The China-Global South Podcast

Enthusiasm for electric vehicles is waning in both the U.S. and China, but that is definitely not the case in other parts of the world where EV adoption rates are steadily rising. In fact, at the Bangkok Motor Show this week, Chinese EV brands are grabbing all of the attention.

Throughout the Global South, Chinese EV brands are expanding their presence in both manufacturing and sales. And unlike U.S.-made EVs that are largely expensive luxury vehicles, the Chinese brands are focusing on small, affordable cars that are within the price range of consumers in Asia, Africa and Latin America, among other places.

Lei Xing, a longtime China automotive journalist and host of the China EVs & More Podcast, joins Eric to discuss why Chinese automakers are looking to developing countries to drive EV sales.

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U.S. and European officials often lament that they've fallen behind China when it comes to engaging Africa, Asia, the Americas, and other developing regions. Western governments aren't set up to rapidly deploy the kind of money and resources that Beijing's done with its Belt and Road Initiative over the past ten years.

While the U.S. and Europe are now trying to catch up, author Jeremy Garlick writes in his new book Advantage China: Agent of Change in an Era of Global Disruption that their efforts are hamstrung not only by money but also by history.

Jeremy joins Eric & Cobus to explain why he thinks China's political system provides key systemic advantages over its Western rivals when it comes to engaging the Global South.

Show Notes:

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The escalating tensions between China, the Philippines, and the United States in the South China Sea highlight how Southeast Asia is now the most dangerous frontline in the burgeoning Great Power competition between Beijing and Washington.

But as this week's ASEAN summit in Australia highlights, there is no consensus in the region over how the Southeast Asian bloc's 11 member states are responding to the rapidly changing geopolitical environment.

This week, Eric spoke with Prashanth Parameswaran, a highly regarded analyst on Southeast Asian affairs and founder of the widely-read ASEAN Wonk newsletter, for some perspective on how different countries across the region are positioning themselves in this new era.

Show Notes:

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A lot of EV consumers bought new battery-powered cars in the hope it would be better for the environment than a vehicle with a conventional internal combustion engine that runs on fossil fuels. By some measures, that's no doubt true.

But many of these early adopters are also unaware their supposedly "green" cars aren't quite as carbon neutral as promised and that there are serious labor and human rights problems related to the metals used to manufacture the batteries that power those EVs.

Krista Shennum, a climate and human rights researcher at Climate Rights International, joins Cobus & Antonia to discuss the situation in Indonesia where Chinese mining companies dominate the all-important nickel sector that's rife with labor and environmental abuses.

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Editor's Note: we're sharing this bonus episode of the China in Africa Podcast given that the topic is so relevant for our audience interested in China-Global South issues.

Academics and think tank analysts, predominantly in the U.S. and Europe, spend a lot of time debating whether it's appropriate to use the nomenclature "Global South" to describe developing countries in Africa, Asia, and the Americas, among other regions.

In those regions, it's actually less of an issue where framings like "South-South" are commonplace. The use of the word "South" doesn't seem to be as sensitive an issue as it is for those observers in the "Global North."

This week, Jorge Heine, a research professor at Boston University and former Chilean ambassador to South Africa, India and China, joins Eric & Cobus to give a passionate defense of the "Global South" and why he feels it's more important than ever now to embrace the concept.

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They're still counting the votes in Indonesia after last week's election but it's all but certain that Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto will become the country's next president. While some of the world's major powers, like the U.S. and India, are holding back their official congratulations, the Chinese weren't so reserved.

Ambassador Lu Kang went to Prabowo's private residence on Sunday and was photographed playing with the likely president's cat, Bobby -- a clear signal Beijing is keen to build a close relationship with the new administration in Jakarta.

CGSP's Southeast Asia Editor Antonia Timmerman joins Eric to discuss the geopolitics now swirling over the archipelago and what's ahead for China-Indonesia ties in the Prabowo era.

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For much of the past year, there's been a lot of talk about China's new leaner, more focused Belt and Road Initiative that goes by the mantra "Smart and Beautiful." The problem is very few people actually know what it looks like in practice.

