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Category: Myth Busting

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, ...

Analysis from Cobus van Staden

Ghana Commissions First Roads Built Under Controversial Bauxite Deal

Ghana’s Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia this week commissioned the first road infrastructure built under a controversial $2 billion resource-for-infrastructure deal with the Chinese conglomerate Sinohydro. 

Bawumia was eager to claim the inauguration of 441 km of roads in the Cape Coast region as a win for his government, which has faced major economic headwinds over the last few months. It also papered over the fact that the project faced criticism for delayed implementation following the signing ...

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 ...

NO! China is NOT Exporting Convict Labor to Africa!!!!

15-minutes in to almost any conversation about the Chinese in Africa and the question about Chinese labor invariably comes up. "The Chinese are exporting convicts to work on construction sites," according to one of the pervasive myths, or, "Chinese companies don't hire as many ...