Reflections on the legacy of Jiang Zemin, China’s president from 1993 to 2003, who passed away on Wednesday, emphasized how he presided over a decade of explosive economic growth. Fewer have pointed out that he was also a key architect of China’s current relationship with Africa.
After the Mao era, emblematized by Chinese involvement in African anti-colonial struggles, the relationship went dormant as China focused on building economic ties ...
Category: Humanitarian aid
China and Forced Displacement in an Age of Crises
By Hugo Jones The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has estimated that the number of forcibly displaced people across the globe now surpasses 100 million. Weak economic growth, compounded by an emerging food crisis, is likely to inflate this ...
New Contingent of Chinese Blue Helmets Arrive in DR Congo
Nearly one hundred Chinese PLA soldiers operating as UN peacekeepers arrived in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on Friday. None of the troops will be assigned to combat roles and instead will support existing Chinese engineering and medical detachments.
China’s 500 Borehole Project Tapped Its Final Well in Zimbabwe
It took almost ten years to drill 500 boreholes in a China Aid-funded project to deliver badly-needed water to communities throughout Zimbabwe. The project drilled its final borehole in the southern Gwanda Township on Saturday marking the end of ...
Q&A: China Likely to See the Cut in UK Aid Spending as Both an Opportunity and a Loss
The British government's decision to slash its overseas aid budget from $21.3 billion in 2020 to $13.8 billion this year is prompting heightened anxiety within the U.S. and European development communities that the move will provide a new opening for China to expand its influence in Africa ...
Three Experts Reflect on China’s Ambitious New Aid and International Development Agenda
The Chinese government earlier this month published a major update to the country's foreign aid and international development strategy. The new white paper entitled "China's International Development Cooperation in the New Era" maps out an ambitious new vision that integrates Chinese overseas development ...
Analysis from Cobus van Staden
Jiang Zemin Created the Africa-China Relationship As We Know It Today
Background: For More Than a Decade, Africa’s Been the Top Destination for Chinese Foreign Aid
Since 2010, Africa's been the largest recipient of Chinese foreign aid, even as China's ties in Asia have grown to be more geopolitically consequential. However, when reviewing data in the recently-published white paper on Chinese international development, analysts ...
Q&A: Improving Trilateral Development Cooperation Among China, African Governments and External Partners
By Jinyu Chen, Research Analyst at Development Reimagined Trilateral cooperation, a buzzword in the field of aid and development cooperation, refers to a “development relationship in which a DAC donor and/or multilateral agency ‘partners’ with a so-called ‘pivotal’ country (e.g. ...
Combatting Malaria in the Comoros Islands: How China Almost Got it Right
China’s ground-breaking anti-malarial intervention in the Comoros, where malaria is the number one cause of death across all populations, has resulted in the East African island nation being named by the World Health Organisation as “one of six African countries on course to eliminate malaria by 2020”. ...
Kenya President Uhuru Kenyatta Wants to Know What Happened to the Missing Jack Ma PPE Donations
Under mounting public pressure, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta ordered an investigation into Kenya Medical Supplies Authority (Kemsa) and its handling of the March 2020 PPE donations from the Jack Ma Foundation, amid allegations that they were illicitly sold, lost or wasted. The ...
Video: Chinese COVID-19 Aid and Medical Teams Are Becoming Increasingly Visible in Africa
The video team at the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong assembled a short overview of the increasingly visible Chinese medical team deployments and COVID-19 donations across Africa. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1pB2PcGzVs&feature=emb_title ...