Western investors are waiting around on the sidelines, nervous that the outcome of Côte d'Ivoire's elections, scheduled for 29 November, may bring more instability, but Chinese investors are heading straight for...

China is taking advantage of the global economic crisis to restructure its mining industry. A 4 trillion renminbi (US$586 billion) stimulus plan, announced late last year, encompasses sector-specific reform measures put...

The list of countries with multibillion-dollar, Chinese-backed projects is growing longer, with Mozambique the latest country to receive a golden handshake. In late May, China Exim Bank announced US$2.3 billion in...

While China's leading dam-builder Sinohydro was busy dealing with complaints from Western non-governmental organisations about its refusal to engage with local populations, an East African NGO shut down one of Sinohydro's...

The October 2007 merger between the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the world's largest bank, and Standard Bank, South Africa's largest, is finally showing its potential. After a lacklustre start,...

R.S. Sharma has the top job at India's Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), a state-owned company with a growing global agenda. Market capitalisation makes ONGC India's second-largest company, trailing Reliance...

Its revolutionary days are long over and CPV General Secretary Nong Duc Manh leads an outward-looking Vietnam committed to multilateral diplomacy, which this year has taken steps to mend relationships (and...

Malaysia's Sime Darby has signed a US$800 million deal securing a 63-year concession to 220,000 hectares in Liberia that include the troubled Guthrie Rubber Plantations. Sime Darby, a government-controlled plantation operator,...

Zhang Ming rose to his position through the West Asia and North Africa Department of China's Foreign Affairs Ministry, which he joined in the early 1980s. Postings at the embassies in...

Western mining houses are pulling out of Zambia due to the copper price slump, leaving Chinese and Indian investors to battle over the abandoned assets. As the copper price crashed...