Viewpoint

12.07.23

China’s Vision for World Order

Johanna M. Costigan
In October, in front of leaders from Asia, Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East, Xi Jinping stood triumphant in a celebratory keynote address celebrating the tenth birthday of his Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The speech,...

Conversation

04.06.20

What Does the Coronavirus Mean for EU-China Relations?

Plamen Tonchev, Theresa Fallon & more
2020 promised to be an especially consequential year for the EU-China relationship, but three highly anticipated summits have been thrown into uncertainty, and diplomacy between Europe and China is now completely consumed by the coronavirus crisis.

Why China’s ‘Debt Trap Diplomacy’ Critics Are Wrong

Eric Olander, Cobus van Staden & more
China’s critics, led largely by the United States, are determined to warn developing countries about the risks of borrowing too much money from Beijing. They contend China will use these loans to financially entrap economically vulnerable countries...

Confused About China’s Belt and Road Agenda? You’re Not Alone.

Eric Olander, Cobus van Staden & more
Thirty-seven foreign heads of state came to Beijing this week to take part in the second Belt and Road summit hosted by Chinese President Xi Jinping. Some leaders, like Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta, came with expectations to sign huge...

Conversation

04.24.19

Is This the End of Belt and Road, or Just the Beginning?

Nadège Rolland, Adrian Zenz & more
On April 25-27, China’s government will host the leaders of dozens of countries to celebrate the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the signature foreign policy program of Xi Jinping. Since its founding in October 2013, the BRI now covers more than 150...

Conversation

02.15.19

China is Upping Its Aid and Development Game. How Should the U.S. Respond?

Deborah Bräutigam, Mark Akpaninyie & more
During his September 2018 U.N. address, President Donald Trump threatened that the United States may decide to only give foreign aid to “those who respect us and, frankly, are our friends.” In August, the White House attempted to cut foreign aid...

African Governments Need to Negotiate Better Deals With China. Here's How They Can Do It.

Eric Olander, Cobus van Staden & more
The problem with the “debt trap” theory is that it too often strips Africans of their agency in the negotiating process. That either they don’t know what they are doing or they’re simply negotiating bad deals. While both of those may be true, in...

Conversation

12.19.18

China’s Growing Footprint in Latin America

Benjamin Creutzfeldt, Rebecca Ray & more
Many Latin American countries experienced political change in 2018, with presidential elections in three of the largest countries—Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia—and transitions in Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, El Salvador, and Paraguay. Meanwhile, several...

Viewpoint

10.23.18

With an Influx of Blue Helmets and Cash, China’s Role in African Security Grows More Pervasive

Michael Kovrig
China’s growing engagement with African countries got a publicity boost on September 3 and 4 with the latest Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) summit. The triennial event brought leaders and officials from 53 African countries and the...

Whose Problem is Kenya’s Debt: Kenya’s or China’s?

Eric Olander, Cobus van Staden & more
Nairobi-based international development economist Anzetse Were suggests in a new paper that Kenya’s leaders, not China, should be the ones held accountable for borrowing too much money without a detailed, transparent plan on how to repay the loans...

Should African Governments Welcome Or Be Wary of Chinese Infrastructure Investment?

Eric Olander, Cobus van Staden & more
China announced a U.S.$60 billion financing package for African states to build out new roads, airports, railways, and other needed infrastructure. While no one questions the need for infrastructure, there are legitimate concerns as to whether it...

Is This Really the Best Time for a China-Africa Summit?

Eric Olander, Cobus van Staden & more
Does it still make sense for China to put on big, expensive mega-summits with African leaders, like FOCAC, which will take place in Beijing in September? Facing a slowing economy and a potentially devastating trade war with the U.S., maybe China is...

Huge Increase in Chinese Aid Pledged to Pacific

Kate Lyons
Guardian
Australia has traditionally been the most significant donor to the Pacific, but in 2017 China committed to spending more than four times as much as Australia, data from the Lowy Institute thinktank published today shows.

