Chinese and African governments are beginning to negotiate the agenda for the upcoming Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) summit that will take place in Beijing later this fall. Development finance, infrastructure, and green technology are all expected to be prominent themes, but this year’s event will be considerably different than previous summits, given that it comes at a time of considerable economic uncertainty for both China and African countries. Hannah Ryder, CEO of the international development consultancy Development Reimagined, recently co-hosted an African ambassadors retrea ..read more

Senior U.S. leaders have once again called on China to use its considerable economic leverage to persuade Iran to change its behavior in the escalating conflict with Israel. Various U.S. have made this same request on several occasions already, going back all the way to the day after Hamas launched its assault on southern Israel on October 7th. Each time, though, those U.S. appeals have largely been ignored by the Chinese. That raises two important questions: why does the U.S. keep asking if nothing happens? And, even if Beijing was willing to do act, would the leadership in Tehran even listen ..read more

China maintains a massive lead over the U.S. and other G7 countries in both mining and refining capacity in Africa, a key vulnerability that policymakers in the U.S., Europe, and elsewhere say they're determined to rectify. A new report from the United States Institute of Peace lays out a roadmap for how the U.S. can close that gap with China to achieve mineral security while protecting local labor and environmental standards. Terence McCulley, a senior visiting expert for West Africa at USIP and a former U.S. ambassador to several African countries, joins Eric, Cobus & Geraud to discuss t ..read more

For much of the past ten years, Chinese technology in Africa focused largely on devices and infrastructure. But today, the conversations also include issues related to governance, online services, and the emergence of artificial intelligence. Benjamin Dada, founder of the popular African tech news site BenDada.com, joins Eric to discuss the latest Chinese tech trends on the continent and why Chinese firms are still outpacing their competitors. JOIN THE DISCUSSION: X: @ChinaGSProject | @stadenesque | @eric_olander | @bendada_ Facebook: www.facebook.com/ChinaAf ..read more

Few topics have shaped perceptions about China's engagement in Africa more than the presence of Chinese construction sites across the continent. Chinese contractors have built countless ports, roads, railways, and more, but how that work was done has been very controversial over the years. There've been widespread complaints about mismanagement, abuse, and discrimination at Chinese-run construction sites across the continent. While there's no doubt some veracity to those claims, many of the allegations are also rooted in vastly different expectations between Chinese managers and local workers ..read more

While many in the West still contend Africa's worsening debt crisis is largely due to excessive Chinese lending, Tsinghua University Professor Tang Xiaoyang argues that accusation just isn't true.  Instead, the well-known China-Africa scholar contends the main problems facing African borrowers today are anchored in the United States. Most of Africa's debt is priced in U.S. dollars, which is now much more expensive than it was just a few years ago due to higher interest rates set by the Federal Reserve in Washington. Professor Tang joins Eric & Cobus from Beijing to discuss the current ..read more

Enthusiasm for electric vehicles is waning in both the U.S. and China, but that is definitely not the case in other parts of the world where EV adoption rates are steadily rising. In fact, at the Bangkok Motor Show this week, Chinese EV brands are grabbing all of the attention. Throughout the Global South, Chinese EV brands are expanding their presence in both manufacturing and sales. And unlike U.S.-made EVs that are largely expensive luxury vehicles, the Chinese brands are focusing on small, affordable cars that are within the price range of consumers in Asia, Africa and Latin America, among ..read more

U.S. and European officials often lament that they've fallen behind China when it comes to engaging Africa, Asia, the Americas, and other developing regions. Western governments aren't set up to rapidly deploy the kind of money and resources that Beijing's done with its Belt and Road Initiative over the past ten years. While the U.S. and Europe are now trying to catch up, author Jeremy Garlick writes in his new book Advantage China: Agent of Change in an Era of Global Disruption that their efforts are hamstrung not only by money but also by history. Jeremy joins Eric & Cobus to explain why ..read more

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, surging youth unemployment and much slower growth. The easy Chinese money for African leaders is no longer there and that may not be a bad thing, says Gyude Moore from the Center for Global Development in Washington, D.C. Gyude wrote a column this month that said a slowing Chinese economy could force a lot of African governments to initiate badly-needed ..read more

The escalating tensions between China, the Philippines and the United States in the South China Sea highlight how Southeast Asia is now the most dangerous frontline in the burgeoning Great Power competition between Beijing and Washington. But as this week's ASEAN summit in Australia highlights, there is no consensus in the region over how the Southeast Asian bloc's 11 member states are responding to the rapidly changing geopolitical environment. This week, Eric spoke with Prasanth Parmeswaran, a highly-regarded analyst on Southeast Asian affairs and founder of the widely-read ASEAN Wonk newsle ..read more