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: Fact Check
FACT CHECK: No, Kenya’s Lamu and Mombasa Are Not Being Targeted by the Chinese Military
The prominent Kenyan daily The Standard this week published a breathless front-page story claiming that the U.S. government says it is concerned that China wants to leverage the Kenyan ports of Mombasa and Lamu for military use. The article ...
The Indian Pundit Who Created the Discredited Chinese “Debt Trap” Meme is Still Convinced He’s Right
The creator of the widely-debunked Chinese "debt trap" meme is at it again with a new litany of breathless warnings about the risks developing countries take on when they borrow money from China. Indian pundit ...
No, Jackie Chan Didn’t Wear a T-Shirt Promoting Uganda’s First Son to Be “The Next President”
The fact-checking team at Pesa Check debunked a photo that's been circulating on Twitter and Facebook showing Hong Kong superstar Jackie Chan purportedly wearing a t-shirt with a photo of the first son of Uganda, Muhoozi Kainerugaba, with the caption "The Next President."
Almost Every Major Kenyan Newspaper Published Column by Chinese Ambassador That Refutes Debt Trap Accusation
An unusual phenomenon occurred in Kenya over the past few days: the country's normally competitive newspapers all ran the same column written by China's envoy to Nairobi, Zhou Pingjian. Normally, newspapers insist on exclusivity when publishing columns like this. While we have no proof, ...
No, China Did Not “Provide Weapons to Farmajo Regime in Somalia”
Washington's former top diplomat for Africa, Tibor Nagy, posted a highly misleading tweet on Tuesday that accused China of "hypocrisy" over remarks made by Chinese Special Envoy Xue Bing, who told Daily Nation correspondent Aggrey Mutambo earlier this week that "China will send out engineers ...
Analysis from Cobus van Staden
Jiang Zemin Created the Africa-China Relationship As We Know It Today
U.S. Senator Marco Rubio Plays Fast and Loose with the Facts in Condemning China’s BRI
Few other stakeholders in the U.S. despise China as much as Florida Senator Marco Rubio. He's now among Beijing's fiercest critics in Washington (which is quite an accomplishment, given how confronting China has become something of a pastime in the U.S. capitol.) He's been particularly strident about ...
Fact-Checking a Claim That Nigeria Threw Away More Than a Million Doses of Chinese Vaccines
The investigative team at the Chinese news site The Paper.cn published a fact-checking report that debunked accounts circulating on Chinese-language Twitter that Nigeria had destroyed more than a million doses of Chinese-made COVID-19 vaccines. Last December, Nigerian authorities did, in fact, ...