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Why Is China Engaging Africa? Chinese Expert Weighs In

In the run-up to the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation summit, many tried to parse the factors driving China’s engagement with the continent. The consensus among Western commentators was a combination of Chinese need for mineral resources and their need to build political coalitions.

How China’s Changing Economy is Impacting Africa?

Back in the early 2000s, when Chinese engagement in Africa started to ramp up, China was enjoying double-digit growth and devoured vast quantities of African oil, minerals, and timber to feed its surging manufacturing sector. ...

Prominent Chinese Professor Explains Why the U.S., Not China is Actually to Blame for Global South Debt Distress

One of China's foremost scholars on international debt says accusations that Beijing engages in predatory lending, or "debt trap diplomacy" do not align with the facts -- and that it's actually the U.S., or more precisely the U.S. dollar, that's really to blame.

China Should Not Compromise With Western Creditors in Zambian Debt Relief, Says Prominent Scholar

Zambia’s debt renegotiation is being delayed by barriers within China’s banking system and by Western pressure. So says Professor Tang Xiaoyang, a prominent expert on Chinese overseas development finance and the director of the Department of International Relations at Tsinghua University, in an interesting interview with the ...

Chinese Scholar Makes the Case That It’s Bond Debt, Not Bilateral Loans That Trap Developing Countries

A new research paper by prominent Tsinghua University development finance scholar Tang Xiaoyang provides the most detailed argument to date in defense of China's bilateral lending to Global South countries and how mostly Western-initiated bonds are the real culprit in burdening poor states with unmanageable debts.

Analysis from Cobus van Staden

BRICS Announces Numerous New Initiatives

The BRICS group wrapped up its two-day leaders’ summit in Rio de Janeiro on Monday. The summit’s final communique is a 16,000-word doorstop that covers numerous issues from economics to education.
The communique avoids any direct mention of the United States, and references to “unilateralism” and other coded criticism are also relatively scarce. Rather, the communique keeps the focus on the BRICS’ vision of the strengthening and reform of the global multilateral system ...

Why Pragmatism, Not Ideology Drives Chinese Economic Engagement in Africa

In these contentious times, China is often accused of exporting its statist economic model to Africa and other developing regions as part of a broader ideological agenda to create a new Sinocentric international order. But Tsinghua University Professor Tang Xiaoyang argues 

FOCAC PERSPECTIVES: Hoping the Journalists Do a Better Job Covering FOCAC And Avoid All Those “Tired Tropes”

Every day leading up to the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation conference on November 29th and 30th, CAP will feature perspectives from journalists, academics, activists, and business leaders about what they hope will emerge from the FOCAC event in Dakar.  If ...

TRANSLATION: Is It a Good Idea For Chinese Companies in Africa to Reply Primarily on Chinese Workers?

Few issues in the China-Africa relationship are as old or as contentious as that of labor. Accusations that Chinese companies prefer to hire their own unskilled laborers and then mistreat the local employees they do hire are among the widely believed perceptions about Chinese labor practices in ...

Carnegie-Tsinghua Scholar Tang Xiaoyang on the “Real Situation Confronting Chinese Companies in Africa”

One of China's largest and most influential online portals, Observer (观察), published an interview this week with well-known China-Africa scholar Tang Xiaoyang, deputy director of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy, about some of the difficulties that Chinese companies are encountering in ...

China’s Role in Africa’s Economic Transformation

Over the past 20 years China has played a pivotal, arguably indispensable role in Africa's economic development. China is by far Africa's largest bilateral trading partner, a major source of foreign investment and a vital player in helping Africa to close ...

China, Africa and the PRC's Massive New Development Bank

57 countries including two from Africa, are among the founding members of China's new development bank, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). While the new bank's primary objective will be develop infrastructure projects in Asia, as its name suggests, there is widespread anticipation (mixed ...