Category: Africa

Africa, China and the Rise of the Global South

Date Saturday 17 March
Time6pm Britain / 1pm US Eastern / 10am US Pacific
VenueMarx Memorial Library
London EC1R 0DU
And Zoom
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Speakers

  • Booker Ngesa Omole – National Vice-Chairperson and National Organising Secretary of the Communist Party of Kenya (CPK)
  • Roger McKenzie – Foreign Editor, Morning Star
  • Fiona Sim – Black Liberation Alliance
  • Cecil Guzmore – veteran Pan-African community activist and historian
  • Alex Gordon – RMT President
  • Frank Murray – Caribbean Labour Solidarity
  • Radhika Desai – Convenor, International Manifesto Group

Information

The geopolitical map of the world is changing at a rapid pace and in profound ways, with the dominant characteristic being the rise of the Global South, with the rise of socialist China at its heart.

Two years ago, the imperialist powers, led by the United States, were shocked when, almost in its entirety, the Global South, repulsed by the hypocrisy and double standards, refused to follow in imposing sanctions on Russia following the launch of its Special Military Operation.

Now, that hypocrisy and double standards are on unprecedented and shameless display, with the United States having so far used its veto three times in the United Nations Security Council to block calls for a ceasefire in Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinian people.

As Chinese President Xi Jinping often says, the world is currently witnessing changes unseen in a century, a timeframe that links to the creation of the world’s first workers’ state in the Soviet Union. Today, President Xi has noted, socialism with Chinese characteristics offers a new option for countries that wish to rapidly develop their economies while maintaining their independence. The expansion of the BRICS grouping, whose GDP has surpassed that of the G7, and the admission of the African Union to the G-20, both of which were championed by China, are important reflections of this.

In his February 17th message to the 37th Summit of the African Union, Xi said that the Global South, represented by China and Africa, is booming and this has a profound impact on the course of world history.

Our meeting provides a rare chance to hear a first-hand perspective from the frontline of this anti-imperialist struggle in Africa.

Booker Ngesa Omole is the National Vice-Chairperson and National Organising Secretary of the Communist Party of Kenya (CPK). He also serves as the President of the Marxist-Leninist Institute, responsible for training party cadres, and is the editor of the party’s official quarterly publication, “Itikadi – Socialism Theory and Practice,” which reflects the CPK’s unwavering commitment to the principles of Marxism-Leninism as its guiding ideology.

The CPK is at the heart of an emerging new wave of Marxist-Leninist parties across Africa. Their website explains:

“CPK is conscious of Kenya’s noble history of struggle against foreign domination and imperialism. Our Party is the continuation of the social and national liberation struggle of the Kenyan patriots that ultimately brought about independence from British colonialism in 1963. We remember those elders who died or survived with great suffering in the struggles for national freedom. They sacrificed their lives and blood to give us self-respect in the period and aftermath of colonial domination… However, these noble wishes and aspirations will only be realised when Kenya replaces the capitalist system with the socialist system… CPK is a vanguard Party, as well as a mass organisation guided by the ideology of Marxism-Leninism and its application based on the historical and material conditions of Kenya and the world around us. The Party is a people’s organisation, its paramount interests are the interests of the broadest masses of the people.”

The CPK is building unity and solidarity with the socialist countries, with Comrade Booker having visited China twice in 2023, the second time for the World Socialism Forum, which was also attended by Friends of Socialist China.

We hope as many comrades and friends as possible will take the opportunity to hear him during his brief visit to London.

Organisers

This event is organised by Friends of Socialist China and supported by the Morning Star, Caribbean Labour Solidarity, the Black Liberation Alliance and the International Manifesto Group.

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Tazara: Why China built a railway that many thought would fail

This short film made by CGTN documents the history, present situation and prospects of the Tazara Railway which links Zambia and Tanzania. 

By far China’s largest foreign aid project at the time, it was built during the first half of the 1970s, when China was itself still a poor country and after the United States, Britain, Japan and even the Soviet Union had all refused to build it. It enabled landlocked Zambia to get its copper to port whilst avoiding countries then still under colonial and white racist rule.

The 1,800 km railway took five years to build, with 50,000 Chinese workers taking part in the project. 65 of them gave their lives. 

In recent years, the railway has encountered problems, with freight traffic, not least due to the availability of other options since the liberation of all countries in southern Africa. Nevertheless, it still plays an important role in the lives of local people and communities. A joint statement adopted by China and Zambia in September last year, during the state visit of the Zambian president, saw China pledge support to the railway’s upgrading and renovation.

Disappointing “rush to judgment” on China’s role in the Congo

The article below, written by Dee Knight and republished from Black Agenda Report, responds to a recent review by Ann Garrison of Siddharth Kara’s 2023 book Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives.

Garrison had written, also in Black Agenda Report, that “huge Chinese corporations so dominate Congolese cobalt mining, processing and battery manufacture that one has to ask why a communist government, however capitalist in fact, doesn’t at least somehow require more responsible sourcing of minerals processed and then advanced along the supply chain within its borders.”

Dee Knight responds with a comradely criticism – while recalling Garrison’s “strong record of incisive anti-imperialist reporting on Africa” – that the book review (and the book under review) ignores some important facts about Congo’s mining industry and China’s role in it.

Referencing the work of Isabelle Minnon, a lawyer and activist in Belgium, and others, Dee observes that “China’s role has been to bring new, large-scale investment on a new basis: combined financing for industrial mining and public infrastructure – roads, railroads, dams, health and education facilities.” The effect of this has been to reverse the trajectory towards de-industrialisation of Congo’s cobalt economy, and to provide much-needed infrastructure for development.

Furthermore, “China cancelled the DRC’s interest-free loans worth an estimated $28 million, promised to fund more infrastructure projects and also give $17 million in other financial support as the DRC joins the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).”

The win-win nature of the China-DRC relationship – as opposed to some sort of neo-colonial dynamic – is what has provoked the ire of Western commentators.

Based on her reading of Cobalt Red, Ann Garrison writes that “Huge Chinese corporations so dominate Congolese cobalt mining, processing and battery manufacture that one has to ask why a communist government, however capitalist in fact, doesn’t at least somehow require more responsible sourcing of minerals processed and then advanced along the supply chain within its borders.” [emphasis added]

Garrison has a strong record of incisive anti-imperialist reporting on Africa, so it is necessary to consider her question seriously. Unfortunately, the result of such consideration suggests Garrison rushed to judgment about China’s role in the Congo, and failed to look beyond Cobalt Red for facts and analysis of the DRC’s rapidly changing mining industry.

Others have researched the issue more fully and accurately. One is Isabelle Minnon, a lawyer and activist in Belgium. Her research report, “Industrial Turn-Around in Congo?” appeared last October in Lava, a Belgian magazine of social criticism and Marxist analysis.

Minnon shows that China has been part of the solution, not of the problem. “China has responded to the DRC’s need to have partners who invest in industrialization,” she writes. Western colonists had bled Congo dry through onerous debt, leaving it “weighed down by a burden that prevented it from developing economically. In 2001 industrial production was at a standstill, mining sites deserted.”

When the DRC turned to the World Bank and IMF for help, they insisted on privatizing the mining sector, laying off thousands of mine workers. Hundreds of mines were sold with “dormant mining titles” to foreign companies – “not to produce but to resell them at the right time” for big profits.

The measures didn’t wipe out the mining industry, but they pushed thousands of laid-off mine workers and their families to fend for themselves as artisanal miners, and then sell the minerals to processing companies. That was the situation described in Cobalt Red.

China’s role has been to bring new, large-scale investment on a new basis: combined financing for industrial mining and public infrastructure – roads, railroads, dams, health and education facilities. The result was “After decades of almost non-existent industrial production, the country became and remains the world’s leading producer of cobalt and, by 2023, became the world’s third largest producer of copper.” The new deal “puts an end to the monopoly of certain Western countries and their large companies whose history shows that this exclusivity has not brought development to the country.”

The arrangement has dramatically reduced the role of artisanal mining. “Since the enormous increase in production in the mining sector in Congo, 80% of mining production is done industrially. Sicomines [China-Congolese Mining Co.] has built the most modern factory in the DRC for processing raw copper.” The same is true for cobalt, replacing artisanal mining with organized, industrial production. Industrial mining is a reversal of artisanal mining.

“Resource-for-Infrastructure (RFI) deals like this all over Africa have helped China foster strong relations with several countries,” writes Halim Nazar of India’s Institute for Chinese Studies .

Western competitors are not happy. “The IMF publicly criticized the DRC for taking on too much debt,” Nazar writes. But it has been a “debt-investment” based on real growth.

A Peace-for-Concessions Swap?

Avril Haines, US Director of National Intelligence, visited Kinshasha airport last November 20, to meet with DRC President Tshisekedi, together with Molly Phee, Undersecretary of State for Africa, the State Department’s most senior official for Africa. It was the first day of Tshisekedi’s presidential campaign, reports Tony Busselen , author of Congo for Beginners. The top US officials focused on peace between the DRC and neighboring Rwanda, offering help in difficult upcoming elections. Tshisekedi won the heavily contested elections in a landslide .

A December 1 report in Politico suggests it may have been a peace for concessions swap. “The meeting with Haines comes at a time when Washington is trying to counter China in Africa. Congo is home to about 70 percent of the world’s cobalt reserves and China is the largest producer. Beijing is Kinshasa’s largest trading partner and has acquired important mining rights since the 2000s. Control of the market gives the country a big lead over the US in the race for crucial parts for electric vehicle batteries.”

Did Haines press for Tshisekedi to review Congo’s contracts with China? Politico quotes Cameron Hudson, a former CIA intelligence analyst for Africa: “If anything, this administration has already shown that it is willing to review contracts with China.” Last February 16, Tshisekedi’s administration published a highly critical report on the China contract. The President ordered an audit of the contract, and called on China to revise it on a “win-win” basis.

When President Tshisekedi was invited to China last May, he gave an interview on Chinese TV in which he distanced himself from the policy of condemnation and interference against China. China had cancelled the DRC’s interest-free loans worth an estimated $28 million , promised to fund more infrastructure projects and also give $17 million in other financial support as the DRC joins the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Isabelle Minnon cites Franz Fanon’s observation that “Africa has the shape of a revolver whose trigger is in the Congo.” She adds that “those whose finger is on this trigger have the power to build or destroy the DRC and all of Africa.” She says this is how, following the 1961 US-and-Belgium-backed coup d’état and assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the colonialists were able to install Mobutu Sese Seko, who governed for 31 years, and cooperated with them in destroying the Congolese economy by miring it in debt. After the DRC and China agreed on a resource-for-infrastructure deal, the situation has improved – so much that the deal “fueled the fury of Western countries to the point that” the World Bank and IMF tried to force a 50 percent reduction in the infrastructure budget.

The Wilson Center published a report in September 2021, that “Artisanal miners produce 20% of the country’s cobalt output. The remainder comes from foreign-owned firms, primarily Chinese, whose rechargeable battery industry accounts for around 60 percent of global cobalt demand.” [emphasis added] Note that industrialized mining is many times more productive than artisanal mining, so even producing 20% of output, there are more artisanal miners than industrial mine workers.

Who likes Cobalt Red, and who doesn’t

Ann Garrison acknowledges criticism of Cobalt Red – she says Open Democracy “called it a sensationalistic, self-aggrandizing ‘White Saviour’ exposé.” OD said Cobalt Red “simply rehashes old stereotypes and colonial perceptions of the DRC, with indulgent use of dehumanizing rhetoric, lack of research ethics, and ignorance and/or erasure of local knowledge.” Perhaps most telling, the OD critics say Cobalt Red’s author “is intent on portraying the DRC as an unchanging, suffering world out of time.” But times are changing, and much of this change can be traced to the innovation of the resource-for-infrastructure deal with China.

Garrison notes that “Kara (the author of Cobalt Red), “has been interviewed on countless podcasts, on Democracy Now, and at the Foreign Policy Association. This last – along with bestseller ranking in the NY Times and Publishers Weekly and shortlisting for the Financial Times Best Business Book of the Year – suggest approval from questionable sources. There is questionable honor sharing glory with such “heroes” of the Foreign Policy Association as Antony Blinken and Madeleine Albright, General David Petraeus, journalists Robin Wright and David Sanger, and foreign policy titans like William Burns and Fiona Hill.

It may be that Ann Garrison didn’t notice that China’s role in the Democratic Republic of Congo was a significant change. In one sense that’s understandable. Change has not manifested itself completely, and the process may well be far from perfect. But in her article she rushed to judgment too quickly, without making appropriate comparisons.

Tanzania’s ambassador to China refutes debt trap slander

This year sees the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Tanzania and China and, according to Khamis Omar, Tanzania’s Ambassador in Beijing, the enduring bilateral friendship is growing stronger and their mutually beneficial cooperation has great potential.

According to the Ambassador: “China and Tanzania have a lot in common. In the past both had a common kind of quest to fight against colonialism and oppression and to lift people’s human rights in a real sense. Now both sides share a common vision of advancing toward prosperity and have enjoyed a substantial and supportive relationship.”

In an interview with China Daily, he further recalled that China supported Tanzania even when the former was relatively poor itself. He specifically cited the1,860-kilometre Tazara Railway, which links landlocked Zambia with the Tanzanian port of Dar es Salaam, and which opened in 1976.

