The News Feed is curated by CGSP’s editors in Asia and Africa.
The Chinese Communist Party is not impressed with the "historic" announcement made at the G20 summit in New Delhi on Saturday that aims to build a vast multi-modal transportation corridor linking India to Europe via the Middle East.
The new railway, according to the CPC-run nationalist tabloid Global Times, is yet another case of "much said, little done" by the United States in an ongoing effort to "isolate China" and curtail Beijing's advances in the Middle East.
The proposed mega-project will integrate railway lines and port connections all the way from India to Europe across dozens of countries in between that will also enable the transport of green hydrogen and data along newly laid undersea cables.
The leaders from the various countries involved in the project did not provide any details on the cost or timing of such an ambitious initiative but were effusive about its potential:
A lively debate broke out online after the announcement as to whether the project is specifically aimed at countering China's Belt and Road Initiative.
U.S. and Western media outlets rushed to frame it as "an alternative to China's Belt and Road vision" or specifically intended to "counter the BRI."
But Evan Feigenbaum, vice president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and one of Washington's most experienced Asia Watchers, cautioned that is the wrong way to look at this kind of deal.
"The problem with “counter BRI” is that it is a US narrative, while local narratives are nearly always about multiplication/addition, not subtraction," he said in a post on X.
WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT? Biden is right when he says this is a "big deal," but that may be precisely the problem. It could be too big of a deal. The coordination task in building a project on this scale across countries and continents is unprecedented and both the U.S./EU don't exactly have a stellar track record building infrastructure in the Global South, much less on a scale as massive as this.
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Eric Olander
Until recently, there was never any doubt that a Chinese president would participate in major summits like the G20 or ASEAN. Chinese leaders in the post-Mao era saw their attendance at these events as a symbol of China's resurgence as a major world power.
That is apparently no longer the case as Xi Jinping is now carefully picking and choosing which of these fora he feels will maximize Beijing's interests. To that end, Josh Lipsky, the senior director of the Atlantic Council's GeoEconomics Center in Washington, said that economic considerations will influence the decision over whether to attend next year's G20 summit in Brasília:
No one knows quite why Xi didn’t show in India. It could be the need to be seen focusing on domestic problems, or China-India rivalry, or a broader signal about how China wants multilateralism to work after BRICS expansion. But one thing is clear: Xi didn’t think there was a price to pay for missing the meeting.
Next year, when Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva convenes world leaders, Xi may not be able to make the same calculation.
Eric Olander
The United States and the European Union are moving forward with a plan to upgrade the 1,300-kilometer Lobito rail corridor that links the copper and cobalt belts in Zambia and the DR Congo with the port of Lobito in Angola.
In separate announcements made on the sidelines of the G20 summit in New Delhi on Saturday, the U.S. and EU said that a feasibility study to expand the railway between Angola and Zambia will be undertaken.
This is the first update on the project since the United States announced a $250 million pledge to refurbish the line back in May.
This is the first major infrastructure project in Africa under the auspices of the U.S. Partnership for Global Infrastructure Investment (PGII) and the EU's Global Gateway program, which are both ostensibly aimed at competing with China's Belt and Road Initiative.
And early indications suggest that it's going to be difficult to persuade mining companies in the region to get behind the project. So far, only one company, Canada's Ivanhoe Mines, has said it plans to use the newly refurbished route.
WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT? It's notable that in both the U.S. and the EU statements, neither made any reference to mining or critical minerals, which is understandable given the somewhat awkward optics of this project. The fact is that this is the first major PGII/GG infrastructure initiative on the continent and it's a mine-to-port railway that is eerily similar to European infrastructure priorities in Africa during the colonial period.
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Eric Olander
U.S. President Joe Biden pushed back against the accusation that newly-elevated diplomatic ties with Vietnam are part of a larger effort to "contain China" or start a new "Cold War."
“I think we think too much in ... cold war terms,” Biden said at a news conference in Hanoi on Sunday. “It’s not about that. It’s about generating economic growth and stability in all parts of the world. And that’s what we’re trying to do.”
