Category: Diplomacy

China’s Foreign Ministry has confirmed Pentagon allegations that a second Chinese surveillance balloon is floating over Central and South America. Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning said the balloon is non-military and used for flight tests. She said it has limited self-steering capacity and was blown off course, entering South American airspace “by ...

Zhu Jing, China’s outgoing ambassador, is making the rounds of Kinshasa to say goodbye before leaving the country later this week. He is vacating his post as part of a routine rotation. Zhu was a prominent voice for China as the DRC became ...

China’s use of diplomatic junkets to justify its anti-Uyghur measures in Xinjiang to the Global South are ratcheting up again. Ambassadors and other senior diplomats from Senegal, Benin, Mali, Rwanda, Madagascar, Malawi, Uganda, Lesotho and Chad visited the region on Thursday. Judging by Global ...

U.S. officials are speaking out about the urgency to diversify supply chains for critical resources that are now largely dependent on China, particularly rare earths, cobalt, and lithium that are all essential ingredients in manufacturing electric vehicle batteries. ...

The Chinese government provided its first official confirmation that it will provide Sri Lanka with a two-year debt repayment moratorium on $2.83 billion of loans owed to The China Exim Bank. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning's statement on Friday was intended, in part, ...

China is by far the world's dominant producer of solar power technology which is becoming increasingly popular in places like Africa that are under mounting pressure to transition from reliance on fossil fuels to new, greener renewable sources of energy.

By Alvaro Mendez and Chris Alden After eleven months and five rounds of negotiations, Ecuador announced last month that it has completed a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with China. It still has to obtain legislative approval, but we believe it will ...

The Kremlin announced Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit Moscow, although the Chinese Foreign Ministry hasn’t confirmed it yet. The visit will partly aim to deny growing distance between the allies on the Ukraine conflict, although it is unlikely to change China’s fundamental position. (SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST)

Another senior U.S. diplomat has accused China of not doing enough to resolve Sri Lanka’s debt renegotiation, a sign that the island’s financial crisis is increasingly being framed geopolitically. U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland said: "What China has offered ...

In a recent interview, the U.S. ambassador to the UN (and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Africa) weighed in on China's role in African debt distress in terms that could be described as 'blinkered' at best ('disingenuous' is another possibility): 

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning pushed back against recent allegations by senior Western officials that China is holding back debt restructuring in Zambia. Citing recent statistics from the Zambian government, Mao pointed out that Zambia’s debt burden is predominantly Western, with 24% to (Western-led) multilateral institutions and 46% to (mostly ...

China’s Foreign Minister Qin Gang held a phone conversation with his Argentine counterpart Santiago Cafiero, the newest sign of the two countries’ increasing closeness. Argentina is a champion of closer cooperation between China and Latin America and plans to join the BRICS bloc. ...