“It was the first regional project that happened in our region in Africa, so it was really appreciated because at that time China itself did not have much financial muscle… It was also a symbol of Chinese contribution to the liberation, freedom and independence of Africa.”

The railway allowed Zambia to export its copper without being reliant on countries then still under colonial and white racist rule. It was, by a considerable margin, China’s biggest foreign aid project at that time.

Now, Omar notes, China is the world’s second-largest economy and represents a vast market with immense possibilities for Tanzania. The prospects for collaboration are substantial, particularly in areas such as agriculture, textiles and apparel, beverages, laser items, livestock, and the maritime economy.

Refuting the ‘debt trap’ calumny levelled against China by western powers, Omar said: “African countries need to borrow money during the process of economic development. It is important for the country that borrowed money to make sure that it spends wisely and prudently. China provides loans at preferential interest rates. What is wrong with China doing that?”

Meanwhile, the South China Morning Post has reported that China plans to spend US$1 billion to refurbish the Tazara rail line. China’s Ambassador to Zambia Du Xiaohui handed the proposal to the country’s Transport Minister, Frank Tayali, saying that China wished to work together with “Zambian and Tanzanian brothers and sisters” on the project.

Minister Tayali said that he “was particularly excited that the Chinese experts will work alongside Zambian labour.”

The following article was originally published by China Daily.

The enduring friendship between China and Tanzania is growing stronger, and collaboration between the two benefits both and has great potential, says Tanzania’s Ambassador to China, Khamis Omar.

The 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations between China and Tanzania is being celebrated this year, and the friendship between the two continues to grow increasingly robust, Omar said.

“China and Tanzania have a lot in common. In the past both had a common kind of quest to fight against colonialism and oppression and to lift people’s human rights in a real sense. Now both sides share a common vision of advancing toward prosperity and have enjoyed a substantial and supportive relationship.”

China supported Tanzania even when the former was relatively poor itself, he said. The most notable venture the two sides have been involved in is the 1,860-kilometer Tazara Railway, which links landlocked Zambia with the Tanzanian port of Dar es Salaam, and which opened in 1976.

“It was the first regional project that happened in our region in Africa, so it was really appreciated because at that time China itself did not have much financial muscle,” Omar said. “It was also a symbol of Chinese contribution to the liberation, freedom and independence of Africa.”

China has played a substantial role in bolstering Tanzania’s economy by supporting plantations and industrial facilities and by deploying technicians, which has been instrumental in initiating economic modernization. Moreover, since 1964 China has been sending medical teams to help Tanzania.

Over time China and Tanzania have expanded and strengthened their collaboration. Beyond aiding Tanzania in certain areas, both countries have worked together in many fields, promoting prosperity.

“China emphasizes mutual gains in its foreign cooperation and ensures that the other side also benefits,” Omar said.

Largest trading partner

Last year China continued to be Tanzania’s largest trading partner and biggest investor. The value of trade between January and November was $7.96 billion, a year-on-year increase of 6.8 percent, according to official figures. Chinese companies made investments worth more than $11 billion in Tanzania.

China, the world’s second-largest economy, represents a vast market with immense possibilities for Tanzania, Omar said. The prospects for collaboration are substantial, particularly in areas such as agriculture, textiles and apparel, beverages, laser items, livestock and the maritime economy.

He is keen to see provinces in China and regions in Tanzania forge stronger connections and explore collaborative opportunities, he said.

Omar first came to China in 2005, and since then he has traveled extensively throughout the country, he said. He takes pleasure in exploring its impressive progress by visiting various places, particularly to gain insights into China’s development and governance.

In Shenzhen, a model city for China’s reform and opening-up, he discovered that the keys to its prosperity lie in being open, having a youthful work force, adopting innovative practices and policies that give priority to people, engaging in sustainable development and having robust manufacturing, he said.

“Socialism with Chinese characteristics is a different kind of governance that one has to know to unpack and try to understand the Chinese context. This is not one size fits all. It’s very important to understand the context of Chinese development and Chinese civilization with different dynasties… I’m learning about it.”

The Belt and Road Initiative has brought tremendous benefits to Africa over the past decade, he said. However, some countries have said the initiative is creating “debt traps”, which is “propaganda targeted at China”, Omar said.

“African countries need to borrow money during the process of economic development. It is important for the country that borrowed money to make sure that it spends wisely and prudently. China provides loans at preferential interest rates. What is wrong with China doing that?”

This year is the China-Tanzania Culture and Tourism Year, he said. Tanzania has more than 130 tribes with different kinds of cultures, music and social life, and it is endowed with rich tourism resources that he would like to tell Chinese people about this year.

Xi Jinping extends condolences over death of Namibian President Hage Geingob

Hage Geingob, President of the Republic of Namibia, died on Sunday February 4, 2024, whilst receiving treatment for cancer, at the age of 82. 

A longtime veteran of the liberation struggle waged by the South West African People’s Organisation (SWAPO), Geingob served as Nambia’s first Prime Minister when the country won independence from apartheid South Africa in 1990. He was elected President in 2014, with 87% of the vote, and was re-elected five years later. 

Announcing the President’s death, Vice President Nangolo Mbumba, said that the country had “lost a distinguished servant of the people, a liberation struggle icon, the chief architect of our constitution.”

In accordance with the constitution, Mbumba has been sworn in as the country’s fourth president but has stated that he will not be a candidate in November’s presidential election. SWAPO had already selected Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, who was serving as Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, as its candidate. She has now been appointed as the country’s Vice President.

In one of his final political acts, Geingob not only backed South Africa’s case charging Israel with genocide at the International Court of Justice, but also criticised Germany, Namibia’s former colonial overlord, for backing Israel’s defence of the charges levelled against it, noting that the country was responsible for the genocide of tens of thousands of Nama and Herero people from 1904 to 1908. “The German government is yet to fully atone for the genocide it committed on Namibian soil,” he noted.

In a message sent on February 5, Chinese President Xi Jinping, said that President Geingob, an outstanding leader of Namibia, had promoted the in-depth development of the China-Namibia comprehensive strategic partnership of cooperation during his lifetime and made important contributions to boosting China’s friendship with Namibia and Africa. His death is a great loss to the Namibian people and the Chinese people also lost a good friend.

The same day, Foreign Ministry press spokesperson, Wang Wenbin, responding to a question from Xinhua News Agency, said:

“We express deep condolences over President Hage Geingob’s passing and extend sincere sympathies to the Namibian government and people and to President Geingob’s family. President Geingob was an extraordinary leader of his country. He led the Namibian people in pursuing national independence and liberation and advancing socio-economic development and was supported and loved by the people.

“President Hage Geingob was an old friend of the Chinese people. He oversaw on the Namibian side the upgrade of China-Namibia ties to a comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership and the deepening of the relationship, and he made important contributions to the friendship between our two countries. The Chinese people firmly stand with the Namibian people in this time of grief.”

The following article was originally published by the Xinhua News Agency.

BEIJING, Feb. 5 (Xinhua) — Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday sent a message of condolences to Namibia’s newly sworn-in President Nangolo Mbumba over the death of former Namibian President Hage Geingob.

On behalf of the Chinese government and people, and in his own name, Xi extended profound condolences and expressed sincere sympathy to the Namibian government and people, as well as Geingob’s family.

In his message, Xi pointed out that President Geingob, an outstanding leader of Namibia, had promoted the in-depth development of the China-Namibia comprehensive strategic partnership of cooperation during his lifetime and made important contributions to boosting China’s friendship with Namibia and Africa.

His death is a great loss to the Namibian people, and the Chinese people also lost a good friend, Xi said.

He added that China cherishes the profound traditional friendship between China and Namibia and is ready to work with the Namibian side to push forward the continuous development of the two countries’ comprehensive strategic partnership of cooperation. 

China hails Non-Aligned Movement’s endeavours in advancing global peace

The Ugandan capital Kampala hosted the 19th summit meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), January 19-20. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s special representative Liu Guozhong attended and delivered a speech, highlighting the movement’s important role in promoting the cause of world peace and human progress and noting its birth, “at the climax of the national liberation movements in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.” Liu is also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and a Vice Premier of the State Council.

The NAM should continue to uphold independence and oppose power politics, seek common ground while shelving differences, promote peaceful coexistence, seek strength through unity, strive for common development, and advocate equality, fairness and justice, Liu added.

The NAM Summit was followed on January 21 with the third South Summit, the highest decision-making body of the Group of 77 (G77), which now groups 135 developing countries. 

Speaking there, Liu said that this year marks the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Group of 77, and over the past six decades, the Global South has followed the right path of equality, mutual trust, mutual benefit, solidarity, and mutual assistance.

Independence is the defining political feature of the Global South, seeking strength through unity is the glorious tradition of the Global South, development and revitalisation are the historical mission of the Global South, and fairness and justice are the common propositions of the Global South, he noted.

As a developing country and a member of the Global South, China has always shared a common destiny with other developing countries and will continue to take South-South cooperation as a priority in its foreign cooperation and contribute to the common development of developing countries in the Global South.

On January 21, Liu had a meeting with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who has also assumed the rotating chair of the NAM and G77.  

Museveni asked Liu to convey his sincere greetings to President Xi. He welcomed the vice premier and his delegation to attend the two summits and thanked China for its significant contribution to the success of the meetings.

From joining hands to oppose colonialism and hegemonism and strive for national liberation, to strengthening unity and cooperation and jointly promoting development and revitalisation, the destiny of the African and Chinese people has always been closely linked, Museveni stressed.

The Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post further reported Museveni as telling Liu: “We have been together in the anti-colonial struggle. China supported us when we were fighting for independence. It also supported the freedom fighting groups in Southern Africa – Mozambique, Zimbabwe and South Africa.

“Since then, China has grown economically [and] has helped Africa even more. We are therefore very happy with China.”

Liu responded that China was still a very poor country in 1949 when the People’s Republic was founded, “but the Chinese leaders made a very important decision” to develop relations with Africa through “supporting African people in fighting for national independence, liberation and their efforts to fight imperialism.”

In a meeting with another high-level Chinese delegation last November, the Ugandan presidential website quoted Museveni as saying that: “Ever since 1949, when the Communist Party took power in China, China has been on the side of Africa. At that time, Chinese leaders like Mao Zedong supported our struggle against colonialism. Then, after independence, even when China was not so prosperous, they extended support to Africa. I remember China building the Tanzania-Zambia railway after independence, and that was to help landlocked Zambia against the white supremacists in Southern Africa.”

Prior to visiting Uganda, Liu had visited Algeria and Cameroon.

The Kampala NAM Summit saw the admission to full membership of South Sudan, the first expansion in 13 years, meaning that the body now has 121 member states – 54 from Africa, 26 from the Americas, 36 from Asia, 3 from Oceania and 2 from Europe. In addition, there are 19 observer countries, including China, and 11 observer organisations, including liberation movements from the US colony Puerto Rico and Kanaky, the French colony known as New Caledonia in the South Pacific.

The following articles were originally published by the Xinhua News Agency.

China hails Non-Aligned Movement’s endeavors in advancing global peace

KAMPALA, Jan. 21 (Xinhua) — Chinese President Xi Jinping’s special representative Liu Guozhong attended the 19th Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Summit on Friday and Saturday in the Ugandan capital Kampala and delivered a speech, highlighting the movement’s important role in promoting the cause of world peace and human progress.

The NAM, born at the climax of the national liberation movements in Asia, Africa and Latin America, has effectively advanced the cause of world peace and human progress, said Liu, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and vice premier of the State Council.

It should continue to uphold independence and oppose power politics, seek common ground while shelving differences, promote peaceful coexistence, seek strength through unity, strive for common development, and advocate equality, fairness and justice, Liu said.

Liu stressed that China will always be a member of the developing world and is willing to work with the NAM countries to promote the implementation of the Global Development Initiative, Global Security Initiative and Global Civilization Initiative under the guidance of building a global community of shared future.

China is ready to advance Belt and Road cooperation, practice the common values of humanity, and advocate an equal and orderly multipolar world and a universally beneficial and inclusive economic globalization, to promote the world toward a bright future of peace, security, prosperity and progress, Liu said.

Heads of state and government and high-level representatives from more than 100 countries, and heads of international organizations attended the summit. Ugandan President and the chair of the NAM Yoweri Museveni, heads of state of South Africa, Sri Lanka and other countries, the president of the UN General Assembly, and the UN secretary-general delivered speeches, expressing their views on the current international situation and strengthening the role of the NAM. Liu’s speech was positively recognized and widely appreciated by representatives of other countries.

On Saturday, Liu was invited to attend a seminar of the Mwalimu Nyerere Foundation on development held by President Museveni and delivered a speech. 

Continue reading China hails Non-Aligned Movement’s endeavours in advancing global peace

Togolese President Faure Gnassingbe: Africa needs China’s support and Africa-China cooperation more than ever

Following his visits to Egypt and Tunisia, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi concluded his January 2024 visit to Africa with visits to the west African states of Togo and Côte d’Ivoire. 

Meeting Togolese President Faure Gnassingbe on January 17, both sides expressed a willingness to promote bilateral ties and advance cooperation between Africa and China.

Under the framework of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), Togo and other African countries have achieved development in infrastructure construction, Gnassingbe said.

Africa has accelerated its economic growth, enhanced security and brought benefits to the people on the continent, he said, stressing that these achievements could not be realised without China’s long-term and selfless assistance.

