Category: Diplomacy

Naturalized South African-citizen Xiaomei Havard's swearing-in last week to become an ANC member of parliament sparked a strong backlash online under the hashtags #SArejectsXiaomeiHavard and #PutSouthAfricansFirst. Havard was named to replace the late minister in the ...

This week’s confirmation hearing for Linda Thomas-Greenfield’s to become the next United States ambassador to the United Nations provided a glimpse of how Africa might be dragged into growing tensions between the U.S. and China. Thomas-Greenfield faced hostile questioning about a speech she gave in 2019, ...

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's January visit to Tanzania highlighted the East African country's growing importance to Beijing. It's a strategically located Belt and Road country that has the potential to serve as a major gateway to inland regional markets along ...

Linda Thomas-Greenfield (photo), President Biden’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, came under criticism on Wednesday during her confirmation hearing, for a speech she made in 2019 at a now-closed Confucius Institute in Savannah, Georgia. Republican senators argued the speech was overly complimentary ...

Questions about the efficacy of Chinese vaccines and whether China and India have engaged in a form of "vaccine rivalry" really seem to have gotten under the skin of China's bombastic national tabloid Global Times. In fact, they seem downright hurt by the critiques and seem to ...

During her confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to become the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield was asked on several occasions to comment on how she perceives China's engagement in Africa. Remember that Thomas-Greenfield is ...

An article in today's Global Times newspaper, one of China's more bombastic nationalist tabloids, provides a glimpse into how determined Chinese officials are to "decouple" their trade with Australia, especially in the hugely valuable iron sector. Sino-Australian relations deteriorated sharply in 2020 over disputes ...

The Chinese government appears to be moving to de-escalate tensions with India over reports that the two Asian powers are increasingly engaged in a so-called "vaccine rivalry" related to the distribution of COVID-19 jabs to developing countries around the world. "There ...

Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Monday delivered his first major international address since Joe Biden became president of the United States. Xi spoke remotely to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. He touted China's success in battling COVID-19, reiterated his oft-stated support of multilateral institutions, and ...

It’s fascinating to read Xi Jinping’s address to the World Economic Forum and then to read the comments about the speech. What U.S. commentators focus on, and what they ignore, reveal much about the challenges posed by China’s rise to established powers like the United States. The ...

If Xi Jinping thought back in May when he promised to make Chinese-made COVID-19 vaccines available to developing countries as a "public good" that it would be an easy soft power win, well, he may now be reconsidering that assumption. Sure, ...

Developing countries in Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Americas are now the new front in an increasingly contentious struggle between Asia's two continental powers. India and China, both pharmaceutical manufacturing powerhouses, are jostling over who will become the primary supplier of COVID-19 vaccines to many of the ...