China’s Empire of Money Is Reshaping Global Trade

Bloomberg Markets
Bloomberg
China is building a very 21st century empire—one where trade and debt lead the way, not armadas and boots on the ground. If President Xi Jinping’s ambitions become a reality, Beijing will cement its position at the center of a new world economic...

Where Does Africa Fit in Xi Jinping’s Worldview?

Eric Olander, Cobus van Staden & more
The Forum on China-Africa Cooperation summit will take place at a delicate time for Chinese President Xi Jinping, as he confronts enormous challenges related to the ongoing trade war with the United States and, at the same time, huge opportunities...

Conversation

06.14.18

One Year After They Almost Went to War, Can China and India Get Along?

Joel Wuthnow, Selina Ho & more
One year ago, the Chinese and Indian armies faced off at Doklam, a disputed Himalayan area on the border between China, India, and the tiny kingdom of Bhutan. While the two sides didn’t go to war over the border as they did in 1962, tensions were...

Somalia Aims to Be Heard at Upcoming China-Africa Mega Summit

Eric Olander, Cobus van Staden & more
Around 50 African leaders are expected to be in Beijing in September for the upcoming Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) summit. While Africa’s largest and most strategically important countries will likely do very well, receiving huge...

Books

05.03.18

High-Speed Empire

Will Doig
Columbia Global Reports: The story of the world’s most audacious infrastructure project.Less than a decade ago, China did not have a single high-speed train in service. Today, it owns a network of 14,000 miles of high-speed rail, far more than the rest of the world combined. Now, China is pushing its tracks into Southeast Asia, reviving a century-old colonial fantasy of an imperial railroad stretching to Singapore, and kicking off a key piece of the One Belt One Road initiative, which has a price tag of U.S.$1 trillion and reaches inside the borders of more than 60 countries.The Pan-Asia Railway portion of One Belt One Road could transform Southeast Asia, bringing shiny Chinese cities, entire economies, and waves of migrants where none existed before. But if it doesn’t succeed, that would be a cautionary tale about whether a new superpower, with levels of global authority unimaginable just a decade ago, can pull entire regions into its orbit simply with tracks, sweat, and lots of money. Journalist Will Doig traveled to Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore to chronicle the dramatic transformations taking place—and to find out whether ordinary people have a voice in this moment of economic, political, and cultural collision.{chop}

US’s Tillerson Warns African Nations Not to ‘Forfeit Their Sovereignty’ by Taking Chinese Loans

Justina Crabtree
CNBC
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has warned against African nations accepting Chinese cash in agreements which could “forfeit their sovereignty.”

Industrial Parks Are Africa’s Latest Gamble to Lure Chinese Manufacturers

Eric Olander, Cobus van Staden & more
Freelance journalist William Davison joins Eric and Cobus to discuss his reporting from the Hawassa Industrial Park in Ethiopia, which is the latest high-stakes gamble taken by a number of African countries to lure Chinese manufacturers. Officials...

China is Challenging the West’s Dominance in Foreign Aid

Eric Olander, Cobus van Staden & more
Quietly, and largely out of sight, China has emerged to become a major player in the foreign aid space, challenging institutions and norms long established by the West. Although China’s international development budgets remain a tightly guarded...

Conversation

08.03.17

As China Reins in Capital, What Next for Global Trade?

Yu Zhou & Peter Knaack
China’s Communist Party and its leader, Xi Jinping, are tightening controls on overseas spending by the country’s biggest companies and their highly visible billionaire CEOs. The Wall Street Journal reported recently that Xi personally signed off on...

Hong Kong to Be Staging Point for Plan to Draw 100 Billion Yuan of Capital into China’s Bond Market

Karen Yeung
South China Morning Post
China’s government will allow foreign investors to trade in the country’s $9.3 trillion bond market, a vital step in helping to internationalise the yuan and help deepen the capital market.