Togo expresses gratitude to China for upholding justice in the international arena, opposing interference in Africa’s internal affairs, and playing an indispensable role in Africa’s peaceful development, the president added.

The African people need a friend like China, who takes care of Africa’s realities, listens to Africa’s demands, and never imposes its will on others. As a beneficiary of Africa-China cooperation, Togo will always trust China and carry forward the traditional friendship while deepening cooperation in various fields.

In today’s volatile world, Africa faces new challenges to its peaceful development and needs China’s support and Africa-China cooperation more than ever, he added.

Wang said that the China-Togo friendship, forged by the older generation of leaders, has become a model of South-South cooperation.

China understands and believes in Africa, he said, noting that as long as Africa is united and independent, grows strong through unity, and finds a development path suited to its national conditions, it will be able to overcome difficulties and create new opportunities.

The 21st century is a century of revitalisation for developing countries, Wang stressed, noting that China will always stand firmly with Africa, support Africa in accelerating its independent development, and promote the upgrading of China-Africa cooperation, to deliver more fruits of China-Africa cooperation to Togo and other African countries.

Wang went on to say that China has provided a reference for developing countries to explore development paths suited to their national conditions, and stands ready to share development experience and opportunities with Africa so as to realise modernisation for both China and Africa.

In her meeting with Wang, Prime Minister Victoire Sidemeho Tomegah Dogbe said that Togo admires China’s remarkable development achievements and hopes to learn from China’s experience and to strengthen cooperation in such fields as poverty alleviation, agriculture, industrial parks, interconnectivity, digital economy, personnel training and environmental protection, to create more jobs and achieve inclusive and sustainable growth. She added that Togo welcomes more investment from Chinese enterprises.

Dogbe said that FOCAC has played a vital role in accelerating Africa’s development, and the “nine projects” proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping have greatly benefited Togo. Togo is ready to work closely with China to prepare for the next meeting of the forum, she added. This is scheduled to be held in China in autumn this year.

Wang responded that China will continue to support Togo in safeguarding its sovereignty, independence, national security and national dignity, promising that China will strengthen all-round cooperation with Togo and assist it in accelerating its industrialisation process.

Wang stressed that the FOCAC has become an important platform for promoting Africa’s development, served as a banner for China-Africa solidarity and cooperation, and effectively guided international cooperation with Africa.

In his meeting, Foreign Minister Robert Dussey said that Togo highly appreciates China’s tradition of adhering to the annual first visit of foreign ministers to Africa over the decades. 

Wang Yi said that over the years, China and Togo have set an example by treating each other on an equal footing and fostering mutually beneficial cooperation, and this relationship has also become a symbol of China-Africa solidarity and friendship. China appreciates Togo’s adherence to Pan-Africanism and its active mediation of sub-regional hotspot issues, and China supports Togo in playing a greater role in international and regional affairs. Wang expressed China’s wish for Togo to successfully hold a Pan-African Congress.

Africa is a continent full of hope and represents an independent pole in a multipolar world, Wang said. He stressed that China supports African countries in upholding independence, seeking strength through unity, and holding Africa’s destiny in their own hands.

In the historical process of seeking development and revitalisation, Togo and other African countries can always rely on China as a long-term strategic partner. He affirmed that China fully supports Africa in exploring the African path to modernisation and in jointly creating an even brighter future for China-Africa cooperation.

On January 18, President of Côte d’Ivoire Alassane Ouattara met with Wang Yi in his country’s economic capital, Abidjan. He said that he admires China’s remarkable achievements, and thanked China for shouldering responsibilities as a major country in promoting peace and development.

The president said that Côte d’Ivoire’s position on the Taiwan question is clear: there is only one China in the world, and Taiwan is part of China. He stated that Cote d’Ivoire would continue to abide by the one-China principle.

Wang congratulated Cote d’Ivoire on successfully hosting the 34th Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) football tournament, saying that it is a grand event for the African people and a source of pride for Cote d’Ivoire.

China delivered the main stadium on time and with high quality, and the Cocody Bridge built by Chinese companies in Abidjan has become a new landmark for the country, symbolising mutually beneficial cooperation between the two sides and representing China-Africa friendship.

In his meeting, Foreign Minister Kacou Houadja Leon Adom thanked the Chinese side for always caring for the needs of  Côte d’Ivoire and providing valuable support in various fields, noting that China has helped Cote d’Ivoire successfully host the 34th Africa Cup of Nations.

Africa looks forward to taking the next meeting of FOCAC as an opportunity to deepen bilateral cooperation in various fields, and achieve mutual benefit and win-win results, he added.

Wang expressed delight over China’s contribution to the success of the ongoing football tournament, stressing that China is willing to work with Côte d’Ivoire to advance pragmatic cooperation in various fields and open up new prospects for bilateral relations in a new era, under the guidance of the important consensus reached by the two heads of state.

China will firmly support Africa in safeguarding national sovereignty, independence and national dignity, and support African countries in seeking strength through unity and exploring a development path with African characteristics that accelerates its development while maintaining independence, Wang said. China has confidence in Africa’s development and supports Africa in striving for its rightful place in the global multipolar system and fully enjoying the dividends of economic globalisation.

Following these visits, Wang Yi continued his foreign tour to Brazil and Jamaica.

The following reports were originally published by the Xinhua News Agency.

China, Togo look forward to closer cooperation

LOME, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) — Togolese President Faure Gnassingbe on Wednesday met here with visiting Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, with both sides expressing willingness to promote bilateral ties and advance cooperation between Africa and China.

Gnassingbe asked Wang to convey his sincere greetings and best wishes to Chinese President Xi Jinping and spoke highly of the bilateral relations and practical cooperation.

Under the framework of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, Togo and other African countries have achieved development in infrastructure construction, Gnassingbe said.

Africa has accelerated its economic growth, enhanced security and brought benefits to the people on the continent, he said, stressing that these achievements cannot be realized without China’s long-term and selfless assistance.

Togo expresses gratitude to China for upholding justice in the international arena, opposing interference in Africa’s internal affairs, and playing an indispensable role in Africa’s peaceful development, the president said.

Continue reading Togolese President Faure Gnassingbe: Africa needs China’s support and Africa-China cooperation more than ever

China, Algeria pledge to continue mutual support, cooperation

China and Algeria have vowed to continue extending firm support to each other on issues related to their core interests and to enhance bilateral cooperation in various fields.

The two sides made the pledge during a visit by Liu Guozhong, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and vice premier of the State Council, who met separately with Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune and Prime Minister Nadir Larbaoui on January 16 in the capital Algiers.

During the meetings, Liu spoke positively of Algeria’s development achievements, adding that China and Algeria are “sincere friends and natural partners in the pursuit of common development and national rejuvenation.”

The Chinese vice premier noted that an important consensus was reached last July by Chinese President Xi Jinping and Tebboune, who paid a successful state visit to China.

As this year marks the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the China-Algeria comprehensive strategic partnership, Liu said that China is willing to take it as an opportunity to work with Algeria to continue firmly supporting each other on issues related to their core interests and promoting mutual exchanges and cooperation under the framework of high-quality joint construction of the Belt and Road.

He further noted that China is also committed to continuing its close coordination and cooperation with Algeria in international and regional affairs. 

Tebboune and Larbaoui said that strengthening cooperation with China is a strategic choice for Algeria, vowing to actively participate in the joint construction of the Belt and Road, attract more Chinese companies to Algeria to invest, and jointly promote development.

During the visit, Liu also held a meeting with representatives of the Chinese medical teams on an aid mission in Algeria.

This latter meeting carries particular significance as Algeria was the very first country to which China dispatched its overseas medical aid teams, with last year marking the 60th anniversary. The first team was dispatched on April 6, 1963, shortly after Algeria had won its national independence from French colonialism at the cost of some one million martyrs and the fledgling nation was in desperate need of assistance in the medical and other fields. Chinese medical teams have remained in Algeria on a constant and uninterrupted basis since then, while China’s medical assistance has expanded to embrace 76 countries, retaining a focus on Africa.

An event to mark the 60th anniversary was held in Beijing in late December 2023.

On December 29, Chinese leader Xi Jinping met with the delegates and Liu Guozhong delivered a speech. He said that the CPC Central Committee attaches great importance to international medical aid and that General Secretary Xi has fully affirmed the achievements that have been made in this regard.

Six decades on, medical workers on foreign aid missions have benefited local people with their proficient medical skills and lofty medical ethics, presenting a better China through their practical actions and winning high praise from the governments of recipient countries and their people, Liu added.

He encouraged them to open up new fronts in international medical aid, and make even greater contributions toward building a global community of health for all.

The following articles were originally published by the Xinhua News Agency.

China, Algeria pledge to continue mutual support, cooperation

ALGIERS, Jan. 16 (Xinhua) — China and Algeria on Tuesday vowed to continue firm support to each other on issues related to their core interests and enhance bilateral cooperation in various fields.

The two sides made the pledge during the visit of Liu Guozhong, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and vice premier of the State Council, who met Tuesday separately with Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune and Prime Minister Nadir Larbaoui in the Algerian capital of Algiers.

During the meetings, Liu spoke positively of Algeria’s development achievements, adding that China and Algeria are “sincere friends and natural partners in the pursuit of common development and national rejuvenation.”

The Chinese vice premier noted that an important consensus was reached last July by Chinese President Xi Jinping and Tebboune, who paid a successful state visit to China.

As this year marks the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the China-Algeria comprehensive strategic partnership, Liu said that China is willing to take it as an opportunity to work with Algeria to continue firmly supporting each other on issues related to their core interests and promoting mutual exchanges and cooperation under the framework of high-quality joint construction of the Belt and Road.

He noted that China is also committed to continuing its close coordination and cooperation with Algeria in international and regional affairs and making active efforts to promote the building of a community with a shared future for mankind.

Tebboune and Larbaoui said that strengthening cooperation with China is a strategic choice for Algeria, vowing to actively participate in the joint construction of the Belt and Road, attract more Chinese companies to Algeria to invest, and jointly promote development.

The Algeria-China relations are unbreakable, as the two sides have a broad consensus on major international and regional issues, said the Algerian leaders, who voiced Algeria’s willingness to work with China to uphold international fairness and justice and safeguard the common interests of developing countries.

During the visit, Liu also held a meeting with representatives of the Chinese medical teams on an aid mission in Algeria. 

Xi meets representatives to event marking 60th anniversary of China dispatching int’l medical aid teams

BEIJING, Dec. 29 (Xinhua) — Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday met with representatives to an event marking 60th anniversary of China dispatching its first international medical aid team.

Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, congratulated them and extended regards to all those who are or were on foreign medical aid missions.

Cai Qi, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and director of the General Office of the CPC Central Committee, was present at the meeting.

At around 11:30 a.m., Xi and others arrived at the East Hall of the Great Hall of the People amid a warm round of applause. Xi and others waved to the representatives and had a cordial exchange with them before taking a group photo together.

Liu Guozhong, a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and vice premier, delivered a speech. He said that the CPC Central Committee attaches great importance to international medical aid, and General Secretary Xi fully affirmed the achievements that have been made in this regard.

Six decades on, medical workers on foreign medical aid missions have benefited local people with their proficient medical skills and lofty medical ethics, presenting a better China through their practical actions and winning high praise from the governments of recipient countries and their people, Liu said.

Liu encouraged them to open up new fronts in international medical aid, and make even greater contributions toward building a global community of health for all.

A total of 30 outstanding international medical aid groups and 60 outstanding individuals were commended at the meeting.

Wang Yi in Tunisia: All countries, big or small, rich or poor, should have the right to development

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited Tunisia as the second leg of his January Africa tour following his visit to Egypt.

Meeting with Tunisian President Kais Saied on January 13, both men expressed opposition to interference in other countries’ internal affairs under the pretext of human rights and democracy.

During their talks, President Saied voiced great appreciation for Chinese President Xi Jinping’s philosophy of governance, commending China’s great achievements in promoting modernisation, as well as the 60 years of development of Tunisia-China relations and the fruitful results of their pragmatic cooperation.

“Although Tunisia and China are far apart, our friendship is strong and our people are close to each other,” he said, expressing thanks for China’s long-term and valuable support in helping Tunisia to develop and improve people’s lives.

He added that Tunisia will continue to actively participate in the Belt and Road Initiative, learn from China’s successful experience, and promote modernisation with Tunisian characteristics.

For his part, Wang said that since the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Tunisia 60 years ago, bilateral ties have stood the test of an evolving international landscape and have maintained healthy and stable development. The most important experience is that the two countries have trusted each other and carried out mutually beneficial cooperation based on mutual trust and equal treatment.

The world today is afflicted with uncertainty and instability as well as rampant unilateralism, power politics and hegemony, he added, noting that China opposes the imposition of one’s own values, opposes the transformation of other countries according to one’s own standards, and opposes the interference in other countries’ internal affairs under the pretext of human rights and democracy.

Saied said that the history of colonialism cannot be repeated, and the world cannot return to unipolar hegemony. Tunisia opposes double standards and interference in other countries’ internal affairs.

China’s top diplomat also met with Nabil Ammar, Tunisian minister of foreign affairs, migration and Tunisians abroad.

During their meeting, Wang emphasised that Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era provides the fundamental guidance for building China into a great country and for the great cause of national rejuvenation. through Chinese modernisation. China’s development in the new era has also provided a useful reference for other countries intending to speed up development while preserving their independence, he added.

