China Halts Arms Sales to South Sudan (Wait, What?)

In June, China’s ambassador to Juba publicly declared that Beijing would not sell weapons to any side of the ongoing civil conflict in South Sudan. So it was a bit of a surprise when it was discovered that $38 million of weapons had been sold by the Chinese state-owned weapons company Norinco to the South Sudanese government. Now, in September, the Chinese government has cancelled that contract and now says it’s living up to its original promise to embargo all arms sales.

Watch the Al Jazeera English report referenced in the podcast where China’s ambassador to South Sudan publicly states back in June that Beijing will not sell weapons to any of the warring parties in South Sudan.

And then, don’t miss Ilya Gridneff’s excellent reporting in Bloomberg that details Beijing’s new ‘new’ policy on arms transfers to South Sudan after Norinco’s summer 2014 weapons sale was revealed publicly.