Category: Diplomacy

Taiwan's recent effort to revive its diplomatic presence in Africa by signing an agreement with the self-declared state of Somaliland to set up representative offices in each other's territories sparked an immediate wave of predictable responses. China and Somalia denounced the ...

Chinese Ambassador Guo Shaochun paid a visit on Wednesday to President Emmerson Mnangagwa at the State House in Harare. Because Zimbabwe is still largely isolated from the United States and Europe, China plays an outsized role in its foreign policy and is a key source of international ...

China has led a surprisingly effective, low-key campaign to lead mid-tier agencies at international organizations. At the United Nations, Chinese nationals now lead five of the 15 specialized agencies: the International Civil Aviation Organization, the International Telecommunication Union, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the U.N. Department for Economic ...

Iran and China are reportedly nearing completion of a wide-ranging oil-for-infrastructure deal that would pave the way for billions of dollars of Chinese investment in Iran's energy, telecommunications and financial service sectors in exchange for a 25-year supply of oil.

United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo launched a new round of attacks against China and its presence in Africa at a recent press briefing for foreign journalists in Washington, D.C. The Secretary responded to a question from a journalist in ...

Secretary Pompeo's comments on Africa were just one of several U.S. critiques that dominated much of Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian's regular press briefing on Friday. After responding to the Secretary's announcement that Washington would impose targeted sanctions against Chinese officials linked to ...

A predictable sequence of events now unfolds whenever senior-level U.S. officials, notably President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, launch new broadsides against China: Wait between 12 and 24 hours for the foreign ministry to draft a ...

Just hours after Secretary Pompeo's critical comments of the Chinese presence in Africa, the U.S. National Security Council followed up with a provocative tweet that praised Taiwan's recent agreement with the self-declared state of Somaliland. On July 1, Taiwan ...

Never one to mince words, the normally outspoken U.S. ambassador to Kenya, Kyle McCarter, got into a squabble over the weekend with a pair of Kenyans who were enquiring about the status of student visas to the United States that are now in question following President Trump's ...

Africa is by no means alone as a region where small countries are struggling to stay out of great power competition. In South Asia, smaller countries like Nepal, the Maldives, and Sri Lanka are doing their best to avoid getting sucked into the violent conflict currently roiling ...

Given the heightened tensions between the United States and China and the corresponding implications for Africa, a new conversation is getting underway over what great power competition looks like in the 21st century and whether it will play out differently on the continent than during the decades-long ...

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo renewed his attacks on China's presence in Africa last week, triggering a full-throated rebuttal from Beijing in what's now become an almost routine back-and-forth between these two rival powers. The feud between these two countries ...