For his part, Ammar said that the two sides will strengthen solidarity and coordination to jointly safeguard the legitimate interests of developing countries and uphold the principle of non-interference in internal affairs and international equity and justice.

The two ministers also exchanged views on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and agreed to continue to jointly support the just cause of the Palestinian people to restore their legitimate national rights.

President Saied and Minister Ammar also joined Wang Yi for the inauguration of the International Diplomatic Academy in the capital Tunis, the first of its kind that China has built in an Arab country.

At the ceremony, Wang also called for building an equal and orderly multipolar world and advancing an inclusive economic globalisation that benefits all. He underlined that all countries, big or small, strong or weak, rich or poor, should play their due role and enjoy the right to development and revitalisation.

The following articles were originally published by the Xinhua News Agency.

Tunisia, China oppose interference in internal affairs under pretext of human rights

TUNIS, Jan. 16 (Xinhua) — Tunisian President Kais Saied and visiting Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Monday expressed opposition to interference in other countries’ internal affairs under the pretext of human rights and democracy.

During their talks, Saied voiced great appreciation for Chinese President Xi Jinping’s philosophy of governance, commending China’s great achievements in promoting modernization, the 60 years of development of Tunisia-China relations and the fruitful results of pragmatic cooperation.

“Although Tunisia and China are far apart, our friendship is strong and our people are close to each other,” Saied said, expressing thanks for China’s long-term and valuable support in helping Tunisia to develop and improve people’s lives.

He said that Tunisia will continue to actively participate in the Belt and Road Initiative, learn from China’s successful experience, and promote modernization with Tunisian characteristics.

Tunisia will uphold the one-China principle, abide by UN General Assembly Resolution 2758, and support China in exercising sovereignty over all its territory, he said.

For his part, Wang, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, said that since the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Tunisia 60 years ago, bilateral ties have stood the test of an evolving international landscape, and have maintained healthy and stable development. The most important experience is that the two countries have trusted each other and carried out mutually beneficial cooperation based on mutual trust and equal treatment.

The heads of state of the two countries have lately exchanged congratulatory messages, charting the course of the development of bilateral ties, said Wang, thanking Tunisia for its support on issues involving China’s core interests and major concerns.

China also firmly supports Tunisia in safeguarding sovereignty, independence and national dignity, exploring a development path in line with its own national conditions, and independently advancing the national reform process.

“We stand ready to consolidate political mutual trust between the two sides, deepen cooperation in various fields, accelerate respective development and revitalization,” he said.

The world today is afflicted with uncertainty and instability as well as rampant unilateralism, power politics and hegemony, said Wang, noting that China opposes the imposition of one’s own values, opposes the transformation of other countries according to one’s own standards, and opposes the interference in other countries’ internal affairs under the pretext of human rights and democracy.

China is willing to strengthen unity and coordination with Tunisia to jointly implement the Global Development Initiative, Global Security Initiative and Global Civilization Initiative, to promote economic globalization featuring equal, orderly global multipolarity and inclusiveness.

Saied said that the history of colonialism cannot be repeated and the world cannot return to unipolar hegemony. Tunisia opposes double standards and interference in other countries’ internal affairs under the banner of democracy and human rights.

“The series of important global initiatives proposed by President Xi demonstrate China’s cultural heritage and global vision,” Saied said, expressing willingness to work with China and other developing countries to safeguard common values of mankind, defend international fairness and justice, and build a community with a shared future.

The two sides also exchanged views on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and other issues.

Also on Monday, Wang held talks with Tunisian Foreign Minister Nabil Ammar. 

Chinese, Tunisian FMs stress independent development

TUNIS, Jan. 16 (Xinhua) — Visiting Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Nabil Ammar, Tunisian minister of foreign affairs, migration and Tunisians abroad on Monday voiced willingness to support each other’s independent development.

Wang, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, said that this year marks the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between China and Tunisia, thereby having great significance in bridging the past and the future.

“We are ready to take this opportunity to work with Tunisia to review the successful experience and grow our traditional friendship so as to write a new chapter in China-Tunisia friendly cooperation,” he said.

The two sides need to support each other on issues involving each other’s core interests and major concerns, so as to provide a solid foundation for and add strong impetus into bilateral relations, he added.

Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, Wang said, provides the fundamental guidance for building China into a great country and for the great cause of national rejuvenation through Chinese modernization.

China’s development in the new era has also provided a useful reference for other countries intending to speed up development while preserving their independence, said Wang.

China will promote the modernization of the world with Chinese modernization, and is willing to share experience in governance with Tunisia and enhance Tunisia’s capacity for independent development so as to achieve common development and prosperity, said Wang.

For his part, Ammar said that Tunisia and China, sharing extensive common interests and values, have a solid political foundation, sound development momentum, and inspiring cooperation results in bilateral relations.

The Tunisian side cherishes its friendship with China and will always remember China’s support and help.

Ammar reiterated that Tunisia always firmly upholds the One-China principle and stands ready to work with China to push for greater development of bilateral relations.

As China-Tunisia relations have broad prospects, the two sides agreed to strengthen high-level exchanges, add strategic substance to bilateral relations, and expand all-round cooperation.

The two sides will strengthen solidarity and coordination to jointly safeguard the legitimate interests of developing countries, and uphold the principle of non-interference in internal affairs and international equity and justice.

The two sides also exchanged views on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and agreed to continue to jointly support the just cause of the Palestinian people to restore their legitimate national rights. 

Chinese FM lauds great progress in China-Tunisia ties in past 6 decades

TUNIS, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) — Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Monday spoke highly of the “great friendship” achieved by China and Tunisia during the past six decades since the establishment of their diplomatic ties.

Wang, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, made the remarks at a ceremony held in the Tunisian capital of Tunis to inaugurate the China-built International Diplomatic Academy of Tunis, which was also attended by Tunisian President Kais Saied and Tunisian Foreign Minister Nabil Ammar.

It took eight years to build the academy, the only one of its kind that China has helped build in an Arab country, the Chinese top diplomat noted.

The academy, which has demonstrated the high level and quality of the China-Tunisia ties, will become a new symbol of and platform for carrying forward the traditional China-Tunisia friendship, he added.

Over the past decades, China and Tunisia have firmly supported each other in safeguarding independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity, and choosing their own paths of development, Wang said.

The two countries have also achieved fruitful results in pragmatic cooperation by successfully implementing a number of high-quality projects to improve people’s livelihoods, maintaining close communication and coordination in international and regional affairs, and working together to safeguard common interests as well as international fairness and justice, he said.

At the ceremony, Wang also called for building an equal and orderly multipolar world and advancing an inclusive economic globalization that benefits all.

He underscored that all countries, big or small, strong or weak, rich or poor, should play their due role and enjoy the right to development and revitalization.

Ammar, for his part, said that this year marks the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Tunisia and China, which have achieved smooth progress in bilateral cooperation in various fields.

Strengthening the bilateral friendship is the shared political wish of both sides and conforms to the common interests of the two countries and their peoples, said Ammar.

He expressed gratitude to China for building the academy, which is the concrete result of the joint construction of the Belt and Road and has crystallized the profound friendship between Tunisia and China.

Tunisia will use the academy as a bridge for boosting mutual understanding and exchanges between Tunisia and China, as well as the rest of the world, the Tunisian top diplomat said. 

China puts forward four-point proposal for ending Gaza conflict

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi began a visit to Africa on January 13, visiting Egypt, Tunisia, Togo and Cote d’Ivoire till January 18. This marks the 34th consecutive year that a Chinese foreign minister makes Africa the first destination for his overseas visits. Wang Yi’s itinerary this time also takes him to Brazil and Jamaica, January 18-22.

On January 14, Wang Yi met in Cairo with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, where he stressed the importance of implementing an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

For his part, President Sisi congratulated China on its great development achievements under the leadership of President Xi Jinping and its increasingly important role in international affairs. China, he said, is a great country, and no country or force can stop China’s progress.

Expressing his gratitude to China for its strong support for Egypt’s economic and social development, Sisi said that the joint construction of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) by Egypt and China has achieved remarkable results.

He also thanked Chinese enterprises for their “important contribution” to Egypt’s national construction and economic development and welcomed more Chinese investments in Egypt.

Noting that Egypt is an important Arab, African, Islamic, and developing country, Wang once again congratulated Egypt on becoming a new member of the BRICS. China, he added, is willing to work with Egypt to promote a more equal and orderly multipolarisation as well as a universally beneficial and inclusive economic globalisation, and jointly build a community of shared future for humanity.

The same day, Wang also met with Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry.

Shoukry said that Egypt is proud of being the first Arab and African country to have forged diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China, and it is a great pleasure to make Egypt the first stop of the Chinese foreign minister’s first visit abroad again in a new year, which demonstrates the solid and profound friendship between Egypt and China.

Egypt adheres to the one-China principle, unswervingly supports China in safeguarding national unity, stability and development, as well as regarding China’s legitimate position on issues related to Xinjiang and Hong Kong.

Wang noted that the China-Egypt friendship has brought tangible benefits to the two peoples and set a model for South-South cooperation. 

Both sides, he continued, should promote cooperation in various fields, including new energy, aerospace, agricultural science and technology, digital economy, artificial intelligence, and medical and health care. China encourages Chinese enterprises to invest in Egypt, more Chinese citizens to visit Egypt, and stands ready to import more high-quality products from Egypt.

He pointed out that both China and Egypt, as representatives of major developing countries and emerging forces, pursue independent foreign policies and support genuine multilateralism. In a turbulent and intertwined world, China and Egypt are important factors for maintaining strategic stability. China is ready to work with Egypt to support an equal and orderly multipolar world and economic globalisation that benefits all, promote the development of global governance in a more just and reasonable direction, and safeguard the common interests and legitimate rights of developing countries.

In a joint press conference of the two foreign ministers, Wang Yi called for the convening of a more comprehensive, authoritative, and effective international peace conference to formulate a road map for implementing the two-state solution to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

He also put forward a four-point proposal for resolving the conflict in Gaza.

First, the overriding priority now is to end the Gaza conflict as soon as possible. The international community must take immediate action and focus all efforts on achieving a ceasefire, protecting the safety of civilians, and avoiding the loss of more lives.

Second, it is a moral responsibility to ensure the urgent delivery of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. It is necessary to establish a humanitarian relief mechanism as soon as possible to ensure the rapid, safe, barrier-free and sustainable delivery of humanitarian aid to the Palestinians in Gaza. China has decided to provide its third batch of humanitarian aid to Gaza.

Third, the will of the Palestinian people must be fully respected regarding the future arrangements of Gaza. “The Palestinians governing Palestine” is the basic principle for discussing the future of Gaza. Strengthening the power of the Palestinian Authority and supporting Palestine’s internal reconciliation is the realistic approach to ensuring “the Palestinians governing Palestine” principle.

Fourth, the essence of settling the Palestinian issue is to correct historical injustice. Justice must be returned to the Palestinian people as soon as possible, and a political settlement must be achieved in accordance with relevant UN resolutions and the Arab Peace Initiative by establishing an independent and sovereign Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital. 

Wang also noted that Egypt is a major Arab, African, Islamic, and developing country. This year, China will host the 10th Ministerial Conference of the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum, and the new session of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation. China looks forward to working with Egypt to lead China-Arab States and China-Africa collective cooperation to a new level, and to build a model of high-quality South-South cooperation.

The Chinese Foreign Minister also met in Cairo with the League of Arab States Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit.

The Arab League has become the first regional organisation to sign a joint statement with China aimed at further implementing the Global Civilisation Initiative, Wang noted, adding that China is willing to work with the Arab side to push for new progress in China-Arab practical cooperation.

He said that this year marks the 20th anniversary of the establishment of the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum, and that over the past two decades, the forum has made important contributions to promoting the development of China-Arab relations and has become a “prestige brand” for China-Arab collective cooperation.

Gheit said that the Arab League firmly adheres to the one-China principle and “one country, two systems,” opposes using double standards on issues related to human rights and Xinjiang and stands against interference in China’s internal affairs.

“We deeply appreciate China for upholding justice on the Palestinian question, and for its important contributions to ceasefire, an end to violence, de-escalation and the protection of civilians. We believe that China will continue to play an indispensable role,” he added.

China issued joint statements with both Egypt and the League of Arab States on the question of Palestine.

The joint statement with Egypt demanded an immediate and comprehensive ceasefire and  opposed and condemned all violations of international law, including international humanitarian law, as well as of international human rights law, including the forced individual and collective transfers and forcible transfers of the Palestinian population from their land.

That with the League of Arab States demanded that: “The UN Security Council should heed the voices of Arab and Islamic countries and other countries that oppose Israel’s continued war against civilians in Gaza and take binding measures to ensure that international security and peace are properly assured,” adding that: “Any arrangement concerning the future and destiny of Palestine should follow the principle of ‘Palestinians governing Palestine’. Efforts should be made to achieve intra-Palestinian reconciliation and the support of both China and Algeria for an inclusive national dialogue with the participation of all Palestinian factions should be underlined in order to achieve the above-mentioned goals.”

The two sides also expressed “deep concern over the recent escalation of the situation in the Red Sea and stressed the need to respect Yemen’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity, while ensuring the safety of international commercial routes in the Red Sea.”

