CGSP Podcasts
Weekly discussions with key thought leaders about China’s engagement in Africa and the Global South.
podcast
Global Gateway in Africa: Europe’s Answer to China’s Belt and Road
The European Commission's Global Gateway initiative will turn three years old in December. The $300 billion infrastructure initiative was launched with great fanfare to provide developing countries in Africa and elsewhere with an alternative to China's Belt and Road Initiative.
China’s Paying a High Cost for Its “All-Weather” Relationship With Pakistan
Chinese Premier Li Qiang is in Pakistan this week to get ties with its South Asian neighbor back on track after a series of terrorist attacks this year. The latest incident occurred earlier this month near the airport in the southern ...
Judd Devermont on the State of U.S. Foreign Policy in Africa
U.S. President Joe Biden was supposed to be in Angola this week, fulfilling a pledge to visit the continent he made back at the 2022 U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit. But with massive hurricanes pounding the southern United States, the president was forced ...
Beyond Railways and Ports: China’s Evolving Lending Strategy in Africa
Chinese lending to African countries rebounded in a big way in 2023 after seven consecutive years of decline. Last year, Chinese lenders approved loans totaling $4.61 billion to African borrowers, a dramatic increase over the $922 million lent in 2022, according ...
Negotiating Chinese Infrastructure Deals: Lessons From Two African Countries
Africa is the only region in the world where access to electricity is actually shrinking. Prolonged drought across large swathes of the continent has severely impacted hydropower production, triggering large-scale electricity outages — most notably in Zambia.
Railroads and Rivalries in Southern Africa
The U.S. and China plan to spend billions of dollars refurbishing key railway lines in southern Africa that link critical resource mining hubs in Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo with ports on both sides of the continent.
China’s Response to the Wars in the Middle East
The rapidly escalating conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon prompted a strong reaction from the Chinese government this week. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with his Lebanese counterpart Abdallah Bou Habib on Monday at the UN in New York ...
[WEEK IN REVIEW] Illegal Chinese Miners in Ghana Have Been Warned
China's new ambassador to Ghana, Tong Defa, spoke out forcefully this week to condemn the ongoing problem of illegal mining in the country and issued a fresh warning to his compatriots that if they are caught breaking the law, the embassy ...
How Persian Gulf Countries Are Responding to the U.S.-China Rivalry
For much of the past thirty years, since the end of the Cold War, the United States has been largely unrivaled in its power in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf. Today, that is no longer the case as the ...
Can China Help Africa Become the Next Factory of the World?
For decades, African governments have tried to lure Chinese manufacturing companies to set up factories in their countries with the promise of an abundant supply of low-cost labor. Other than a few high-profile companies, Chinese companies, for the most part, have ...
Economic Giants Align: Brazil’s Growing Partnership with China
2024 has been a pivotal year for Brazil-China relations. Last month marked 50 years of diplomatic ties between the two nations, and in celebration of this milestone, President Xi Jinping is expected to visit Brazil by the end of the year. ...
[DOUBLE EPISODE] The China-Africa Summit Debrief
The three-day Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) summit wrapped up in Beijing on Friday. The big headline from this year's gathering was the announcement that China will provide $50.7 billion in financing to African countries over the next three years.