The News Feed is curated by CGSP’s editors in Asia and Africa.
Eric Olander
Eric Olander
TWEET TRANSLATION:The [Saudi Telecom Company] launched its new cloud computing joint venture with China's Alibaba which includes two data centers in Riyadh. The company will provide cloud computing services to meet growing demand in Saudi Arabia in the retail, financial, tech and internet sectors.
Eric Olander
Eric Olander
Huawei's now independent high-end smartphone brand HONOR, which was spun off in 2020 in response to crippling U.S. sanctions, is now setting its sights on the South African mobile market.
The company said it's been investing heavily to build brand awareness in SA, and it's aiming to grab 10% of the market within the first year of launch and a staggering 30% within the next three years.
That will not be easy given how crowded and competitive South Africa's mobile device sector is these days with big players like Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo, and even HONOR's former parent company Huawei all battling it out.
HONOR and other brands are also facing supply chain constraints with shipping times from China now as long as 3-4 weeks.
Eric Olander
China's top diplomat for Africa, Wu Peng, embarked on a seven-nation tour of the continent on Tuesday, his first visit to the continent since last November.
He's far more active on Twitter than most other senior Chinese diplomats, so it's quite likely he'll post regular updates throughout his trip.
The Foreign Ministry has not provided any details of his agenda or why those specific countries were selected for the visit.
Eric Olander
Chinese embassies around the world, particularly in small and middle-sized countries, are accustomed to using aggressive tactics with local media whenever they feel an outlet has violated one of Beijing's so-called "red lines" (particularly on issues like Taiwan, Tibet, and Xinjiang). Threats of diplomatic retaliation are often enough to get a media channel to either retract or unpublish an offending story.
While those tactics may work in some countries, that's definitely not the case in Israel.
Israeli lawmakers are now stepping in to defend Jerusalem Post Editor in Chief Yaakov Katz for his interview with Taiwan's Foreign Minister Joseph Wu and accusing China of attempting "to damage freedom of speech in Israel" with its persistent demands for Katz to take down the interview.
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Eric Olander
Chinese oil major Sinopec and Algerian oil giant Sonatrach signed a half-a-billion dollar deal to drill for oil and gas in the Zaarzaitine field, 1500km from Algiers. Under the new agreement, the two sides will produce 95 million barrels. The timing of the deal is notable given the heightened interest in Algeria's energy reserves, particularly by European countries looking for alternative suppliers as they wean themselves off Russian imports. (XINHUA)
The boom days for battery metals are over according to a client note published by the U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs. Abundant supplies of cobalt, lithium, and nickel will lead to price drops over the next two years and lessen what's become a major point of competition between China and Global North governments. But this is an ominous forecast for the DRC, Zimbabwe, Indonesia, and Chile which are all major exporters of these materials. (SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST)
China and Mexico have resumed direct cargo flights that were halted last year. A commercial carrier bound for Mexico City took off from the Henan provincial capital of Zhengzhou on Saturday. Now, the Mexican embassy in Beijing is working on getting passenger flights going again after direct service was suspended in 2019. (LA PRENSA LATINA)
The China-founded Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) announced it will not hold its October annual meeting in Moscow, as originally planned, in the latest indication Beijing is bending to international outrage over Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The meeting will now be held online instead. Tuesday's move follows the AIIB's decision in March to halt all activities in Russia and Belarus "pending a review". (NIKKEI ASIA)
Long-simmering disputes between China and the Philippines flared anew on Tuesday after Manila filed a formal diplomatic protest against Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea. The Philippines are angry over a Chinese fishing ban in waters they claim are theirs. Foreign affairs officials also said this week they summoned a Chinese diplomat to protest against alleged harassment of Filipino fishing vessels by the Chinese coast guard. (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
There are signs of progress that tensions are beginning to ease along the so-called "Line of Actual Control" that divides India and China. Officials from both countries on Tuesday agreed to to hold the next round of disengagement talks between senior military officers. Since 2020, this part of the Himalayan border region has been a flashpoint between the two countries, with regular skirmishes that have led to dozens of casualties on both sides. (THE HINDU)
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is in Papua New Guinea (PNG) for the second-to-last stop of his 10-day South Pacific tour. Wang arrived in Port Morseby at a sensitive time in the run-up to next month's national elections. Former Prime Minister Peter O'Neill, who's running again, said Wang's visit is not welcome in the current environment. Wang will next head to Timor Leste before returning to China on Saturday. (ABC NEWS)
The United States and Japan held their first strategic dialogue on Southeast Asian affairs as part of the two countries' efforts to mount a challenge to China's dominance in ASEAN. Wednesday's talks came just one week after U.S. President Joe Biden visited Japan and unveiled the new Indo-Pacific Economic Framework that both countries hope will weaken China's dominance in the region. "Southeast Asia is key to realizing a free and open Indo-Pacific," Foreign Ministry Press Secretary Hikariko Ono told a press conference after the virtual talks. (KYODO NEWS)
China's number two diplomat at the United Nations, Dai Bing, called on the Security Council to condemn the surging violence in the eastern DR Congo. Tensions in the already volatile east have soared in recent days amid a bitter diplomatic feud that's erupted between the DRC and Rwanda with both sides accusing the other of destabilizing the region. Dai urged the AU "and other regional organizations" to get involved. (XINHUA)
Eric Olander
Iran's once steady business of selling large quantities of oil to China's independent refineries may soon become the latest casualty of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
For years, China provided Iran a vital cash flow by supplying the Chinese with as much as 7% of their total oil imports. Much of that oil was laundered through transshipments via Oman, the UAE, and Malaysia among other countries, circumventing U.S. sanctions.
