Anyone who knows a South African will be amply aware that the country is currently undergoing economically ruinous rolling blackouts labeled ‘loadshedding.’ Even if you don’t know them, South Africans are liable to follow you down the street, foam-flecked and shouting about Eskom, the corruption-addled state power utility.
The loadshedding scandal is rooted in corruption. It’s only the most visible part of a historical tragedy: how the ruling African National Congress ...
Category: China-Middle East
China’s Middle East Approach Probably Won’t Change Soon: Expert
Following President Xi Jinping's visit to Saudi Arabia late last year, many speculated that China was aiming to replace the U.S. in the region, not least because U.S.-Saudi relations are currently quite frosty. However, the China-Middle East expert Andrea Ghiselli recently ...
Bad Takes: What the News Media Got Wrong About Xi’s Trip to Saudi Arabia
So much of the international news coverage of Xi Jinping's three-day visit last week to Saudi Arabia was framed in the context of the broader U.S.-China rivalry. The Saudis and other Arab states, according to the prevailing narrative, were pivoting away ...
Why China May Succeed in the Middle East Where So Many Others Have Failed
Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Saudi Arabia last week and his participation in three summits with Arab leaders went precisely according to plan. The President was feted lavishly by the Saudi royal family while seeming to rise above the region's often toxic politics.
Xi’s Saudi Trip Could Set the Scene for Long-Term Changes: Expert
While Chinese government spokespeople have called President Xi Jinping’s visit to Saudi Arabia ‘epoch-making,’ they’ve been a lot vaguer about the agenda for his meetings. However, Tang Tianbo, a researcher at the Middle East Institute of the ...
For the Western Press, Xi’s Saudi Visit is All About the United States
The China-Middle East expert Jonathan Fulton complained on Twitter this week that many editors at major Western news outlets seem to have pre-decided their framing of Xi Jinping’s visit to Saudi Arabia. Rather than focusing on what the two countries want and where they’re coming ...
Analysis from Cobus van Staden
A Chinese Giant’s Complicity in South Africa’s Corruption Disaster
Xi Jinping Travels to Saudi Arabia For High-Profile Summits With Saudi and Arab Leaders
Chinese President Xi Jinping will arrive in Riyadh on Wednesday for a three-day visit that will include a trio of summits with Saudi Arabia's rulers and Arab leaders. Even though preparations in the Kingdom had been underway for weeks ...
China-Saudi Trade is Booming… And Not Just Because of Oil
The obvious reason for Xi Jinping's trip to Saudi Arabia is to foster closer ties with one of China's largest oil suppliers (Russia and Saudi Arabia have been battling for the top spot for much of the past year), but that alone would overlook the increasingly dynamic ...
Beware of the Simple Media Narratives Warns China Scholar About Xi Visit to the Mideast
Atlantic Council Senior Fellow Jonathan Fulton has some advice for journalists covering Xi Jinping's visit to Saudi Arabia: don't fall for the simple narrative that this trip is about some kind of Great Power Competition with the United States. Instead, Fulton ...
What’s at Play in Xi Jinping’s Upcoming Visit to Saudi Arabia?
Chinese President Xi Jinping will reportedly travel to Saudi Arabia this week for a state meeting and to attend the inaugural China-Arab Summit. This is a particularly important visit as Xi returns to in-person diplomacy because Saudi-U.S. relations are quite frosty amid wrangles over oil prices in ...
New Report on China-Arab Relations Provides Overview of What Will be on Xi’s Agenda at Upcoming Saudi Summit
Xi Jinping is widely expected to travel to Saudi Arabia at the end of the week for what will be his first visit to the Kingdom in six years and his first since Riyadh became China's largest oil supplier. ...