But that's starting to change, particularly in regions like Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) where two seemingly contradictory investment trends are taking place: overall Chinese FDI in the region is down but in key areas, so-called "new infrastructure," Chinese investments in LAC countries have been going up.

Margaret Myers, director of the Asia and Latin America Program at the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington co-authored a new report on China's evolving investment priorities in the Americas and joins Eric to discuss why Chinese FDI today looks very different than it even just a few years ago.

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There was a lot of speculation in the U.S. last year that an upgrade of diplomatic ties with Vietnam would prompt Hanoi to be more aligned with Washington in its rivalry with China. While Vietnam did embark on a flurry of diplomatic upgrades with China's rivals in Japan, South Korea and the United States, among others, China nonetheless remains the Southeast Asian country's primary foreign policy priority.

And that's never going to change regardless of what the U.S. and others offer Hanoi, according to Khang Vu, a doctoral candidate in Vietnamese foreign policy at Boston College.

Khang joins Eric to explain why a combination of geography and history require the Vietnamese to always put China at the center of their international strategy.

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Together, the United States and China import $40 billion worth of timber products each year, quite a bit of which is harvested illegally from West Africa's rapidly shrinking forests. But cracking down on this illicit trade is extremely difficult given that many of the region's governments are actively complicit.

The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), an NGO based in the U.S. and UK, recently traced how Chinese merchants trafficked rosewood timber from the forests Equatorial Guinea back to China and eventually all the way to store shelves at Home Depot in the United States.

Last year, EIA published their findings in a damning investigative report. Ma Haibing, an Asia policy specialist at EIA, was part of the team that worked on that report. He joins Eric & Cobus from Washington, D.C. to discuss the key findings and what he recommends can be done to crack down on this destructive trade.

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This year's COP28 gathering is wrapping up in Dubai and it turned out to be the most controversial climate conference in years where China was at the center of many of the most contentious discussions on how to mitigate the impact of global warming.

China's positions at the conference were difficult to decipher. Chinese negotiators positioned themselves as a still developing country that's suffering the consequences of climate change while at the same time aligning many of their critical votes at COP28 with the fossil fuel-producing countries.

Anika Patel, a China analyst at the online news site Carbon Brief, covered the Chinese delegation at COP28 in Dubai and joins Eric & Cobus to share of her insights into China's approach to climate politics at the conference.

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There's mounting concern in the U.S. and Europe that their global reputations, particularly in developing countries, will be among the latest casualties of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

In the Global South, anger is rising against the West over what is perceived to be a double standard by the West's unconditional support of Israel even as it bombs civilian neighborhoods in Gaza while at the same time lecturing other countries, namely Russia, for violating the rules of war when it does the same.

CGSP Southeast Asia Editor Antonia Timmerman joins Eric & Cobus from Jakarta to discuss how all of this plays into China's larger campaign to challenge the Western-led rules-based international order.

SHOW NOTES:

Read Antonia's latest column on Explaining Indonesia?s Different Responses To Palestine, Xinjiang, and Myanmar?s Rohingya: https://tinyurl.com/3da3jea6

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Prior to the October 7th terrorist attack by Hamas in southern Israel, China had positioned itself as a new power broker in the Middle East. Chinese officials were brimming with confidence after they finalized a détente between Iran and Saudi Arabia earlier this year, hinting they could do the same in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

But in the wake of a full-scale war that's now underway, those same Chinese officials are much more circumspect.

In this week's episode, CGSP Middle East Editor Jony Essa and Eric speak with three of the world's leading China-Mideast scholars to discuss China's response to the war between Israel and Hamas.

First, Gedaliah Afterman, head of the Asia Policy Program at the Abba Eban Institute for International Diplomacy at the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel, and Jonathan Fulton, associate professor of political science at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi, discuss how the war has impacted China's foreign policy towards Israel and Persian Gulf countries.

Then, Bill Figueroa, one of the world's foremost experts on China-Iran relations at the University of Groningen, joins the conversation to talk about whether Beijing can leverage its influence with Iran to sway Hamas.

