicates Efforts to Rebalance Trade

In 2025, trade between China and Africa reached $348 billion, a 17.7% increase from 2024. As in the previous year, this growth was largely driven by rising Chinese exports, which amounted to $225 billion, compared to $123 billion in imports from the African continent.

China-Africa and the Cost of Unused Talent

When it comes to the China-Africa story, most people first think about infrastructure. Those who follow it more closely might think of diplomacy. But China-Africa relations is also a story about hundreds, maybe even thousands, of African students trained in China through scholarships and bilateral partnerships.

How the U.S. Aims to Seize Control of Critical Congolese Minerals and Curb Chinese Expansion

By signing the strategic partnership agreement with the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the United States achieved two key objectives in its critical minerals strategy: first, securing preferential access to copper, cobalt, zinc, gold, and other minerals considered strategic; and second, establishing a regulatory framework ...
Regime Survival and International Implications: China’s Perspective on the Iran Crisis
A makeshift memorial in tribute to Iran's late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on a street, after he was killed in Israeli and U.S. strikes on Saturday, amid the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran, in Tehran, Iran, March 4, 2026. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
By Andrea Ghiselli This edition of the ChinaMed Observer returns to the Chinese official narrative and expert debate on the ongoing war in Iran. In a previous issue, we examined initial Chinese reactions: restrained, framed in international law, and calling for dialogue and de-escalation. Moreover, as discussed ...

What China’s Friends Can Actually Expect From Beijing

In recent months, amid U.S. military interventions in Venezuela and Iran, questions about how China responds to threats facing its “allies” –  if they can be described as such – have resurfaced with increasing frequency in policy circles worldwide, including across the Global South. ...

The Rise of “Bully Diplomacy” in Critical Minerals

If U.S. President Donald Trump’s cold, realpolitik, interest-driven critical minerals diplomacy is unlikely to fundamentally shake China’s dominance of the global critical minerals supply chain, it may nevertheless begin to shift certain fault lines and push Chinese interests into spaces where they had previously gone largely unchallenged. ...

China’s Export Surge to Africa in 2025 Complicates Efforts to Rebalance Trade

In 2025, trade between China and Africa reached $348 billion, a 17.7% increase from 2024. As in the previous year, this growth was largely driven by rising Chinese exports, which amounted to $225 billion, compared to $123 billion in imports from the African continent.

China-Africa and the Cost of Unused Talent

When it comes to the China-Africa story, most people first think about infrastructure. Those who follow it more closely might think of diplomacy. But China-Africa relations is also a story about hundreds, maybe even thousands, of African students trained in China through scholarships and bilateral partnerships.

How the U.S. Aims to Seize Control of Critical Congolese Minerals and Curb Chinese Expansion

By signing the strategic partnership agreement with the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the United States achieved two key objectives in its critical minerals strategy: first, securing preferential access to copper, cobalt, zinc, gold, and other minerals considered strategic; and second, establishing a regulatory framework ...

China Moves from Infrastructure to Legal Influence in Africa

Prosecutors and representatives from twelve African countries — Ethiopia, Algeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe — gathered in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, on October 29, 2025, for the second China-Africa Prosecutorial Cooperation Forum. The meeting’s theme, ...

China, Zambia and Tanzania Seal $1.4 Billion Deal to Modernize Tazara Railway

More than a year after a memorandum of understanding was signed in Beijing, China, Zambia and Tanzania have finalized an agreement to rehabilitate and modernize the Tazara railway. Built by China in the 1970s, the strategic line links Zambia to Tanzania and runs to the port of ...

Congo Uses Cobalt Export Limits to Force Processing Deals With Chinese Miners

The Democratic Republic of Congo appears determined to leverage its negotiating power with Chinese and other mining companies to secure major concessions on local cobalt processing. That was the signal sent by Congolese Mines Minister Louis Watum, who said — according ...

China’s Biggest Cobalt Miner Faces a Harsh New Reality in DR Congo

The world’s leading exporter of cobalt, China’s CMOC Group, may turn out to be the biggest loser under the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s new export quota policy, which is set to replace the existing moratorium on cobalt shipments beginning in mid-October.

Stop Calling the Lobito Corridor a U.S. Gambit Against China

There’s a lazy but geopolitically irresistible allure in branding Angola’s Lobito Corridor as a U.S. bid to blunt China’s influence in Africa and the region’s mineral supply chains. I get why the framing sticks: it’s neat, dramatic, and easy to sell. ...

African Countries Should Stop Being Questioned About Their Diplomatic Engagements

No nation should have to defend its right to choose its own diplomatic partners. Yet, in recent years, African countries have increasingly been called to account whenever those partners happen to be China or Russia.  When President William Ruto of Kenya ...

A Display of Power, Not Partnership, in Washington

This is a is a long overdue column that I intended to write back in March after South African President Cyril Ramaphosa left Washington after that now infamous joint press conference in the Oval Office where he was ambushed by U.S. President Donald Trump for challenging the ...
Page 1 of 5125
Detected IP: ...