China

Sudan is set to split into two next year, and China – the Khartoum regime’s most important international backer – is stuck in the middle. Under the 2005...

Growing demand for Africa’s minerals, oil, gas and farmland will shape China’s next five-year plan (2011-2015) due to be approved in March 2011. The planning committees have to...

The ruling Communist Party makes policy and the state bureaucracy implements it but decisions on economic strategy are taking in a wider range of opinion and expertise.

Born in 1953 to a prominent Communist revolutionary, Xi Zhongxun, China’s presumed president-in-waiting, is a ‘princeling’ groomed to the elite class. Xi Jinping grew up in privilege in...

European powers are blocking billions of dollars of debt relief to President Joseph Kabila’s government until it agrees to revise some of its trade and financing deals with...

China has breached the United Nations arms embargo on Darfur by failing to ‘take the necessary measures to prevent the supply of arms and related materiel of all...

China’s flagship African railroad project continues to lose money, and Chinese management may be brought in to avoid throwing more good money after bad. Built in the 1970s,...

Critics of President John Atta Mills’s trade deals with China are claiming that two of the biggest financing arrangements are unlikely to go ahead as planned. These are...

China’s Deputy Permanent Representative, Wang Min, puts South-South diplomacy into action at the United Nations. Even after surpassing Japan as the world’s second-largest economy, China frequently sides with...

Opposition politicians and trades unionists have gone on the offensive since Chinese managers at the Collum coal mine shot protesting Zambian workers on 21 October. The charge is...

Mayhem broke out on 15 October at the Collum Coal Mine in southern Zambia after Chinese owners shot workers protesting over dangerous and difficult working conditions. The workers...

The stratospheric figures – all in billions of dollars – emerging from President John Atta Mills’s grand tour of Asia last month suggest the love affair between Accra...

As political candidates and generals were locked in negotations about the second round of the presidential elections due by the end of October, interim President General Sékouba Konaté...

In return for huge investments in housing and roads, the China Hyway Group has asked for several mining permits that would give it access to at least...

Mozambique has a new Trade and Industry Minister following the sacking on 12 October of Antonio Fernando. President Antonio Guebuza has selected a young economist, Armando Inroga, as...

When Prime Minister Aires Aly and Planning and Development Minister Aiuba Cuereneia met the delegation from China Tong Jian Investment Corporation in late August, they signed a...

Security experts reckon that cyber warfare and espionage will be this century’s new battlegrounds. With that in view, Beijing is now considering whether to allow the Nigerian government...

The Chiadzwa/Marange alluvial diamond fields remain off limits to Zimbabwe’s Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Mines and Energy. Amid growing reports of Chinese involvement, Mines Minister Obert Mpofu remains...

Ghana is among the most stable of China’s African allies but as new emissary Gong Jianzhong will be keeping an eye on recent attacks on Chinese businesses in...

Indian and Chinese companies have joined the race for Uganda's oil assets in the Lake Albert Basin, where at least 2 billion barrels of oil have been discovered....

From energy and construction to transport and agriculture, President Jacob Zuma's 23-26 August trip to China has garnered billions of dollars in potential investments across the economic spectrum....

President Jacob Zuma's August trip to China completed the final stage of his tour this year of the BRIC - Brazil, Russia, India and China - economies. The...

Beijing hopes that business and non-interference will win the day in Sudan. Liu Guijin, China's highest-ranking Africa envoy, told Africa-Asia Confidential that in Sudan China's 'overall concern is...

The International Criminal Court's arrest warrants for Sudanese President Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir continues to cast clouds over China's Africa policy. Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki invited Omer...

China has diverse commercial and political interests in Algeria, leaving Ambassador Liu Yuhe with plenty to do. Investigations into the US$12 billion East-West Highway project, in which Chinese companies are involved,...

Beijing's 20-26 July seminar for developing countries on the topic of 'actively guiding' public opinion and creating a 'sound national image' is its latest response to the tide of Western criticism...

Journalists and activists, pointing to the lack of press freedom and weak civil society in China, argue that Beijing's engagement will only encourage the same in Africa.

A record US$100 million signature bonus for Andry Rajoelina's regime from Chinese investors will not be enough to compensate for the loss of aid funds as Western governments try to...

Economic relations between Luanda and Beijing are getting even closer as Angola struggles with mounting debts while China becomes more dependent on Angolan oil. In mid-August, Finance Minister Carlos Alberto Lopes...

Seeking hard cash and a platform for his disavowals of the West, President Robert Mugabe flew to Shanghai's spectacular trade expo, where on 11 August he thanked Beijing for being...

The cultivation of ties with the African Union is a lynchpin of China's courtship of the continent. To this end, China has built a new conference centre at the AU's...

The Lagos State government, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation and the China State Construction Engineering Corporation signed an US$8 billion deal this month for a 300,000 barrel-per-day oil refinery and a...

Plans to sell the state-owned Nigeria Telecommunications (Nitel) have floundered after China Unicom announced it would not be contributing to the front-running New Generation Consortium comprised of China Unicom Europe, the...

China's oil interests in Sudan will come under heavy scrutiny again as Khartoum and Juba start negotiations on sharing oil revenues after the independence referendum due in January 2011. Backed by...

When asked about the 12 July reinstatement by the International Criminal Court of genocide charges against Sudanese President Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Qin Gang did not...

The continuing power of Mines Minister Mahmoud Thiam and the prospect that he will wield influence after the second round of the presidential elections next month is good news for the...