The President's remarks follow a whirlwind day where he met with Vietnam's Communist Party General Secretary Nguyễn Phú Trọng to oversee the elevation of diplomatic ties to Hanoi's highest-level, a comprehensive strategic partnership that puts Washington on par now with Beijing.
Despite the President's assurances that his eagerness to foster closer ties with Vietnam is not specifically about China, few observers really believe that given Washington's stepped-up effort to forge closer security ties with China's neighbors in both East and Southeast Asia.
For the Vietnamese, however, the political calculations are quite different. The enhancement of ties with the U.S. is just one of several upgrades that it has planned with major countries in the region, including Indonesia, Singapore and Australia.
While Hanoi's relations with Beijing are largely stable, with the exception of a bitter territorial dispute in the South China Sea, Vietnamese leaders are nonetheless keen to fortify their ties with other powers as part of a longheld great power hedging strategy.
It's also worth noting that while Vietnamese public opinion about China is decidedly negative, the leadership in Hanoi, particularly General Secretary Trọng, is far more open to engaging the Chinese -- both politically and economically.
WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT? There is no doubt this weekend's enhancement of U.S.-Vietnam diplomatic ties is going to add to Xi Jinping's anxiety about the U.S. encirclement of China in the Asia-Pacific region. While Vietnam will never be a full-fledged ally of the U.S., the increasingly close ties with Washington also mean that it will be more complicated for the Chinese to feel as if Hanoi is fully aligned with their worldview.
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Eric Olander
Hundreds of Vietnamese trucks carrying fresh fruit are backing up at Chinese border crossings due to newly introduced inspection requirements.
The timing of these new inspections is prompting speculation that it could be a form of retaliation against Vietnam for upgrading diplomatic ties with the United States on Sunday.
If that indeed is what's happening (and it's not certain), it would fit a larger pattern of China using inspections to intentionally slow trade from countries that it is upset with. In 2018, for example, Ford vehicles were inexplicably held up at Chinese ports, presumably in response to new tariffs imposed by the Trump administration on Chinese goods.
WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT? China is clearly anxious about closer U.S.-Vietnamese ties and while officials in Beijing haven't explicitly said so, a trade slowdown like what's happening now on the Vietnamese border could very well be their way of conveying that message without actually saying anything.
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Eric Olander
The Philippines Coast Guard and Navy successfully outmaneuvered a Chinese blockade to bring food and other provisions to a remote outpost in the South China Sea -- but not before several harrowing confrontations with Chinese vessels that appeared determined to prevent the Filipino vessels from passing.
Chinese fishing vessels, known as the maritime militia, also took part in Friday's stand-off with Philippines ships that had to move quickly to avoid being rammed and to make their way through more than a dozen Chinese vessels.
The Chinese Coast Guard said the Philippines supply boats and two coast guard ships had illegally entered its waters near the Second Thomas Shoal, part of the larger South China Sea territory that China claims for itself -- a point that is fiercely opposed by the Philippines and other countries in the region that also have claims to portions of the South China Sea.
Meantime overhead, a U.S. Air Force P-8 Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft closely monitored the situation in the event that the Philippines vessels called on the U.S. for assistance as part of the two countries' mutual defense treaty.
WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT? The intensity of the showdowns between the Chinese and Philippines Coast Guards appears to be increasing, raising the chances of an accident or other confrontation that could lead to the intervention of the U.S. Navy, which is now on standby should Manila call for its assistance.
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Eric Olander
In this image taken by the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG), seven Chinese vessels, including unmarked "maritime militia" ships, surrounded a pair of PCG ships during a re-supply mission on Friday.
Eric Olander
Zambian President Haikinde Hichilema landed in the southern Chinese megacity of Shenzhen on Sunday to kick off a six-day visit to China that will include highly-anticipated talks with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping to finalize the details of a debt restructuring deal signed last June.
Chinese creditors own an estimated two-thirds of Zambia's bilateral debt and played a central role in more than two years of negotiations that resulted in the deal that was agreed to in Paris earlier this summer.
