Today is a public holiday in South Africa – Human Rights Day. There’s a certain irony in spending the day focusing on China’s President Xi Jinping’s visit to Vladimir Putin, knee-deep in a human rights disaster.
What one makes of the Ukraine crisis increasingly maps on where one lives. This is made clear by a remarkable new set of polling data recently published by the European Council on Foreign Relations ...
Category: Energy
Russia Knocks Saudi Arabia From Top Spot as China’s Leading Oil Supplier
Russia overtook Saudi Arabia in the first two months of the year as China's largest oil supplier, with purchases surging 24% compared to the same time last year, according to new Chinese customs data. Chinese buyers were seemingly keen to take ...
India to Build Massive Hydropower Plant Near Contested Border With China
The Indian government will build a $3.9 billion hydroelectric power plant in Arunachal Pradesh, very close to the country's disputed border with China known as the Line of Actual Control. Environmentalists are condemning the $3.9 billion project saying the new 2,880-megawatt ...
The Role of Chinese Solar Technology in Africa’s Just Energy Transition
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.
Solar Power to the People
By Sophie Mbugua, Wesley Langat The second instalment of this two-part series visits the Garissa solar power plant in eastern Kenya to explore the role of renewables in the energy transition. Heading north from the ...
A Chinese Giant’s Complicity in South Africa’s Corruption Disaster
Anyone who knows a South African will be amply aware that the country is currently undergoing economically ruinous rolling blackouts labeled ‘loadshedding.’ Even if you don’t know them, South Africans are liable to follow you down the street, foam-flecked and shouting about Eskom, the corruption-addled ...
Analysis from Cobus van Staden
Xi Bets on Global South in Moscow
Why a Chinese Coal Buy From Australia Should Worry Some Developing Countries
One of China's largest coal importers, the China Energy Investment Corp., bought at least two shipments of Australian coal on Friday in the latest sign of thawing ties between the two countries. While the amount purchased is not significant, it's the first ...
China-Global South in 2023: Our Views on What to Expect
Eric Olander, Editor in Chief China's efforts to build a parallel international order are going to accelerate in 2023. Led by a new foreign policy team that will assume office in March, Xi Jinping's new Global Development Initiative will take shape, ...
Chinese-Built Cross-Frontier Hydro System Inaugurated in Mali
This weekend saw the inauguration of the Gouina Hydroelectric dam and Malinguina hydropower station in Mali. Funded by the China Exim Bank and built by PowerChina, the facilities form part of a transfrontier hydroelectric system linking Mali, Senegal, and Mauritania. ...
Why the Persian Gulf is China’s “New Africa”
Fifteen years ago, Africa supplied a third of China's imported oil and was a key recipient of foreign investment beyond its near abroad in east Asia. Today, a large portion of that energy procurement has shifted to countries in the Persian ...
Partially Chinese-Financed Hydropower Dam Cuts Power Deliveries to Zambia, Zimbabwe Due to Lack of Water
Environmentalists have warned for years that southern Africa's Chinese-financed hydroelectric building binge would eventually collide with the reality that the region doesn't have enough water. Officials at the Zambezi River Authority that runs the Kariba Dam announced