As one of the anchors in the proposed trans-Guinea railway, the China International Fund may consider its position in Guinea unassailable. However, the Bellzone/CIF deal is already persuading other companies that...

Malawi has profitably switched its allegiance to China from Taiwan with a price tag of over US$350 million. In the past two years, China has taken over road and building...

The shadowy joint venture between Angola's state-owned oil company and the nebulous China International Fund has reached a new stumbling block in its three-year-old pursuit of a major stake in Tanzania's...

A pillar of China's diplomacy is the cultivation of links between the Chinese Communist Party and the ruling parties of its allies. The strategy has become more nuanced, as seen...

Chinese companies are caught in the political crossfire between President Abdelaziz Bouteflika and his opponents in the military and intelligence services led by General Mohammed ‘Tewfik’ Mediene. The main point...

As the graft wars intensify between factions of the Algerian government, several officials are appearing in court in connection with irregularities on contracts with Chinese companies in the East-West Highway project....

A storm is gathering over attempts by China’s Zijin Mining Group to buy Platmin Congo without prior approval from President Joseph Kabila’s government, despite generally good Beijing-Kinshasa relations....

There are two big problems with the new deal between the China International Fund and the small Australian mining company Bellzone announced in Conakry on 24 May to...

Chinese arms are affordable options for African militaries looking to upgrade, and the advisors of the People’s Liberation Army are ready to meet that demand. On 23-31 May,...

Xia Huang’s short tenure as Ambassador to Niger has been anything but uneventful. Since his arrival in Niamey in November 2009, Xia has contended with a coup that...

Equal measures of optimism and scepticism greeted China’s announcement of an agreement to build three oil refineries worth US$23 billion. The terms of the memorandum of understanding are clear; the...

When Gabon’s President El Hadj Omar Bongo Ondimba was alive, his ministers had nothing but praise for the nearly US$4 billion Bélinga iron ore mine and associated logistics projects, described...

Beijing’s relationship with the China International Fund is much clearer than it likes to admit. When the Hong Kong-registered CIF signed multibillion-dollar deals with pariah regimes in Guinea...

Oppositionist Michael Sata’s rhetoric against China is not slowing down Chinese investment plans ahead of Zambia’s national elections, which are due in 2011. Chinese companies operating Zambian mines will now have...

The China-Africa Development Fund’s expansion plans moved a step forward with the opening of a new branch in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on 30 March. The office will pursue greater cooperation...

The first cooperation agreement signed by the China-Africa Development Fund was with the Tianjin North China Geological Exploration Bureau, a state-run mining enterprise, in December 2007.

April 2009: the China-Africa Development Fund and YTO Group announced a joint venture – the China-Africa Machinery Corporation – to manufacture agricultural and construction equipment. YTO agreed to invest US$20.1 million for...

Five years after his first official visit, President Joseph Kabila returned to South Korea on 29-30 March. Two protocols were agreed. The first accord seeks to replicate China’s US$6...

A US$3.3 million loan offered by the China International Fund has drawn renewed criticism of the company’s activities in Guinea. On 1 March, Abdoulaye Yéro Baldé, a member...

Why won’t anyone help Yang Fan pay his US$135,000 bail bond – especially when he has $2.3 million stashed in a local bank account and a swish golf...

Jia Qinglin, the number four in China’s leadership, has just completed his second tour of African nations. At each stop, Jia sought to build ties with presidents and...

State prosecutors have ordered more arrests this month, as investigations intensify into the Chinese companies and European middlemen dealing with Algeria’s US$12 billion East-West Highway project. The probes,...

There are four main strands to the sweeping the anti-corruption investigations launched in the wake of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s win with 90% of the votes cast in the...

The news that José dos Santos da Silva Ferreira is to head a new super ministry which will oversee Chinese contracts and projects is a strong vote of...

The execution of the US$6 billion ore-for-infrastructure deal originally signed in April 2008 between the Congolese state and Chinese companies China Railway Group and Sinohydro has suffered a...

Zambia does not always get what it wants or what it wants at the right time. President Rupiah Banda went on a 10-day official visit to China in...

Advocates of Chinese engagement with Africa often take rhetorical swipes at the ‘Washington Consensus’. The fact is that China covets seats in the institutions that underpin it. Justin...

Over US$23 million in signature bonuses payable on China’s $6 billion Sino-Congolaise des Mines (Sicomines) deal with the Kinshasa government have been stolen according to a probe by a commission set...

Agreed in November 2009, the second phase of infrastructure deals associated with the Sicomines joint venture is worth US$400 million and is expected to provide Congolese President Joseph Kabila with a...

In February, after months of political jockeying, Tullow gained control of all of the oil under Lake Albert, allowing it to bring in its preferred partner, the China National Offshore...

The on-again off-again plan to renovate the railway linking coastal Lagos to Kano in the north may formally start up this year, but questions about the validity of any contract...

More than a year and two amendments later, progress is finally being made on little-known China Union’s US$2.68 billion deal to redevelop Liberia’s Bong Mines. In her apologetic New Year...

The year 2009 was one of broken promises. China declared repeatedly that its relations with Africa would not be affected by the global financial crisis (AAC Vol 2...

Debate within China has been raging for some time over the solution to the problem of slumping exports. One of the more controversial ideas that has been floated is a...

Fears of an aggressive Chinese military build-up surfaced again after a People’s Liberation Army Navy Admiral advocated the establishment of an overseas base to fight Somali pirates in...

As he responds to the fiery criticism of opposition Patriotic Front leader Michael ‘King Cobra’ Sata, Li Qiangmin is more outspoken than most Chinese diplomats, staunchly defending his...