Rajpriya Gautam

Linda Thomas-Greenfield (photo), President Biden’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations,  came under criticism on Wednesday during her confirmation hearing, for a speech she made in 2019  at a now-closed Confucius Institute in Savannah, Georgia. Republican senators argued the speech was overly complimentary of Chinese engagement in Africa. In that speech ( transcript ), Thomas-Greenfield said both the U.S. and China could learn from each other’s experience in Africa in contributing to African development. The portion of the speech that got the most attention at yesterday’s hearing, however, was the play on China’s “win-win development” motto: “In the U.S.-China-Africa relationship, win-win-win cooperation is possible and common development can be achieved. If we all took a step back to consider it, we would see that if we banded together to support Africa’s growth and development, we would all be better for it.” Asked by Idaho Senator James Risch to comment on the speec

Two Chinese-made COVID-19 vaccines made by Sinopharm and Sinovac are now under evaluation by the World Health Organization to receive the highly prized prequalification (PQ) status. If the Chinese vaccines do receive WHO PQ certification, that could open up vast new markets in developing countries that rely on the global health body’s assessment before approving the use of certain pharmaceutical treatments.  Uganda, for example,  has said that it will not import a Chinese vaccine unless it has been approved by the WHO . The WHO is expected to deliver its decision regarding Sinopharm and Sinovac vaccines some time in March. Today’s Chinese Vaccine Headlines From Around the World MOROCCO:  Morocco on Wednesday received half a million doses of China’s Sinopharm coronavirus vaccine as it prepares to become the first African country to roll out a national immunization campaign.  (REUTERS) EGYPT:  The top doctor on Egypt’s COVID-19 task force says so far there’ve been no problems or

News that  Chinese-made COVID-19 vaccines were smuggled into the Philippines  sparked concern around the world that the already thriving black market trade in counterfeit pharmaceuticals will inevitably extend to the coronavirus vaccine. Lebogang Mokoena, a columnist for the South African newspaper Financial Mail,  made the case that Africa is well-positioned to fall victim to the use of bogus vaccines , given its place at the back of the line for access to jabs and the already ubiquitous presence of counterfeit Chinese and Indian pharmaceuticals in some African countries. China, too, has a lot at stake in ensuring this doesn’t get out of control.  Chinese vaccines are already facing intense criticism  for their lower efficacy rates and if fakes flood the market that could further erode public trust in the safety of Chinese vaccines in many countries. Get a daily email packed with the latest China-Africa news and analysis. Read exclusive insights on the key trends shaping Ch

Questions about the efficacy of Chinese vaccines and whether China and India have engaged in a form of “vaccine rivalry” really seem to have gotten under the skin of China’s bombastic national tabloid Global Times. In fact, they seem downright hurt by the critiques and seem to be hitting back at their accusers. Global Times Fires Back Against Its Critics IT’S ALL THE FAULT OF WESTERN MEDIA : “While China is leading the way in promoting international cooperation on the supply of COVID-19 vaccines, and aiding other countries to ease supply shortfalls, some Western media outlets continue to baselessly assault China’s efforts. The attacks will serve only to jeopardize global cooperation in the fight against the pandemic.”  (READ MORE) LOSS OF GLOBAL HEGEMONY PROMPTS U.S. TO LASH OUT AT CHINA : “Chinese vaccines have fundamentally changed the global pattern of vaccine distribution monopolized by companies in the US and its allies, which claim to safeguard justice and fairness. Under t

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa gave voice yesterday to the growing concern in developing countries about wealthy states hoarding COVID-19 vaccines. In his speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos,  President Ramaphosa accused rich countries of acquiring as much as four times the amount of vaccines needed for their populations  and said this is creating a dangerous situation for those in poor countries who will remain exposed to the virus. It’s in this context that China this week seemingly brushed aside  mounting criticisms  about the efficacy of some Chinese-made vaccines and accusations that it’s now engaged in some kind of “ vaccine rivalry ” with India.  Instead, what we’re seeing now is a surge of deliveries of Chinese vaccines throughout the Global South, where many countries appear increasingly desperate to find an affordable supply of jabs regardless of where they come from. Today’s China-Global South Vaccine Headlines AFRICA:  China confirmed that four African