“The Arab side highly appreciates China’s extensive efforts to calm the conflict in Gaza, achieve a ceasefire and support the just cause of the Palestinian people, and appreciates China’s Position Paper on the Settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict. The two sides are willing to continue to strengthen communication and coordination, make unremitting efforts to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza and end the grave humanitarian crisis suffered by more than two million Palestinian people, and work to end the occupation and promote a comprehensive, just and lasting settlement of the Palestinian question.”

The following articles were originally published by the Xinhua News Agency and the Chinese Foreign Ministry. The two joint statements have been machine translated and lightly edited by us.

Egyptian president, Chinese FM discuss bilateral ties, Gaza conflict

CAIRO, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) — Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi held a meeting with visiting Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Sunday, during which the two sides discussed the ways to strengthen bilateral ties and stressed the importance of implementing an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

Continue reading China puts forward four-point proposal for ending Gaza conflict

South Sudan: China supports displaced persons

China is extending humanitarian support to the impoverished nation of South Sudan as it copes with an influx of refugees and returnees resulting from the bitter civil conflict currently raging in its northern neighbour.

On December 28, 2023, the South Sudanese government reported that trucks carrying humanitarian aid donated by China to support refugees and returnees displaced from Sudan had started to arrive in the capital, Juba. Minister for Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management Albino Akol Atak said: “This has been a generous donation by the government of China to the people of South Sudan.”

He added that the donation by China will be used to shelter the returnees and refugees at the transit sites and the final destinations and noted that there will be further support from the Chinese government for the displaced persons, totalling 1.4 million US dollars, which will be delivered before the end of January.

Akol expressed gratitude for the generous contribution, saying that it affirmed the true friendship between South Sudan and China.

South Sudan and China have enjoyed friendly relations since the former won its independence in July 2011. This relationship is underpinned by the close ties between the two ruling parties, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) and the Communist Party of China (CPC).

The below article was originally published by Telesur.

On Thursday, the government of South Sudan said that trucks carrying humanitarian aid donated by China to support refugees and returnees displaced from Sudan have started to arrive in Juba, South Sudan’s capital.

Minister for Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management Albino Akol Atak said six trucks carrying a total of 26,145 pieces of plastic sheets arrived in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, to support the returnees and refugees.

“This has been a generous donation by the government of China to the people of South Sudan and is a result of our engagement with the international community and donors for them to help the government and to support the efforts of the government in its responses to the influx of refugees and returnees that have come as a result of the conflict in Sudan,” Akol told reporters in Juba.

He said more than 460,000 people have already been displaced to South Sudan as a result of the Sudanese conflict and are in dire need of shelter, food, and medicines in the transit centers and their final destination.

Akol said the donation by China will be used to shelter the returnees and refugees at the transit sites and the final destinations.

He noted that there will be another support from the Chinese government for the displaced persons totaling 1.4 million U.S. dollars, which will be delivered before the end of January 2024.

Akol expressed gratitude for the generous contribution of the government of China, affirming the true friendship between South Sudan and China.

Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki meets with Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa Affairs Xue Bing

The friendly relations between China and Eritrea were underlined on December 15, 2023, with a meeting in the Eritrean capital Asmara between President Isaias Afwerki and the visiting Special Envoy for Horn of Africa Affairs of China’s Foreign Ministry Xue Bing.

Xue Bing said that this year marks the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Eritrea. In May this year, President Isaias Afwerki paid a successful visit to China and reached a lot of common understandings with President Xi Jinping, drawing a new blueprint for the future development of bilateral relations. China is ready to work with Eritrea, taking the common understandings between the two heads of state as a guide, to strengthen the alignment of development strategies, advance the implementation of the Outlook on Peace and Development in the Horn of Africa, and elevate bilateral cooperation to a higher level.

Isaias Afwerki said that he had paid a successful state visit to China. Eritrea greatly admires China’s tremendous achievements in development, and appreciates China’s important role in international affairs. Eritrea is ready to strengthen strategic communication and coordination with China, expand practical cooperation in various fields, and promote the building of a more equitable and reasonable international order.

Eritrea officially proclaimed its independence on May 24, 1993. Diplomatic relations with China, which had supported the Eritrean liberation struggle since its early days, were established on the same day.

The following article was originally published on the website of the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

On December 15, 2023, Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki met with Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa Affairs of the Foreign Ministry Xue Bing at the President’s Office in Eritrea. Eritrean Foreign Minister Osman Saleh, Economic Advisor to the President and General Coordinator for China Affairs Hagos Gebrehiwet, and Chargé d’Affaires a.i. of the Chinese Embassy in Eritrea Dai Demao were present.

Xue Bing said that this year marks the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Eritrea. In May this year, Mr. President Isaias Afwerki paid a successful visit to China and reached a lot of common understandings with President Xi Jinping, drawing a new blueprint for the future development of bilateral relations. China is ready to work with Eritrea, taking the common understandings between the two heads of state as a guide, to strengthen the alignment of development strategies, advance the implementation of the Outlook on Peace and Development in the Horn of Africa, and elevate bilateral cooperation to a higher level.

Isaias Afwerki said that he paid a state visit to China and had a successful meeting with President Xi Jinping in May this year. Eritrea greatly admires China’s tremendous achievements in development, and appreciates China’s important role in international affairs. Eritrea is ready to strengthen strategic communication and coordination with China, expand practical cooperation in various fields, and promote the building of a more equitable and reasonable international order.

Wang Yi holds talks with Angolan Foreign Minister Téte António

We previously reported on the visit to China by Angolan Foreign Minister Téte António in early December 2023. Further information on this visit has now been made available on the website of the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

Meeting his Angolan counterpart on December 6, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that this year marks the 40th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Angola and is of important transitional significance. China and Angola have forged a friendship of sharing weal and woe in the anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist struggle, and have pursued a path of mutually beneficial and win-win cooperation on their respective journey towards development and revitalisation. Under the strategic guidance of the two heads of state, China-Angola relations have maintained a strong momentum of development with fruitful results in practical cooperation, which has brought tangible benefits to the people of the two countries, provided an important boost to Angola’s accelerated development and also set an example for South-South cooperation. 

Wang Yi added that China appreciates Angola’s commitment to the one-China principle and the country’s support for China in safeguarding its core interests, and China also firmly supports Angola in safeguarding sovereignty, security and development interests, and in exploring a successful development path suited to Angola’s national reality. China is ready to work with Angola to strengthen multilateral coordination, advance the mechanism building of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), build a closer China-Africa community with a shared future, jointly safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of developing countries, and make the international order more equitable and reasonable.

Téte António said that Angola and China are sincere friends and also strategic partners. Angola thanks China for providing the country with precious support in its post-war reconstruction, economic development, pandemic response, and improvement of the people’s livelihood, as well as for playing a role as a major country in safeguarding Africa’s peace and security and correcting historical injustice.  Angola stands ready to work with China to continue to enhance communication and coordination, jointly advance the building of the FOCAC, jointly safeguard the United Nations-centred international system, and build a new type of international relations.

The following article was originally carried on the website of the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

On December 6, 2023, Member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Foreign Minister Wang Yi held talks with Foreign Minister of Angola Téte António in Beijing.

Wang Yi said that this year marks the 40th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Angola, and is of important transitioning significance. China and Angola have forged a friendship of sharing weal and woe in the anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism struggle, and have pursued a path of mutually beneficial and win-win cooperation on their respective journey towards development and revitalization. Under the strategic guidance of the two heads of state, China-Angola relations have maintained a strong momentum of development with fruitful results in practical cooperation, which has brought tangible benefits to the people of the two countries, provided an important boost to Angola’s accelerated development and also set an example for South-South cooperation. The two sides should follow through on the important common understandings reached by the two heads of state, and push for the development of China-Angola relations at a higher and deeper level. China is ready to share with Angola the experience of development of Chinese modernization and opportunities in the mega market, expand practical cooperation in infrastructure, digital economy, clean energy, health care and food security, among others, deepen people-to-people and cultural exchanges, enhance people-to-people ties, and consolidate the popular foundation of China-Angola friendship.

Wang Yi said that China appreciates Angola’s commitment to the one-China principle and the country’s support for China in safeguarding its core interests, and China also firmly supports Angola in safeguarding sovereignty, security and development interests, and in exploring a successful development path suited to Angola’s national reality. China is ready to work with Angola to strengthen multilateral coordination, advance the mechanism building of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), build a closer China-Africa community with a shared future, jointly safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of developing countries, and make the international order more equitable and reasonable.

Téte António said that Angola and China are sincere friends and also strategic partners. Under the guidance of the two heads of state, Angola-China relations have been constantly enriched, and cooperation has been increasingly deepened. Angola thanks China for providing the country with precious support in its post-war reconstruction, economic development, pandemic response and improvement of the people’s livelihood, and for playing a role as a major country in safeguarding Africa’s peace and security and correcting historical injustice. Angola will remain committed to the one-China principle, and support China in safeguarding sovereignty and territorial integrity. Angola-China cooperation is mutually beneficial and win-win, and major projects have been continuously successfully implemented, which have witnessed and promoted friendship between the two countries. Angola welcomes China’s investment and will earnestly protect the safety and security of Chinese enterprises and personnel in Angola. Angola stands ready to work with China to continue to enhance communication and coordination, jointly advance the building of the FOCAC, jointly safeguard the United Nations-centered international system, and build a new type of international relations.

Malian FM: China is a reliable friend and partner of Mali

A salient feature of the international scene recently has been the revolt against French neo-colonialism, in particular, in the Sahel region of West Africa. Progressive military officers, with broad and extensive popular support, have taken power in Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso, with an orientation to national development and independence against imperialism. And, in order to deter the threat of external aggression, on 16 September 2023, the three countries formed the Alliance of Sahel States as a mutual defence pact, under which “any attack on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of one or more contracted parties will be considered an aggression against the other parties.”

Against this background, Mali’s Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop visited China in early December. The importance attached by Mali to the visit was highlighted by the fact that Diop was accompanied by several other ministers, including those of Economy and Finance and Industry and Commerce. 

The delegation met with China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi on 8 December. At the meeting, Wang remarked that the China-Mali friendship was forged by the elder generation of the leaders of both countries.

It should be noted here that Mali won its independence from French colonial rule on 20 June 1960, proclaimed itself a republic on 22 September and established diplomatic relations with China on 25 October. Mali’s first president, Modibo Keïta (1915-1977), who served as head of state from independence until he was overthrown in 1968, spending the rest of his life in prison, was one of the outstanding leaders of the African liberation struggle and was committed to Mali taking the socialist road. It is this heritage from which the current Sahelian leaders are taking inspiration, with Burkina Faso, in particular, learning from its previous outstanding leader, Thomas Sankara, and adopting a clear socialist orientation.

Wang Yi went on to note that sixty years ago, Premier Zhou Enlai visited ten African countries including Mali, opening a historical chapter of long-term friendship, solidarity, and cooperation between the two peoples. That visit, from December 1963-February 1964, ended with Zhou’s famous declaration that “Africa is ripe for revolution.”

China, Wang Yi said, fully understands and respects the independent choice of the Malian people and never interferes in other countries’ internal affairs. Noting that Mali has achieved important results in maintaining national stability and protecting the safety of its people, he expressed the belief that Mali has the wisdom and ability to solve the temporary difficulties it is currently facing, grasp the destiny of national development and progress, and achieve lasting peace and tranquility.

This is a significant statement in terms of the unfolding political dynamic in the region. China customarily refers to respecting the political developments in other countries. The addition of understanding, in the context of the ongoing attempts by some outside forces to question or undermine developments in Mali – which include insisting on the withdrawal of foreign troops – underlines China’s support and solidarity with the progressive changes currently underway in the country.

Wang Yi added that China is ready to deepen cooperation with Mali in education, training, medical care, and agriculture, among other areas, and to carry out more projects such as the “Mali Digital” project and the “Africa Solar Belt” Program, to help promote the peace and development process in Mali. And, underlining the common interest in opposing imperialist-backed ‘Islamist’ terrorist forces, he also expressed the hope that Mali can continue to take concrete and effective measures to ensure the safety of Chinese personnel in the country.

For his part, Abdoulaye Diop said that Mali and China enjoy a long history of friendship and share similar positions on significant issues of principle. In significant remarks that echoed those of his Chinese counterpart, he went on to note that China supports Mali in safeguarding sovereignty and territorial integrity and always listens patiently to Mali’s appeals and is a reliable friend and partner of Mali.

Mali, Diop added, adheres to independence, and abides by the one-China principle. His country hopes to deepen mutually beneficial cooperation with China and will make all-out efforts to ensure the safety of Chinese personnel in the country. Mali also attaches great importance to a series of important initiatives proposed by President Xi Jinping and looks forward to learning from China’s successful development experience, continuing to receive support and assistance from China, and deepening practical cooperation between Africa and China across the board.

The below article was originally published on the website of the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

On December 8, 2023, Member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Foreign Minister Wang Yi held talks with Mali’s Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop. Mali’s Minister of Economy and Finance and Minister of Industry and Commerce, among others, were present.

