China’s Vice President Han Zheng addressed the UN General Assembly on Thursday. Along with retreads of established Chinese positions on Taiwan, Ukraine, and the Israel/Palestine conflict, his comments also provided interesting clues about China’s messaging to the Global South.
First, he called on the international community to “follow the direction of a multipolar world” with the UN at its center. I wonder how opinion within Beijing’s inner circles breaks down around the bipolarity/multipolarity issue, considering ...
Category: View From China
Prominent Chinese Professor Explains Why the U.S., Not China is Actually to Blame for Global South Debt Distress
One of China's foremost scholars on international debt says accusations that Beijing engages in predatory lending, or "debt trap diplomacy" do not align with the facts -- and that it's actually the U.S., or more precisely the U.S. dollar, that's really to blame.
If You Want to Understand Why China and India Are So Far Apart on Resolving Their Border Dispute, Then Read This Blog
Part of the problem at the root of the worsening border dispute between India and China is that both sides are approaching the issue from two totally different, wholly divergent perspectives. While the Indian government accuses China of encroaching on its ...
Xi-Modi Talks in Joburg Sparks New Optimism About Improving Ties With India
Reactions in China to last week's brief conversation between President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi were far more upbeat than those in India. To be sure, there was nowhere near as much commentary about the meeting in the ...
Chinese Scholars: BRICS Is All About Confronting the West
Many Chinese scholars have weighed in on this week’s BRICS summit, and the framing of the discussion on Chinese-language platforms is revealing. Commentators tend to see the bloc's importance as mostly lying in how it directly confronts Western global primacy. This ...
Burundi’s “Banana Riders” Go Viral on Chinese Social Media, Triggering Memories of China’s Own Development Journey
Eric, a young Burundian, barrels down a mountain at 70km an hour with more than 200 kilos of bananas strapped to his rickety bicycle in what looks like an absolutely terrifying race to the bottom. Eric and his fellow "banana riders" ...
Analysis from Cobus van Staden
Unpacking Han Zheng’s Messaging to the Global South at the UN General Assembly
Translation: Why Some Chinese Men in Africa Prefer Not to Return Home
The following article was published on Congo Daily (今日刚果), a WeChat channel for the Chinese expatriate community in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The name or identity of the author is not known. What makes this article so interesting is how it reflects the views and ...
China Coast Guard: Philippines Hyping South China Sea Issue at the Behest of Its “American Father”
The China Coast Guard (CCG) published its side of the story in a post on WeChat on Sunday that blasted the Philippines for unnecessarily "hyping" what happened. It appears the tactic of the Philippine Coast Guard to quickly release videos and photos ...
Chinese Media Noticeably Quiet on Zambian Debt Deal
Most major financial news outlets in the U.S. and Europe featured prominent coverage of Friday's landmark Zambian debt restructuring deal but the story was barely mentioned in China. The official state-run Xinhua news agency published a short summary of the announcement but, ...
TRANSLATION: The Difficulties of Working as a Chinese Journalist in India
The Chinese government ordered the last remaining Indian foreign correspondent to leave in the latest salvo in an ongoing tit-for-tat between the two Asian powers over the presence of journalists in each other's country. The Beijing-based reporter for the state-run Press Trust of India was instructed ...
TRANSLATION: Africa is the Most Contempible Region for Chinese Living Abroad
This is the second in a series of posts that we've translated from the popular online writer Nie Shaorui (聂少聂) who is based in East Africa and regularly posts provocative columns about daily life for the Chinese diaspora in Africa. The purpose of these translations is to ...