Why China's Ability to Make a $6 Toaster is a Big Problem for the Global South
Release Date: 11/12/2025
Africa and the New World Order: U.S. Pulls Back and China Moves Forward
The China in Africa Podcast
The collapse of the post-war international system now underway will have a disproportionate impact on African countries that rely heavily on multilateral bodies like the UN. Beyond a pull-back of aid and humanitarian assistance, African countries must also contend with an increasingly hostile United States. Dozens of African countries have been targeted by the Trump administration for visa restrictions, trade sanctions, and regularly denigrated by the president himself. At the same time, U.S. diplomats across the continent were ordered by the State Department in January to remind African...
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China's Place in the New Post-American International Order
The China in Africa Podcast
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week will likely be remembered as one of the most significant orations of the early 21st century. Carney channeled the fear and frustration of many global leaders when he defiantly declared that the U.S.-led international order is over. The "rupture" that Carney referenced in his address has profound consequences for China as it moves to reshape a part of this new international order to better align with its interests. Zongyuan Zoe Liu, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a senior...
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What Did Wang Yi Accomplish on His Low-Key Africa Tour?
The China in Africa Podcast
While global attention was fixed on the fallout from U.S. intervention in Venezuela and rising tensions between Washington and Tehran, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi quietly toured three African countries in a notably low-profile visit. Eric, Cobus, and Géraud unpack why this understated trip mattered despite attracting little media attention, and examine its timing alongside a controversial BRICS naval exercise held off the coast of South Africa. 📌 Topics covered in this episode: Why Africa remains China’s first diplomatic stop of the year Wang Yi’s low-key tour: Ethiopia,...
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Why Wang Yi Chose Somalia, Ethiopia, Tanzania & Lesotho for His 2026 Africa Tour
The China in Africa Podcast
China's Wang Yi kicked off a four-nation, week-long Africa tour this week, marking a signature tradition for Beijing: making the continent the foreign minister's first overseas trip of the new year. Wang visited Ethiopia and will also travel to Somalia, Tanzania, and Lesotho in southern Africa. Ovigwe Eguegu, a Nigeria-based policy analyst for Development Reimagined, joins Eric & Cobus to discuss why these four countries made the itinerary, and what Beijing may be signaling geopolitically and economically. 📌 Topics covered include: Why Africa is China’s first diplomatic stop in 2026...
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2025 China-Africa Year in Review
The China in Africa Podcast
In this special year-end edition of The China in Africa Podcast, Eric, Cobus, and Géraud look back on the top stories of 2025 and look ahead to the key trend to watch in 2026. 📌 Topics covered include: Simandou goes online (Guinea) and the iron ore geopolitics shift Zambia’s Kafue River spill and the China narrative battle China’s manufacturing push, overcapacity, and export pressures Soybeans and South America’s growing leverage in U.S.–China trade China–India détente and what it changes (and doesn’t) G20 turbulence around South Africa and global governance fractures...
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China's Outsized Role in West Africa's Illegal Resource Trade
The China in Africa Podcast
Every year, illegal mining, fishing, and logging drain billions of dollars from West Africa's economies as the problem persists largely unchecked, with Chinese actors playing an outsized role. Fueled by chronic corruption among local regulators across the region and seemingly insatiable demand for these resources in China, curtailing these illegal activities often feels impossible. But there's still hope. Earlier this year, a group of 21 scholars and analysts, mostly from West Africa, came together to develop new solutions and policy recommendations to reform the mining, timber, and...
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China’s Role in Africa’s Industrialization: Obstacle, Partner, or Both?
The China in Africa Podcast
Africa’s industrialization push is colliding with the defining economic question of this era: how can any country or region climb the manufacturing value chain so long as China dominates industrial production of pretty much, well, everything? But even if overcoming the China question is possible, African leaders then face a second, more daunting obstacle: infrastructure. The lack of reliable power, water, roads, and other infrastructure necessary to support industrialization is severe in many parts of the continent. A new book by Professor Carlos Oya, a preeminent China-Africa scholar...
