Category: Academia
Senior U.S. Diplomat Explains What Makes the U.S. So Uneasy About China’s Presence in Africa
While there have been countless seminars on China-Africa relations in Washington featuring scholars, think tank analysts, and journalists, it's quite rare that these discussions feature high-ranking State Department officials. The higher up in the ranks, the more they prefer to keep discussions out of the public eye. ...
India-Africa Relations and the China Angle
India is becoming increasingly alarmed about China’s growing international influence, as frosty relations with Beijing persist despite recent Chinese overtures. This is especially true for Africa. India has long considered large swathes of the continent as a traditional sphere of influence. The Institute of Chinese ...
Exploring China’s Increasingly Prominent Role in Africa’s Media Sector
China is now a major player in the African media market, particularly in anglophone countries across the continent where its government-produced digital, broadcast, and print services are all widely available. The Chinese have invested heavily in building a formidable media ecosystem ...
New Data Reveals COVID’s Impact on Chinese Engagement in MENA and Horn of Africa
By Leonardo Bruni The ChinaMed Project's newly-updated China-Medittereanean dataset provides the first insights into the impact that COVID has had on Chinese engagement in the Middle East & North Africa as well as the Horn of Africa regions. The ...
Leading Scholar Argues the Middle East is Pivoting to Regional Cooperation and China
The retreat of the United States is causing a ‘wave of reconciliation' in the Middle East and reorienting these countries towards China. So says Ding Long, a prominent professor at the Middle East Institute at Shanghai University of International Studies.
One of China’s Elder Statesmen of African Diplomacy Makes the Case For Why the Continent Must Remain a Strategic Priority
China’s growing relationship with Africa is crucial for attaining its wider global goals, according to veteran diplomat Kuang Weilin, China’s first ambassador to the African Union, and a highly-regarded commentator on African affairs in China. Kuang spoke ...
Chinese Infrastructure Loans to Africa Are Not Aid – But What Are They?
As concern grows as to how countries like Kenya will repay their loans to China, navigating misinformation about Chinese lending remains challenging. Johns Hopkins University Professor Deborah Brautigam, one of the world’s leading experts on Chinese lending to Africa, unpacked the issue in a public lecture on ...
One of China’s Most Famous Experts on African History Draws the Link Between Agency and Development
Africa won’t achieve development if it doesn’t also grasp full autonomy in the international system. This is the view of Li Anshan, one of China’s most prominent academic experts on African history. This subordination to outside powers echoes that of China ...
Data Analysis for Transparency and Accountability in China’s Overseas Economic Activity
The Global China Initiative (GCI) at the Boston University Global Development Policy (GDP) Center manages five open-source databases tracking Chinese overseas development finance and investments. Through these databases, GCI aims to provide transparent data to aid the public, including policymakers, journalists, academic researchers, civil society, and others, ...
China Exim Bank’s Controversial Loan to Expand Uganda’s Entebbe Airport
New research from AidData at the College of William & Mary in the United States provides the first insight into the loan contract between China Exim Bank and the Ugandan government for the expansion of the Entebbe International Airport. ...
Comparing Chinese Rail Projects in Kenya and Indonesia
China is building rail lines all over the Global South. But how does Africa's experience with Chinese contractors compare with that of Southeast Asian countries? The South African Institute of International Affairs recently published a paper comparing the environmental, ...
Uganda’s Entebbe Contract is Aggressive, But Is It Unique?
Media coverage of the Uganda Entebbe Airport loan is focusing on what the research lead Bradley Parks has called China Exim Bank's "aggressive" loan tactics. Parks' unit at AidData showed that the Entebbe airport won't be seized in the case of ...