But now that whole business is in jeopardy as China's independent refineries, known as "teapots" that are largely clustered in the northern industrial province of Shandong, are preparing to take delivery of almost a million metric tons of Russian Urals crude in a couple of weeks.
These deliveries will accelerate the decline in Iranian oil shipments to China which have already fallen by 25-30% since the early stages of the war in March. It's not surprising then that the Iranians are now out in the market trying to compete directly with the discounted Russian prices, offering their own crude "at a good price."
Opportunity for the U.S.? If Washington is looking for an opportunity to further squeeze Tehran by tightening the sanctions, this might be a good time to do it as the once-reliable Chinese cash flow dries up... at least for now.
But China has to be careful: Although Iran is by no means China's most important geopolitical partner in the Persian Gulf (contrary to the prevailing perception among many in Washington), ensuring its economic viability is undeniably very important to Beijing. A destabilized Iran is potentially dangerous to China's other more important relationships in the region, namely Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and even Israel.
The bottom line: While the teapot refineries are important, they are still just a bit player -- handling around 20% of the country's oil imports. So, watch for China's powerful oil majors to step in and slurp up heavily discounted Iranian crude, if for no other reason as a thin economic lifeline for the Ayatollahs.
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Eric Olander
Conservative Republicans in the U.S. Senate are well-known for their disdain for Iran. They're also equally opposed to the Communist Party of China. So, it's a no-brainer then to combine the two into a single piece of legislation.
Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn along with half a dozen other GOP colleagues, including outspoken Iran/China hawks Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, introduced the Iran China Accountability Act "to call attention to Iran’s ties with Communist China."
The legislation that's now with the House of Representatives would make it a prerequisite for any future Iran nuclear deal that Tehran "terminate all agreements involving the transfer of funds from China" and require that Iran end any security ties with the PLA.
Curiously, the legislation also demands that "the CCP ceases the incarceration of Uyghurs" which is somewhat random given there's no apparent connection between the situation in Xinjiang and the Iran nuclear deal.
This whole exercise is entirely performative because even if the legislation passed the House (unlikely), there's very little chance it would make it past the Democratic-controlled Senate and zero chance that President Joe Biden would sign it into law.
But what's important here is how the GOP is fine-tuning its messaging on both Iran and China in the run-up to the Congressional mid-term elections later this year and the presidential campaign that will begin in 2023.
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Eric Olander
Chinese diplomats around the world have a well-earned reputation for personally calling journalists and their editors (including this publication) to express their objections, often rudely, when there is coverage they don't like -- usually about a red-line issue like Taiwan, Hong Kong, or Xinjiang among others.
Well, someone in the Chinese embassy in Israel apparently thought they could intimidate Yaakov Katz, the editor in chief of the Jerusalem Post newspaper, with a phone call to demand that he unpublish an interview he did earlier this week with Taiwan Foreign Minister Joseph Wu.
While that Chinese tactic does work with editors in some countries, the embassy clearly did not understand what it was up against when they tried to pick a fight with Katz.
It's going to take a lot to intimidate a JPost Editor in Chief: This is a guy who probably gets dozens of far more menacing threats every day given where he lives so to try and bully him with threats of a diplomatic downgrade is just silly.
A lot of Chinese diplomats really struggle with the concept of an independent press: it's revealing that the embassy staffer who made the call threatened to downgrade relations with Israel unless the story was retracted shows that s/he fundamentally did not understand that as an independent publication, JPost is in no way affiliated with the government.
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Eric Olander
The head of Algeria's National Assembly, Salih Gojil, met on Tuesday with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yang, chairman of China's rubber-stamp legislature known by its acronym CPPCC. Based on the read-out from the official Algerian Presse Service, it appears that the meeting was more about relationship building since there was no mention of any substantive issues. (ALGERIE PRESSE SERVICE -- in Arabic)
Eric Olander
Kenya's mobile phone market shrank by 9% in the first quarter of the year, according to new data from technology consultancy IDC, but even a drop that large didn't budge Transsion's Tecno brand from the top spot in the market.
Tecno led smartphone sales in the January-March period with 27.1% of the market, followed by Samsung (23%) and Safaricom (13%). The Chinese company's lead in feature phone sales was even more pronounced where it dominates with 37% of the market, followed closely by its sister-brand Itel (36%) and Nokia (23%).
