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Erik is joined by Winslow Robertson and Owakhela Kankhwende to discuss their chapter of the book From Trump to Biden and Beyond: Reimagining U.S.-China Relations, entitled "U.S. Strategy Vis-À-Vis China's Presence in the African Continent: Description and Prescription". Winslow Robertson is a PhD student at IESE Business School at the University of Navarra, where he focuses on Chinese provincial SOEs and the Belt and Road. He is also the founder of Cowries and Rice, a Sino-Africa management consultancy.Owakhela Kankhwende is a recent graduate with a MAS in business analytics from Fordham University's Gabelli School of Business. He has been a research analyst at Pivotal Advisors, and is currently a data analyst at Insider.Recommendations:Owakhela:The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon (1961)UnLearn: 101 Simple Truths for a Better Life by Humble the Poet (2019)Winslow:From Politics to Business: How a state-led fund is investing in Africa? The case of the China-Africa Development Fund by Hangwei Li (2020)The Long Game: China's Grand Strategy to Displace American Order by Rush Doshi (2021)The Dragon Prince series on Netflix (2018-19)Erik:I Want You Back film (2022)Promises album by Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders, and the London Symphony Orchestra (2021)
Dirty words, politically incorrect phrases, the legal distinction between suspect and criminal, customs boundary versus national boundary, and better ways to refer to disabled people and minorities: All are discussed in the recent Xinhua style guide update, translated and explained on SupChina here. Jeremy and Kaiser discussed the style guide and took audience questions at a live podcast at the Definitive China Happy Hour in Washington, D.C., on August 10, 2017. The Happy Hour brings together China professionals and enthusiasts from over 30 D.C.-area China organizations, including Chinese nationals, students, young professionals, and employers. Jeremy and Kaiser wish to thank: Winslow Robertson and his team at Cowries and Rice for organizing the event and hosting them American Mandarin Society Young China Watchers China Society
If you are listening to this podcast, there is a good chance that you have heard of Prof. Deborah Brautigam and her research - "The Dragon's Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa" published in 2010 by the Oxford University Press is, for a lot of young scholars, the gateway by which they became interested in Africa-China affairs. However, not nearly as many people are aware of Prof. Brautigam's research center, the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies' China-Africa Research Initiative (SAIS CARI) and we want to remedy that, so hosts Winslow Robertson and Lina Benabdallah (Yiting Wang is sadly absent) invited Janet Eom on the pod. Ms. Eom is the Research Manager at SAIS CARI, and previously she researched the impact on society, environment, and labor relations of Chinese activity in Africa at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy in Beijing. She discusses the SAIS CARI post-doctoral research fellow position and other opportunities for researchers as well as the vision for the Initiative on this episode.
What is the role of the African entrepreneur on the African continent in the Sino-Africa relationship? To answer that question first-hand, hosts Winslow Robertson and Lina Benabdallah have invited Norbert Haguma on the pod. Haguma is: CEO of the AfrOrient Group, a one stop solution for any Asia-Africa project which was established in Hong Kong in 2009 and moved to Kigali in 2015; as well as Vice President of the Rwanda Diaspora Global Network. Haguma spent 10 years in China as a student, translator, consultant, IT engineer, and manager, but recently moved back to the African continent to leverage his considerable Sino-Africa expertise for the AfrOrient Group, leading trade and cultural delegations in Africa.
Over the past few months, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in China has put out two phenomenal Sino-Africa reports: the 2015 Report on the Sustainable Development of Chinese Enterprises Overseas, co-authored by the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation under the Ministry of Commerce and the Research Center of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration under the Commission of the State Council, which was released on November 9; and If Africa builds nests, will the birds come?: Comparative Study on Special Economic Zones in Africa and China, which was written in conjunction with the International Poverty Reduction Center in China and released on December 17. To talk about those reports, and for what UNDP China has planned for 2016, hosts Winslow Robertson, Lina Benabdallah, and Yiting Wang have invited on the pod Hannah Ryder, the Head of Policy and Partnerships for the UNDP in China, to the pod. She leads a group of national and international experts in UNDP to support China to cooperate practically and effectively with other countries and develop its positions on various key international issues, including the post-2015 development agenda, China’s climate change policy, and China’s development cooperation.
