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China in Africa: the BBC’s Annoying Interview of Liu Guijin
It’s not often that senior Chinese officials make themselves available for interviews with the international media, especially in English. So when I first heard that the BBC World Service’s “Business Today” radio program was to interview Beijing’s top diplomat on African Affairs Ambassador Liu Guijin …
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Rant: China Might Want to Consider Soft Power Too
By any measure China’s awe inspiring embrace of Africa is impressive. Let’s put aside the staggering financial statistics on how many billions of dollars Beijing is spreading across the continent or even the scale of its natural resource haul. Honestly, there is no comparison because …
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The Chinese in Africa: Meet Mister Chen
Scan the headlines about the Chinese in Africa and the predominant theme focuses almost exclusively on the infrastructure-for-natural resource deals. The Chinese are signing multi-billion dollar oil and mineral deals up and down the continent while spending a comparable fortune building desperately needed infrastructure in …
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The West’s Tragic Blindspot in Africa
I have been living in Kinshasa for almost three weeks now and since I landed here I’ve been asked countless times what I find the most interesting/bizarre/unusual about life in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. For me, the answer is clear. It’s not the …
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[PHOTOS] China’s Infrastructure Building Machine Comes Home
The great Chinese infrastructure parade rolled right under my window and I jumped on the extremely rare opportunity to take some pictures of the operation. This is quite exceptional in the DR Congo as it is both culturally and legally not permitted to take peoples’ …