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Amid a slowing economy at home, more Chinese companies are now looking to invest abroad in search of higher returns. While there's been a lot of hope in recent years that some of that money would find its way to Africa and other less-developed regions, that's not happening.

Instead, Chinese companies are investing in countries closer to home in Asia, according to Chim Lee, a China analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Chim joins Eric & Cobus from Beijing to discuss the latest trends in Chinese overseas FDI and why Chinese companies are focusing more attention on "de-risking" their investments.

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Two years ago, China introduced a series of new so-called "green guidelines" that it hoped would promote more sustainable development abroad. But in Africa, according to a new research report, it appears those higher environmental, social, and governance (ESG) have been difficult to meet.

Researchers from Boston University's Global Development Policy Center, the Fudan University Green Finance and Development Center, the South African Institute of International Affairs, and LSE IDEAS teamed up to examine ESG standards at five Chinese-funded infrastructure projects in Egypt, Nigeria, and Ethiopia.

Two of the scholars on that team, Cecilia Han Springer and Christoph Nedopil, join Cobus (who also contributed to the research) to discuss their findings and explain why Chinese companies continue to struggle to meet minimum ESG standards in Africa.

SHOW NOTES:

Read the full report: Elevating ESG: Empirical Lessons on Environmental, Social and Governance Implementation of Chinese Projects in Africa: https://bit.ly/46ZHL4d

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Chilean President Gabriel Boric oversaw the signing of a $233 million lithium deal with Chinese mining giant Tsingshan Holding Group, the latest investment that solidifies China's dominance of the fiercely contested EV battery metal supply chain.

In just the past few months alone, Chinese firms have moved quickly to lock up similar mining and processing deals in Morocco, Nigeria, Bolivia, and Zimbabwe, among other countries.

Henry Sanderson, executive editor at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, joins Eric & Geraud to discuss these latest deals and what the implications are for G7 countries that are looking to build alternate non-Chinese supply chains for critical resources.

SHOW NOTES:

Amazon: Volt Rush: The Winners and Losers in the Race to Go Green by Henry Sanderson: https://a.co/d/7kDJxds

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China's economy emerged from the pandemic much weaker than before. Unemployment is up, exports are down and a burgeoning property crisis is having a devastating impact on local government finances.

These changes in the economy are happening very fast, so quickly that's it difficult for experts to keep pace with what's happening, much less among those who don't closely follow Chinese economic trends -- particularly in developing countries.

Michael Pettis, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, is one of the world's foremost scholars on the Chinese economy. He joins Eric this week to discuss how the dramatic changes that are now taking place in China will impact countries throughout the Global South.

SHOW NOTES:

Amazon: Trade Wars Are Class Wars: How Rising Inequality Distorts the Global Economy and Threatens International Peace: https://amzn.to/46Iiqel

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There's growing anxiety in the United States over China's expanding presence in the Latin America-Caribbean (LAC) region. Last week, a Congressional subcommittee held another breathless hearing that warned of the dangers of "Communism on our shores."

That concern in Washington is based, in part, on surging Chinese trade with LAC countries, more investment, and a growing ideological alignment with Beijing's worldview among many of the region's largest countries.

LAC countries are also key destinations for Chinese-backed infrastructure projects as part of the Belt and Road Initiative.

But contrary to the simplistic narratives in Washington about Chinese engagement in Latin America, Bruno Binetti, a China Foresight Associate at LSE Ideas and a non-resident fellow at the Inter-American Dialogue, says the region's ties with Beijing are undergoing profound change. Bruno joins Eric & Cobus from Beijing to explain how.

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The Chinese economy is in trouble. Exports, manufacturing output, and investment are all down. Unemployment, particularly among young people is up. Provincial debt is now at a record $8 trillion while a burgeoning property crisis has eliminated a once reliable source of revenue for local governments.

The financial difficulties that China is now experiencing have direct implications on dozens, if not hundreds of developing countries around the world that have come to rely on Chinese demand to bolster their own economies.

