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: Iraq
The China-Mediterranean Observer: Assessing the Impact of the Chinese Defense Minister’s Recent Visit to Iran
We start this issue of the ChinaMed Observer reporting on the visit to Iran made by the Chinese Minister of Defence, Wei Fenghe. During the visit on April 27th Wei met with several high-ranking Iranian officials, including President Seyed Ebrahim Raisi, Minister of Defense General Mohammad-Reza Gharayi ...
How Will Ukraine Affect China’s Global Role? Arab Columnists Weigh In
The conflict in Ukraine is causing a flurry of analysis in the Arabic-language media, and a lot of this writing also focuses on how the conflict is affecting China’s global role. One of the dominant themes is that the Ukraine crisis ...
The BRI Challenges Our Assumptions of How the World Fits Together
A fascinating new report emerged from the Green Financing and Development Center at Fudan University in Shanghai this week, tracking trends in China’s Belt and Road investment. The big news is that while global BRI spending (both foreign direct investment and loans) has remained stable at roughly ...
The China-Mediterranean Observer: Greece Settles Port Dispute With China But Concerns Linger
Although many countries, such as Iraq, Algeria, and Syria, continue to underline the positive outcomes of their relations with China, the search through the media outlets of the wider Mediterranean also showed that there are raising concerns over a rising Chinese political presence in the MENA region, ...
China Wants to Be a Big Player in the Middle East
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's latest six-nation tour of the Middle East and Turkey revealed that Beijing now aims to play a much larger role in the region. During his trip, Wang signed a high-profile ...
Analysis from Cobus van Staden
Xi Bets on Global South in Moscow
China Tries to Calm U.S. Anxieties About New Pact With Iran
One of China's most prominent Iran scholars, Fan Hongda from the Shanghai Institute of International Relations, published a column in the Communist Party-controlled English-language newspaper China Daily that appears intended to try and calm fears in the United States and to send the message that ...
China Donates Vaccines to UN Peacekeepers and International Olympic Committee
China will donate COVID-19 vaccines to the United Nations for use by peacekeepers stationed around the world, according to Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian at the regular press briefing in Beijing on Friday. Zhao did not mention how many doses would be offered or when they ...
Chinese COVID-19 Vaccines Arrive in Guinea
Guinea on Wednesday received a donation of 200,000 Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine doses from China as it seeks help from multiple sources to halt the spread of the coronavirus, according to foreign affairs minister Ibrahima Khalil Kaba. Officials in Conakry are also expecting a shipment of ...
200,000 Chinese Vaccines Land in Algeria
Algeria's national vaccination drive, already up and running, got a shot in the arm on Wednesday with the arrival of 200,000 Sinopharm jabs donated by China. Algiers kicked off its vaccination campaign last month using a mix of supplies from China, Russia, and AstraZeneca.
Brazil is Running Low on Chinese Vaccine Supplies Prompting Concerns Beijing May Be Playing Politics
Brazil is running out of its supply of the Chinese-made CoronaVac COVID-19 vaccines and apparently, Beijing hasn't approved the shipment of ingredients needed to make more. Only 6 million doses out of a 46 million dose order have arrived and those stocks are ...