China’s Vice President Han Zheng addressed the UN General Assembly on Thursday. Along with retreads of established Chinese positions on Taiwan, Ukraine, and the Israel/Palestine conflict, his comments also provided interesting clues about China’s messaging to the Global South.
First, he called on the international community to “follow the direction of a multipolar world” with the UN at its center. I wonder how opinion within Beijing’s inner circles breaks down around the bipolarity/multipolarity issue, considering ...
Category: China-Africa 101
Indian Rumor Sparks Weekend of Baseless Speculation About Coup in China
All weekend there was wild speculation on both Indian and U.S. Twitter that Chinese President Xi Jinping had been placed under house arrest and that a military coup had taken place in Beijing. There was no coup, of course, ...
A Rare Long-form Discussion in the United States Media on China-Africa Relations
It's extremely rare in the United States for a national broadcast media outlet to feature a nuanced discussion on China-Africa relations. In most instances, as was the case last year on the Daily Show with Trevor Noah, the issue is often framed using outdated ...
Which Way is West?
One of the fun aspects of the China-Africa Project is that we don’t always agree. The work of pulling in different perspectives means that how we see reality is itself a negotiation, drawing on our different backgrounds. For example, one of the issues where Eric and I ...
Namibian Opposition Leader: “Chinese Must Respect Us”
Tensions between Chinese companies and local labor unions have been simmering all year and now it appears the issue is escalating into a charged political attack against the government for not doing enough to protect worker rights. "People are ...
Anti-Colonialism Remains a Central Tenant of China’s Engagement in Africa
Colonialism and imperialism are the kinds of subjects that students in the U.S. and Europe study in school, framed within the assumption that they have very little applicability in contemporary geopolitics. But for the Chinese, these issues remain very close to the surface and make up a ...
Analysis from Cobus van Staden
Unpacking Han Zheng’s Messaging to the Global South at the UN General Assembly
Debunking the Chinese Unskilled Labor Myth in Africa
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 ...
Gyude Moore Tries To Dispel Some of the Most Durable American Misperceptions About the Chinese in Africa
Gyude Moore, the former Liberian public works minister and now a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development joined prominent China scholar Damien Ma, director and co-founder of MacroPolo, the in-house think tank of the Paulson Institute in Chicago, for an online discussion that ...
Infographic Highlights How Nigeria Doesn’t Actually Owe China That Much Money
A new infographic circulating online showcases data from Nigeria's Debt Management Office and clearly shows the relatively small amount of debt owed to China compared to that of private creditors and multilateral lenders (as of June 2020). This runs counter ...
How China Finances All That Infrastructure Construction in Africa is Starting to Change. Here’s How.
For several years now, as debt levels in a number of African countries have risen to alarming heights, Chinese and African officials have reportedly been looking for new ways to evolve the traditional resource-for-infrastructure (RFI) deals that critics on both sides of this relationship contend saddles African ...
The Top Ten Most Popular Episodes of The China in Africa Podcast in 2019
The following is a list of the most downloaded episodes of The China in Africa Podcast in 2019. If you're not already a subscriber, you can do so on iTunes or anywhere you get your podcasts. 1. CHINA-AFRICA 101: ...