Editor’s note for Tuesday, January 4, 2022

My thoughts today:

Africa — a continent of 54 countries largely ignored by the average denizen of Washington, D.C. — is this year again the destination for the first overseas trip of China’s jet-setting Foreign Minister Wáng Yì 王毅.

​​Wang is visiting Eritrea, Kenya, and the Comoros Islands. He’ll then head back east and stop in the Maldives and Sri Lanka. “So far, so Indo-Pacific,” comments Cobus van Staden of the China-Africa Project. “In other words, the visit seems concentrated on the Indian Ocean, a region that’s key to Chinese economic, connectivity, and strategic agendas.”

Van Staden concludes that “if there’s one message to take from Wang’s African tour, it’s that the Africa-China relationship is becoming a long-term structural reality, with both sides largely aligned along the same time-lines and agendas.”

In other words, African countries are not going to suddenly turn away from Beijing because of fears about debt traps, Huawei, or something else, despite the hopes of some policy makers and pundits in Europe and the U.S.

Our word of the day is algorithmic recommendation (算法推荐 suànfǎ tuījiàn).

—Jeremy Goldkorn, Editor-in-Chief