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Why the U.S.-DRC Mining Deal is Bad News For China
The China in Africa Podcast
The U.S. and the DR Congo signed a landmark deal on critical minerals during President Félix Tshisekedi's visit to the White House this week. The pact provides the U.S. with extraordinary access to the Congolese mining sector and is widely expected to inhibit Chinese mining companies in the DRC from expanding their operations. CGSP Africa Editor Géraud Neema joins Eric & Cobus to break down the details of the deal and explain why what happened in the DRC could set a dangerous precedent for Chinese mining operations in other African countries. JOIN THE DISCUSSION:...
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China at COP30 and the New Politics of Climate Change
The China in Africa Podcast
With the U.S. absent from two major international summits this month, the G20 in South Africa and the COP30 in Brazil, we got an early look at what the post-American order is starting to look like. In both instances, China moved to fill the void left by the U.S., taking on a much more prominent role. Anika Patel, China analyst at the non-profit climate news site Carbon Brief, reported extensively from COP30 and noted a key difference in Beijing's messaging at the different summits in Johannesburg and Belém. In South Africa, Chinese Premier Li Qiang sought to position Beijing as an emergent...
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How China Uses Parliamentary Buildings to Build Influence in Africa
The China in Africa Podcast
China has funded, designed, and built more than 200 government buildings across Africa, including the headquarters of the African Union and Ecowas, foreign ministry annexes in Ghana and Kenya, and at least 15 national parliaments. Eric and Cobus speak with Innocent Batsani-Ncube, an associate professor of African politics at Queen Mary University of London and author of the new book China and African Parliaments. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in Lesotho, Malawi, and Zimbabwe, Batsani-Ncube explains how China’s parliamentary construction boom works, why African governments welcome...
info_outlineChina is breaking the rules of development. Typically, as countries progress up the value chain, they transition from agriculture to light industry, then to heavy industry, and ultimately to high-technology and services. And as they move up the value chain, this creates opportunities for less-developed countries to advance.
But China's not doing that. Chinese manufacturers are holding on to their immense productive capacity, enabling them to produce both low-tech sneakers and high-tech semiconductors at a scale and cost that are unrivaled.
Now, as developing countries around the world seek to move up the value chain, they will have to compete head-on against the dreaded "China Price."
James Kynge, who covered China for nearly 30 years at the Financial Times, delved into this challenge in a fascinating audiobook that came out earlier this year, "Global Tech Wars: China's Race to Dominate." James joins Eric from London to explain how China's ability to produce a $6 toaster exemplifies the country's enormous manufacturing advantage that will be very difficult, if not impossible, for other countries to match.
CHAPTERS:
• Introduction – The $6 toaster and the global value chain crisis
• The Flying Geese Model – How automation broke development’s old path
• China’s Dual Reality – A continent-sized economy of billionaires and low-wage labor
• Industrial Clusters – The unbeatable advantage of Shenzhen and the Pearl River Delta
• The Global South’s Dilemma – Competing against the “China price”
• Automation and Inequality – Why manufacturing isn’t moving offshore
• The $1 Trillion Surplus – Trade backlash and global tensions
• Searching for Solutions – Industrial policy and self-strengthening in the Global South
• Winners and Losers – Cheap exports, consumer gains, and producer pain
• Political Risk – Xi Jinping’s lesson from Western deindustrialization
• The Humanoid Robot Moment – From $6 toasters to $6,000 robots
• China’s Auto Revolution – BYD and the new wave of affordable EVs
• The Double-Edged Future – Opportunity and disruption in China’s rise
SHOW NOTES:
- Financial Times: Global Tech Wars: China's Race to Dominate by James Kynge
- Financial Times: China’s plan to reshape world trade on its own terms by James Kynge and Keith Fray
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