Category: Academia

The Group of 7 countries recently announced a rival to China's Belt and Road Initiative. Their new Build Back Better World (B3W) initiative has prompted widespread discussion of the implications for developing regions that are desperate for new sources of capital to build infrastructure. ...

Understanding where Africa fits within China's broader strategic geopolitical vision is something of a mystery to many outside observers. Most international reporting and research on the issue relies on English or French language materials that go a long way to frame the prevailing narratives about Chinese priorities ...

China's use of U.S. social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook is a relatively new phenomenon that started in earnest around the end of 2019 and gathered speed through 2020. As such, there's been little research conducted into the breadth of Chinese engagement on these platforms and ...

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken's comments this week that suggested China imports labor to work on infrastructure projects highlights the incredible durability of one of the oldest myths about Chinese engagement. The reality is there's been a steady decline in ...

Antony Blinken is just the latest U.S. Secretary of State to accuse China of bringing over large numbers of unskilled workers to build infrastructure in Africa, presumably at the expense of local labor. Every Secretary of State over the last decade ...

While Africa is home to a number of world-class think tanks, very few have deep expertise in China and Asian affairs more broadly. This week, a group of young scholars launched the Afro-Sino Centre for International Relations ...

Two years after it was founded, a new Ghana-based China-Africa research center launched on Tuesday with a virtual ceremony. The Afro-Sino Centre of International Relations is an Accra-based think tank that aims to provide policymakers, scholars, and the public with critical analysis on contemporary issues in China-Africa ...

A groundbreaking new analysis by researchers in the United States and Germany provides an unprecedented look inside the contracts that China uses to lend billions of dollars to developing countries around the world. The new ...

There's been a lot of discussion over the past week about the implications of the China-Iran comprehensive strategic partnership agreement the two sides signed during Foreign Minister Wang Yi's recent visit to Tehran. Scholars and analysts in the U.S. and Europe have been struggling to understand the ...

If you’re into curling up with a cup of coffee and an 85-page report on Chinese lending, you can’t go wrong with AidData’s How China Lends: A Rare Look into 100 Debt Contracts with Foreign Governments (PDF). One of the most striking findings in ...

The China-Africa Research Initiative's (CARI) latest report on the downturn in Chinese overseas lending to African governments that was published earlier this week was not well-received in some quarters of Beijing. Song Wei, a well-known Africa analyst who used ...

The release of Wednesday's groundbreaking report that analyzed 100 Chinese state-backed loans to developing countries over a three-year period sparked considerable international media coverage.  While the 77-page report produced by researchers at AidData, the Washington-based Center for Global Development (CGD), ...