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: Podcast
Why It Isn’t China’s Fault Its Trade With Africa Is So Distorted
China is forecast to break another trade record with Africa this year, potentially even crossing the $300 billion barrier. While that sounds great, the big number masks a distorted trading relationship that is mostly concentrated in extractives among a small handful ...
Analysis from Cobus van Staden
Jiang Zemin Created the Africa-China Relationship As We Know It Today
Can China’s Surveillance State Governance Model Be Exported Abroad?
China has built the world's largest and most intrusive surveillance system to monitor the behavior of its people. Millions of cameras, vast databases, and sophisticated online filters work together to form a seemingly omnipresent matrix that overwatches every aspect of daily ...
U.S.-China Technology Competition in Africa
African telecom operators have resolutely opposed U.S. calls to stop using Chinese networking hardware. In fact, Huawei, ZTE, and other Chinese tech firms in recent years have significantly expanded their presence beyond networking to mobile money, data centers, and even new ...
A Look Back on a Week of Intense Chinese Diplomacy in Southeast Asia
Chinese President returned home from a week of intense diplomacy in Indonesia and Thailand where he attended a pair of summits and held more than a dozen bilaterals with other international leaders. Both the G20 ...
Will China and Wealthy Countries Pay For Climate Damage in the Global South?
Join us for a very lively end-of-week show where Eric, Cobus, and Geraud get into a spirited debate over whether China, India, and wealthy countries will pay for the damage they've caused to poor countries in Africa and elsewhere from global ...
A Conversation with Molly Phee, the Top U.S. Diplomat for Africa
This Summer the United States updated its foreign policy for Africa when it shifted the focus from competing with China to improving governance and bolstering trade ties with the region. Now, three months later, the State Department's top diplomat for ...
Emerging Trends and Myths in Africa-China Relations: Live From Johannesburg
China's relationship with Africa is undergoing profound change in the post-pandemic era. Chinese engagement on the continent has fallen precipitously with a massive drop in people-to-people exchanges, development finance lending, and academic engagement.
The U.S.-China Battle For Ideas in the Global South
Both the United States and China have restructured their respective foreign policy establishments in recent years to be better poised to confront each other. In the just concluded 20th Party Congress in Beijing, Chinese President ...
Where Does Africa Fit in Xi Jinping’s New Foreign Policy
Chinese President Xi Jinping outlined a more assertive foreign policy vision during his closely-followed address at the 20th Party Congress in Beijing last Sunday. He made it clear that China's new foreign policy priorities will focus primarily on competition with the ...
Despite Huge Problems, Pakistan Remains Indispensable to China
It has been a difficult year for China in Pakistan. A burgeoning economic crisis in the South Asian country threatens to undermine the multibillion dollar China Pakistan Economic Corridor development initiative while anti-Chinese terrorism has surged in recent months.
Debt in Africa: Everyone’s Watching What China Does in Zambia
The United Nations Development Program issued a new report this week that once again sounded the alarm on the urgent need for debt relief in the world's poorest countries. The UNDP said 54 countries are at risk, with African countries accounting ...