This week Eric & Cobus sit down with Wu Peng, the director-general of the department of African affairs in the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for his perspective on a wide range of issues that are impacting relations between the two regions.

The conversation also features questions from a trio of experts in China-Africa relations including:

• Gyude Moore, a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development (@gyude_moore)
• Zainab Usman, director of the Africa program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (@MissZeeUsman)
• Aggrey Mutambo, senior diplomatic affairs writer for the Daily Nation and The East African newspaper (@agmutambo)

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Since its inception in 2013, Chinese government officials have insisted that the Belt and Road is solely an economic initiative and does not have any military motivations. But the BRI's civil-military distinction is no longer as clear cut as it used to be. President Xi Jinping himself called for a strong BRI security system to protect China's overseas interests, people and property.

One little-known aspect of the BRI is that much of the overseas construction, particularly ports, must conform to standards that conform to the People's Liberation Army's requirements. So, while today there's little evidence that China is leveraging the BRI for security or military purposes, there are concerns that it is positioning to be able to do so in the future should the need arise.

Daniel Russel, vice president for international security and diplomacy at the New York-based Asia Society Policy Institute, examined the security dimensions of the BRI in a recent paper. Daniel joins Eric & Cobus to discuss what he calls the Belt and Road's "civil-military fusion" in maritime, terrestrial and space environments.

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Watch a discussion with the authors of ASPI's report Weaponizing the Belt and Road Initiative: https://youtu.be/PX5PnnnYrFw

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Nigerian consumer protection authorities shut a Chinese supermarket in the capital, Abuja after a video went viral showing the store refusing entry to local residents. The scandal sparked outrage online and was among the top stories of the week on national TV channels.

Eric, Cobus, and Geraud discuss why this particular instance of alleged discrimination triggered such an emotional reaction. Plus, African Union officials met with Chinese diplomats in Addis Ababa this week as part of a regular human rights dialogue and conveyed a very gentle critique of Chinese labor practices in Africa.

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Senior U.S. leaders have once again called on China to use its considerable economic leverage to persuade Iran to change its behavior in the escalating conflict with Israel. Various U.S. have made this same request on several occasions already, going back all the way to the day after Hamas launched its assault on southern Israel on October 7th.

Each time, though, those U.S. appeals have largely been ignored by the Chinese.

That raises two important questions: why does the U.S. keep asking if nothing happens? And, even if Beijing was willing to do act, would the leadership in Tehran even listen?

For some perspective on these two questions, Eric spoke with Iran-China scholar Bill Figueroa, an assistant professor at the University of Groningen, who explained why so many in Washington are misreading just how much influence China actually has in Iran.

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China maintains a massive lead over the U.S. and other G7 countries in both mining and refining capacity in Africa, a key vulnerability that policymakers in the U.S., Europe, and elsewhere say they're determined to rectify.

A new report from the United States Institute of Peace lays out a roadmap for how the U.S. can close that gap with China to achieve mineral security while protecting local labor and environmental standards.

Terence McCulley, a senior visiting expert for West Africa at USIP and a former U.S. ambassador to several African countries, joins Eric, Cobus & Geraud to discuss the new report and whether he thinks it's even possible for the U.S. to rival China's critical mineral supply chain.

SHOW NOTES:

USIP Senior Study Group Final Report: Critical Minerals in Africa: Strengthening Security, Supporting Development, and Reducing Conflict amid Geopolitical Competition: https://tinyurl.com/2yop8jcf

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For much of the past ten years, Chinese technology in Africa focused largely on devices and infrastructure. But today, the conversations also include issues related to governance, online services, and the emergence of artificial intelligence.

Benjamin Dada, founder of the popular African tech news site BenDada.com, joins Eric to discuss the latest Chinese tech trends on the continent and why Chinese firms are still outpacing their competitors.

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Few topics have shaped perceptions about China's engagement in Africa more than the presence of Chinese construction sites across the continent. Chinese contractors have built countless ports, roads, railways, and more, but how that work was done has been very controversial over the years.

There've been widespread complaints about mismanagement, abuse, and discrimination at Chinese-run construction sites across the continent. While there's no doubt some veracity to those claims, many of the allegations are also rooted in vastly different expectations between Chinese managers and local workers.

For some perspective on this complex dynamic, Eric & Cobus spoke with two longtime Africa-China scholars, Mandira Bagwandeen, a political science lecturer at Stellenbosch University in Cape Town, and Elisa Gambino, a Hallsworth Research Fellow in political economy at the University of Manchester, to discuss their latest research on Chinese-African labor relations in the construction sector.

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Former Cambodian strongman Hun Sen was in Beijing last week lobbying the Chinese government to move forward with the $1.7 billion Funan Techo Canal project which his son, President Hun Manet, has made the centerpiece of his new administration.

The new canal would connect Phnom Penh's inland port to Kep province on the Gulf of Thailand, creating a new transport link for Cambodia's garment and agricultural exporters, among others.

However, the project is also raising concerns in neighboring Vietnam. Officials there are worried the new canal will divert water from the fragile lower Mekong Delta ecosystem, which provides a vital lifeline for millions of farmers. The Vietnamese also stand to lose a lot of business and are concerned about the potential security implications of the new canal.

Jack Brook, an independent journalist based in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, recently wrote about the canal for a story published in Nikkei Asia and joins Eric to explain why this project is generating so much controversy.

SHOW NOTES:

• Nikkei Asia: Cambodia to divert Mekong trade via China-built canal, vexing Vietnam by Jack Brook: https://tinyurl.com/25j2fv3t
• The China-Global South Project: Q&A: How Cambodia’s Chinese-backed Funan Techo Canal Risks Destabilizing the Lower Mekong Delta: https://tinyurl.com/2adfcr3w

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