Wang Yi said that the China-Mali friendship was forged by the elder generation of the leaders of both countries. Sixty years ago, Premier Zhou Enlai visited ten African countries including Mali, opening a historical chapter of long-term friendship, solidarity and cooperation between the two peoples. China fully understands and respects the independent choice of the Malian people and never interferes in other countries’ internal affairs. Noting that Mali has achieved important results in maintaining national stability and protecting the safety of its people, Wang Yi expressed the belief that Mali has the wisdom and ability to solve temporary difficulties it is currently facing, grasp the destiny of national development and progress, and achieve lasting peace and tranquility. China is willing to work with Mali to continue to firmly support each other and jointly safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of developing countries as well as the basic norms governing international relations.

Wang Yi said that in recent years, a number of China-Mali practical cooperation projects have been successfully implemented, bringing benefits to the Malian people. China is ready to deepen cooperation with Mali in education, training, medical care and agriculture, among others, and carry out more projects such as the “Mali Digital” project and the “Africa Solar Belt” Program, to help promote the peace and development process in Mali. Wang Yi expressed the hope that Mali can continue to take concrete and effective measures to ensure the safety of Chinese personnel in the country.

Wang Yi said, in response to the urgent needs of African countries, President Xi Jinping has put forward three important initiatives, namely, the Initiative on Supporting Africa’s Industrialization, the Plan for China Supporting Africa’s Agricultural Modernization, and the Plan for China-Africa Cooperation on Talent Development. China is ready to work with Africa to implement these initiatives, strengthen cooperation under the mechanism of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, and accelerate common development and revitalization.

Abdoulaye Diop said that Mali and China enjoy a long history of friendship and share similar positions on significant issues of principle. China supports Mali in safeguarding sovereignty and territorial integrity and always listens patiently to Mali’s appeals, and is a reliable friend and partner of Mali. Mali adheres to independence and abides by the one-China principle. Mali hopes to deepen mutually beneficial cooperation with China, and will make all-out efforts to ensure the safety of Chinese personnel in the country. Mali attaches great importance to a series of important initiatives proposed by President Xi Jinping, and looks forward to learning from China’s successful development experience, continuing to receive support and assistance from China, and deepening practical cooperation between Africa and China across the board.

China-Angola relations continue to bring tangible benefits to both sides

Foreign Minister of Angola Tete Antonio recently paid a visit to China at the invitation of his counterpart, Wang Yi. At their meeting, Wang Yi said that under the strategic guidance of the two heads of state, China-Angola relations have maintained a strong momentum of development with fruitful results in practical cooperation, which has brought tangible benefits to the two peoples, provided an important boost to Angola’s development and set an example for South-South cooperation.

China is willing to share with Angola its experience of development as well as opportunities in the Chinese market, expand practical cooperation on infrastructure, digital economy, clean energy, health care and food security, deepen people-to-people exchanges, and consolidate the popular foundation of China-Angola friendship, he added.
In a meeting with Commerce Minister Wang Wentao, the two countries also signed an agreement to facilitate and protect bilateral investment. The agreement 

 stipulates a dispute settlement mechanism and the investment protection obligations of the two sides and is expected to mutually enhance investor confidence on both sides and create a more stable, convenient and transparent business environment for enterprises from both countries.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between China and Angola.

The following articles were originally published by the Xinhua News Agency.

Chinese FM holds talks with Angolan counterpart

BEIJING, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) — Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi held talks with Foreign Minister of Angola Tete Antonio in Beijing on Wednesday.

Wang, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, said that under the strategic guidance of the two heads of state, China-Angola relations have maintained a strong momentum of development with fruitful results in practical cooperation, which has brought tangible benefits to the two peoples, provided an important boost to Angola’s development and set an example for South-South cooperation.

China is willing to share with Angola the experience of development and opportunities in the Chinese market, expand practical cooperation on infrastructure, digital economy, clean energy, health care and food security, deepen people-to-people exchanges, and consolidate the popular foundation of China-Angola friendship, said Wang.

Wang also expressed China’s willingness to strengthen coordination on multilateral platforms with Angola, advance the mechanism building of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, build a closer China-Africa community with a shared future, jointly safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of developing countries, and promote the development of the international order in a more just and reasonable direction.

Antonio said that Angola will stick to the one-China principle and support China in safeguarding its sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Bilateral cooperation between the two countries is mutually beneficial, Antonio said, adding that Angola welcomes Chinese investment, and is willing to continue close communication and coordination with China. 

China, Angola sign investment protection agreement

BEIJING, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) — China and Angola on Wednesday signed an agreement in Beijing to facilitate and protect bilateral investment, according to the Ministry of Commerce of China.

The pact, signed by Chinese Minister of Commerce Wang Wentao and Foreign Minister of Angola Tete Antonio, is a mutually beneficial, high-quality investment agreement that stipulates a dispute settlement mechanism and the investment protection obligations of the two sides.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between China and Angola.

The signing of the agreement is expected to enhance investor confidence on both sides and create a more stable, convenient and transparent business environment for enterprises from both countries, the ministry said.

Next, the two sides will carry out their respective domestic procedures to promote the agreement’s early entry into force, according to the ministry. 

George Galloway: The West sucks the blood of Africans, while China transfuses hope

In this short, three-minute film for Chinese broadcaster CGTN, George Galloway, former Member of Parliament, and leader of the Workers’ Party of Britain, refutes western propaganda regarding China’s role in Africa and makes a stark contrast between the western record with regard to the African continent and that of China. The West, George insists, sucks the blood of Africans, while China transfuses hope.

The United States has 29 military bases in Africa. China has one – in Djibouti, where the US also has a base. Yet it is China that is accused of interference. China is building the infrastructure that the colonial powers never did and promoting the post-independence economic development that the West did everything to try to strangle at birth. 

Unlike the West, George notes, China did not enslave anybody in Africa. It occupied nowhere – unlike the imperialist scramble for every last square inch of the continent. Again, unlike the west, China murdered no African leaders, carried out no coups, did not “buy” uranium from Niger at grotesquely undervalued prices and nor did it support apartheid in South Africa or the former Rhodesia – rather it supported the freedom struggle. 

Under the Belt and Road Initiative, George notes, China is building road, rail and air transportation networks across the continent, along with schools, hospitals, universities and kindergartens.

This succinct and poweful video is embedded below.

Xi Jinping meets South African deputy president

The close friendly relations between China and South Africa were recently underlined by a visit from Deputy President Paul Mashatile. 

Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Mashatile on November 6. He said that this year marks the 25th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between China and South Africa, with their bilateral relationship entering a “golden era.” 

During his fourth state visit to South Africa in August, he and President Cyril Ramaphosa agreed that China and South Africa should be strategic partners with high-level mutual trust, development partners that progress together, friendly partners that enjoy mutual understanding, and global partners with a commitment to justice.

President Xi expressed China’s willingness to work with South Africa and other African countries to implement China’s three initiatives on supporting Africa’s industrialization, agricultural modernization and talent development, as well as the eight major steps to support high-quality Belt and Road cooperation, create a number of high-standard, sustainable cooperation projects that benefit people’s livelihood, work for a more strategic and sustainable China-Africa cooperation, and promote the building of a high-level China-Africa community with a shared future.

He called on the two sides to continue to cooperate closely within the BRICS mechanism, strengthen solidarity and cooperation among developing countries, and promote the development of the global governance system in a direction conducive to developing countries.

Mashatile said President Xi’s successful state visit to South Africa in August further consolidated the traditional friendship between South Africa and China, and injected strong impetus into the future development of relations. President Ramaphosa awarded the country’s highest honor to President Xi, which showed that the South African people highly affirm and appreciate President Xi’s great contribution to promoting South Africa-China friendship.

On the same day, on his request, Mashatile, who is also the Deputy President of the African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa, also met with Liu Jianchao, Minister of the International Department of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee (IDCPC). 

Mashatile said that the ANC attaches great importance to its relations with the CPC and thanks the CPC for the long-term support and assistance to the ANC. Currently, the African continent, including South Africa, is facing many new challenges. The ANC is willing to strengthen exchanges on state governance and administration with the CPC, learn experience and practices in strengthening party building from the CPC, be more people-oriented, listen to the people, and understand and serve the people’s needs, so as to better realize the Party’s purposes and goals. The ANC is willing to work with the CPC to help the two countries strengthen cooperation in energy and other fields, reinforce coordination in international affairs, and promote the stronger development of relations between the two countries.

Liu said, currently the world has entered a new period of turbulence and change, with increasing uncertainties, instability, and unpredictable factors. The CPC and the ANC, as the ruling parties of their respective countries, should strengthen unity and cooperation and work together to deal with risks and challenges on the way forward. The CPC and the ANC have always supported and helped each other.

A few days previously, on November 3, IDCPC Vice-Minister Li Mingxiang met with a delegation led by Bonginkosi Emmanuel “Blade” Nzimande, Chairperson (and formerly General Secretary) of the South African Communist Party (SACP), and South Africa’s Minister of Higher Education, Science and Technology.

Li said the Chinese side is willing to work with the South African side to implement the important consensus reached by the top leaders of the two countries, further strengthen cooperation between the two countries in all fields, deepen inter-party exchanges and mutual learning, and jointly promote the continuous development of the comradely and brotherly relationship between China and South Africa.

Nzimande thanked the CPC for its long-term and selfless support to the SACP and expected to continuously deepen friendly cooperation with the CPC in various fields.

The following articles were originally published by the Xinhua News Agency and on the website of the IDCPC.

Xi meets South African deputy president

BEIJING, Nov. 6 (Xinhua) — Chinese President Xi Jinping met with South African Deputy President Paul Mashatile in Beijing on Monday.

Xi said this year marks the 25th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between China and South Africa, with the bilateral relationship entering a “golden era.”

During his fourth state visit to South Africa in August, President Xi and President Cyril Ramaphosa agreed that China and South Africa should be strategic partners with high-level mutual trust, development partners that progress together, friendly partners that enjoy mutual understanding, and global partners with a commitment to justice.

Continue reading Xi Jinping meets South African deputy president

China hands over new parliament building to Zimbabwe

On Thursday October 26, the Chinese government handed over to Zimbabwe a new parliament building that was constructed and funded by China. The building, which photographs show to have been built in a distinct Zimbabwean national style, was handed over to President Emmerson Mnangagwa at a ceremony attended by government officials, diplomats, Chinese embassy officials, and others.

Speaking at the ceremony, President Mnangagwa said that the building is a pivot point around which a new administrative capital will be built.

“The new parliament building, which stands as one of the most magnificent and modern buildings in our country, signifies the excellent relations that exist between Zimbabwe and the People’s Republic of China,” he added.

These excellent relations date back to the Zimbabwean people’s armed struggle to overthrow the racist and colonial regime and win national independence. China fully supported that struggle. President Mnangagwa himself was one of those who were trained in guerilla warfare in China.

The timing of the handover of the parliament building was very apposite as it came the day after Anti-Sanctions Day. October 25 was designated as Anti-Sanctions Day by the 16-member Southern African Development Community (SADC) in response to the sanctions placed on Zimbabwe, and other anti-imperialist, independent countries, by leading imperialist powers such as the United States and Britain. According to Zimbabwean Vice-President Constantino Chiwenga, addressing an Anti-Sanctions Day rally in the capital, Harare:

“Since 2001, we estimate that Zimbabwe has lost or missed over 150 billion US dollars through frozen assets, trade embargoes, export and investment restrictions from potential bilateral donor support, development loans, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank balance of payment support, and commercial loans.” 

A meeting was also held in New York to express solidarity with the Zimbabwean people on this occasion. It was organised by the December 12 Movement (D12), a revolutionary nationalist organisation that has maintained close ties with Zimbabwe and its ruling ZANU-PF party for many years. While three members of D12 were in Zimbabwe to take part in the anti-sanctions activities there, veteran member Colette Pean told the New York gathering that settlers had stolen 86% of Zimbabwe’s land. Despite the sanctions, Zimbabwe has built hydroelectric dams and shared development projects equally among its 10 provinces.

US and other capitalists now want to grab Zimbabwe’s large lithium reserves, vital to making batteries for electric cars. But December 12th Movement member Vinson Verdree said Zimbabwe won’t let its lithium be stolen. The country will build a battery plant and other facilities to process the raw material.

The timing of China’s handover of the new parliament to Zimbabwe therefore underlines its utter rejection of universal sanctions.

This was also made clear in the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s regular press conference on October 25. The Global Times newspaper asked spokesperson Mao Ning:

“During the General Debate of the United Nations General Assembly this year, leaders of many African countries condemned Western countries for abusing sanctions and interfering in internal affairs of African countries. Today, October 25, is the Anti-Sanctions Day declared by the Southern African Development Community (SADC). African countries have called on the West to lift illegal sanctions on Zimbabwe as soon as possible. What’s China’s comment?”

She replied: “The 39th SADC Summit held in 2019 named October 25 as the Anti-Sanctions Day and called on the US and some other Western countries and organisations to remove sanctions on Zimbabwe. Today, on the occasion of the fifth Anti-Sanctions Day, we noted that multiple African countries have once again strongly called for lifting the sanctions. China supports that.

“The unlawful sanctions of the US and some Western countries on Zimbabwe, which have lasted for over two decades, have seriously violated the country’s sovereignty, infringed upon the development right of the Zimbabwean people, and disrupted the international political and economic order and the global governance system. 

“China, as always, firmly supports Zimbabwe in opposing external interference and keeping to its own development path. We once again urge the few countries and organisations to listen to the international call for justice, lift the unlawful sanctions on Zimbabwe as soon as possible, take responsible and concrete steps to help the country develop its economy and improve people’s wellbeing, and play a constructive role in promoting world peace and development.”