An article in  today’s Global Times newspaper , one of China’s more bombastic nationalist tabloids, provides a glimpse into how determined Chinese officials are to “decouple” their trade with Australia, especially in the hugely valuable iron sector. Sino-Australian relations  deteriorated sharply in 2020  over disputes related to the origin of COVID-19, the South China Sea, and Huawei. Now,  Beijing appears determined to use Australia’s dependence on the Chinese market  as a weapon to retaliate against Canberra for what it sees are malign attacks. To that end, a Chinese team in Zambia installed the NEUH-60, a piece of equipment that will reportedly enhance Zambian iron ore to a similar level of quality as Australian ore. It’s clear from the quotes used in the Global Times story that the researchers involved in the project are clear about the objective: “Now China is enhancing the development of African iron mines, when the necessary bedrock infrastructure is finished including highw

The Kenyan government, like a lot of African governments, is struggling to find the right balance between continuing to pay for badly-needed new infrastructure while at the same time servicing its enormous debts for older projects — many of which are now so-called “white elephants” that were never built or used. The situation has been compounded by the fact that once abundant Chinese financing is, for the most part, no longer available and the Treasury instead is forced to either take on more domestic debt or go to the bond markets where interest rates tend to be higher. NEW INFRASTRUCTURE:  The Treasury requested $1.8 billion in funding for the 2021-2022 budget to build 6,000 kilometers of new roads. The request did not mention how it would underwrite the cost of that construction.  (THE STANDARD) OLD INFRASTRUCTURE:   Kenya’s Finance Cabinet Secretary Ukur Yatani told Spice FM radio this week that the government is no longer servicing debts for infrastructure projects that were

A trio of scholars in China  recently published an academic paper in the Journal of Contemporary China  that included a much more detailed map of China’s Belt & Road trade routes in Asia than previously available. One of the key takeaways from the map is the vast overland corridors across South Asia from the Gawadar Port in Pakistan to Kashgar in Xinjiang, from Kunming in southern China across Laos to Myanmar in the Gulf of Thailand, and then up north, where massive Russian oil pipelines snake down through Mongolia to China’s industrial rust belt. If these burgeoning trade routes fully materialize (a big “if’), it could have an enormous impact on Chinese trade with Africa and the Middle East. Oil and other goods would no longer have to transit through the Malacca Strait in Southeast Asia, and could instead be directed to ports in Pakistan, Myanmar or Thailand. Click here to see a larger version of the map. Get a daily email packed with the latest China-Africa news and ana

The Chinese government appears to be moving to deescalate tensions with India over reports that the two Asian powers are increasingly engaged in a so-called “ vaccine rivalry ” related to the distribution of COVID-19 jabs to developing countries around the world. “There are multiple COVID-19 vaccine candidates out there on the market, and countries should be able to make their choices on the vaccines independently,”  said Zhao Lijian at the regular press briefing on Monday in Beijing . “This issue can afford no place for malign competition, let alone the so-called “rivalry,” he added. Both countries are shipping millions of vaccines to many of the world’s poorest countries at the same time as their militaries have  clashed  once a gain  along their disputed border. Both China and India are supplying countries in Africa with COVID-19 vaccines. SUGGESTED READING: The Economic Times :  China plays down its vaccine rivalry with India Global Times :  Chinese FM rejects idea of China-

Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Monday delivered his first major international address since Joe Biden became president of the United States. Xi spoke remotely to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. He touted China’s success in battling COVID-19, reiterated his oft-stated support of multilateral institutions, and implicitly attacked the U.S. for its “arrogant isolation.” Not surprisingly,  U.S. media outlets focused on the “Cold War”  aspect of Xi’s speech along with the various indirect references to Beijing’s rivalry with Washington. Few, if any, major news channels in Africa and other developing regions covered the address. But they probably should have, given that a significant portion of the Chinese president’s comments focused on issues pertinent to the Global South. Portions of Xi’s Speech That Might Be of Interest to African Stakeholders NORTH-SOUTH WEALTH INEQUALITY:   The president addressed the widening wealth gap between rich and poor countries, adding that COV

The Chinese government earlier this month published a major update to the country’s foreign aid and international development strategy. The new white paper entitled “ China’s International Development Cooperation in the New Era ” maps out an ambitious new vision that integrates Chinese overseas development with the Belt and Road and aims to position Beijing among the top tier of international aid actors. 3 Perspectives From 3 Overseas Development Institute Scholars on the Importance of China’s New Development White Paper MULTILATERAL VS. BILATERAL : “China’s new white paper comes at a time when the influence and credibility of the US in the global system has been in disastrous decline. The paper reinforces China’s commitment to multilateralism and to pouring new money into multilateral institutions, emphasizing its credibility as a cooperative global power. But its approach to low-income country (LIC) debt remains bilateral” —  Yunan Chen, Senior Research Officer HUMANITARIAN ASS