Lizzi Li, an economist and reporter at the Chinese language television network Wall Street TV, joins Eric & Cobus from New York to discuss what's behind the economic slowdown in China and why it's critical that policymakers and other stakeholders in the Global South learn quickly how to adapt to the new economic realities that are taking shape.

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There was a glimmer of hope last month that China and India would pull back from their increasingly contentious standoff when military commanders concluded talks along their disputed border on a somewhat optimistic note. The hope was that these talks would pave the way for leaders from both countries to meet while they were together at the BRICS summit in Johannesburg.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi did meet briefly in South Africa but it did nothing to stall the downward spiral in relations between the two Asian powers.

Ananth Krishnan, an associate editor at The Hindu newspaper in New Delhi and one of the foremost experts on Sino-Indian relations, joins Eric & Cobus to explain why ties have soured so badly and what to expect going forward.

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China's Belt and Road Initiative marked its 10th anniversary this month, prompting a lot of discussion about what's next for Beijing's controversial development agenda. While BRI spending in Africa and the Americas has plummeted in recent years that is not the case closer to home in Southeast Asia.

Cambodia, in particular, stands apart from other countries in terms of its growing dependence on Chinese economic engagement -- both from government-backed BRI projects and private investors who have transformed major cities like Sihanoukville (not always for the better).

Wang Yuan, an assistant professor at Duke Kunshan University, and Linda Calabrese, a research fellow at the Overseas Development Institute, published a paper last month that examined China's hugely important economic presence in Cambodia and join Eric & Cobus to discuss what lessons other developing countries can learn from Phnom Penh's experience.

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The failure of G20 countries last month to agree on a plan to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030 highlights a key problem in the ongoing debate over how to respond to climate change: the institutions that are designed to help solve this problem are failing.

It's not clear what China's role was in that debate at the G20 but elsewhere Beijing's actions on combatting climate change are somewhat contradictory. While China is by far the world's leader in renewable energy and green transportation, it's also the world's largest polluter, thanks in part to its reliance on coal power.

This week, Byron Tsang, a London-based senior policy advisor at the independent climate change think tank E3G and Madhura Joshi, a senior research associate for E3G in Mumbai, join Eric & Cobus to discuss the current state of global climate diplomacy.

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China's critics contend the Belt and Road Initiative is dead or dying due to a mix of gross mismanagement and hubris. The data, however, reveals a very different story. While lending has definitely decreased considerably from its peak in 2016, the BRI is very much alive -- it just looks very different today than it did even a few years ago.

Instead of expensive large-scale infrastructure projects in Africa, the Americas, and Asia, Chinese lenders are now focusing more on smaller initiatives related to technology, renewable energy, and connectivity. In fact, Chinese creditors lent more money to finance green energy initiatives in the first half of the year than in any other 6-month period since the BRI launched a decade ago.

Christoph Nedopil, founding director of the Green Finance and Development Center at Fudan University has been closely tracking the evolution of the BRI and joins Eric & Cobus to discuss what the latest data on BRI lending reveals about its future.

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For much of the past 20 years, China sought to radically expand its presence beyond its traditional spheres of influence to new regions in Africa, the Americas, and the Middle East. China lent billions to countries in these regions and devoted considerable diplomatic capital to building political influence there as well.

But now, in this new era of Great Power competition with the United States and Europe, China is once again shifting its focus, this time closer to home in Asia. Its so-called "near abroad" is now by far the most consequential region for China both in terms of trade and, increasingly, new security challenges.

Raffaello Pantucci, a senior associate fellow at Britain?s Royal United Services Institute and a visiting senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, is one of the world's leading experts on China's relations in Central Asia and joins Eric & Cobus to discuss why this region, in particular, is now so important to Beijing.

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In June, Zambia reached what's been described as a landmark debt restructuring deal that for the first time brought together the country's bilateral creditors including China, traditional Paris Club lenders and bondholders.

While the deal is no doubt unprecedented, it also reveals that China was very effective in successful in getting the parties to agree to many of its demands.

Matt Mingey, a senior analyst at the consultancy Rhodium Group, is among the world's foremost experts on Chinese lending and debt issues. He joins Eric & Cobus from Washington, D.C. to discuss whether China is, in fact, setting the agenda for debt restructurings in the Global South.

