During the latest China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) summit, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced a new development assistance deal for Africa. The $60 billion development package will include a string of zero-interest loans for infrastructure projects. But the latest deals also include more cultural exchange projects as well as scholarships and training programs for Africans.

Many African entrepreneurs today consider China as the new land of opportunities. One of them is Nathalie Fodderie from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) […] Through her journey, we see how African and Chinese traders grapple with geographic and cultural hurdles to make a profit.

BASED IN Hong Kong, the South China Morning Post has a distinguished 112-year history as an independent news source, in English, about China […] Chinese Internet mogul Jack Ma’s company, Alibaba, has just announced plans to buy the paper [...] It may well be that the South China Morning Post is about to be molded into a pseudo-private instrument of the Chinese state’s “soft power,” […]

But soft power loses its gauzy delicacy when human-rights lawyers are jailed and their supporters harassed. The world has one Nobel Peace Prize laureate in jail, and he languishes in a Chinese prison. For all the positive developments in China — and there are so many, from poverty alleviation and upward mobility, not to mention digital innovation and expanding consumer choice — official repression of free thinkers only serves to outline the steely fist of authoritarianism.

A highly-anticipated appearance in Beijing by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s favorite girl band was abruptly cancelled Saturday, hours before the group was set to perform and with no official explanation given. [...] the group — which was accompanied by an army orchestra, the State Merited Chorus – arrived in Beijing on Thursday and was expected to stay until next Tuesday on what the North Korean official news agency KCNA described as a “friendship visit” to China.

India selected Japan to help build its first high-speed rail link in a coup for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and a defeat for China, which also had bid for the signature project. The $15 billion deal clinches three years of negotiations and reflects the deepening relationship between India and Japan stemming from the personal relationship between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Abe. 

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un has despatched his all-female dance troupe on a six-day mission to China in an effort to rebuild relations with their northern neighbor. This is the first time the all-girl band have been allowed out of the secretive state as Pyongyang attempts a diplomatic rapprochement with Beijing.