Note: This episode was recorded live over lunch, and has considerable ambient noise which we were unable to remove. We are continuing to discuss the Sixth Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) for the rest of the month. FOCAC will be held in three weeks, December 4-5 in Johannesburg, South Africa. For historical context, FOCAC was initiated in 2000 in Beijing in order to sketch out a three-year cooperation plan between China and the countries of Africa. Since then, the triennial meetings have alternated between China and an African country. This week, hosts Winslow Robertson and Lina Benabdallah examine China-Africa security issues with Amb. David Shinn, who was U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia and Burkina Faso. He is currently an Adjunct Professor of International Affairs at The George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, and co authored China and Africa: A Century of Engagement with Prof. Joshua Eisenman, which was published in 2012 by the University of Pennsylvania Press. In addition, he recently published a non-China-Africa book: Hizmet in Africa: The Activities and Significance of the Gulen Movement.
We are continuing to discuss the Sixth Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) for the rest of the month. FOCAC will be held in three weeks, December 4-5 in Johannesburg, South Africa. For historical context, FOCAC was initiated in 2000 in Beijing in order to sketch out a three-year cooperation plan between China and the countries of Africa. Since then, the triennial meetings have alternated between China and an African country. This week, hosts Winslow Robertson and Lina Benabdallah hope to discuss how how FOCAC will engage with sustainable development and have three guests from the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Kenya, WWF China, and WWF South Africa respectively to explore the linkages between FOCAC and sustainable development: Jackson Kiplagat is the Interim Policy & Research Lead - Africa for WWF Kenya, Nan Li is Policy Program Manager for China's Green Shift Initiative at WWF China; and Louise Scholtz is Manager: Special Projects: Policy Futures Unit of WWF South Africa.
South Africa is hosting the sixth Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) this December. FOCAC was initiated in the year 2000 and in Beijing in order to sketch out a three-year cooperation plan between China and the countries of Africa. Since then, the triennial meetings have alternated between China and an African country - and this time, will mark the first instance that FOCAC is held at a summit (instead of ministerial) level in an African country. To discuss FOCAC today as well as its media permutations, hosts Winslow Robertson (and Lina Benabdallah in spirit) invited Dr. Bob Wekesa on the show. Dr. Wekesa received his PhD in international communications at Communication University of China and is currently a Research Associate at University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. He is a leading expert on all things relating to China-Africa media, and he actually attending the previous FOCAC in 2012, held in Beijing.
Note: This episode was recorded last year and is missing some content. It has been uploaded as the podcast is relaunching. Clean cookstoves are cooking instruments designed to save fuel, improve health, empower women, and protect the environment. They are rarely mentioned in the same breath as China-Africa relations, but in this episode, host Winslow Robertson has two clean cookstove experts connect the two topics. Jichong Wu, China Program Manager at the United Nations Foundation and Yiting Wang, Program Development Manager at WWF-China, both share their histories with clean cookstoves as well as explain how those stoves fit into the China-Africa relationship.
We continue our discussion on China-Zambia relations following the death of President Michael Sata, and host Winslow Robertson wanted to look at what Sata meant to Zambian voters. He asked Mr. Kennedy Gondwe, a freelance journalist based in Lusaka who is an expert on Zambian politics and returning guest Solange Guo Chatelard, an associate at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/Saale, Germany. If you wanted to know about domestic Zambian politics, this is the episode for you!
The Africa-China relationship is pretty smooth when you have the Export-Import Bank of China or the China Development Bank throwing billions of dollars in your direction. However, not everyone involved in the relationship is so lucky. In this episode, host Winslow Robertson speaks to an individual Chinese entrepreneur, Liang Zhang, who is a travel consultant, bringing small Chinese tour groups to Morocco to experience the country and its culture. We discuss how he got started, why he chose Morocco, and why everyone should visit the country. If you want to learn more about a different side of the China-Africa relationship, please listen!