The following articles were originally published by the Xinhua News Agency and the US publication Struggle/La Lucha.

China hands over Zimbabwe’s new parliament building

HARARE, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) — The Chinese government on Thursday handed over to Zimbabwe a new parliament building that was constructed and funded by China through a grant.

Tang Wenhong, vice chairman of China International Development Cooperation Agency (CIDCA) and head of a visiting Chinese delegation, officially handed over the majestic building to Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa at a ceremony attended by government officials, diplomats, and Chinese embassy officials, among others.

The new parliament building, with a combined floor area of 33,000 square meters, is a pivot point around which a new administrative capital will be built, said Mnangagwa in his address at the ceremony.

“The new parliament building, which stands as one of the most magnificent and modern buildings in our country, signifies the excellent relations that exist between Zimbabwe and the People’s Republic of China. The attention to detail and high standards of workmanship exhibited in this project are indeed commendable,” Mnangagwa said.

Mnangagwa said Zimbabwe recognizes the development milestones achieved by China and its quest for global peace and a shared future for mankind.

Tang, in his address at the ceremony, said the project is a vivid manifestation of the cooperation between Zimbabwe and China.

Both sides have achieved fruitful results in practical cooperation in infrastructure, agriculture, health, education and other fields, setting a model for South-South cooperation, Tang said. 

Continue reading China hands over new parliament building to Zimbabwe

Life for Angolans is changing for the better with the support of China

The following article, first published in Global Times, is based on an interview with João Baptista Borges, Angolan Minister of Energy and Water.

Borges, who was attending the Third Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, addresses the accusations of “debt trap” that have been leveled against the China-led Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). He calls such claims “untrue and unfair”, noting that the infrastructure projects China is involved in – related to energy systems, water treatment and more – “have benefited millions of Angolans” and that Angola’s cooperation with China “is very important and strategic for us in terms of the great changes it has brought to our lives… If you ask anybody in Angola, they will tell you that our lives have changed with these supports from China.”

Borges insists that Angola’s participation in the BRI is based on mutual respect and mutual benefit, and that Angola makes its own decisions about what projects to pursue. “China has never imposed any projects on us; each project was selected by us.”

Furthermore, while Angola is a major fossil fuel producer, it is developing ambitious plans to carry out a green transition, and considers that Chinese experience and investment will be crucial in this regard. “We are talking in terms of hundreds of millions of dollars to construct solar power plants and hydro transmission systems in order to eliminate gradually the consumption of fossil fuels. Our priority is really to transform our economy in order to provide not only more power but also clean power to the people at affordable prices.”

The China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has generated numerous opportunities for partner countries, including Angola, as noted by João Baptista Borges, the Angolan Minister of Energy and Water, in an exclusive interview with the Global Times, during which he conveyed appreciation for the positive changes that Chinese companies have contributed to his country’s development, notably in sectors including water, energy supply, and green transformation.

The Angolan minister has also refuted the West’s intensified allegations over the so-called “debt trap” issue targeting the initiative, calling it both “untrue and unfair.”

These remarks were made on the sidelines of his visit to China on behalf of Angolan President João Lourenço to attend the third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation (BRF), which was held in Beijing from Tuesday to Wednesday.

China’s increased support for Angola can be traced back to the early 2000s when the country was emerging from a decades-long civil war and was in dire need of extensive rebuilding, the minister said.

At that time, there was a pressing need for rebuilding, and the country had already begun receiving substantial financial support from the Chinese government for various critical infrastructure projects, such as water and energy supplies, Borges explained.

The cooperation with China has later increased substantially, with a range of major projects, including water treatment systems and transmission systems, being built to help secure the energy supply of the country and improve the living standards of local people.

Continue reading Life for Angolans is changing for the better with the support of China

‘Asian NATO’: brought to you by South Korean repression

In this detailed article, which was originally published by The Real News Network, Ju-Hyun Park, the network’s engagement editor, analyses the implications for regional peace, security and economics of the tripartite summit between the United States, Japan and South Korea, that US President Joe Biden hosted at Camp David in August, and relates them to the intensified crackdown on the labour movement and wider sections of civil society since a new conservative administration took office in South Korea.

According to Park, this budding tripartite alliance is a “dream come true for Washington in the New Cold War. And it wouldn’t be happening without South Korean President Yoon’s [Yoon Suk Yeol] war on labour and the opposition.”

Noting that, at Camp David, “for the first time, South Korea, Japan, and the US pledged to share data on North Korean missiles, coordinate joint military responses to threats in the region, and host a new annual trilateral military exercise,” Park explains: “These outcomes indicate a realignment of forces in East Asia that significantly raises the risks of potential major power conflict with China… The Camp David summit is a sure step towards achieving one of Washington’s long-standing goals: establishing an Asian equivalent to NATO as a bulwark to protect US interests in the Pacific.”

Roping South Korea into an alliance with Japan has been an aim of US policymakers since the Korean War (1950-53), but consummating it has proved elusive, both because of the bitter legacy of Japanese colonial rule on the Korean peninsula and latterly South Korea’s burgeoning and mutually beneficial economic relationship with China:

“China overtook the US as South Korea’s primary trade partner almost 20 years ago, and South Korea’s largest corporations depend on China for labour, production, and markets. While South Korea’s capitalists also benefit from the US military occupation of the peninsula, there are few benefits to them in picking sides in a zero-sum conflict between the US and China.”

Biden’s apparent success, therefore, in binding the two powers together in a joint embrace with the United States may been seen as a victory for deft diplomacy, but “there is another cause that deserves significantly more credit: For the past year, current South Korean President Yoon Seok Yeol has waged a ruthless war on the sections of South Korean civil society standing in the way of Washington’s agenda, attacking labour, peace groups, and the general public.”

Yoon’s principal target has been South Korea’s militant labour movement. In January this year, hundreds of police officers raided the offices of multiple progressive organisations, including the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), which represents over two million workers.

Yoon has also overseen a drastic escalation in the frequency and intensity of joint military exercises between South Korea and the US, with more than 20 planned for this year alone.

According to Park:

“Labour repression within South Korea also plays a significant role in facilitating Washington’s aims to technologically and economically isolate China… The war on Chinese tech goes beyond targeting individual Chinese conglomerates. Under Biden, a strategy has slowly taken shape to attempt to bring as much high-tech production back to the US as possible while simultaneously taking measures to exclude China from existing international supply chains that rely heavily on production in Taiwan and South Korea. Two of Biden’s biggest legislative wins, the Inflation Reduction Act and CHIPS and Science Act, contain provisions that effectively force South Korean companies to abandon their investments in China in favour of building electric vehicle and semiconductor factories in the US. South Korean EV battery makers have already committed $13 billion to build new plants and expand existing ones in seven US states.

“This has all come at a steep cost to South Korea. South Korean technology exports to the Chinese market plummeted in the wake of the CHIPS and Inflation Reduction Acts. From 2022 until June 2023, South Korea suffered the most severe trade deficit in its history, haemorrhaging some $47.5 billion in 2022 alone. By far, the leading cause of this deficit was the sudden reversal in trade with China.

“Squeezed between rising inflation and spiralling economic prospects, South Korea’s workers are bearing the brunt of this economic realignment. At the same time, the Yoon government is scrambling to find some way to reverse its poor economic performance without making concessions to workers. Hence, Yoon’s war on trade unions – the only vehicles available for the working class to organise independently and fight back… South Korean labour is one of the only organised obstacles within the US-led bloc to Washington’s economic offensive against China. Crushing the unions means clearing the way for the unhindered reengineering of South Korea’s economy in Washington’s vision.”

Whilst noting that Chinese President Xi Jinping seems determined to maintain cordial relations with South Korea, if at all possible, Park adds that analysts have also warned of the possibility that the trilateral alliance could be used as a mechanism to draw South Korean forces into US wars abroad – including in the Taiwan Strait.

Park also explains that the tightening of a US-led hegemonic bloc in the Pacific inevitably comes up against the law that every action has a reaction, in this case in terms of further consolidating the ties between Pyongyang, Moscow and Beijing:

“North Korea, isolated and encircled for so long, now has a wide and reliable rearguard of support in Moscow and Beijing. As the centre of economic gravity pivots towards China, opportunities for North Korea’s advancement will only proliferate.”

While largely unnoticed by the US public, the trilateral summit between Japan, South Korea, and the US that took place at Camp David this August sent shockwaves throughout East Asia. 

US President Joe Biden, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, and Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio punctuated the end of the three-day summit by releasing a joint declaration rife with the kinds of diplomatic ambiguities and appeals to vague principles typical of this sort of affair. The three leaders pledged their support for a “free and open Indo-Pacific,” for an international “rules-based order,” and for “peace and stability” around the world. But, of course, the historic significance of the summit had less to do with the rhetoric and more to do with the concrete commitments made by the three governments. 

The Pacific today looks a lot like Europe on the eve of the First World War—a hotbed of military powers sharply divided into opposing blocs driven by irreconcilable interests, ready to be pulled into war at a moment’s notice.

For the first time, South Korea, Japan, and the US pledged to share data on North Korean missiles, coordinate joint military responses to threats in the region, and host a new annual trilateral military exercise. 

These outcomes indicate a realignment of forces in East Asia that significantly raises the risks of potential major power conflict with China. Japan and South Korea have been individual allies of the US for decades—but the three have never before been part of a shared military structure. Now, with an agreed-upon “commitment to consult,” tighter military integration and coordination between the three countries than ever before is assured. 

While there is no treaty to bind this budding alliance together yet, the unprecedented “trilateral security cooperation” born from the Camp David summit is a sure step towards achieving one of Washington’s long-standing goals: establishing an Asian equivalent to NATO as a bulwark to protect US interests in the Pacific. The result, which is already manifesting, is a much more divided and hostile region than existed before—where the possibility of great power conflict between nuclear states seems to be more a matter of time than a mere hypothetical.

WRANGLING SOUTH KOREA

Roping South Korea into an alliance with Japan has been an aim of US policymakers since the Korean War, when then-Secretary of State Dean Acheson sought to weld South Korea and Japan together into an economic bloc that could revive Japanese industry post-World War II and ward off communist influence in Asia. In recent years, however, the rise of China as an economic powerhouse, coupled with the nuclearization of North Korea, has brought renewed urgency to this long-sought objective.

For years, Seoul proved to be a slippery fish in Washington’s net. Yoon’s predecessor, Moon Jae-In, delicately navigated support for US military expansion in Korea without making ironclad commitments to insert South Korea into an anti-China bloc. 

The reasons for South Korea’s previous ambiguity lay in a divergence of interests between Seoul and Washington in light of a rapidly changing world. China overtook the US as South Korea’s primary trade partner almost 20 years ago, and South Korea’s largest corporations depend on China for labor, production, and markets. While South Korea’s capitalists also benefit from the US military occupation of the peninsula, there are few benefits to them in picking sides in a zero-sum conflict between the US and China. 

This is all rather inconvenient for those in Washington intent on preserving US hegemony indefinitely. South Korea is not only geostrategically important in a conflict against China—it also has the largest military of any US ally in the region, and is also a crucial producer of advanced technologies which US corporations and the Pentagon depend on. To put it simply, the US needs South Korea to succeed in containing China far more than South Korea needs to participate in this conflict. 

Then there’s the other, far thornier issue of Japan’s 35-year colonization of Korea and the deep imprint it has left—and continues to have—on Korea. Japan has yet to fully acknowledge, apologize for, or offer satisfactory compensation for its many colonial crimes against the Korean people. This matter remains an open wound on the Korean psyche, and a thorn in the side of Tokyo and Washington. 

The litany of Japanese atrocities in Korea are too many to name here, but the most prominent issue at the moment concerns Japan’s forced conscriptions of Koreans during WWII. From 1939 to 1945, Japan forcibly conscripted hundreds of thousands of Koreans to fight its wars, and mobilized more than 3 million Koreans as forced laborers throughout its empire. Among the most heinous and best known of these crimes was the conscription of an estimated 200,000 Korean women into sexual slavery for Japan’s military—a program euphemistically known as the “comfort women” system. 

In 2018, the South Korean Supreme Court ordered Japanese conglomerate Mitsubishi, which profited from wartime forced labor, to pay reparations to their surviving victims. This incident set off a diplomatic row that escalated to the level of a trade dispute that lasted for years.

For Washington, the renewed push to force Japan to address and atone for these historical injustices could not have come at a more inconvenient time. Just a year before, in 2017, India, Australia, Japan, and the US had revived the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or the Quad—a military alliance intended to serve as the main axis of a new anti-China bloc. 

The Trump administration was keen to rope South Korea in as a fifth member of the Quad, but this goal never materialized. Entering any kind of explicit alliance with Japan was, and still is, politically toxic in South Korea. Moreover, as the world enters a new era where the US is losing its footing as the globe’s preeminent military and economic power, South Korea, among other nations, was quite sensibly reading the room and attempting to hedge its bets.

Upon entering office, Biden’s administration set achieving a trilateral partnership between the US, Japan, and South Korea as a high priority, seeking to accomplish what its predecessor could not. The Camp David summit represents a major step towards achieving this goal. While the White House and its cheerleaders have already claimed this as a victory for deft diplomacy, there is another cause that deserves significantly more credit: For the past year, current South Korean President Yoon Seok Yeol has waged a ruthless war on the sections of South Korean civil society standing in the way of Washington’s agenda, attacking labor, peace groups, and the general public. 