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Three Chinese warships made ports of call in Ghana and Nigeria this month, prompting a new wave of speculation about Beijing's military ambitions in Africa. The PLA Navy visit followed reports that Chinese miners in the Central African Republic were rescued by a group of Russian mercenaries which also triggered questions as to whether the controversial Wagner Group is now working more closely with Chinese entities on the continent.

All of this is set against a backdrop of increasingly close military-to-military ties between the PLA and their counterparts in Africa.

Paul Nantulya, a research associate at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies in Washington, D.C., is among the foremost experts on Chinese military engagement on the continent. He joins Eric & Cobus to discuss his latest research on the increasingly close ties between Chinese and African militaries for training and education which are also closely linked to increased Chinese weapons sales.

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The South China Sea is one of the world's most strategically vital maritime zones where more than $5 trillion of trade passes through each year -- a whopping 60% of the globe's total maritime commerce. It's also the epicenter of an increasingly contentious geopolitical dispute among more than half a dozen countries over territorial boundaries and who ultimately controls this enormous body of water.

Chinese sovereignty claims over the whole of the South China Sea have provoked furious responses from its regional neighbors and sparked a dangerous duel with the U.S. and other major navies over continued freedom of navigation through the area.

Ray Powell, a former U.S. Air Force colonel, tracks the maneuvers of ships and other vessels operating in the South China Sea on a daily basis as the team lead for Stanford University's Project Myoushu. Ray joins Eric & Cobus from Palo Alto to break down the different territorial claims and why this burgeoning maritime conflict is so incredibly important.

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Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas wrapped up a visit to Beijing last week where he heard lofty promises from Chinese officials about their desire to mediate a settlement with Israel. While the visit made for some good headlines, the chances of China jump-starting the stalled peace process are close to zero.

Tuvia Gering, a leading China watcher in Israel and a researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies in Jerusalem, and Jony Essa, CGSP's Arabic Editor, join Eric and Cobus to discuss the key takeaways from the Abbas visit and explain why China is not well-positioned to broker a settlement between Israelis and Palestinians.

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The days of China easily handing out billions of dollars to build infrastructure in developing countries around the world are now over. The Chinese can't afford it anymore and many of the borrowing countries just don't have the capacity to take on more debt.

But that doesn't mean the Chinese aren't lending anymore. They are. It's just that the projects they finance today are either small -- below $50 million -- or "beautiful" -- support local communities and align with certain Chinese political objectives.

Edwin Li, a Beijing-based project finance attorney for the international law firm Dentons, detailed these new lending priorities in a recent article and joins Eric & Cobus to explain why it's critical that borrowing countries clearly understand what China does and doesn't fund.

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Indonesia is a pioneer among developing countries for its efforts in moving up the EV battery metal value chain. Whereas most other countries like the DR Congo and Chile export raw commodities that are processed elsewhere, Indonesia now requires all of the nickel mined in the country to be processed locally.

But just as in the DRC where the Chinese dominate the cobalt mining sector, a similar dynamic is now playing out in Indonesia.

CGSP's Southeast Asia Antonia Timmerman joins Eric & Cobus from Jakarta to talk about China's controversial role in the Indonesian mining business plus how a new Chinese-backed high-speed railway is generating more concern than excitement.

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China is one of the very few truly bipartisan issues in Washington today where there is near unanimous consensus that the U.S. must work to counter Beijing's growing influence around the world, especially in developing countries.

The problem is that there is much less agreement on what the U.S. should actually do to respond to the China challenge.

Dan Runde, a senior vice president at the DC-based think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies, joins Eric & Cobus to discuss his new book that makes the case for why bolstering U.S. soft power is key to persuading Global South countries to favor the United States over China.

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In September 2021, President Xi Jinping announced at the United Nations that China would immediately halt all financing of coal power projects abroad as part of Beijing's broader ambition to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.