There are a variety of media outlets interested in the Africa-China relationship, and in this episode host Winslow Robertson wanted to discuss how these outlets look at the relationship. James Schneider was the Editor-in-Chief of Think Africa Press and is currently the Editorial Director at New African Magazine. He read Theology at the University of Oxford and has a particular interest in the study of political economy, capital flows, and equitable development. Sam Piranty is a producer with the BBC and a recent recipient of a grant from the Wits China-Africa Reporting Project, which allowed him to learn and write about African communities in Guangzhou.
The Dalai Lama was recently supposed to visit the 14th World Peace Summit, to be held in South Africa, yet his visa to the country was, for all practical purposes, denied. Dr. Ross Anthony looked at the issue on the Center for Chinese Studies' Commentary: "China, South Africa and the Dalai Lama: costs and benefits" and host Winslow Robertson invited him on the pod to discuss the Dalai Lama's relationship with South Africa in-depth. If you want to learn more about the Dalai Lama Debacle, which The Daily Maverick dubbed the incident, please listen to this episode!
China has a little-known program equivalent to the U.S. Peace Corps: the unofficially titled Chinese Youth Volunteers in Africa. Wendy Wang, a Business Development and Communications Officer with China House, explained this program to host Winslow Robertson. If you want to know about this program, how it is administered, how the volunteers are recruited, how it is funded, and more, please listen to this episode!
The latest Chinese white paper on foreign aid was released on July 10. Looking at Chinese foreign assistance from 2010 to 2012, the paper reveals that China has given a cumulative total of $14.4 billion, half of which went to Africa. To get some more context on the white paper itself as well as the rhetoric behind the white paper, host Winslow Robertson asked Ms. Marina Rudyak and Mr. Christian Straube to come on the pod. Ms. Rudyak holds an M.A. in Modern and Classical Chinese Studies and Public Law from the University of Heidelberg. After graduating in 2009 with a thesis on the People’s Republic of China’s energy security policy in Central Asia she worked in the Beijing office of the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ). In April 2014, she re-joined the Institute of Chinese studies as an assistant to pursue her PhD on Chinese foreign aid and China’s role in international development. Christian Straube is a PhD candidate at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Germany. Mr. Straube runs the website http://www.christianstrau.be/ which looks at China's relations with copperbelt African countries. He also translates Chinese documents into English. They are lending their expertise to look carefully at the text of the white paper itself and its significance beyond the numbers.
If you are listening to this podcast, you are no doubt well-acquainted with the research of Prof. Deborah Brautigam, having read "The Dragon's Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa" or her wonderful blog "China in Africa: The Real Story." However, did you know that Prof. Brautigam has started a new, exciting Sino-Africa research initiative? On today's episode, host Winslow Robertson asks Prof. Brautigam about the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) China Africa Research Initiative (CARI), which recently held its inaugural public conference: "China’s Agricultural Investment in Africa: ‘Land Grabs’ or ‘Friendship Farms’?" If you want to know what one of the top scholars in the Sino-Africa field is up to, or where the field is headed, you owe it to yourself to listen to this episode!
Continuing from the previous discussion about China's involvement in African green energy, hosts Winslow Robertson and Dr. Nkemjika Kalu ask PhD students Alexander Demissie and Moritz Weigel of ChinaAfricaBlog to delve further into their research. They talk about what has been most surprising, what they hope people will take away from the discussion, and more. This is part two of the two-part episode!
You specialized in China-African relations, so where is that dynamic, high-powered job that you were expecting? Isn't everyone interested in Sino-Africa relations and willing to pay for that expertise? Not quite. Hosts Dr. Nkemjika Kalu and Winslow Robertson asked the most successful China-Africanist they know of (read: not an academic), Dr. Lucy Corkin, Class of Programme at Rand Merchant Bank, to come on the show and give some career advice. You may know Dr. Corkin from her many publications, most notably Uncovering African Agency: Angola's Management of China's Credit Lines. If you are an underemployed Sino-Africanist, you owe it to yourself to listen to this episode!
