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2024 will be remembered as a seminal year in China-Africa relations with a rebound of Chinese lending to the continent and renewed diplomatic engagement in the run-up to the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation summit that took place in Beijing.
Africa also emerged again as a centerpiece in the U.S.-China duel as leaders from both major powers visited the continent in 2024.
And while stakeholders in the U.S. and Europe struggle to get their businesses to see the opportunities available in Africa, Chinese firms have no such concerns as they expanded their presence this year in the mining, telecom, and automotive sectors.
In this year-end double episode, Eric, Cobus, & Géraud share their top three China-Africa stories of 2024 and provide a forecast for what to expect in the year ahead.
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A few months ago, China looked like it had all its Mideast diplomacy figured out. Israel and the U.S. were taking heavy hits in the court of global public opinion over the devastation caused by the war in Gaza.
Each harrowing image of Palestinian civilians enduring unimaginable suffering steadily undermined U.S. and Israeli claims that their war against Hamas was justified. Beijing eagerly criticized Washington’s hypocrisy in championing universal human rights—except when it came to Israel, the U.S. military, and other selective American interests.
But now that Israel has decapitated Hamas' leadership in Gaza and Hezbollah's in Lebanon, and with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad now exiled to Russia, the geopolitical landscape in the region looks very different.
Tuvia Gering, a longtime China-Israel analyst and a cyber threat intelligence analyst at the Tel Aviv-based cyber security start-up Planet Nine, joins Eric & CGSP Middle East Editor Jony Essa to discuss how China's position in the region is seen from Israel.
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Tuvia Gering on Bluesky: @geringtuvia.bsky.social
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Tensions between China and the Philippines over territorial disputes in the South China Sea flared anew in December after another confrontation at sea. Soon after two vessels collided near the contested Scarborough Shoal, representatives from both sides took to the airwaves to blame the other for the latest incident.
Both Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Philippines counterpart Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. have made it clear they will not concede even a single inch of territory they claim rightfully belongs to their countries.
Don McLain Gill, a Manila-based lecturer at De La Salle University, joins Eric to discuss why the situation going into the new year will remain very tense.
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India's External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar told the lower house of parliament last week that "some improvement" had been made in resolving the ongoing border dispute with China. But he also cautioned that a lot more work has to be done and that it will take years to "reset" relations with Beijing.
The two sides have pulled back their military forces from seven points along their contested boundary in the Himalayas, so they're no longer in close proximity to one another, but those troops are nonetheless still stationed there and haven't yet been redeployed.
Daniel Balazs, a research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, is a specialist in Sino-Indian relations and joins Eric to discuss what's motivating the two countries to negotiate a border settlement.
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U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is not a fan of the Biden administration's climate legislation known as the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), describing it as a "green scam." Trump has promised to repeal it, which will undoubtedly be welcome news in Indonesia.
Indonesia is home to the world's largest nickel reserves, a critical ingredient for manufacturing EV batteries. But the IRA aims to limit China's role in the battery supply chain, presenting a huge headache for Indonesian nickel suppliers given the outsized role that Chinese smelters play in the country's mining sector.
Putra Adhiguna, managing director at the Energy Shift Institute, an independent non-profit energy finance think tank in Jakarta, joins Eric to discuss Indonesia's uncomfortable position squeezed between China and the U.S. in the race to dominate transition mineral supply chains.
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Chinese contractors have been renovating the Ream Naval Base in Cambodia for the past two years, leading to widespread suspicion that the upgraded facility could eventually serve as a future outpost for the PLA Navy in Southeast Asia.
Despite compelling evidence that Chinese naval forces have been stationed at the base for much of the year, both the Chinese and Cambodian governments deny these claims.
Christopher Woody, an independent defense journalist based in Bangkok, argues that while it seems the Chinese military is set to maintain a presence at the base, it may not resemble a traditional military installation.
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U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has already indicated that the Middle East is going to be a central focus of his second term's foreign policy. He's already named Elise Stefanik, a fiercely pro-Israel lawmaker, to be his ambassador at the United Nations and he's been in regular contact since his election last week with both Arab and Israeli leaders.