Hichilema's challenge this week, according to Zambian scholar Emmanuel Matambo, researcher director at the Centre for Africa-China Studies at the University of Johannesburg, is to keep Beijing engaged in the debt restructuring process while at the same time try to persuade the Chinese government to provide new development financing:
The president is also scheduled to meet with Chinese investors to try and entice them to invest in Zambia's mining, energy and infrastructure sectors.
WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT? This trip is going to be critical for both countries to try and close the debt restructuring deal and put it behind them. China's critics have long blamed Beijing for dragging out the process, while Hichilema is coming under increasing pressure at home for letting this drag on. While the deal may have been agreed to back in June, it still needs to be finalized by the various creditors, which is what he's hopefully going to do this week.
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Eric Olander
South Africa is reportedly in negotiation with the Chinese electric vehicle giant BYD to open a manufacturing plant in the country, according to the cabinet. BYD, China’s best-selling car brand, launched its first e-vehicle in SA last year. South Africa has a robust auto-building sector, which includes a plant by another Chinese automaker, BAIC, which produces 100,000 vehicles per year. (ENGINEERING NEWS)
The Chinese tech giant Huawei has opened a cloud data center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, following the establishment of a regional headquarters in the kingdom earlier this year. The center will support AI applications and language models in Arabic, as well as Saudi government services. It is Huawei’s 30th cloud center globally. The company plans to invest $400 million in the Saudi cloud sector in the next five years. (REUTERS)
The IMF’s Managing Director, Kristalina Georgieva, said she had “very productive and substantive discussions with the Chinese leadership” during a recent visit to Beijing. She met with Premier Li Qiang, Vice Premier He Lifeng, Central Bank Governor Pan Gongsheng, and Finance Minister Liu Kun, as well as with the head of the BRICS-led New Development Bank, Dilma Rousseff. “I am grateful to China for recognizing the role of the IMF at the center of the global financial safety net,” she said. (AL JAZEERA)
The parliament of Vanuatu has elected Sato Kilman as prime minister, following a vote of no confidence against his predecessor Ishmael Kalsakau on the grounds that he endangered Vanuatu’s non-aligned status by signing a security pact with Australia. Opposition parties charged that the pact endangered relations with China, the island country’s biggest creditor. The U.S. and its allies have tried to get strategically-positioned Pacific Island states not to forge alliances with China in the context of regional competition. (REUTERS)
Kenyan President William Ruto linked Africa's worsening debt crisis with the fight against climate change. “If you don’t solve the debt issue, you can’t solve the climate issue,” he told the Financial Times at the Africa Climate Summit. He added that China is central to that discussion: "they cannot walk away from this conversation about debt distress." (FINANCIAL TIMES)
New ambassadors from Saudi Arabia and Iran arrived in each other's capitals on Tuesday, marking the formal restoration of diplomatic ties between the two Gulf rivals. Ties between the two countries ruptured in 2016 but were revived in March when the sides agreed to a China-brokered détente. (AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE)
A high-level Venezuelan delegation led by Vice President Delcy Rodriguez and Oil Minister Pedro Tellechea arrived in Shanghai on Tuesday in a bid to revive the South American country's oil sector. The two are reportedly looking to close JV deals between their respective national oil companies but it won't be easy. China has already lent Venezuela $60 billion, quite a bit of which remains unpaid. (BLOOMBERG)
China and Indonesia are reportedly discussing expanding the controversial Chinese Bandung-to-Jakarta high-speed rail project to Indonesia’s second-biggest city of Surabaya, over 700km away. This follows Chinese Premier Li Qiang taking a trial run of a section of the yet-to-be-completed line. The project has been plagued by delays, cost overruns, and local resistance. (REUTERS)
Bank of China, the most internationalized of China’s four state-owned banks, opened a branch in the Saudi capital of Riyadh. The launch comes two years after first getting approval from the kingdom. Chen Weiqing, China’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia, said the opening reflected a “new stage” of cooperation between the two countries. RMB internationalization is reportedly key to the expansion, with several companies, including the power giant ACWA, signing Memoranda of Understanding with BOC covering yuan use and green financing. (SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST)
Eric Olander
Han Zhen
Chinese Prime Minister Li Qiang sought to soothe tensions with its neighbors in Southeast Asia during his keynote address on Wednesday at the ASEAN leaders summit in Jakarta.
