2024 will be remembered as a seminal year in China-Africa relations with a rebound of Chinese lending to the continent and renewed diplomatic engagement in the run-up to the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation summit that took place in Beijing.

Africa also emerged again as a centerpiece in the U.S.-China duel as leaders from both major powers visited the continent in 2024.

And while stakeholders in the U.S. and Europe struggle to get their businesses to see the opportunities available in Africa, Chinese firms have no such concerns as they expanded their presence this year in the mining, telecom, and automotive sectors.

In this year-end double episode, Eric, Cobus, & Géraud share their top three China-Africa stories of 2024 and provide a forecast for what to expect in the year ahead.

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A few months ago, China looked like it had all its Mideast diplomacy figured out. Israel and the U.S. were taking heavy hits in the court of global public opinion over the devastation caused by the war in Gaza.

Each harrowing image of Palestinian civilians enduring unimaginable suffering steadily undermined U.S. and Israeli claims that their war against Hamas was justified. Beijing eagerly criticized Washington’s hypocrisy in championing universal human rights—except when it came to Israel, the U.S. military, and other selective American interests.

But now that Israel has decapitated Hamas' leadership in Gaza and Hezbollah's in Lebanon, and with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad now exiled to Russia, the geopolitical landscape in the region looks very different.

Tuvia Gering, a longtime China-Israel analyst and a cyber threat intelligence analyst at the Tel Aviv-based cyber security start-up Planet Nine, joins Eric & CGSP Middle East Editor Jony Essa to discuss how China's position in the region is seen from Israel.

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Tuvia Gering on Bluesky: @geringtuvia.bsky.social

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Tensions between China and the Philippines over territorial disputes in the South China Sea flared anew in December after another confrontation at sea. Soon after two vessels collided near the contested Scarborough Shoal, representatives from both sides took to the airwaves to blame the other for the latest incident.

Both Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Philippines counterpart Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. have made it clear they will not concede even a single inch of territory they claim rightfully belongs to their countries.

Don McLain Gill, a Manila-based lecturer at De La Salle University, joins Eric to discuss why the situation going into the new year will remain very tense.

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FOLLOW CGSP IN FRENCH AND ARABIC:
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India's External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar told the lower house of parliament last week that "some improvement" had been made in resolving the ongoing border dispute with China. But he also cautioned that a lot more work has to be done and that it will take years to "reset" relations with Beijing.

The two sides have pulled back their military forces from seven points along their contested boundary in the Himalayas, so they're no longer in close proximity to one another, but those troops are nonetheless still stationed there and haven't yet been redeployed.

Daniel Balazs, a research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, is a specialist in Sino-Indian relations and joins Eric to discuss what's motivating the two countries to negotiate a border settlement.

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X: @ChinaGSProject | @eric_olander | @stadenesque

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YouTube: www.youtube.com/@ChinaGlobalSouth

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U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is not a fan of the Biden administration's climate legislation known as the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), describing it as a "green scam." Trump has promised to repeal it, which will undoubtedly be welcome news in Indonesia.

Indonesia is home to the world's largest nickel reserves, a critical ingredient for manufacturing EV batteries. But the IRA aims to limit China's role in the battery supply chain, presenting a huge headache for Indonesian nickel suppliers given the outsized role that Chinese smelters play in the country's mining sector.

Putra Adhiguna, managing director at the Energy Shift Institute, an independent non-profit energy finance think tank in Jakarta, joins Eric to discuss Indonesia's uncomfortable position squeezed between China and the U.S. in the race to dominate transition mineral supply chains.

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Chinese contractors have been renovating the Ream Naval Base in Cambodia for the past two years, leading to widespread suspicion that the upgraded facility could eventually serve as a future outpost for the PLA Navy in Southeast Asia.

Despite compelling evidence that Chinese naval forces have been stationed at the base for much of the year, both the Chinese and Cambodian governments deny these claims.

Christopher Woody, an independent defense journalist based in Bangkok, argues that while it seems the Chinese military is set to maintain a presence at the base, it may not resemble a traditional military installation.

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X: @ChinaGSProject | @stadenesque | @eric_olanderFacebook: www.facebook.com/ChinaAfricaProject
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U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has already indicated that the Middle East is going to be a central focus of his second term's foreign policy. He's already named Elise Stefanik, a fiercely pro-Israel lawmaker, to be his ambassador at the United Nations and he's been in regular contact since his election last week with both Arab and Israeli leaders.

But Trump is coming back to power at a time when the region is very different than when he left office in 2020. Back then, China was a marginal player in Mideast diplomacy which is no longer the case. China's economic and diplomatic influence in the region has increased significantly over the past four years.

In this special edition, produced in partnership with The ChinaMed Project, Eric hosts six of the world's leading China-Mideast scholars to discuss their forecast for how Donald Trump's re-election will impact U.S.-China relations in the region.

The conversation is divided into two parts:

Panel 1: How the arrival of a new U.S. President fits in the national strategies of regional actors and their relations with China

• Ahmed Aboudouh is the head of the China studies unit at the Emirates Policy Center and an associate fellow at the Chatham House in London.
• Gedaliah Afterman is the head of the Asia-Israel policy program at the Abba Eban Institute for Diplomacy and Foreign Relations and a lecturer at Reichman University and Tel Aviv University.
• Jonathan Fulton is an assistant professor of political science at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi and a nonresident senior fellow for the Atlantic Council's Middle East Programs and the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative.

Panel 2: How a new US President will/might shape US-China relations in the Middle East

• Dawn Murphy is an associate professor of national security strategy at the U.S. National War College.
• Zhang Chuchu is an associate professor of international relations in the School of International Relations and Public Affairs at Fudan University in Shanghai and she is the deputy director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Fudan University.
• Mohammed Al Alsudairi is a lecturer in politics and international relations of the Arabic speaking world at the Australian National University in Canberra.

JOIN THE DISCUSSION:
X: @ChinaGSProject | @eric_olander
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YouTube: www.youtube.com/@ChinaGlobalSouth

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There's been a lot of talk in recent years about the new "small and beautiful" doctrine that now guides China's Belt and Road Initiative. The problem is that a lot of people still do not understand what it actually means in practice.

President Xi Jinping first unveiled the concept at the Third Belt-and-Road Symposium in 2021 when he said that China's overseas development finance would focus more attention on "better connectivity" for telecommunications, energy, and financial services.

China has also had to scale down its financing of large-scale infrastructure projects because of economic challenges at home and debt sustainability issues among borrowing countries.

Lui Kanyi, a Beijing-based project finance lawyer and head of China at a large international law firm, has been closely following the transformation of the BRI for many of his Chinese clients. Kanyi joins Eric & Cobus to discuss the "small and beautiful" trend and what people should know about the future direction of the BRI.

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X: @ChinaGSProject | @eric_olander | @stadenesque
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YouTube: www.youtube.com/@ChinaGlobalSouth

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JOIN US ON PATREON!
Become a CGSP Patreon member and get all sorts of cool stuff, including our Week in Review report, an invitation to join monthly Zoom calls with Eric & Cobus, and even an awesome new CGSP Podcast mug! www.patreon.com/chinaglobalsouth