But Trump is coming back to power at a time when the region is very different than when he left office in 2020. Back then, China was a marginal player in Mideast diplomacy which is no longer the case. China's economic and diplomatic influence in the region has increased significantly over the past four years.
In this special edition, produced in partnership with The ChinaMed Project, Eric hosts six of the world's leading China-Mideast scholars to discuss their forecast for how Donald Trump's re-election will impact U.S.-China relations in the region.
The conversation is divided into two parts:
Panel 1: How the arrival of a new U.S. President fits in the national strategies of regional actors and their relations with China
Ahmed Aboudouh is the head of the China studies unit at the Emirates Policy Center and an associate fellow at the Chatham House in London. Gedaliah Afterman is the head of the Asia-Israel policy program at the Abba Eban Institute for Diplomacy and Foreign Relations and a lecturer at Reichman University and Tel Aviv University. Jonathan Fulton is an assistant professor of political science at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi and a nonresident senior fellow for the Atlantic Council's Middle East Programs and the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative.Panel 2: How a new US President will/might shape US-China relations in the Middle East
Dawn Murphy is an associate professor of national security strategy at the U.S. National War College. Zhang Chuchu is an associate professor of international relations in the School of International Relations and Public Affairs at Fudan University in Shanghai and she is the deputy director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Fudan University. Mohammed Al Alsudairi is a lecturer in politics and international relations of the Arabic speaking world at the Australian National University in Canberra.JOIN THE DISCUSSION:
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There's been a lot of talk in recent years about the new "small and beautiful" doctrine that now guides China's Belt and Road Initiative. The problem is that a lot of people still do not understand what it actually means in practice.
President Xi Jinping first unveiled the concept at the Third Belt-and-Road Symposium in 2021 when he said that China's overseas development finance would focus more attention on "better connectivity" for telecommunications, energy, and financial services.
China has also had to scale down its financing of large-scale infrastructure projects because of economic challenges at home and debt sustainability issues among borrowing countries.
Lui Kanyi, a Beijing-based project finance lawyer and head of China at a large international law firm, has been closely following the transformation of the BRI for many of his Chinese clients. Kanyi joins Eric & Cobus to discuss the "small and beautiful" trend and what people should know about the future direction of the BRI.
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Even though the five countries in Central Asia are among the world's largest fossil fuel producers, the region faces chronic electricity shortages due to a lack of refining capacity. The energy crunch is further compounded by a reluctance to become overly dependent on Russian fuel.
To solve both problems, several Central Asian governments are looking to source renewable energy technology from China. While wind and solar still account for a small share of Central Asia's total energy production, that may soon change as more affordable Chinese green tech enters the market.
Yunis Sharifli, an independent Eurasia foreign policy analyst, recently explored this trend in an article published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Yunis joins Eric & Cobus to explain the geopolitics powering the green energy transition in Central Asia.
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India and China have reached a deal to de-escalate tensions along their bitterly disputed border in the Himalayas, potentially ending a contentious four-year stand-off between the two Asian powers.
Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said on Monday that the two countries agreed to conduct joint military patrols along the border known as the Line of Actual Control. No details of the pact have been released and the Chinese government has yet to comment on the arrangement.
If the two countries have, in fact, agreed to pull back their forces and disengage, it would have wide-ranging geopolitical consequences throughout Asia. Sushant Singh, a lecturer in South Asian studies at Yale University and contributing editor of The Caravan magazine in New Delhi, joined Eric & Cobus to discuss the ramifications of de-escalation along the Sino-Indian border.
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Chinese Premier Li Qiang is in Pakistan this week to get ties with its South Asian neighbor back on track after a series of terrorist attacks this year. The latest incident occurred earlier this month near the airport in the southern port city of Karachi when separatist militants with the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) killed two Chinese nationals in a suicide bombing.
Pakistan has vowed to crack down on the militants but, so far, to little avail. In turn, Beijing has become increasingly frustrated with Islamabad's inability to better protect Chinese interests in the country.
