Asia-Africa Relations: Confucius Institutes

Asia Times Online :: China News, China Business News, Taiwan and Hong Kong News and Business.

A features writer for the Economist once insisted that the Mandarin character for Africa means "wrong continent". This is perhaps because there is a perception that the teachers have frequently been wrong-headed about Africa, and have tended to get it wrong whenever they have moved out of their comfort zones in trading and infrastructure development.

Such a view is not entirely right, and China has in recent years taken great pains to show the world that it is a well-rounded emerging power with a complete strategy for engagement in places like Africa.

Its Confucius institutes are an interesting feature in this show of sophistication. The Hanban - the Chinese National Office for teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language - began spreading them from 2004 when it set up the first one in the South Korean capital of Seoul.

Top Chinese officials have made no effort to disguise the propaganda value they perceive in the spread of the institutes, but so far very little in the way of a coherent strategy has emerged as to how they can be integrated into the mainstream of Chinese foreign policy, which nowadays is driven, as everyone knows, by a mercantilist view of global politics and economics. Africa has not been spared this ambiguity.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Assassination in Africa

allAfrica.com: Somalia: Puntland Information Minister Assassinated (Page 1 of 1)

Mr. Warsame Abdi "Sefta Bananka," Puntland's information minister, was killed by unknown gunmen dressed in military fatigues at a restaurant in Galkayo, a trade town that links Puntland to regions in south-central Somalia, where an insurgency has been raging since early 2007.

Police officials said the killers escaped, but Puntland security forces are doing all they can to capture the assassins.

The late Warsame Abdi becomes the first Cabinet minister since Puntland's formation in 1998 to be killed in the line of duty.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Allegation of Civilian Abuse by UN-Backed Troops in Congo-Kinshasa

United Nations-backed Congolese armed forces conducting intensified military operations in eastern and northern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have failed to protect civilians from brutal rebel retaliatory attacks and instead are themselves attacking and raping Congolese civilians, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Thursday.

The attacks on civilians from all sides have resulted in a significant increase in human rights violations over the past six months.

"The Congolese government's military operations have been a disaster for civilians, who are now being attacked from all sides," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of HRW, on a visit to eastern Congo. "Congo and the U.N. need to take urgent measures to protect people and keep this human rights catastrophe from getting even worse."

Since January 2009, nine HRW fact-finding missions to frontline areas found a dramatic increase in attacks on civilians and other human rights abuses in Lubero, Rutshuru, Masisi and Walikale territories in North Kivu, Kalehe and Shabunda territories in South Kivu, and Haute Uele district in northern Congo.

link: allAfrica.com: Congo-Kinshasa: UN-Backed Troops Abusing Civilians, HRW Says (Page 1 of 1)