Category: Geopolitics
NATO Communique Dials Up Tensions
Chinese state media is responding strongly to a NATO communique released this week that characterizes China as a threat to the bloc’s interests. The communique, released during a two-day NATO summit in Lithuania, said: “The ...
The Solomon Islands’ Beijing Embassy Opens Amid Western Concern About Stronger China Ties
The Solomon Islands officially opened its new embassy in Beijing this week, following the upgrading of their ties to a comprehensive strategic partnership. These stronger ties include an agreement on police cooperation. This follows riots in the capital Honiara in 2021, partly ...
China Doubled Investment in Critical Minerals Last Year, Says International Energy Agency
China made some big moves last year to expand its already formidable presence in the critical minerals mining sector and diversify where it gets those resources that are so crucial to powering next generation transportation. Chinese companies doubled their investment in ...
China Looms Large As ASEAN Foreign Ministers and Key Outside Powers Gather in Jakarta
Foreign ministers from the ten members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are gathering in Jakarta with their counterparts from China, the U.S., Russia and beyond, for an intense week of ministerial meetings that will focus on some of the most contentious disputes in the world. ...
U.S. Seeks to Bolster Ties in the Caribbean to Fend Off Chinese Advance
Top diplomats from China and the U.S. were in the Caribbean at the same time in what's widely seen as the newest front in the escalating geopolitical competition between the two major powers. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in
New Half-Billion Dollar Deal Aims to Position Angola’s Lobito Corridor as Main Gateway for Africa’s Critical Resources
The competition for access to critical metals used to manufacture electric vehicle batteries intensified with the announcement that Trafigura, a Singaporean-based commodity trading giant, is going to lead a consortium of European companies to rebuild a rail line poised to become one of Africa's most important logistics corridors. ...
The U.S. Helped Coordinate and Finance the New Lobito Corridor Deal
A Tweet by Amos Hochstein, the Biden administration's lead on infrastructure initiatives in developing countries, was the only indication last week of any U.S. involvement in the deal to rebuild the Lobito corridor in Angola. But behind the scenes, the U.S. ...
Indian FM Jaishankar Takes Veiled Swipe at China During Africa Tour
India's top diplomat S. Jaishankar issued a subtle yet direct criticism of China's engagement in Africa during a recent tour of Zanzibar and Tanzania. "Unlike some other countries," he told a meeting of the Indian diaspora community in Dar es Salaam, ...
Why China’s Global South Diplomacy Is Such a Challenge for the United States
Remember when poor countries didn’t matter? Those halcyon days when an American president could call them shitholes and nobody would mind? Those days have just ended. In case you missed it, the Wall Street Journal broke a story in June that ...
WEEK IN REVIEW: Mutual Expulsions of Indian and Chinese Reporters Almost Complete
The mutual expulsions of Indian and Chinese reporters are now almost complete. The last Chinese journalist in India, a reporter for Xinhua, was expelled last week, leaving just one reporter from the Press Trust of India still in China as the only remaining Indian foreign correspondent.
Sri Lanka Gets Relief from World Bank as FM Walks a Careful China Line
The World Bank announced $700 million in budgetary and welfare support to Sri Lanka on Thursday. The news comes as Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister Ali Sabry met with China’s Finance Minister Liu Kun and Exim Bank chair Wu Fulin to discuss China’s central role in his country’s debt restructuring. ...
Backgrounder: China’s Emerging Playbook in South Asia
China’s outsized role in two key South Asian debt crises (Sri Lanka and Pakistan) and its fractious cross-border relationship with India have overshadowed a larger trend: Beijing is increasingly becoming an adept navigator of South Asian complexities in order to grow its own influence in the region.