A Chinese Perspective on South Africa as an Emerging Power: Global, Regional and Bilateral Implications

4/2011

By NIU Haibin

The final CCS Discussion Paper for 2011 examines some of the dynamics of South Africa’s emergence onto the global and regional stage.The active international profile of South Africa has attacted China’s increasing interests to cooperate with it at both regional and global levels as well as bilateral level. Globally, both countries share responsibilities to maintain international peace and security, deal with climate change, promote Africa’s development, and reform major international institutions. Regionally, both are major players which have big influence on Africa’s peace and development. The bilateral relationship between China and South Africa will have more and more strategic influence given its increasingly regional and global implications.

Download CCS Discussion Paper 4/2011 [here].

Weekly China Briefing – 25 May 2012

1. PetroSA teams up with China’s Sinopec on Project Mthombo
2. Agreement to grow Chinese cotton in East Sudan
3. Spike in agricultural trade with Africa
4. Chinese cinema firm to buy AMC in US$ 2.6 billion deal
5. China and Croatia to enhance economic ties
[Read the full Weekly China Briefing here -->]
China Monitor

Sustainability as a topic: Preparing for FOCAC V

Issue 71 – May 2012

This month, the AEAA | The China Monitor looks at the issue of sustainability in the run up to the earlier than expected occasion of the fifth Ministerial meeting of FOCAC in Beijing this year. We often hear that mutual learning is a key element in South-South Cooperation, in which China-Africa relations are one element. We want to explore where learning does or could take place in the relationship, and we are interested in truly mutual learning, i.e. both sides, China and African states, learning from each other. Learning never is a one-way street; we can testify to this, not least as a University institution. One of the elements under discussion in FOCAC is the sustainability of the relationship. More than ten years into the revived China-Africa relations, the perspective opens up from the immediate cooperation towards longer-term issues.

Sustainability is a broad concept and can include many things, from political and social to economic or ecological aspects. In this edition of African East-Asian Affairs, we focus on the ecological aspects of China-Africa relations. The topic of how to engage in ‘greening’ FOCAC will also be the topic of a workshop that the CCS organises in mid-May in Stellenbosch, in cooperation with the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the People’s Republic’s embassy to South Africa. We are expecting high-level speakers from China, Africa and elsewhere and are looking forward to this opportunity to engage with Chinese and other African scholars on a topic area that is crucial for future relations.

The two pieces here draw from work the CCS is undertaking on the issue of sustainability, which falls under one of our three work strands. Also included are a selection of our Commentaries from the last month.

As FOCAC approaches, we will be preparing and publishing more work on the Forum, and important topics the policy-makers and decision-makers attending should probably be au fait with going into such a high-level and diverse international forum.

Download Issue 71 of African East-Asian Affairs | The China Monitor here.