Author: Eric Olander
Eric Olander is the co-founder of the China Global South Project, an independent, non-partisan media initiative dedicated to exploring every facet of China’s engagement in Africa. Eric is a fluent Mandarin-speaker and a longtime China-watcher with more than 25 years of journalism experience at many of the world’s leading media companies, including CNN, the BBC, and FRANCE24, among others. He received his undergraduate degree in East African History from the University of California at Berkeley and holds a master’s degree in Chinese Public Affairs from the University of Hong Kong.
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China's once enormous global COVID vaccine distribution drive has effectively come to a halt this year, according to new data published by the public health consultancy Bridge Consulting in Beijing. It's not clear what prompted the sharp dropoff in vaccine deliveries, but it could ...
Frozen Imported Chinese Fish Being Passed Off as Fresh Catch in Kenya
Unsuspecting shoppers at the fish markets in the western Kenyan city of Kisumu on Lake Victoria have been buying frozen imported fish from China that's being passed off by unscrupulous vendors as fresh catch. When reporters from ...
New Trends in Chinese Overseas Development Finance
In less than six years, China's financing of overseas energy projects in the Global South plunged from $35 billion to zero, according to new data released this week from Boston University's Global Development Policy Center. BU's findings mirror a broader pullback ...
China’s Special Mideast Envoy Meets With Sudan Leader
Zhai Jun, China’s Special Envoy to the Middle East, met on Tuesday with the head of Sudan’s army and the leader of the October 25 military coup that plunged the country into crisis, Lieutenant-General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan. Zhai’s trip is part ...
Four Different Chinese Ambassadors are Moving On
An unusually large number of Chinese ambassadors announced this week they will be leaving their posts in at least four African countries. It's just a coincidence that so many are happening at once and there is no indication that any of the envoys have been recalled.
The Increasing Closeness Between China and Somalia Raises Questions for U.S.
Somalia is emerging as a focus for China, following a meeting between Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his Somali counterpart Abisaid Muse Ali on the sidelines of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation meeting in Pakistan on Tuesday. This closer alignment also has implications for the United States. ...
If You Want to Read Bad Things About China’s Engagement in Africa, You’ll Enjoy the Hoover Institution’s New Handbook
The conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University spent several months working with thirty civil society organizations from 24 African countries to produce a new handbook that is purportedly intended to help policymakers better understand the key issues related to China's engagement in Africa.
Somaliland President Taps into Washington’s China Issues
President Muse Bihi Abdi, the leader of the separatist region of Somaliland, wound up his visit to Washington, D.C. with significantly more U.S. support for independence. Somaliland is officially a province of Somalia, but declared independence in 1991. The president’s visit follows months of intense lobbying by ...
No, China Did Not “Provide Weapons to Farmajo Regime in Somalia”
Washington's former top diplomat for Africa, Tibor Nagy, posted a highly misleading tweet on Tuesday that accused China of "hypocrisy" over remarks made by Chinese Special Envoy Xue Bing, who told Daily Nation correspondent Aggrey Mutambo earlier this week that "China will send out engineers ...
China’s Ambassador to Somalia Makes Clear That When It Comes to Taiwan, There’s No Room For Compromise
Occasionally, China's famously media-shy ambassadors in Africa come out of their shells and engage in surprisingly frank discussions on social media. Admittedly, it doesn't happen very often but it did on Monday over on Fei Shengchao's Twitter page when the Chinese envoy to Somalia responded to critical ...
The New York Times’ Popular Podcast The Daily Dedicated an Entire Episode to the U.S.-Chinese Cobalt Competition in the DRC… And It Was Really Mediocre
The massively popular New York Times podcast The Daily devoted an entire episode on Friday to the competition between the U.S. and China over access to the world's largest reserves of cobalt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. ...
China Went on a Three Day African Diplomatic Blitz to Rally Support For Its Stance on Ukraine
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Foreign Minister Wang Yi wrapped up a three-day flurry of meetings on Sunday with counterparts from four African countries. Although each of the meetings, according to readouts, addressed a wide range of topics, China's controversial stance on the war in Ukraine emerged ...