Since then, the Chinese government has fulfilled that pledge, terminating coal power plant financing deals in Zimbabwe, South Africa, and other countries. But at home, China's policy on coal is very different. In fact, this year alone, the Chinese have approved more than 20gw of new coal power production in just the first three months of the year, more than all of 2021 combined.

Christoph Nedopil Wang, an associate professor at Fudan University and one of the world's leading scholars in Chinese green development finance, joins Eric & Cobus to discuss this striking contradiction in Chinese policy on coal and why China does one thing abroad but another at home.

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There was a lot of excitement earlier this month at the IMF and World Bank's annual gathering in Washington, D.C. about rumors that the impasse between China and multilateral development banks (MDBs) had been resolved. That stalemate between the Chinese and the MDBs, namely the World Bank, has impeded debt restructuring deals in Sri Lanka, Zambia, and now Ghana among other countries.

But now, two weeks later, there's still no official confirmation from either China or the MDBs that they've settled their differences.

Kevin Gallagher, director of the Global Development Policy Center at Boston University, attended the Spring Meetings in Washington, D.C., and joins Eric & Cobus to give an update on the current state of debt relief for some of the world's poorest countries.

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The U.S. and China are waging a hard-fought battle today for dominance of global technology standards, particularly in emerging sectors like 5G mobile telecommunications. While China's access to markets in advanced economies is increasingly limited, tech companies like Huawei, ZTE, and Bytedance are rapidly expanding in the Global South.

But the U.S. Congress is adamant to try and limit China's expansion in developing markets by effectively telling countries if you want to work with the U.S., then you can't use Chinese tech.

John Lee is closely following this unfolding competition from Berlin where he's a director at the technology consulting firm East West Futures. John joins Eric & Cobus to discuss what developing countries need to do to avoid becoming collateral damage in the expanding U.S.-China tech duel.

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When China announced in March that it had brokered a landmark agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia to restore diplomatic ties, it took a lot of people by surprise. They just didn't see it coming.

But now, a month later, it appears that the deal is solid. Just last week, the foreign ministers from both countries reconvened in Beijing to finalize the pact and begin the process of reconciliation.

While all of this is very encouraging, William Figueroa, a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Cambridge Centre for Geopolitics and one of the world's foremost Sino-Iran scholars, joins Eric & Cobus to explain why it's still too early to tell if China's new role as the preferred Mideast mediator will succeed.

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Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim both wrapped up state visits to China last week and their discussions with President Xi Jinping revealed some fascinating linkages between contemporary Chinese foreign policy objectives and Beijing's historical perception of its role as Asia's central power.

Antoine Roth, an international relations scholar at Tohoku University in Japan explores those themes in his new book "A Hierarchical Vision of Order: Understanding Chinese Foreign Policy in Asia." He joins Eric & Cobus from Sendai to discuss what lessons can be drawn from China's diplomatic history in Asia that can inform a better understanding of contemporary trends in Chinese foreign policy in other parts of the world.

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Chinese lending to countries in Latin America and the Caribbean is gaining momentum. For the second year in a row, China's two largest policy banks have increased lending to countries in the region, albeit in much smaller amounts than what they did a decade ago.

At the same time, there's word that China has spent close to a quarter trillion dollars over the past twenty years to bail out dozens of countries struggling to stay afloat under the weight of such much debt.

Margaret Myers, director of the Asia and Latin America program at the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, D.C., and Rebecca Ray, two of the world's leading experts in Chinese overseas development finance, joins Eric to discuss how these two seemingly divergent trends actually align with one another and why the Americas is emerging as a key market for Chinese creditors.

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Reporting on China is difficult even for the most experienced journalist who's spent years living there and speaks the language. So, it's not surprising that reporters in Africa who've had limited exposure to the country often struggle to cover China-related news.

In this special episode produced in conjunction with the Africa-China Reporting Project (ACRP) at Wits University in Johannesburg, Eric is joined by veteran China Watcher, Kaiser Kuo, founder and host of the popular Sinica podcast, to discuss how African journalists can improve their reporting on China.

The interview with Kaiser was recorded during a live online workshop hosted by ACRP Project Coordinator Bongiwe Tutu that included questions from African journalists who participated in the event.

