Category: Uncategorized
Tecno’s Response to This Week’s Malware PR Crisis: “Keep Calm and Carry On”
The news that Chinese-owned African mobile phone giant Tecno sold tens of thousands of phones infected with malicious viruses between 2018 and 2019 is now a major international story. CNN, the BBC and dozens of African news outlets have been ...
China’s Soft Power Play in Africa: Rapid Industrial Development
The Chinese embassy in Cameroon posted a short, seemingly innocuous video today that commemorated 40 years of development in Shenzhen, a once-sleepy fishing town near Hong Kong that is now one of the world's leading tech hubs with a population of 13+ million people. ...
Chinese Media Coverage of the Xi-Lungu Call Didn’t Say Anything About Debt Relief But Did Mention the One China Policy
Chinese official news coverage of Monday's call between President Xi Jinping and Zambian leader Edgar Lungu highlighted the stark disparity between the two countries' current political priorities. Neither the Xinhua news agency nor the China Daily ...
Huawei Has Leveraged the COVID-19 Crisis to Enhance Ties With African Governments
Seemingly every week since the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, has seen a new announcement of a Huawei technology donation to an African government in support of their effort to combat the pandemic. Huawei appears to be skilfully taking advantage of ...
Pompeo’s Critiques of the Chinese in Africa Sparks Pointed Response From Beijing
Secretary Pompeo's comments on Africa were just one of several U.S. critiques that dominated much of Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian's regular press briefing on Friday. After responding to the Secretary's announcement that Washington would impose targeted sanctions against Chinese officials linked to ...
China’s 3-Step Propaganda Response to U.S. Critiques
A predictable sequence of events now unfolds whenever senior-level U.S. officials, notably President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, launch new broadsides against China: Wait between 12 and 24 hours for the foreign ministry to draft a ...
With an Eye on Annoying China, the U.S. National Security Council Praises Taiwan’s Outreach in East Africa
Just hours after Secretary Pompeo's critical comments of the Chinese presence in Africa, the U.S. National Security Council followed up with a provocative tweet that praised Taiwan's recent agreement with the self-declared state of Somaliland. On July 1, Taiwan ...
The Chinese Embassy in Abuja Blasts Nigerian COVID-19 Lawsuit as “Shoddy” and “Frivolous”
The Chinese embassy in Nigeria on Wednesday forcefully reasserted its objections to a $200 billion lawsuit against China for reparations for COVID-19 filed by a group of Nigerian lawyers in the High Court. "The attempt to file frivolous lawsuits is a shoddy one, as it has zero ...
The UN Human Rights Council Statement on Hong Kong Highlights Why African Countries Are Becoming Increasingly Important to China
Africa's growing political importance to China was on full display at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) last week in Geneva where nearly half of the signatories of a statement supporting China's controversial national security law in Hong Kong were from African states. ...
Africa Practice: Africa is Not Facing a Debt Crisis but Some African Countries Certainly Are
The London-based consultancy Africa Practice published a new infographic on Twitter that highlights the wide disparities between different countries' debt-to-GDP ratio across the continent.
Why Oh Why Did the Daily Nation Newspaper Report That a Plane Full of Chinese Evacuees Took Off From Nairobi When It Didn’t?
For some totally inexplicable reason the normally reliable Daily Nation newspaper in Kenya is sticking with the story that hundreds of Chinese nationals have been evacuated from Nairobi even when no such evacuation ever took place, there were no flights to China this week and repeated denials ...
The Chinese Approach to Debt Relief is Very Different Than That of Legacy Donors. A New Report Explains Why.
A trio of researchers at the China-Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C. has published a new working paper that provides some badly-need context about yesterday's announcement by Chinese President Xi Jinping to cancel a small segment of Beijing's loan ...