ENTER YOON SEOK YEOL

Despite less than 18 months in office, Yoon has earned the dubious distinction of being South Korea’s least popular head of state ever—not to mention one of the most maligned leaders in the world. His administration has been pilloried by civil society groups and the main opposition Democratic Party for its corruption and ineptitude, while simultaneously characterized as a “prosecutor’s dictatorship” where escalating abuses of executive power are interpreted by many as signs of backsliding towards South Korea’s days of autocratic rule.

Domestically, the Yoon administration has declared war against its political enemies, particularly against the labor movement. In January of this year, hundreds of police officers raided the offices of multiple progressive organizations, including the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, which represents over 2 million workers.

Yoon’s domestic crackdown isn’t taking place in a vacuum separate from the formation of the trilateral alliance. These repressive measures are the necessary internal complement to an international agenda primarily determined not in Seoul, but in Washington. 

Wielding trumped-up charges ranging from racketeering to spying on behalf of North Korea, the Yoon administration has weaponized law enforcement to continue its crackdown on labor and progressive organizers throughout this year. Over 1,000 members of the Korean Construction Workers Union alone are currently under federal investigation, and more than 30 are now in jail. One local KCWU leader, Yang Hoe-dong, died by self-immolation in protest of these charges—transforming himself into a martyr for the movement to rally around.

It’s not just labor unions that have found themselves in Yoon’s crosshairs. The 6.15 Committee has also been the target of official persecution. Originally founded in 2000, the 6.15 Committee has chapters on both sides of the Korean peninsula and overseas that work towards building support for Korean peace and reunification through people-to-people exchanges. At the same time that the KCTU’s offices were raided, members of the 6.15 Committee in Jeju province were arrested on espionage charges. The evidence? They had previously hosted a public screening of a North Korean film.

Perhaps most brazenly, the Yoon administration has also escalated attacks on the media. Two news outlets, Newstapa and the Joongang Tongyang Broadcasting Company, were raided by prosecutors on Sept. 14, 2023, for publishing a story in 2022 spotlighting Yoon’s alleged participation in an illegal loan scheme. Press freedom has never stood on firm ground in South Korea, even after the supposed era of “democratization” in the 1990s. Ousted former President Park Geun-hye notoriously maintained a blacklist banning thousands of artists considered unfriendly to her government. Yet no other president since the days of military dictatorship ever dared to use state security forces against a media office, until Yoon.

Yoon’s domestic crackdown isn’t taking place in a vacuum separate from the formation of the trilateral alliance. These repressive measures are the necessary internal complement to an international agenda primarily determined not in Seoul, but in Washington. 

OLD AUTOCRACY, NEW COLD WAR

As president, Yoon has overseen several dramatic changes in South Korean foreign policy that benefit US interests and require the repression of internal dissent to achieve: scuttling relations with North Korea, joining US attempts to technologically isolate China, and reconciling with Japan to clear the way for the Camp David summit. 

Since coming into office, Yoon has overseen a drastic escalation in the frequency and intensity of joint military exercises between South Korea and the US. These military exercises began in the 1970s as annual affairs—now, there are more than 20 planned for 2023 alone. These war drills routinely rehearse invasions of North Korea within miles of the DMZ, the de facto border that has divided Korea since the 1953 armistice. 

The KCTU and other labor groups have provided some of the most stalwart opposition to these war games. Last year, in response to the Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises, the KCTU joined hands with the more moderate Federation of Korean Trade Unions to deliver a joint statement denouncing war maneuvers—a statement that was, significantly, also signed by their union umbrella counterpart in North Korea. 

Predictably, Yoon and Biden’s acts of aggression have prompted parallel North Korean shows of force, which then provide the pretext for Washington, Seoul, and, increasingly, Tokyo to escalate in turn. The Biden administration deployed two US nuclear submarines to Korea for the first time in 40 years this summer, and the US and South Korea warned in a joint statement that “Any nuclear attack by North Korea against the United States or its allies is unacceptable and will result in the end of that regime.”

Labor repression within South Korea also plays a significant role in facilitating Washington’s aims to technologically and economically isolate China, a crucial pillar of National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s “New Washington Consensus.” Here, the intersection of technological and military power are key. US domination of tech patents is one of the pillars of its premiere position in the global economy—a position it can only hold so long as Chinese attempts to develop domestic tech production capacity are foiled.

Maintaining US dominance of the tech market also has more obvious military implications for Washington, which depends on semiconductors produced in South Korea and Taiwan to operate its weapons of mass destruction. Gregory C. Allen, an analyst with the hawkish Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, describes Washington’s tech offensive against China as “actively strangling large segments of the Chinese technology industry—strangling with an intent to kill.”

Attempts to “strangle” Chinese tech have escalated sharply under the Trump and Biden administrations. Two of the clearest and highest-profile examples of this have been US attempts to sanction Huawei, going as far as to coordinate the arrest of the company’s CFO during a visit to Canada, as well as the push to ban TikTok, which culminated in a bizarre and ridiculous Senate hearing earlier this year.

But the war on Chinese tech goes beyond targeting individual Chinese conglomerates. Under Biden, a strategy has slowly taken shape to attempt to bring as much high tech production back to the US as possible while simultaneously taking measures to exclude China from existing international supply chains that rely heavily on production in Taiwan and South Korea. Two of Biden’s biggest legislative wins, the Inflation Reduction Act and CHIPS and Science Act, contain provisions that effectively force South Korean companies to abandon their investments in China in favor of building electric vehicle and semiconductor factories in the US. South Korean EV battery makers have already committed $13 billion to build new plants and expand existing ones in seven US states.

This has all come at a steep cost to South Korea. South Korean technology exports to the Chinese market plummeted in the wake of the CHIPS and Inflation Reduction Acts. From 2022 until June 2023, South Korea suffered the most severe trade deficit in its history, hemorrhaging some $47.5 billion in 2022 alone. By far, the leading cause of this deficit was the sudden reversal in trade with China. 

Squeezed between rising inflation and spiraling economic prospects, South Korea’s workers are bearing the brunt of this economic realignment. At the same time, the Yoon government is scrambling to find some way to reverse its poor economic performance without making concessions to workers. Hence, Yoon’s war on trade unions—the only vehicles available for the working class to organize independently and fight back. As President Yoon himself put it, the crackdown on unions is necessary “so that corporate value can rise, capital markets can develop, and many jobs can be created.” South Korean labor is one of the only organized obstacles within the US-led bloc to Washington’s economic offensive against China. Crushing the unions means clearing the way for the unhindered reengineering of South Korea’s economy in Washington’s vision.

Amid this political and economic chaos, Yoon was able to broker a new understanding with Tokyo that put an end to years of diplomatic and economic clashes. In a move many critics described as unconstitutional, the Yoon administration unilaterally modified the 2018 Supreme Court decision ordering restitution from Japanese companies for Korean survivors of wartime forced labor. Instead, the survivors will now be compensated from a fund paid into by South Korean corporations, letting their Japanese counterparts off the hook. Despite being opposed by some 60% of South Koreans, this arrangement allowed for a thaw in Seoul and Tokyo’s relations, which, in turn, set the stage for the summit at Camp David this August. 

Analysts have also warned of the possibility that the trilateral alliance could be used as a mechanism to draw South Korean forces into US wars abroad—including in the Taiwan Strait. 

The specter of North Korean nuclearization was presented as the primary justification for the Camp David summit and the resulting trilateral security cooperation alliance. But the outcomes of Camp David were not exclusively military in nature. Japan and South Korea also pledged to share data on critical supply chains with the US. 

Domestically, Yoon’s participation in the Camp David Summit was widely lambasted as a betrayal of South Korea’s interests. The summit has not only heightened tensions on the Korean peninsula; it has also done significant damage to South Korean relations with Russia and China, although China’s Xi Jinping seems determined to maintain cordial relations. Analysts have also warned of the possibility that the trilateral alliance could be used as a mechanism to draw South Korean forces into US wars abroad—including in the Taiwan Strait. 

The Camp David Summit has only brought more darkness to the political climate in South Korea. Days before he left for the US, Yoon gave a national address for Liberation Day, which marks the anniversary of the end of Japanese colonial rule in Korea. Rather than offer reflections on the human toll of the colonial period or the legacy of the Korean independence movement, Yoon fixated on a different target: “The forces of communist totalitarianism have always disguised themselves as democracy activists, human rights advocates, or progressive activists while engaging in despicable and unethical tactics and false propaganda,” he said. “We must never succumb to the forces of communist totalitarianism.” 

In South Korea, anticommunism and state repression have gone hand-in-hand since the “Republic of Korea” was first established in a widely opposed, US-sponsored election process in 1948. Before the Korean War officially began in 1950, a mass uprising on the island of Jeju against Korea’s division ended in the slaughter of between 30,000 and 60,000 people. In the early days of the Korean War itself, the South Korean government massacred between 100,000 and 200,000 political dissidents that had previously been forced to register in the so-called National Guidance League.

Throughout the long night of South Korea’s military dictatorships, which lasted from the end of WWII to the 1990s, strikes were broken, activists tortured and disappeared, and families of the massacred and vanished were silenced and surveilled in the name of suppressing the communist threat. When the city of Gwangju took up arms in 1980 to demand democracy and appealed to the US to intervene, President Jimmy Carter greenlit the deployment of South Korean paratroopers from the DMZ to butcher as many as 2,000 of the city’s residents. In the aftermath, the Chun Doo Hwan regime blamed the events in Gwangju on North Korean infiltrators and communists. 

For now, the Yoon administration has limited the scale and brutality of its crackdown to incarcerations and prosecutorial witch hunts. But the echoes of Korea’s recent history leave many wondering if, or when, the bloodletting will return. For its part, the Biden administration has followed in the footsteps of every previous administration by refusing to acknowledge the political repression unfolding under Yoon’s South Korea. Corporate media, in turn, has largely ignored the outcry against the Camp David summit by South Koreans themselves.

DIVIDING KOREA, DIVIDING THE PACIFIC

The joint statement delivered at Camp David cast the new US-Japan-South Korean axis in terms of a partnership based on a mutual desire for global peace and prosperity. But the immediate consequences of the summit strongly indicate that things are, in fact, moving in the opposite direction.

Rather than deescalating military tensions and breaking down barriers to international cooperation, the Camp David Summit signals an escalation of military threats coinciding with the tightening of a US-led hegemonic bloc in the Pacific. Every action has a reaction, and the reaction here is coming in the form of a consolidated counter-bloc between Pyongyang, Moscow, and Beijing.

The reestablishment of cooperative relations between North Korea, China, and Russia has been a long time coming. Relations between the three countries turned cold after the destruction of the Soviet Union. For decades, Russia and China acquiesced to UN Security Council sanctions against North Korea—something which they no longer are willing to abide.

In recent years, Beijing and Moscow have increasingly turned to each other, and to Pyongyang, as fellow targets of US sanctions, military encirclement, and propaganda. For all its bombastic proclamations about protecting peace and freedom around the world, Washington has created the conditions for a new unity of interests to emerge among those states it names as its enemies. 

Pyongyang, Beijing, and Moscow were all united in their alarm and rejection of the Camp David Summit—and not without reason. All three countries were explicitly named in the Camp David Principles and Joint Statement as problems to be managed by the self-appointed triumvirate. China and Russia also share borders with Korea, which will be the primary site of military escalation by Washington, Tokyo, and Seoul. Beijing and Pyongyang swiftly denounced the new bloc. Moscow even suggested the start of trilateral naval exercises between the three countries as a counter to US-led military maneuvers.  

On Sept. 12, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un boarded an armored train for the Russian Far East in his first foreign visit as head of state since 2019. In a meeting with Vladimir Putin, Kim expressed his government’s full support for Russia in its conflict against NATO, and received pledges to assist with developing space technologies from Moscow. 

For the time being, the two Korean states have aligned with opposing global interests. The possibility of reunification and reconciliation, which seemed so tantalizingly close just a few years before, now appears to be far out of reach. Yet even as the currents of world politics pull Korea apart once again, opportunities for a different future remain. 

South Korea, which ascended economically for decades on Washington’s coattails, now finds itself on the side of a declining power. Already, Seoul is being forced to choose between its objective interests in closer ties with its neighbors and Washington’s contravening political preferences. The result appears to be a declining trend in South Korea’s fortunes—something key stakeholders in the country may not tolerate forever. 

North Korea, isolated and encircled for so long, now has a wide and reliable rearguard of support in Moscow and Beijing. As the center of economic gravity pivots towards China, opportunities for North Korea’s advancement will only proliferate. The unintended result in the not-too-distant future could well be two Koreas that can stand on truly equal footing and finally become one, ending the division of Korea and the centrality of that division in manufacturing regional conflict.

But perhaps such predictions are too optimistic for the present moment. After all, Korea must survive intact for such a future to be possible. The Pacific today looks a lot like Europe on the eve of the First World War—a hotbed of military powers sharply divided into opposing blocs driven by irreconcilable interests, ready to be pulled into war at a moment’s notice. That war was so cataclysmic that for a generation it could only be remembered as The Great War. The war to come will be even more vicious, and so far, it’s being served to us with a smile.