Continuing the celebration of International Women's Day, hosts Winslow Robertson and Dr. Nkemjika Kalu explore what it means to be an Asian women in an African country. This week, we have one guest share her experience as a Chinese development worker for a French non-governmental organization: Ms. Lin Yiran, program manager of social water management currently based in the Democratic Republic of the Congo at Solidarités International. Please listen! P.S. The recording quality was not quite as strong as we would have liked, we are sorry to say.
In a bizarre celebration of International Women's Day, hosts Winslow Robertson and Dr. Nkemjika Kalu explore what it means to be an Asian women in an African country. This week, we had three guests share their experiences as Asian women scholars who do on-the-ground research in Africa: Prof. Yoon Jung Park, convener/coordinator of the (world-famous) Chinese in Africa/Africans in China (CA/AC) Research Network, who is currently an adjunct professor at Georgetown University with affiliations as Senior Research Associate of the Sociology Department at Rhodes University; Solange Guo Chatelard, a PhD candidate at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris and an associate at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/Saale, Germany, whose work studying Chinese communities in Zambia got her a job a production assistant in the film "When China Met Africa"; and Vivian Lu, a PhD student at Stanford University's Department of Anthropology looking at economic networks linking African merchants to production and trade sites of everyday goods in Asia and Africa. Lucky us!
In a bizarre celebration of International Women's Day, hosts Winslow Robertson and Dr. Nkemjika Kalu explore what it means to be an Asian women in an African country. This week, we had three guests to share their experiences in the NGO and entrepreneurial world: Jules Shen, an employee of Dalberg in Senegal; Evanna Hu of g.Maarifa in Nairobi; and Eugenia Lee advises nonprofits and startups on how to use ethnographic methods for better engagement of communities. If you are interested in topics of race, gender, and perception, this month's series should make you VERY happy!
China's stadium diplomacy is a topic that we do not really touch on this podcast but that all changed after hosts Winslow Robertson and Dr. Nkemjika Kalu read Mr. Hikabwa Decius Chipande's blog post "China’s Stadium Diplomacy: A Zambian Perspective" which was on Football is Coming Home. The hosts inveted Chipande on the pod to discuss his piece, and he graciously agreed. He is studying the social and cultural history of football in Zambia in the 20th century and he is a recipient of the FIFA Havelange Research Scholarship for his doctoral dissertation on the social and political history of football in Zambia, 1950-1993. What an expert!
After last week's episode, hosts Winslow Robertson and Dr. Nkemjika Kalu brought on another person Winslow met at the African Studies Association Annual Meeting last year: Mr. Derek Sheridan, An anthropology PhD student at Brown University, Derek is studying Chinese migration in east Africa. He is interested in broader questions of transnationalism, migration, identity, and more! He also speaks Mandarin after putting in a few years in Taiwan. Derek came on the pod to discuss anthropology, epistemology, theory, and if there is such a thing as "China-Africa Studies." Prepare for some deep thoughts!
The Cowries and Rice team of Winslow Robertson and Dr. Nkemjika Kalu were painfully aware that they were discussing the DRC while having no Congolese voices. They were put in touch with Gaius Vagheni Kowene, a Congolese freelance journalist, filmmaker, and blogger. He volunteers in media and communication department at the cultural center Yolé!Africa, in Goma, DR Congo. He is also Goma correspondent of Radio Netherlands Worldwide and works with many local and international news agencies. He shared some of his perspectives on the subject in this (very difficult to produce) podcast. PS Hongxiang Huang was the cohost and he asked some great questions but due to a glitch his contribution could not be uploaded :[
Continuing in their mad attempt to talk about one country for a whole month, hosts Winslow Robertson and Dr. Nkemjika Kalu continue their discussion about the Democratic Republic of the Congo, this time focusing on the famous Sicomines deal between two large Chinese companies and the Congolese government. They have recruited Ms. Johanna Jansson, a PhD candidate at Roskilde University and the most knowledgable researcher about Sicomines, to talk on the show and share her considerable knowledge. Listen as she effortlessly parries Winslow's feeble attempts to get her into a debate! What a scholar! What a pro!
