Tag: Washington

As longtime readers of this column and listeners of our podcasts may know, I've been quite critical of the BRICS in recent years. Beyond the creation of a mid-sized development finance bank, this is a group with few other accomplishments to boast about in its 15-year existence. ...

The Chinese embassy in the Philippines on Wednesday released a statement saying Washington should refrain from “instigating trouble” in the South China Sea and that the U.S. was to blame for stirring up trouble in the region. This follows similar denunciations ...

Angolan President João Lourenço kicked off a three-day visit to China this week that will take him to Beijing and Shandong Province. The timing of Lourenço's trip comes as the Chinese economy is facing enormous challenges amid a plunge in FDI, ...

Australia’s decision not to contribute a warship to the U.S.-led patrolling of Red Sea shipping lanes is playing into U.S. political divisions in the run-up to next year’s election. Reaction from the Biden Administration has so far been muted. The Australian ...

It was almost a year ago when Joe Biden promised everyone at the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit that he would visit the continent in 2023. Now, with just two weeks left before the Christmas holiday, the president’s pledge is looking increasingly uncertain.

For the first time in seven years, the United States can re-enter the all-important critical resources mining sector in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where China is the dominant actor. The persistently low price of cobalt, a metal used to ...

After nearly two years of painful, drawn-out negotiations, Zambia finally closed a deal to restructure its bilateral external debt. The announcement was made last week at a global development finance summit in Paris and the new agreement is widely seen as ...

Extreme high temperatures — a ‘once-in-200-years heat wave’ — have been hitting many Asian countries in recent weeks, including those in Southeast Asia. Experts said that it is only the beginning of an era that will see more frequent heat waves and other erratic weather.

The United States rejected suggestions that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's three day visit to the United States last week was about leveraging New Delhi in Washington's rivalry against China. Although China was on the agenda in talks between Modi and ...

Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, arrived in Beijing for a four-day visit that will see meetings with President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang. The trip (Abbas’s first visit to Beijing since 2017) is being framed as an attempt to ...

Apparently, U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan seems to think the best way to counter China's surging influence in the Middle East is to propose building a massive railway that will connect the Indian sub-continent to the Middle East via Persian Gulf states.

International reaction to the extraordinary public protests underway in the streets and university campuses across China has been muted so far. Aside from a scathing statement from the British Broadcasting Corporation over the violent detention of one of its reporters in Shanghai on Sunday, no other foreign entity has issued ...