China Appears to be Losing Interest in Africa

Eric Olander, Cobus van Staden & more
Beijing-based investment attorney Kai Xue joins Eric and Cobus to discuss why he thinks Africa is no longer appealing to Chinese companies. Kai Xue is a longtime Sino-African affairs analyst and carefully monitors trade, foreign direct investment,...

The U.N.’s Role in China’s African Development Agenda

Eric Olander, Cobus van Staden & more
China’s embrace of multilateral diplomacy in Africa is a relatively new phenomenon. For years, Beijing rejected the Western aid model, preferring instead to work bilaterally with African governments where they often employed aid (or infrastructure)...

After $225 Billion in Deals Last Year, China Reins In Overseas Investment

New York Times
On Saturday, in the strongest public signal yet that Beijing is changing course, China’s commerce minister castigated what he called “blind and irrational investment.”

China Capital Crackdown Threatens Wave of Overseas Buyouts

Don Weinland
Financial Times
Delay in Wanda’s $1bn takeover of Golden Globes producer signals shift in Beijing

2016 China-Africa Year in Review

Eric Olander & Cobus van Staden
After years of relatively trouble-free development, 2016 marked a turning point in the China-Africa relationship, amid turbulent changes in the global economic and political order. China increased its deployment of combat troops to the continent,...

Reports

01.01.17

Record Flows and Growing Imbalances

Thilo Hanemann and Mikko Huotari
Mercator Institute for China Studies
Foreign direct investment (FDI) has become an increasingly important part of the E.U.-China economic relationship. European companies have invested hundreds of billions of euros into the Chinese economy since the 1980s, and have made big bets on...

How Rwanda Attracts Chinese Money and Migrants Without the Lure of Natural Resources

Eric Olander, Cobus van Staden & more
Quartz’s Africa correspondent Lily Kuo recently returned from a reporting assignment to Rwanda where she discovered a very different side of China’s engagement in Africa. Rwanda lacks many of the resources and large markets that other African states...

Chinese-IMF Rivalry Worsened Congo’s Debt Load

Eric Olander, Cobus van Staden & more
In 2007, when China’s Exim Bank unveiled a massive U.S.$6 billion mining deal in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), it rocked the normally-staid world of international development finance. The agreement, known as Sicomines, was among the...

Environment

10.21.16

Will Chinese Money Transform Pakistan?

from chinadialogue
The development of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has spurred debate in all quarters. Some perceive it as a form of neo-colonialism and criticize Pakistan’s government for promoting unethical business practices at the cost of ordinary...

Mixed Messages

Economist
A missed opportunity to improve the environment for foreign companies in China

China Spends More in the World than the World Spends in China

BBC
For the first time, Chinese companies have invested more abroad than foreign companies have invested in China

Is Huawei Doing Enough to Train Local Staff in Africa?

Eric Olander, Cobus van Staden & more
The Chinese telecom giant Huawei recently launched a massive publicity campaign to raise awareness in Africa about what it is doing to train local employees. The company has opened at least five training centers in different countries across the...

Conversation

07.08.16

Why Is There So Much Talk of China’s Bleeding Money?

Arthur R. Kroeber & Thilo Hanemann
China has seen its foreign reserves depleted for months, but economists don’t agree about why: Is it because Chinese people are buying offshore assets, such as real estate? Because Chinese companies are paying down their foreign debt? Or both? Or is...

Infographics

06.30.16

Visualizing China’s Aid to Africa

Eva Constantaras
In June of last year, 50 countries signed on to the Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, including the U.K., Germany, Australia, and South Korea, acknowledgement of China’s success in driving development through mega-projects to build...

Industrialization in Africa: Ethiopia Wants to Become the New ‘Made in China’

Eric Olander, Cobus van Staden & more
There’s a pretty good chance that some of the clothes you’re wearing, the shoes on your feet, and even the device you’re using to read this were made in China. Even as its economy slows, China remains the world’s factory, churning out billions of...