Join your hosts Winslow Robertson and Dr. Nkemjika Kalu as they bite off more than they could chew and try to talk intelligently about the Democratic Republic of the Congo for an entire month, starting with discussing the idea of the Chinese as foreigner in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This big topic required two guests, and they were lucky to get them: Prof. Laura Seay, Assistant Professor of Government at Colby College and all-around DRC maven; and Jacob Kushner, who just wrote a fantastic book about recent Chinese interaction with the DRC and its peoples. PS Unsurprisingly, we were hit with some pretty big technical difficulties so we apologize in advance!
Join your hosts Winslow Robertson and Dr. Nkemjika Kalu as they talk about how Chinese people are grappling with China's growing role in African affairs. Their guest this week is Mr. Hongxiang Huang, a freelance journalist who just started a Wits China Africa Reporting Grant and who knows a ton about Chinese public diplomacy. PS Still working on the tech issues, please bear with us!
Join your hosts Winslow Robertson and Dr. Nkemjika Kalu as they talk about what it is like being an African woman in China. Their guest this week is Ms. Marianne Daka, a Zambian business journalist who recently finished up her M.A. in Business Journalism at Tsinghua University. PS Rated PG-13 for language!
Join your hosts Winslow Robertson and Dr. Nkemjika Kalu as they look at what the tragic September 21 Westgate attack in Nairobi meant for Chinese-Kenyan relations. Helping them is Mr. Bob Wekesa, a Kenyan PhD candidate (who just defended his proposal) at Communication University of China and visiting researcher at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. An expert on domestic China-Africa media, we asked him to give his thoughts on how the attack was reported in China versus Kenya and what the affect was, if any, on the broader relationship. PS The podcast gods did not allow a solid internet connection, so please excuse the poor quality of the recording!
Join your hosts Winslow Robertson and Dr. Nkemjika Kalu as they try and determine some of the major indicators of high-quality China-Africa research. They asked Dr. Yoon Jung Park, the convener/coordinator of the (world-famous) Chinese in Africa/Africans in China (CA/AC) Research Network, to be a guest on the podcast. Dr. Park is currently a freelance researcher. She has affiliations as Senior Research Associate of the Sociology Department at Rhodes University and just finished a Visiting Professorship in the African Studies Department of Howard University. If you ever wanted to figure out how to read an Africa-China article and/or news story like a pro, please listen to this episode! PS Please excuse the typing sounds!
Join your hosts Winslow Robertson and Dr. Nkemjika Kalu as they tackle two topics that Winslow is pretty unfamiliar with: Chinese economics and African employment. They asked Merlin Linehan, who has a background working in international development and finance relating to emerging markets, to be a guest on the podcast. He is the head of China in Africa, which provides clients with high quality business intelligence on Chinese companies operating in Africa. If you you ever asked what China's economic downturn means for African employment, please listen to this episode!
Join your hosts Winslow Robertson and Dr. Nkemjika Kalu as they try and understand the recently released Chinese white paper, China-Africa Economic and Trade Cooperation (2013). If you are listening to this podcast, we are pretty sure you heard about it. Assisting them is Frances Pontemayor, a Chinese development finance specialist with an interest in Africa-China relations who recently received her Masters in Public Policy from Tsinghua University. If you wanted to know what does this document means, why it was written, how accurate the statistics are, and more, please listen to this episode!
Join your hosts Winslow Robertson and Dr. Nkemjika Kalu as they engage in pseudo-intellectual navel-gazing: whether China is a neocolonial power or not. However, not content to simply discuss this issue as is, they are adding an extra layer of texture by using former Ghanaian President/famous Pan-Africanist Kwame Nkrumah’s definition of the term "neo-colonialism" from his 1965 book Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of imperialism.
The triumphant debut of the Cowries and Rice Podcast, the second-best China-Africa podcast you ever heard! Join host Winslow Robertson and others as they discuss all aspects of the China-Africa relationship. Join host Winslow Robertson with (possibly permanent) co-hosts Dr. Nkemjika Kalu, Elle Wang, and Andy Liu as they discuss perceptions of China-Africa relations.