Today is a public holiday in South Africa – Human Rights Day. There’s a certain irony in spending the day focusing on China’s President Xi Jinping’s visit to Vladimir Putin, knee-deep in a human rights disaster.
What one makes of the Ukraine crisis increasingly maps on where one lives. This is made clear by a remarkable new set of polling data recently published by the European Council on Foreign Relations ...
Country: European Union
It’s Time to Stop Pretending the System Still Works
In hindsight, it was foolish to think that China, the U.S., India and the Europeans were somehow going to put aside their differences to make desperately-needed compromises to help the world's poorest countries restructure their debts. We should have known this ...
Xinhua: The U.S. Deliberately Distorts Chinas’s Role in the African Debt Crisis
The burgeoning debt crisis in a growing number of African countries is increasingly seen by the Chinese government as another front in Beijing's competition with Western powers like the U.S. A recent article published earlier this month by the official Xinhua ...
When it Comes to the Global South Debt Crisis, the Chinese Message is Clear: Don’t Talk About China, Just Focus on the West
Chinese scholars and U.S. and European officials seem to follow the same playbook on debt. Both sides are highly selective in their assessment of the worsening debt crisis in developing countries by focusing disproportionate attention on opponents' role while conveniently overlooking their own contribution to the problem. ...
Why China Must Partner With Global South Countries to Build a “New International System”
China should respond to pressures from the United States and its allies by building a new global system based on coalitions with Global South countries. So argues Yang Ping, the publisher and editor-in-chief of the influential magazine Beijing Cultural Review.
Wang Huiyao on China’s ‘Misunderstood Foreign Policy’
Senior-level Chinese stakeholders often contend that one of the main reasons for today's heightened geopolitical tensions between China and the West is due to "misunderstandings" of its foreign policy objectives by outsiders. Chinese distrust is ...
Analysis from Cobus van Staden
Xi Bets on Global South in Moscow
China’s Current Challenge of the Bretton Woods Institutions Has Been Years in the Making
China’s dispute with the Bretton Woods institutions dates back to at least the Obama era. The U.S. Congress refused to ratify a 2010 plan to recapitalize the IMF, which would have given large emerging economies enhanced voting rights because it could have affected the U.S.’s ...
Africa is Now a VERY Popular Destination For Western Ministers and High-Ranking Diplomats
For years, China was largely alone in regularly dispatching its foreign ministers and high-ranking diplomats to tour Africa. That is no longer the case as U.S., European and Russian diplomats are fanning out across the continent faster than they have in years.
Scholz Looks to South America to Reduce Germany’s Dependence on Chinese Critical Resources
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has spent the past few days crisscrossing South America in a bid to find alternative sources of critical minerals, notably lithium, that his country's powerful auto industry now relies predominantly on China to supply. Over the weekend, ...
Now It’s the EU’s Turn to Try and Change South Africa’s Mind About Russia and Upcoming Joint Naval Exercises With China
The European Union's top foreign policy official Josep Borrell is the latest foreign dignitary to pass through Pretoria in what appears to be a vain effort to persuade South Africa's international relations minister Naledi Pandor to reconsider Pretoria's stance on Russia's invasion of Ukraine and
Chinese Expert: Global North’s Sudden Concern about Global South Reflects Power Shift
As China’s decades-long focus on South-South cooperation results in strong relationships throughout the developing world, Global North powers like the United States and Japan are suddenly discovering their concern for the Global South in order to shore up their own fading influence.