Why Chinese Companies in Africa Are Improving Their Behavior

Eric Olander, Cobus van Staden & more
Chinese companies around the world, particularly in Africa, have a well-earned reputation for being bad corporate citizens. There are countless stories of labor rights violations, disregard of environmental policies, and lack of engagement with...

As BRICS Slow Investments in Africa, Turkey Ramps Up

Eric Olander, Cobus van Staden & more
Remember when the BRICS were going to power the global economy? Well, the past few years have not been kind to Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. With the exception of India, the other members of this once elite diplomatic club are...

When China Sneezes, Does Africa Catch a Cold?

Eric Olander, Cobus van Staden & more
Chinese government officials have been on an all-out public relations offensive across Africa lately to reassure increasingly nervous political and business leaders that even though China’s economy may be slowing it will not affect the P.R.C.’s...

Conversation

02.23.16

How Long Can China’s Internet Thrive if the Rest of the World Gets Shut Out?

David Schlesinger, Jeff South & more
Last week, Chinese authorities announced that as of March 10, foreign-invested companies would not be allowed to publish anything on the Chinese Internet unless they have obtained government permission to publish with a Chinese partner. What does...

FOCAC 6: A China-Africa Lovefest

Eric Olander, Cobus van Staden & more
The Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) summit concluded in Johannesburg on December 5 amid an almost giddy atmosphere. All sides in this relationship seemingly walked away with more than what they had anticipated.Africa provided a welcome...

Challenging the Myth of Chinese Land Grabs in Africa

Eric Olander, Cobus van Staden & more
Among the most durable myths surrounding the China-Africa relationship is the fear that the Chinese government and private enterprises are buying vast tracts of African farm land and have plans to transplant millions of Chinese peasants to live and...

How China’s Economic Slowdown Will Impact Africa

Eric Olander & Cobus van Staden
The tremors in China’s faltering economy are being felt across Africa. Now that China has replaced Europe and the United States as most African countries’ largest trading partner, there is understandable concern that slowing demand in the P.R.C...

Caixin Media

09.28.15

Xi and Obama Should Make a BIT Breakthrough

President Xi Jinping has begun his first state visit to the United States to meet U.S. President Barack Obama in what state councilor and former foreign minister Yang Jiechi has called “a pivotal meeting at a critical time.”Xi arrived in the United...

Chinese Investment in Africa: Surprisingly Small, but Growing Fast

Eric Olander, Cobus van Staden & more
It’s a widespread misconception that just because China is Africa’s top trading partner, it’s also the continent’s largest foreign investor. In fact, China ranks seventh overall in FDI, far behind the United States, long Africa’s largest source of...

Caixin Media

07.14.15

Uber CEO Enjoying a Fast China Ride

Demand for cross-town transportation is at the heart of an urban lifestyle that is defining modern China. It is also giving the American car-hire service Uber Technologies Inc. an incredible ride.Few are enjoying the ride more than Uber CEO Travis...

China Invests in the World

Shannon Tiezzi
Diplomat
China’s outward foreign direct investment for the first five months of 2015 is up 50 percent from the same period in 2014, says Chinese Ministry of Commerce.

Reports

06.01.15

Chinese FDI in Europe and Germany

Thilo Hanemann and Mikko Huotari
Mercator Institute for China Studies
The authors have—on the basis of a unique transaction dataset—analyzed the newest trends of Chinese direct investment in Germany and the E.U. The study is able to clearly establish that the new wave of Chinese investment offers exceptional...

Want a Green Card? Invest in Real Estate

Julie Satow
New York Times
Developers also take the search for investors in their projects on the road, primarily to China.

Reports

05.01.15

New Neighbors: Chinese Investment in the United States by Congressional District

National Committee on United States-China Relations
Foreign direct investment (FDI) is a vital component of the United States economy today and has been throughout the nation’s history. Investors from abroad are a source of growth, employment, competitiveness, and innovation, and their presence is...

China Airs Pilot Free-Trade Zone National Security Rules for Foreign Investment

Lawrence Chung
South China Morning Post
Investments in defence, the economy, social order, culture, and the Internet, will be reviewed.

