![An African student learns embroidery at Xinyu University in Jiangxi Province, 5 Sept 2018 [Xinhua/Song Zhenping]](https://dongshengnews.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/africa-weekly-51.jpeg)
An African student learns embroidery at Xinyu University in Jiangxi Province, 5 Sept 2018 [Xinhua/Song Zhenping]
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Economy
Most African mega construction projects (60%, 2019) go to Chinese companies, offering low-cost, high-quality alternative
Chinese get ⅓ of their overseas income in Africa, with majority funding from the World Bank (35%, 2000-20) and the Africa Development Bank (27.9%, 2013-18), from which the Chinese receive four times more funding than French companies
Geopolitics
Biden’s Africa foreign policy maintains Trump’s line and continues fueling rivalry with China, say experts
No evidence exists for AFRICOM commander’s (General Townsend) accusations of China seeking naval bases in West Africa and US Secretary Blinken’s comments on Chinese workers in Africa contradicts widely-cited data
China expands “soft power” through educational initiatives, attractive to Africa’s 15 million unemployed youth (13.5% of aged 15-24)
60,000+ Africans study in China (second to France), with 12,000 Chinese scholarships offered annually; 61 government-funded Confucius Institutes on the continent provide secondary school and university-level Chinese language programs
World Literature journal started a wave of translating African literature in China, reaching unprecedented scale by late 1950s