Li did not specifically reference the recent confrontations with the Philippines in the South China Sea, nor did he mention the controversial map that China released last week, which further angered a number of Southeast Asian countries that have ongoing boundary disputes with Beijing.
Instead, he said, "China and ASEAN have succeeded in blazing a correct path of long-term good-neighborliness and friendship." Li's speech also drew on a number of longstanding Chinese talkings that reference the current geopolitical turbulence, including "the world is undergoing profound changes unseen in a century."
It's unlikely that Li's bland speech will make much of an impression on his fellow leaders at the summit, especially after Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr.'s far more point remarks on Tuesday that directly addressed the South China Sea crisis -- even though he seemingly went out of his way not to mention China by name:
While President Marcos was outspoken in his defense of Philippines agency in the duel with China over contested maritime territory, it appears that he did not want to escalate the issue further at the summit.
Manila did not request ASEAN to issue a joint statement on the South China Sea, making it highly unlikely that ASEAN will directly respond to the crisis.
WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT? As tense as relations are between China and several of its ASEAN neighbors, this week's summit in Jakarta is probably not going to be the venue where those differences are aired. ASEAN is very much a consensus-based organization that has long sought to avoid divisive disputes among its members and the major powers.
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Eric Olander
Whether by coincidence or design, three Southeast Asian countries launched high-profile joint military exercises this week with various major powers while leaders from these countries met in Jakarta for the ongoing ASEAN summit.
On Sunday, the Chinese and Thai navies kicked off the annual Blue Strike 2023 joint exercises that includes a number of advanced Chinese warships, submarines and hundreds of troops.
And in Indonesia, thousands of army soldiers from the U.S. and Australia took part in joint jungle training exercises with their Indonesian counterparts as part of Super Garuda 2023.
Also, this week, U.S., Japanese and Philippines navy forces conducted anti-submarine warfare drills followed by a first-ever joint sail in the South China Sea.
That joint sail between the U.S. and the Philippines navies definitely got a lot of attention in Beijing, where there's mounting anxiety over the increasingly close military ties between Washington and Manila.
Communist Party-run media, however, is trying to downplay the issue by showcasing the views of prominent scholars like Zhuo Hua from Beijing Foreign Studies University and Ding Duo from the China Academy of South China Sea Studies, who made the case in the Chinese-language edition of Global Times on Tuesday that the U.S. is an unreliable partner for the Philippines:
This marked the first time that Philippine and U.S. Navy ships crossed through the waters of the South China Sea west of Palawan Island in the Philippines, which is adjacent to the South China Sea's Spratly Islands.
This move by the United States and the Philippines is highly provocative and carries strong symbolic significance. Its purpose appears to be to disrupt ASEAN's stance on the South China Sea issue. Since the Marcos government came to power, the Philippines has taken a series of actions aligning itself closely with the United States, including joint military exercises and provocative actions near Thitu Island.
The joint maritime patrol in the South China Sea by the United States and the Philippines at this moment sends a signal of strengthening the U.S.-Philippines alliance to the outside world. Simultaneously, it conveys a message to ASEAN countries and may attempt to influence ASEAN's position on the South China Sea issue.
It's true that in the short term, the United States and the Philippines have found common interests and cooperation opportunities. However, as the objective dynamics of regional power evolve, their interests may eventually diverge when the balance of power shifts.
WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT? The optics of all this military firepower on display this week seem to convey the sober message that if diplomacy fails, then today's joint exercises could quickly become tomorrow's reality.
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Eric Olander
The United States joined a growing list of countries to reject China's territorial claims detailed in its new standard map that was published last week.
State Department Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel addressed the issues on Tuesday at the daily press briefing and said Beijing's claims are "unlawful" and called on China to settle territorial disputes in the South China Sea in accordance with the international law of the sea.
