Category: Diplomacy

The contractors, China Construction Fifth Engineering Division Corp. and China Construction International, won a $298 million contract to build a new soccer stadium in Guinea. While providing stadiums acted as a diplomatic tool for China in the Global South, this seems like a commercial transaction rather than ‘stadium diplomacy.’

Pakistan's new Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari spent the weekend meeting with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou.  This was Bilawal's first official overseas visit since the new Pakistani government came to power last month, a sign of how ...

Foreign Ministers from the five-nation BRICS group agreed to support China's call to expand the bloc for the first time in more than a decade when South Africa was added. Member states said in a joint statement after the meeting that they agreed in principle to the move but ...

With the U.S. Summit of the Americas set to get underway in Los Angeles in two weeks, China appears to be stepping up its own diplomacy in Latin America. Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Friday held talks with his counterparts from Uruguay, Ecuador, and Nicaragua. ...

The U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin recommended Lt. Gen. Michael E. Langley as the new commander of the U.S. Military’s Africa Command (AFRICOM). If formally nominated by the White House and approved by the U.S. Senate, Langley would become the first Black commander from the Marine Corps ...

The Economist brought out a special report on Africa-China relations. It is rare for the magazine to dedicate so much attention to Africa-China relations. However, its geopolitical framing: “To counter China’s growing role in Africa the West must first understand it” is already drawing criticism from African development experts.

The Biden administration’s decision to return U.S. troops to Somalia has sparked reaction from one of China’s foremost Africa experts. From her position at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, He Wenping played a key role in building Chinese knowledge about Africa, and she’s one of the ...

U.S. President Joe Biden is in Asia for his first official presidential visit to South Korea and Japan. One of the main goals of the trip, which kicked off on Friday, is to promote the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) to Asian governments. 

The Zimbabwean government is once again accusing the U.S. of paying local journalists to write negative stories about Chinese investment in the country. The state-run Herald newspaper reported on Tuesday that the U.S. embassy in Harare is working with the opposition MDC party to foment opposition to Chinese ...

Philippines President-elect Ferdinand Marcos said he plans to expand ties with China when he assumes office on June 30th. The incoming president told his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in a phone call on Wednesday that he hopes relations between the two countries will "shift to a higher gear."

The United States’ development agenda in the Global South is increasingly dominated by the determination to contain China’s global influence. This became clear during budget testimony on Wednesday by Samantha Power, the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) at the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Containing China’s influence in Africa isn’t only a Western preoccupation. Two key non-Western partners to the continent are increasingly framing their engagement in similar terms. Japan and Turkey are both reframing their Africa engagement to target Beijing’s power on the continent.  ...