Since 2010, Africa’s been the largest recipient of Chinese foreign aid, even as China’s ties in Asia have grown to be more geopolitically consequential. However, when reviewing data in the recently-published white paper on Chinese international development,  analysts at the Beijing-based consultancy Development Reimagined noted  that “the share of China’s aid to Africa has fallen from 51.8% over 2010-2012 to 44.65% now, but that still means an absolute increase from $2.1 billion to $3.1 billion annually over 2013-2018.” Development practitioners from traditional donor states in the U.S., Europe, and Japan would probably not recognize a lot of China’s financial contributions as “aid” in the classical definition. Concessional loans make up almost half of all of China’s financial assistance to developing countries, according to the new white paper on international development recently released by the State Council.  The Chinese refer to this kind of assistance as “diverse forms” of

After months of promises, controversies, and disputes over how effective they really are, tens of millions of Chinese-made COVID-19 vaccines are now on their way to developing countries. On Sunday Egypt became the second country in Africa, after the Seychelles , to launch a full-scale vaccination drive using a vaccine produced by the China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm) for the opening phase. The health ministry says that it’s focusing this initial wave of vaccines on an estimated 50,000 healthcare professionals. Egypt is also in talks with the Covax alliance to secure 40 million doses and negotiations are also underway to secure supplies of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. A Big Weekend For Chinese COVID-19 Vaccines: MOROCCO:  Morocco officially authorized the emergency use of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by China’s Sinopharm, Morocco’s Ministry of Health said in a statement. The country also received 2 million doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine on Friday. (

Developing countries in Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Americas are now the new front in an increasingly contentious struggle between Asia’s two continental powers. India and China, both pharmaceutical manufacturing powerhouses, are jostling over who will become the primary supplier of COVID-19 vaccines to many of the world’s poorest countries. The Serum Institute of India (SII), the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer , is producing vaccines in collaboration with the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, and in just the past few days the company’s shipped tens of millions of doses to  Bhutan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Maldives, Myanmar, Mauritius, and Seychelles. In regions where India and China are competing for influence, for example in Asia, the Indian Ocean, and East Africa, the arrival of SII’s vaccines present a formidable challenge to China’s months-long campaign to integrate vaccines into its soft power diplomacy. And in some countries like Thailand and Cambodia , a country’s ch

Chinese state media outlets are ramping up a propaganda campaign against so-called “vaccine nationalism” and findings that Chinese-made vaccines are much less effective than those made in the U.S. and Europe (which is actually the case). The effort started in earnest after Brazillian authorities found in mid-January that China’s Sinovac vaccine was just 50.4% effective , barely passing the minimum requirement to be approved for use. Since then, state media outlets like CGTN, Xinhua and Global Times have gone on the offensive by questioning the efficacy of vaccines made by Pfizer, accusing Western countries of unfairly hoarding vaccines and, most recently, suggesting that China, not the West, is the only country concerned about vaccine access in poor, developing countries. Propaganda Decoder: Breaking Down What Chinese Media Outlets Really Mean “IF HELPING PEOPLE IN NEED (IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES) IS A CRIME, THEN CHINA IS INDEED GUILTY”:  This idea that China is the protector of poo

Scholars, analysts, and commentators in the U.S. and Africa are all offering lots of advice for what Joe Biden should to do to revitalize foreign policy in Africa. Seemingly without exception, the experts agree that Washington urgently needs to shift the focus away from China and towards Africa itself. What Experts Are Saying About China’s Role in U.S. Foreign Policy Towards Africa : CHINA IS NOT AN EXISTENTIAL THREAT TO AFRICAN COUNTRIES : “U.S. policy in Africa will have to focus on African needs and American strengths. The narrative of China’s rise as an existential threat has limited resonance on the continent. Since 2000, China has built over 6,000 kilometers of rail, 6,000 kilometers of roads, about 20 ports, and over 80 large-scale power plants, industrial parks, and special economic zones, the AU headquarters and awarded over 120,000 scholarships. That is hardly the behavior of an existential threat.” — Gyude Moore, senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development

Chinese cobalt imports fell 41.8% last year compared to the volumes shipped from the DRC in 2019, according to the mining news website Argus Media. The lockdowns in response to COVID-19 at the mines in the DRC and at South African ports, from where the precious metal is shipped, were both to blame according to analysts. The downturn came as Chinese companies expanded their already sizable influence in the DRC mining sector through a number of high profile acquisitions, including the December purchase by China Molybdenum of the Kisanfu copper-cobalt mine from U.S.-based Freeport-McMoRan for $550 million. Two Fascinating Articles About the Importance of Cobalt in the Emerging Automotive Sector: Daily Mail:  Toxic secrets behind your mobile phone: Electric cars, wind turbines and solar panels… how our so-called green world depends on the mining of rare metals which is a filthy, amoral industry totally dominated by China by Guillaume Pitron Quartz:   The time to solve the electric c

Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Deng Li and the Senegalese President’s Chief Foreign Affairs Adviser Dunbar Ba met virtually on Friday to discuss plans for the upcoming Forum on China-Africa Cooperation Summit that will be held sometime later this year in Dakar. Precisely when the summit will take place was not addressed in the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s brief statement on the talks between the two meeting’s co-chairs. Get a daily email packed with the latest China-Africa news and analysis. Read exclusive insights on the key trends shaping China-Africa relations. Connect with leading professionals on the China- Africa Experts Network. You've reached your free monthly article limit. Subscribe today for unlimited access. SUBSCRIBE: $15 per month SUBSCRIBE: $149 per year -17% Savings The post Senegalese and Chinese Officials Meet to Plan This Year’s Upcoming China-Africa Summit appeared first on The China Africa Project . source https://chinaafricapr

China and Kenya have agreed to a six-month debt repayment holiday worth $245 million.  Treasury Secretary Ukur Yatani announced the deal during a radio interview on Wednesday when he said the deferral “will give us an opportunity and break on the kind of liquidity that we desire.” Although Yatani did not provide details, he gave the broad outlines of the deal according to a report by Citizen TV: Kenya will have the next six years to make payments on the suspended debt service costs including a one-year grace period after June 2021. Proceeds from the savings are required to be channeled towards combatting the pandemic. Kenya is further obligated to make public its entire stock of debt. Chinese and Kenyan negotiators finalized the arrangement less than 24 hours before a critical deadline when a $1.4 billion loan from the China Exim Bank to build the Nairobi-to-Naivasha railway would have been due . “We were making every arrangement to pay by [Thursday], but two days ago after our

Brazil is running out of its supply of the Chinese-made CoronaVac COVID-19 vaccines and apparently, Beijing hasn’t approved the shipment of ingredients needed to make more . Only 6 million doses out of a 46 million dose order have arrived and those stocks are expected to run out within the next few weeks. Rodrigo Maia, president of Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies, expressed concern earlier this week that the delay may be due to President Jair Bolsonaro’s criticisms of China and steadily deteriorating ties between the two countries. Yesterday, however, Maia met with Chinese ambassador Yang Wanming who reassured him that politics is not responsible for the restocking delay.  Other Chinese Vaccine Headlines: IRAQ:  Ministry of Health spokesman Sayf al-Badr confirmed that regulatory authorities have granted emergency approval to Sinopharm’s COVID-19 vaccine. (CGTN) CHILE:   The government granted emergency approval to begin use of CoronaVac’s vaccine after trials showed an efficacy ra

Outgoing U.S. ambassador to Kenya Kyle McCarter stopped by the State House on Wednesday to meet with President Uhuru Kenyatta (photo). McCarter, a Trump political appointee, will soon be leaving his post now that a new administration has taken power in Washington, D.C. One of McCarter’s signature initiatives was the Free Trade Agreement with Kenya that’s now in limbo both because of an upcoming Congressionally-mandated negotiating deadline and because the Biden administration is expected to take a different approach towards China, according to Professor Michael Chege from the University of Nairobi: “We should expect a radical departure because the idea of following a single country FTA was intended to counter-balance China and its influence.  “Kenya was expected to become an example, with other African countries expected to follow suit if it succeeded. It was part of a big grand strategy that was long-term and assumed he would be re-elected but this will not happen now. The windo

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was among the featured guests at Wednesday’s online  Africa Investment Conference  organized by the UK Department for International Trade. The conference was a follow-up to last year’s UK-Africa Investment Summit that took place in London. One of the key points that both speakers and organizers mentioned repeatedly during the conference was how UK investment stock in 2019 outpaced both the U.S. and China.  UK FDI in Africa increased by 10% in 2019 while both Chinese and U.S. investment on the continent fell by 3-4% that year,  according to Dirk Willem te Velde from the Overseas Development Institute. Get a daily email packed with the latest China-Africa news and analysis. Read exclusive insights on the key trends shaping China-Africa relations. Connect with leading professionals on the China- Africa Experts Network. You've reached your free monthly article limit. Subscribe today for unlimited access. SUBSCRIBE: $15 per month