Sinica Podcast

12.19.14

Cooperation or Exploitation

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more from Sinica Podcast
Exactly how exploitative are Chinese development activities on the African continent? What exactly is motivating the various resources-for-development deals inked by African governments over the last decade, and what strategies are these governments...

Caixin Media

11.04.14

Cai Jinyong: A Chinese Voice at the Top of the IFC

Three top executives serving in recent years at the World Bank and its emerging markets financing arm International Finance Corp. (IFC) have called China home.Economist Cai Jinyong became the fourth in October 2012, when he was named IFC's...

Reports

10.01.14

Avoiding the Blind Alley: China’s Economic Overhaul and Its Global Implications

Daniel H. Rosen
Daniel H. Rosen
Asia Society
President Xi Jinping announced a sweeping overhaul for China’s economy in November 2013, with pledges to make market forces decisive, treat homegrown and foreign investors with the same laws and regulations, and change the mission statement of the...

China to Allow Foreign Ownership of Hospitals

Fanfan Wang
Wall Street Journal
China will let foreign companies own and operate hospitals in some parts of the country as part of an effort to overhaul its health-care system.

Foreign Direct Investment Into China Falls to Lowest Level in 2 Years

Liyan Qi and Richard Silk
Wall Street Journal
 Government denies that antitrust probes Into overseas companies is to blame.

Books

08.06.14

China’s Second Continent

Howard W. French
An exciting, hugely revealing account of China’s burgeoning presence in Africa—a developing empire already shaping, and reshaping, the future of millions of people. A prizewinning foreign correspondent and former New York Times bureau chief in Shanghai and in West and Central Africa, Howard French is uniquely positioned to tell the story of China in Africa. Through meticulous on-the-ground reporting—conducted in Mandarin, French, and Portuguese, among other languages—Howard French crafts a layered investigation of astonishing depth and breadth as he engages not only with policy-shaping moguls and diplomats, but also with the  ordinary men and women navigating the street-level realities of cooperation, prejudice, corruption, and opportunity forged by this seismic geopolitical development. With incisiveness and empathy, French reveals the human face of China’s economic, political, and human presence across the African continent—and in doing so reveals what is at stake for everyone involved.We meet a broad spectrum of China’s dogged emigrant population, from those singlehandedly reshaping African infrastructure, commerce, and even environment (a self-made tycoon who harnessed Zambia’s now-booming copper trade; a timber entrepreneur determined to harvest the entirety of Liberia’s old-growth redwoods), to those just barely scraping by (a sibling pair running small businesses despite total illiteracy; a karaoke bar owner–cum–brothel madam), still convinced that Africa affords them better opportunities than their homeland. And we encounter an equally panoramic array of African responses: a citizens’ backlash in Senegal against a “Trojan horse” Chinese construction project (a tower complex to be built over a beloved soccer field, which locals thought would lead to overbearing Chinese pressure on their economy); a Zambian political candidate who, having protested China’s intrusiveness during the previous election and lost, now turns accommodating; the ascendant middle class of an industrial boomtown; African mine workers bitterly condemning their foreign employers, citing inadequate safety precautions and wages a fraction of their immigrant counterparts’.French’s nuanced portraits reveal the paradigms forming around this new world order, from the all-too-familiar echoes of colonial ambition—exploitation of resources and labor; cut-rate infrastructure projects; dubious treaties—to new frontiers of cultural and economic exchange, where dichotomies of suspicion and trust, assimilation and isolation, idealism and disillusionment are in dynamic flux.Part intrepid travelogue, part cultural census, part industrial and political exposé, French’s keenly observed account ultimately offers a fresh perspective on the most pressing unknowns of modern Sino-African relations: why China is making the incursions it is, just how extensive its cultural and economic inroads are, what Africa’s role in the equation is, and just what the ramifications for both parties—and the watching world—will be in the foreseeable future. —Knopf {chop}