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This month's surprise announcement that China brokered the restoration of diplomatic relations between longtime rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia prompted widespread excitement in Beijing and considerable consternation among U.S. conservatives. The implication for both is that China's role in the process symbolized the decline of U.S. influence in the region.

Not so says Mohammed Soliman, one of the leading Arab political analysts in Washington, D.C. based at the Middle East Institute and also a manager at McLarty Associates Middle East North Africa Program. Mohammed joins Eric to explain why he thinks the U.S. should not overreact and what lessons policymakers should take from what happened.

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New details are emerging about the landmark diplomatic deal brokered by China for Saudi Arabia and Iran to restore diplomatic relations. The initial excitement about the prospects for peace between these two Persian Gulf rivals has given way to a more sober assessment that effectively says the agreement is a good first step but that's about it.

The key test is going to be whether both sides are going to pull back from their proxy fights in places like Yemen. Until that's done, it's still too early to be overly optimistic.

But what does this all say about China's emergence as a key diplomatic power broker? Tuvia Gehring, a researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, and Jacinto Scito, a policy fellow at the London-based Bourse & Bazaar Foundation, are two of the world's foremost scholars on China-Mideast relations and join Eric & Cobus to discuss their reactions to the deal and what it means for China and the wider Middle East.

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In just the past twenty years, China's trade with countries in Latin America and the Caribbean surged 26-fold to almost half-a-trillion dollars. The region is also now a major destination for Chinese foreign investment and becoming a critically important new front in China's geopolitical confrontation with the United States.

While there's no dispute that China is now a major player in the region, knowledge about Chinese engagement in the Americas nonetheless remains surprisingly low, particularly among key stakeholders in Latin America.

A new book, China and Latin America: Development, Agency and Geopolitics by two scholars at the London School of Economics (LSE) aims to change that. Álvaro Méndez, director of LSE's Global South Unit and International Relations Professor Chris Alden join Eric & Cobus to discuss why the Americas is now central to China's global strategy.

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Senior-level Chinese stakeholders often contend that one of the main reasons for today's heightened geopolitical tensions between China and the West is due to "misunderstandings" of its foreign policy objectives by outsiders.

Chinese distrust is also fueled by a longstanding feeling of victimization by the West and a sense that they've lost the "narrative battle" in international media.

Wang Huiyao, president and founder of the Beijing-based think tank Centre for China and Globalisation, wants to change that. In a recent column published in the South China Morning Post newspaper, Wang called on Chinese scholars, analysts, and others to "embrace the global internet if it wants to reclaim its narrative."

Wang joins Eric & Cobus to discuss why he thinks China has such a difficult time in communicating its agenda with the rest of the world.

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During the first Cold War, a large group of developing countries sought to distance themselves from the ideological battle between the United States and the Soviet Union to create a Non-Aligned Movement.

Today, three decades later, at the dawn of yet another Great Power competition, this time between the U.S. and China, Global South countries are once again saying they don't want any part of it.

Jorge Heine, a former Chilean ambassador to China and now a research professor at Boston University joins Eric & Cobus to discuss the new book he co-edited about how this new movement is taking root in the Americas, Asia, and Africa.

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U.S. officials are speaking out about the urgency to diversify supply chains for critical resources that are now largely dependent on China, particularly rare earths, cobalt, and lithium that are all essential ingredients in manufacturing electric vehicle batteries.

It's a hot topic this week at Africa's largest mining conference that's taking place in Cape Town. Although senior U.S. diplomats speaking at the conference haven't actually said the word "China," the "C" word is nonetheless clearly on their minds.

CGSP Francophone Editor Christian-Geraud Neema, a leading expert in Congolese mining issues, joins Eric to discuss U.S.-China resource competition in Africa and whether Washington's plan to narrow China's lead will actually work.

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There was a time when Chinese lending to developing countries rivaled the World Bank. Those days are now long gone as Chinese overseas development lending has been on a steady downward trajectory.

New data from Boston University's Global Development Policy Center (GDPC) reports that in 2020-2021, China granted just 28 loan commitments worth just $10.5 billion -- a small fraction of what was lent in the early 2010s.

