Xi Jinping at the apex of power?

by Straton Papagianneas

On 25/02 Xinhua published proposed changes to the State Constitution ahead of the upcoming National People’s Congress (NPC) early March. The proposal that attracted the most attention in Western media and among netizens was the one to remove the two-term limit for President and Vice-President of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). This proposal stimulated heated discussions among the China-watching community and China scholars. General Secretary Xi Jinping wanting to stay on longer than 2022 was not a surprise, however, more surprising was the fact he pushed for this so hastily. One would expect this to happen more near the end of his second five-year term.

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Top Features on China in 2017

by Julia Tatrai This Is What A 21st-Century Police State Really Looks Like Buzzfeed didn’t exactly ring a bell as a China specialized news page, but this chilling report by Megha Rajagopalan changed that (to a degree). After interviewing about two dozen ...

The emergence of the AIIB in the context of current multilateral development cooperation

by Thomas Otto

After becoming an important global creditor of foreign direct investment, China now also takes a leading role in multilateral development cooperation by establishing a new multilateral development bank (MDB), the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). This step, as I will argue, is not taken by chance but is a reaction to the existing problems of MDBs’ lending activities in Asia. The establishment of the AIIB begs the question in what way China tries to transform current multilateral investment in Asia.

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China and Africa Resources Part 2: Books

by Julia Tatrai Top Picks are marked with *   Africans in China Bodomo, Adams (ed.) (2016) Africans in China: Guangdong and Beyond, New York: Diasporic Africa Press Lan, Shanshan (2017) Mapping the New African Diaspora in China: Race and the C ...

How the EU should engage with OBOR Centrality

by Aya Adachi While EU is faced with disintegration, China’s role in regional integration has gained momentum. As an overarching projection that could potentially incorporate and coordinate other inter-regional regional as well as sub-regional initiative ...

China and Africa Resources Part 1: Blogs & Features

by Julia Tatrai   As a follow up to our interview with Firoze Manji a while back, we are happy to publish the first part of our China in Africa resources series featuring relevant blogs and features discussing different aspects of China in Africa. ...