Editor’s note for Thursday, June 24, 2021

My thoughts today:

Huawei and China are on the move again in Africa, but the rest of the world is not taking note. From the China-Africa Project’s Eric Olander:

U.S. and French media were surprisingly quiet about yesterday’s inauguration of a new national data center in [the West African country of Senegal] that was built with Chinese financing and equipped by Huawei…This is the first time that a country is fully replicating the Chinese data governance model that requires all servers to be located within a country’s borders, providing the state with full access to the information.

The online outrage that is typically triggered in the U.S. by China, Huawei, and anything related to Beijing’s steadily expanding influence in the Global South was noticeably quiet. In fact, not a single U.S. news outlet even carried the story, not even republishing the lone piece of international coverage from Reuters.

MERICS, the think tank, is hosting its European China Talent Program, with a special focus this year “on the many excellent young female, non-binary and young transwomen talents in the European China research community.” If the pandemic situation allows, MERICS will bring selected participants to Berlin for a three-day workshop from November 9 to November 12, 2021. Apply here.

Our word of the day is solar panel (太阳能板 tàiyángnéng bǎn).

—Jeremy Goldkorn, Editor-in-Chief