Rebecca Ray, a senior researcher at GDPC, and Tarela Moses, a data analyst at the center's Global China Initiative join Eric from Boston to discuss the latest trends in Chinese development finance and specifically why Beijing has become much more risk-averse.

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China's two-way trade with countries in the Americas increased 8% last year to $486 billion, nearly twice the volume of what China does in Africa. South America is now a vital source of food, energy, and strategic minerals for China, while markets like Brazil are attracting record amounts of Chinese investment.

Meantime, China's growing presence in Latin America and the Caribbean region is also making the U.S. increasingly uncomfortable given that many people in Washington, D.C. still believe that the Western hemisphere remains America's traditional sphere of influence.

But despite China's enormous economic engagement in the region and the geopolitical concerns in the U.S., Pepe Zhang, a senior fellow at The Atlantic Council and one of DC's top China-Americas watchers, contends that China's surging influence is still not getting the attention that it deserves. He joins Eric & Cobus from Washington, D.C. to explain why.

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Chinese trade with Africa is widely expected to break yet another record in 2022, while Chinese lending to countries across the continent fell again. Meantime, African leaders this year also forcefully pushed back against both the U.S. and China to avoid becoming collateral damage in their escalating great power struggle.

It was an eventful year indeed for Africa-China relations. Gyude Moore, a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development and a prominent African international affairs analyst, joins Eric & Cobus from Washington, D.C. to reflect on the year's key milestones.

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The Chinese debt trap narrative was started based on the purported surrender of the Port of Hambantota in Sri Lanka. When Colombo fell behind in its payments to the China Exim Bank for the loan, the story goes, Beijing seized the port as collateral.

Now, six years later, a pair of Sri Lankan researchers, Umesh Moramudali and Thilina Panduwawala gained access to the original China Exim Bank loan documents for the port and confirmed that the Chinese predatory lending narrative, as it's been told, just isn't true.

The pair join Eric & Cobus to discuss their new report that debunks many of the myths surrounding Chinese lending to Sri Lanka, specifically related to the controversial port.

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So much of the international news coverage of Xi Jinping's three-day visit last week to Saudi Arabia was framed in the context of the broader U.S.-China rivalry. The Saudis and other Arab states, according to the prevailing narrative, were pivoting away from their decades-long relationship with the U.S. to embrace China.

But suggesting that some kind of grand geopolitical realignment is taking place in the Middle East is just wrong says Jonathan Fulton, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and one of the world's foremost scholars on China-Mideast relations. 

Jonathan joins Eric & Cobus from Abu Dhabi to explain why journalists should have instead focused more attention on the strategic interests of individual Arab countries.

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40 countries around the world currently do not have U.S. ambassadors. The corner offices have been empty for months, even years at U.S. embassies in major regional powers like India and Saudia Arabia. Even Italy, a G7 country, doesn't have a U.S. ambassador in place.

The hold-up in getting ambassadors confirmed by the Senate is the consequence of Washington's dysfunctional politics that's adversely impacting the U.S. and its effort to compete with China for influence around the world, particularly in developing countries.

Politico's Senior Foreign Affairs Correspondent Nahal Toosi traveled to Panama earlier this year to report on how U.S. diplomacy is struggling to keep up with China's engagement in the region. She joins Eric & Cobus from Washington, D.C. to discuss her special report on the issue.

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China has built the world's largest and most intrusive surveillance system to monitor the behavior of its people. Millions of cameras, vast databases, and sophisticated online filters work together to form a seemingly omnipresent matrix that overwatches every aspect of daily life.

While China may have pioneered the use of many of these new technologies, today, they are by no means alone. In fact, Chinese companies are now bringing their technology and surveillance expertise to countries around the world -- particularly in the Global South.

Wall Street Journal reporters Liza Lin and Josh Chin, authors of the new book Surveillance State: Inside China's Quest to Launch a New Era of Social Control, join Eric & Cobus to discuss the appeal of China's surveillance technology and how much of Beijing's model can be replicated in other developing countries.

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