Today is a public holiday in South Africa – Human Rights Day. There’s a certain irony in spending the day focusing on China’s President Xi Jinping’s visit to Vladimir Putin, knee-deep in a human rights disaster.
What one makes of the Ukraine crisis increasingly maps on where one lives. This is made clear by a remarkable new set of polling data recently published by the European Council on Foreign Relations ...
Category: Author Interview
China, Latin America, and the Rise of a New Non-Aligned Movement
During the first Cold War, a large group of developing countries sought to distance themselves from the ideological battle between the United States and the Soviet Union to create a Non-Aligned Movement. Today, three decades ...
Can China’s Surveillance State Governance Model Be Exported Abroad?
China has built the world's largest and most intrusive surveillance system to monitor the behavior of its people. Millions of cameras, vast databases, and sophisticated online filters work together to form a seemingly omnipresent matrix that overwatches every aspect of daily ...
Africa in the New Era of U.S.-China Great Power Competition
Chinese President Xi Jinping is widely expected to soon re-emerge on the global stage after a nearly three-year absence. Where is still unknown, but when it does happen it's going to create a much tenser, more confrontational atmosphere at upcoming summits ...
A Discussion With Elizabeth Economy About the World According to China
Acclaimed China scholar Elizabeth Economy join Eric & Cobus this week to discuss her new book for 2022 "The World According to China." It's important to note the interview with Elizabeth was recorded before Russia's invasion of ...
China, Africa, and a New Alternative International Order
There's an emerging consensus among many leading international relations scholars that Russia's invasion of Ukraine marked the official end of the post-Cold War era and the beginning of, well... actually... no one's actually sure what's coming next but whatever it is ...
Analysis from Cobus van Staden
Xi Bets on Global South in Moscow
Why Pragmatism, Not Ideology Drives Chinese Economic Engagement in Africa
In these contentious times, China is often accused of exporting its statist economic model to Africa and other developing regions as part of a broader ideological agenda to create a new Sinocentric international order. But Tsinghua University Professor Tang Xiaoyang argues
Why Perceptions of China Vary So Much Depending on Where You Live
Public perceptions of China vary markedly depending on where you live in the world. In wealthy advanced economies in the Global North, negative sentiment towards China is now at all-time highs and ...
China’s Role in the Burgeoning Debt Challenge in Africa
The debt situation in Africa is changing very quickly as some countries race to negotiate urgent bailouts with the IMF while others are struggling to service their debts amid the ongoing pandemic. Pretty much every country across the continent is struggling ...
A Peek Into the Mysterious World of Chinese Diplomacy
Chinese diplomats around the world are comprised of a mix of reclusive bureaucrats who strenuously avoid public engagement and a new generation of assertive, sometimes even downright aggressive so-called "Wolf Warriors" who wage combat with Beijing's critics.
The Pushback Against China’s Coercive Diplomacy
Although China has successfully leveraged its strengths in COVID-19 vaccine production to replenish its reservoir of goodwill in many developing countries, elsewhere Beijing is facing growing resistance to its increasingly assertive foreign policy agenda. The ...