Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi ended a four-nation Africa tour on Thursday that included stops in Namibia, the Republic of Congo, Chad, and Nigeria. Other than a $255 million railway loan deal for Nigeria, there were very few other major announcements made during the week-long trip.

But that's not a bad thing, according to Ovigwe Eguegu, a policy analyst at Development Reimagined. Ovigwe joins Eric, Cobus, & Géraud to explain why the consistency of the Chinese Foreign Minister's annual visit to Africa, a tradition that now dates back 35 years, is what's important.

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China is deeply unpopular in the U.S., UK, Japan, and most other wealthy countries, and given the politics in those regions, there's no indication that's going to change anytime soon. It's a very different story, though, in large parts of developing Asia, Africa, the Americas and the Middle East where public opinion surveys reveal generally favorable views of the Chinese.

A new "poll of polls" by the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI) on global public opinion about China reveals a lot more nuance about how people in the Global South feel about their countries' ties with China than what is framed in the mainstream media narratives.

Andrew Chubb, a senior fellow at ASPI, led the project and joins Eric & Cobus to discuss what the data tells us about the diversity of views on China across the Global South.

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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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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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Chinese President Xi Jinping surprised a lot of people last month when he made an unannounced stopover in Morocco on his way home from the G20 summit in Brazil. The North African country doesn't often come to mind when considering China's key geopolitical partners in the MENA region... which is a mistake.

Morocco is now a major manufacturing hub for Chinese automakers whose vehicles and parts flow directly into the European market thanks, in part, to a free trade agreement. The Kingdom is also one of the few countries in the world to have a free trade pact with both the EU and the U.S., making it especially attractive for Chinese firms who may be looking to shift production out of China to avoid the anticipated tariffs that will be imposed by the incoming Trump administration.

François Conradie, lead political economist at Oxford Economics Africa, joins Eric and Géraud from Casablanca to discuss why the combination of Morocco's strategic location and abundant resources is luring more Chinese engagement in the country.

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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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Donald Trump will be back in the Oval Office in just over a month after he is inaugurated for his second term as U.S. president on January 20th. While there's concern in some African capitals that Trump may scale back U.S. engagement, there's also a sense of optimism in some countries that he will shake up the system in ways that will give African leaders more access to U.S. policymakers.

What is certain, though, is the incoming president's national security team is very hawkish on China, and that will no doubt find its way back to the center of U.S. foreign policy towards the continent.

Cameron Hudson, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and one of Washington's most well-known Africa watchers, joins Géraud and Cobus to share his forecast for what the U.S. strategy towards Africa will look like in the next Trump administration.

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