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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The Fate of the BRICS Depends on Xi and Modi
Forget about everything that you've heard about this week's BRICS summit in Johannesburg because none of it matters. The fact that Putin didn't go in person seems important, right? No, not really. What about the idea of a dollar-killing BRICS currency? ...
Xi Mysteriously Failed to Show Up at a BRICS Event, Sparking Wild Speculation Over What Happened
The opening day of the BRICS summit in South Africa began as expected on Tuesday with a flurry of high-profile arrivals in Johannesburg followed by a bilateral meeting between South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping. The two ...
Even Xi’s Spokesperson Didn’t Seem to Know What Happened
President Xi's unexplained absence from the BRICS Business Forum on Tuesday also seemingly caught the Foreign Ministry's top spokesperson off guard as well. Hua Chunying published a post on X following the event, erroneously claiming that "Xi Jinping delivered an addressed ...
Relations Between China and South Africa Have Entered a “Golden Era,” Says Xi
Chinese President Xi Jinping began his visit to South Africa on Tuesday with a round of bilateral diplomacy with his host Cyril Ramaphosa. The two leaders met for talks in the capital Pretoria where Xi declared that relations between the two ...
Key Policy Differences Emerge on Day 1 of BRICS Summit
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva pushed back against the suggestion that the BRICS group should become an ideological opponent against the West. "We do not want to be a counterpoint to the G7, G20 or the United States," Brazil's Lula
New Development Bank Moves Forward With Local Currency Bonds in Bid to Reduce Dependence on the U.S. Dollar
The Shanghai-based New Development Bank, aka the BRICS Bank, said it is proceeding with plans to issue bonds and lend more money in local currencies as part of a larger effort to reduce reliance on the dollar. “We expect to lend ...
China’s New, Slimmed-Down Belt & Road Initiative
China's critics contend the Belt and Road Initiative is dead or dying due to a mix of gross mismanagement and hubris. The data, however, reveals a very different story. While lending has definitely decreased considerably from its peak in 2016, the ...
BRICS Leaders Meet in Johannesburg for Summit That Could Reshape the Group
Chinese officials are reportedly pushing for the BRICS bloc, made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, to present a more frontal challenge to the U.S.-led G7. “If we expand Brics to account for a similar portion of world GDP ...
Possible Xi-Modi Meeting in Johannesburg?
One of the closest-watched interactions at the summit will be between India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and China’s President Xi Jinping. Tensions between the two Asian superpowers have been rising due to an ongoing border dispute and larger geopolitical wranglings. There are
Insider/Outsider Politics and Member Country Agendas Are Likely to Shape Summit’s Outcomes
The draft agenda (PDF) of this week’s BRICS summit in Johannesburg reveals an event split between intra-group discussions early on and a wider group of participants on the last day. The first two days are dominated by core BRICS issues, including ...
Chinese Scholars: BRICS Is All About Confronting the West
Many Chinese scholars have weighed in on this week’s BRICS summit, and the framing of the discussion on Chinese-language platforms is revealing. Commentators tend to see the bloc's importance as mostly lying in how it directly confronts Western global primacy. This ...
Chinese Automakers Prominent at BRICS Summit
The BRICS summit is proving a PR bonanza for an unexpected group of stakeholders: Chinese automakers. South Africa, the host of this week’s summit, eschewed the usual fleet of Mercedes Benzes to ferry the delegates between venues. Instead, the Chinese automakers Chery and Haval are providing the official SUVs. ...