Eram Ashraf, a China-Pakistan relations scholar, explained in a column published in The Diplomat how the violence is taking a toll on this vital Chinese diplomatic relationship. She joins Eric & Cobus to explain what's at stake for both sides if the Pakistani government can't contain the BLA.
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Chinese lending to African countries rebounded in a big way in 2023 after seven consecutive years of decline. Last year, Chinese lenders approved loans totaling $4.61 billion to African borrowers, a dramatic increase over the $922 million lent in 2022, according to Boston University's Global Development Policy Center (GDPC).
In the past, China lent billions to countries like Kenya and Nigeria to build massive infrastructure projects like ports and railways. That is no longer the case today as Chinese lending focuses on smaller, more sustainable initiatives, mainly in the energy, telecom, and logistics sectors.
Kevin Gallagher, director of the GDPC, and Diego Morro, a data analyst at GDPC, join Eric & Cobus to discuss the latest trends in Chinese development finance in Africa and a few of the surprises their research uncovered about which countries are getting the most financing.
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The rapidly escalating conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon prompted a strong reaction from the Chinese government this week. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with his Lebanese counterpart Abdallah Bou Habib on Monday at the UN in New York and condemned Israel's actions as “indiscriminate attacks against civilians."
It's notable, though, that neither Wang nor other Chinese officials made any mention of Hezbollah's missile strikes on targets in Israel, including those that hit civilian areas.
The deteriorating security environment in the Middle East is a critical time for China, which is transitioning from a strategy of "hedging" to one that is increasingly focused on "wedging."
Jonathan Fulton and Michael Schuman, senior nonresident scholars at The Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C., join Eric & Cobus to discuss their new report on China's Mideast strategy and Beijing's new regional priorities.
SHOW NOTES:
The Atlantic Council: China’s Middle East policy shift from “hedging” to “wedging” by Jonathan Fulton and Michael Schulman: https://tinyurl.com/286pyh3o Subscribe to The China-MENA Newsletter by Jonathan Fulton: https://chinamenanewsletter.substack.com/ Subscribe to The China-MENA Podcast on Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/256tdywuJOIN THE DISCUSSION:
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For much of the past thirty years, since the end of the Cold War, the United States has been largely unrivaled in its power in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf. Today, that is no longer the case as the U.S. faces new challenges both from regional powers like Iran and Saudi Arabia as well as international competitors, including China and Russia.
This transition to multipolarity is transforming the region and served as the thesis of a special edition of the academic journal Middle East Policy that came out earlier this year.
Three of the journal's editors on this project, Andrea Ghiselli from Fudan University in Shanghai, University of Naples China scholar Enrico Fardella, and Durham University international relations professor Anoushiravan Ehteshami, join Eric to discuss how the different countries in the region are adapting to the Sino-U.S. rivalry.
SHOW NOTES: Download the Spring 2024 edition of Middle East Policy (you'll need institutional access or have to pay a small fee): https://bit.ly/3XvvLUm
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X: @ChinaGSProject | @eric_olander | @stadenesque
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2024 has been a pivotal year for Brazil-China relations. Last month marked 50 years of diplomatic ties between the two nations, and in celebration of this milestone, President Xi Jinping is expected to visit Brazil by the end of the year.
This visit comes as economic ties between the two countries are booming. Bilateral trade is on track to surpass last year’s $157 billion, and recent data shows Chinese investment in Brazil jumped by 33% in 2023.
Beyond economics, Presidents Xi Jinping and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva share similar ideological views on key global issues, posing a growing challenge to U.S. influence in the Western Hemisphere.
This week, South China Morning Post correspondent Igor Patrick and Thiago Bessimo, co-founder of the Portuguese-language site Observa China, join Eric to unpack the deepening Brazil-China relationship and its global implications.
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U.S. officials have spoken at length about the urgent need to end their country's dependency on China for the critical resources needed to power next-generation mobility and technology.
