China-Africa Trade May Be Booming, But Big Problems Loom

A China in Africa Podcast

By Eric Olander, Cobus van Staden & more on August 31, 2014

Trade between China and Africa will break another new record this year as it’s expected to top $200 billion. As trade continues to grow, officials from both regions frequently point to these figures as evidence of steadily improving ties. However, Beijing-based attorney Kai Xue warns that while the trade stats are indeed impressive, they also mask emerging difficulties in the Sino-African relationship.

Ghost Cities to Luxury Malls

By Jeremy Goldkorn on August 29, 2014

Remember the good old days when people didn't talk obsessively about real estate and housing prices, and dinner parties would feature conversations about art? Well, so do we, but with those days long gone we're delighted to host two experts on the real estate market in China for a show that looks into the current state of China's most famous ghost towns from the last decade, as well as retail space, mall development, and more.

China’s Nicaraguan Canal

Digging in the Dark

By Carlos F. Chamorro on August 28, 2014

While Nicaragua was once a central concern—indeed, almost an obsession—of Washington, as Sandinistas and Contras seemed to be battling for the soul of the Western Hemisphere, in more recent times our small and quite impoverished country has slipped off the screens of those who fancy themselves the managers of the “world order.” But recently, a new and quite unexpected global political power play has been threatening to bring our now forgotten country back into world prominence.

Huang Hongxiang

on August 28, 2014

Huang Hongxiang graduated from the Journalism school at Fudan University and from SIPA (School of International and Public Affairs) at Columbia University of New York. As a freelance journalist for Southern Weekly, The Atlantic, The Mail & Guardian, and other publications, he has traveled to Africa and South America many times to investigate and report on various issues, focusing on Chinese investment and related social environmental conflict resolution.

Since graduating from SIPA in 2013, Huang has worked in Africa as a freelance journalist and business representative/consultant for responsible Chinese investment projects. He is dedicated to working on multi-stakeholder dialogues for China’s Going Out and to ensuring the sustainable development of Chinese overseas investment.

Huang is the founder of the Nairboi-based China House Kenya, which provides consulting services to Chinese companies in Africa on sustainable development and investment.

Massive Chinese Mining Deal in DRC Back on Track

A China in Africa Podcast

By Eric Olander, Cobus van Staden & more on August 28, 2014

The controversial Sino-Congolese mining deal Sicomines has been revived thanks to new financing from China's Exim Bank. This is one of Beijing's biggest natural resources-for-infrastructure deals in Africa. If successful, the deal would net millions of tons in iron ore and cobalt for the Chinese while providing the Congolese with desperately needed infrastructure. Johanna Jansson is widely regarded as the leading scholar on Sino-DRC relations, and the Sicomines deal in particular.

Johanna Malm

on August 28, 2014

Johanna Malm has researched the Chinese presence in Africa since 2008. She has held researcher positions at the Centre for Chinese Studies at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, and at the Department of Social Sciences and Business at Roskilde University in Denmark. Malm has conducted fieldwork in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, and Uganda and has been a visiting scholar at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. In 2016, she defended her Ph.D. thesis on the Chinese challenge to the IMF’s power in Africa.

Carlos F. Chamorro

on August 27, 2014

Carlos F. Chamorro is a Nicaraguan journalist and the former Director of the Sandinista newspaper Barricada during the Nicaraguan revolution, from 1979-1990. He is the Director of Confidencial.com.ni and of the television program Esta Semana. In 2010, he was awarded the Maria Moors Cabot Prize by Columbia University