While U.S. criticism of China's controversial territorial claims was widely expected, the ferocity of the pushback against the map by Asian countries is more surprising, according to Prashanth Parameswaran, deputy head of research at the Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm BowerGroupAsia and author of the popular ASEANWONK newsletter:
It is rare to see such a series of quick coordinated statements among Southeast Asian states, with five countries issuing statements in the span of just four days.
While the Philippines and Vietnam have generally been the two more vocal South China Sea claimants in Southeast Asia, Malaysia, which has seen the issue be in the spotlight a few times already during Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s first year in office, was the first to issue a response.
Even Brunei, whose responses to China are often the quietest and the hardest to detect publicly among the four Southeast Asian claimant states, issued a statement of its own.
WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT? The timing of the map's release was just reckless in terms of ruining whatever positive vibe there was coming out of the BRICS summit in Johannesburg last week and it likely contributed to Xi Jinping's decision to stay home from both the ASEAN and G20 summits.
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Eric Olander
China dispatched a high-level Communist Party (CPC) emissary to Vietnam days before U.S. President Joe Biden is set to arrive when he is expected to upgrade diplomatic ties with Hanoi.
Liu Jianchao, head of the CPC's international liaison department, met with the General Secretary of Vietnam's Communist Party, Nguyễn Phú Trọng, on Tuesday.
The official readout of the meeting, according to Vietnamese state media, was rather bland with few details of what they talked about. However, the timing of the visit suggests that Hanoi wants to convey its assurances that Biden's visit is not intended to roil ties with Beijing.
Biden will make a stopover in Vietnam on his way home from the G20 summit in New Delhi and is expected to upgrade bilateral ties to a “strategic partnership,” or possibly even a “comprehensive strategic partnership” – the top tier in Vietnam’s diplomatic hierarchy and the same level that Hanoi currently has with Beijing.
WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT? Vietnamese leaders have moved quickly this year to bolster diplomatic ties not only with the U.S. but also with a number of Asian neighbors in what is likely a hedge against China. So far this year, Hanoi has elevated relations with South Korea, Singapore and Australia, with Indonesia next.
SUGGESTED READING:
Eric Olander
China's steadily worsening ties with India soured further on Tuesday when Beijing's ambassador to Kathmandu, Chen Song, criticized New Delhi's "policies towards Nepal and other neighbors" as "not so friendly."
Chen's remarks sparked an angry response in the Indian media, which accused the ambassador of having a "foul mouth."
Eric Olander
The Chinese ambassador to Niger, Jing Feng, met with the transition Prime Minister Ali Mahamane Lamine Zene on Monday and offered to serve as a mediator to help defuse the escalating political crisis in the West African country.
“The Chinese government intends to play the role of a mediator, with full respect for the regional countries, to find a political solution to this Nigerien crisis,” Jiang said.
But it's not clear if Jiang's offer will even be necessary now that it looks increasingly likely French forces will withdraw following talks with the French embassy in Niamey.
WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT? China is becoming increasingly confident in its abilities to serve as an international mediator following last March's successful reunion between Iran and Saudi Arabia that Beijing helped facilitate. In Niger, China is also well-positioned to make this kind of offer, given that its position there is very strong relative to those of other major (Western) powers that are under pressure.
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Eric Olander
Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen arrived in Eswatini on Tuesday for a three-day visit to mark the tiny landlocked country's 55th anniversary of its independence.
The visit is symbolically important given that the southern African kingdom is Taiwan's last diplomatic ally on the continent and one of only 13 in the world.
Normally when Tsai or other senior Taiwan officials travel abroad, China responds forcefully by insisting that the receiving country respect the One China Policy. But this time, it's different.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry has said nothing about Tsai's visit and even the embassy in Pretoria that oversees ties with Eswatini has remained surprisingly quiet. (REUTERS)
Eric Olander
The pace of news business development deals between Saudi Arabia and China appears to be gaining momentum amid a slate of new announcements this week, highlighting increasingly close financial ties between the two countries:
Eric Olander
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