Part of the solution, they say, is to compete directly with the Chinese for lithium, cobalt, and other critical mineral mining rights around the world. The problem is few U.S. mining companies today do that kind of work in Africa, South America and Southeast Asia where these resources are found.
But the U.S. is geologically endowed, prompting loud calls to mine these resources at home — which raises another problem.
In his new book "The War Below," Reuters correspondent Ernest Scheyder explains how powerful stakeholders have made it very difficult for U.S. mining companies to operate domestically. Ernest joins Eric & Géraud to explain why the politics of mining make it nearly impossible for the U.S. to compete with China for critical resources.
PURCHASE THE WAR BELOW ON AMAZON: https://tinyurl.com/24ng24tm
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In September 2023, just weeks before Hamas' devastating terrorist attack on October 7th, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his foreign policy advisors were preparing for a summit meeting in China with President Xi Jinping. There were even whispers Beijing would help facilitate a rapprochement between Israel and Saudi Arabia much as it did between Riyadh and Tehran.
Now, almost a year later, everything has changed. Sino-Israeli political ties have soured as China aligned with the Arab world and the rest of the Global South in opposition to Israel's war on Gaza. However, while China's standing in Israel has fallen since October 7th, it surged across the rest of the Middle East as more countries in the region regard Beijing as an emerging alternative to the United States.
Gedaliah Afterman, head of the Asia Policy Program at the Abba Eban Institute for Diplomacy and Foreign Relations at Reichman University, and Research Analyst Allie Weinberger, tracked China's Mideast power trajectory in a new article published by the Australian Security Policy Institute. Gedaliah and Allie join Eric to discuss what's behind China's growing influence in the Mideast.
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Many small and middle-power countries are finding it increasingly difficult to navigate the contentious Great Power rivalry between China and the United States. Even though both Beijing and Washington repeatedly state that they don't want to force other countries to choose one side or the other, it isn't always that simple.
Vietnam, however, stands apart from other developing countries in its ability to effectively manage relations with the major powers, including Russia. The main architect of that strategy, known as "bamboo diplomacy," was Nguyen Phu Trong — the long-serving Communist Party General Secretary who passed away last month.
Phan Xuan Dung, a research officer in the Vietnamese program at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS), joins Eric to discuss Trong's legacy and the lessons bamboo diplomacy offers other developing countries.
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Chinese President Xi Jinping has long touted the East's rise and the West's decline, the kind of thinking that's triggered his supporters to fantasize about a post-Western geopolitical order.
While it's indisputable that U.S. and European countries, which represent the foundational pillars of the Western system, have seen their power diminish in the post-Cold War era, there's little credible evidence of a full-blown collapse of Western influence.
Instead, King's College scholar Samir Puri argues in his new book "Westlessness," that the role of the West in the international system is changing and not going away.
Samir joins Eric & Cobus from London to discuss the emergence of a new, less Western global order.
Show Notes:
Order "Westlessness" on Amazon.co.ukJOIN THE DISCUSSION:
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The foreign ministers from China, the U.S., Japan, and Russia, among others, all passed through the Laotian capital, Vientiane, over the past several days, ostensibly for an ASEAN gathering. But the real action took place on the sidelines of the meeting, where the ministers held a series of bilaterals that revealed the hardening battle lines among the major powers.
The tense discussions highlight the frontline role that Southeast Asia now plays in this burgeoning geopolitical competition that appears to be intensifying over disputes related to Taiwan, the South China Sea, and surging Chinese influence in the region.
Prashanth Paramaswaran, writer and creator of the popular ASEAN Wonk Substack newsletter, joins Eric to discuss what happened in Vientiane and the latest on the stand-off between Beijing and Manila over territorial rights in the South China Sea.
SHOW NOTES:
ASEAN Wonk: Why New Japan-Philippines Reciprocal Access Agreement Matters ASEAN Wonk: China Crisis Rocks Philippines Second Thomas Shoal Strategy ASEAN Wonk: Vietnam Foreign Policy Futures After Nguyen Phu Trong PassingJOIN THE DISCUSSION:
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