Eric Olander
This week marked the five-year anniversary of the Chinese-financed and built Standard Gauge Railway that officially launched on May 31, 2017. The milestone was largely ignored by the Kenyan press but was noted with some enthusiasm in the Chinese media. (AFRICA DIRECT -- Chinese)
Eric Olander
The U.S. Summit of the Americas is set to get underway in Los Angeles on Monday and no one seems more eager for the event to get started than China.
Chinese state media outlets are relishing the controversy over the U.S. refusal to invite Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba to the gathering and the backlash that's ensued with other countries including Mexico threatening to boycott.
China regards the summit, much like the recent ASEAN Special Summit, as a U.S. effort to create Cold War-style coalitions to bolster Washington's power and contain China's growing influence in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Eric Olander
Eric Olander
China's state-run media responded angrily to the characterization by international media that Foreign Minister Wang Yi's ongoing South Pacific tour encountered a snag after the coalition of 10-Pacific Islander Countries refused to endorse a Chinese development proposal that also included security provisions.
The nationalist tabloid Global Times said that the "Western media's assertions of China "suffering a setback" with the South Pacific island nations" is "grossly inaccurate" and an "attempt to drive a wedge between parties."
"Negotiations take time and efforts from all parties," the paper explained, "how can carrying out that necessary negotiation process in a professional and respectful manner be a failure?"
The irony, of course, with this article is that if the same coalition of Pacific islander countries publicly rebuffed a U.S., Australian, or a European proposal the way they did China's, there's no doubt Global Times would be among the first out with a tweet and an article ridiculing their Western adversary.
Eric Olander
It's been one week since the United States unveiled its new Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) agenda that is ostensibly intended to build and foster deeper U.S. economic engagement in Asia but is widely seen as Washington's latest effort to confront China's dominance in the region.
In all, 14-countries are now members of IPEF (Fiji just joined) who will all now spend the next 1-2 years negotiating the details of what will likely be a complex agreement (that incidentally will not include any preferential U.S. market access). In the meantime, Chinese scholars have been thinking about what IPEF means for Beijing and how the Chinese leadership should respond.
On Monday, Cui Fan, a well-known professor at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, published a lengthy, six-point argument on WeChat on why he's not particularly worried about IPEF but why the government, nonetheless, still needs to take it seriously:
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Eric Olander
Two big stories this week about the Chinese electric vehicle giant BYD:
BATTERIES: Rather than buy lithium, a key ingredient in EV batteries, on the open market and face steadily rising prices, the company instead will buy six of its own mines in Africa. (THE PAPER -- in Chinese)
DEALERS: BYD will expand its dealer network in Brazil with 100 new locations before the end of next year. “This marks a further expansion of BYD’s passenger car presence in Latin America and the Caribbean,” the company said in a statement. (CAIXIN)
Eric Olander
You can see from the expression on visiting Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong's face the palpable relief from the reception that she received in Fiji over the weekend and, no doubt, to the news that as a group, Pacific Island Countries balked at China's plan to deepen its engagement in the region.
Wong rushed to Fiji to meet with Prime Minister Bainimarama before his meetings on Monday with Wang and emerged from the talks with a massive grin on her face (photo).
Clearly, Wang's Pacific tour motivated Canberra to re-engage its Pacific neighbors. "We want to bring new energy and more resources to the Pacific," Wong said in Suva.
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Eric Olander
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz became the latest Western leader to warn about the purported systemic risks to the global economy posed by Chinese lending to developing countries.
Chancellor Scholz addressed the issue at an event in Stuttgart on Friday in response to a comment that Europe had stood by while China built large-scale infrastructure across Africa which had also led to a sizable increase in Beijing's influence on the continent:
"There is a really serious danger that the next major debt crisis in the global south will stem from loans that China has granted worldwide and doesn't have a full overview of because there are so many players involved.
That would then plunge both China and the global south into a major economic and financial crisis and, incidentally, would not leave the rest of the world unaffected, to put it politely. So this is a serious concern."
The German leader added that he supports China to become a member of the Paris Club although there's little indication Beijing is interested in joining the organization that requires far more loan transparency than Chinese creditors are accustomed to providing.
Eric Olander
Transsion's Tecno unit slipped a spot to #6 in Brand Africa's annual ranking of the most admired brands but it still remained firmly in the top ten and was the highest-ranked of any Chinese company.
Two other phone brands, Transsion's Infinix (#25) and Oppo (#42) were the only other Chinese brands in the top half of the survey that was heavily dominated by European and American companies.
Separately, the Chinese-owned Kenya-based e-commerce company Kilimall is now Africa's sixth-most visited online shopping service, according to new data from Statista.
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Eric Olander
Up until a few years ago, the annual African Business Heroes (ABH) competition was a huge deal, generating massive online excitement. Today, well, not so much.
In fact, it's hard to tell that the ABH contest that's underway again is even the same competition that it was back when celebrity Chinese CEO Jack Ma first launched the program in 2017. Since then, Ma has been sidelined by both the Chinese government/Communist Party and was edged out of Alibaba.
Now, as evident from a recent Tweet by Chen Xiadong, China's ambassador to South Africa, even saying his or the company's name is no longer politically correct (although it's worth noting that Chen did use an archive photo of Ma).
Eric Olander
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