December 7, 2024 panel: “Looming large: China's effects on the world. From left to right: Mary Kay Magistad (Moderator), Desire Nimubona, Lais Martins, Filip Noubel and Amish Raj Mulmi. Used with permission.
One of the panels in Global Voices Summit 2024 on December 7, “Looming Large: China’s Effects on the World,” was devoted to discussing the rise of China and its impact on the world, particularly on issues related to the climate crisis and climate justice.
China's economy has grown 40-fold in the past 30 years. Its Belt and Roads Initiative (BRI) project built infrastructure worldwide, significantly changing many countries.
The Moderator of this panel is Mary Kay Magistad, an award-winning journalist with two decades of experience living in and covering China and Southeast Asia for international media outlets. She is also Global Voices’ board chair.
The panelists are:
Desire Nimubona: A Burundian journalist with more than 17 years of experience in international journalism. His coverage interests are business, insurgency, humanitarian, environment, conservation, and climate justice.
Lais Martins: A Brazilian journalist based in Sa Paulo. She reports on politics, human rights, and technology for Brazilian and international news outlets.
Filip Noubel: Global Voices’ managing editor and a researcher of Taiwan and China. He spent 10 years in Beijing training Chinese journalists and has been based in Taiwan for three years. Filip’s work focuses on China’s impact on the world.
Amish Raj Mulmi: The author of “All Roads Lead North,” which is about Nepal’s relationship with China and India.
Perception of China's presence
The conversation began with the panelists sharing the overall public sentiment about China’s presence in the country or region they have covered in their journalistic investigation.
Desire said that people in African countries are worried that their activities may threaten the environment, such as endangering forests and animals, such as pangolins, on the African continent. Hence, their perception of China’s presence is more negative than positive.
Laís Martins. Photo by Global Voices. Used with permission.
In Latin America, people are more divided in their views about China. Laís said that China has enabled the region's transition to clean energy. For consumers, they are eager to buy China's high-tech products. However, industry players, such as those in the electric vehicle (EV) sector, feel that the influx of Chinese products has taken away their share of local markets.
Filip said that in Central Eastern Europe, people's perceptions changed from total naivety to suspicion and disappointment. In the beginning, China made huge promises, such as buying football clubs and building big roads. But a lot of projects have never come to fruition. As for Central Asia, the public did not have much expectation. After Russia invaded Ukraine, China replaced Russia’s presence, and those who speak Chinese have a lot more opportunities in the region.
Amish said that for developing countries like Nepal, China's involvement, such as the new BRI agreement, has provided people an opportunity to discuss critical issues such as concessional loans.
We don’t want an exclusive loan agreement, and if China wants to lend to us, the rates should be the same with, let’s say, the World Bank or Asia Development Bank. Now, smaller states are pushing back on the terms, including interest rates and payback time of engagement with China.
Environment and climate change
The panelists then addressed the environmental tensions in Chinese infrastructure development projects in developing countries.
Amish Raj Mulmi. Photo by Global Voices. Used with permission.
Amish stressed that the Nepalese public needs greater infrastructure development — particularly roads — as Nepal needs connections to its neighboring countries in order to grow its economy. He highlighted that the record-breaking rainfall that took place in September that resulted in widespread flooding indicated the need for climate-resilient design:
The current problem is that the roads are undesigned. They are not planned properly, and the engineering is terrible. The completion rate is bad as the contractors often cut costs. We need climate-resilient infrastructure, and this is not yet on the agenda…We need new construction codes that address these issues.
In the new BRI agreement with Nepal, China has addressed related concerns as it has asked Nepal to do environmental assessments before moving ahead with construction projects, Amish added.
In Africa, the environmental impact of China's investment has ignited public resentment. Desire pointed out that China is responsible for destroying the Miombo Woodlands thanks to the tree-logging activities. Over the past two decades, China has granted USD 5 billion grant to Cameroon. Yet, it opened the door to more than 10,000 Chinese companies, which have exploited the forests and threatened Indigenous people's livelihoods, the panelist said.
Desire also said that people complain about losing their jobs because of overfishing in the fishery sectors. Thus, the relationship between China and African communities has become very tense — last year, several Chinese companies were attacked by armed groups in Congo. Similar incidents also occurred in a gold mine in the Central African Republic.
Global Climate Justice Fellowship
Global Voices started the Global Climate Justice Fellowship project in 2024, which pairs independent Sinophone journalists and journalists from Central Asia, Francophone Africa, and Latin America to assess the role of Chinese development projects regarding their environmental and social impact. This project aims to provide local audiences with reliable and multi-sourced information when assessing the role of China in their country concerning climate justice.
Filip Noubel. Photo by Global Voices. Used with permission.
Filip, managing editor at Global Voices, explained that the feeling of frustration with the black-and-white narrative on China was the major driving force behind the project:
It is either ‘panda hugging,’ which is copying and pasting what the Chinese Embassy says on their Facebook page and taking it at face value, or the ugly opposite, which is demonizing anything Chinese. So, I want to develop a sophisticated narrative on the role and the influence of ‘ChinaS’ in plural form.
However, Filip said it is not easy to conduct independent investigations on climate justice in the Global South as most Chinese experts who studied or had China-related career concerns do not want to risk angering the Beijing government or their sources, thereby risking their careers.
Hence, instead of working with conventional Chinese experts, the project works with journalists in the Global South who don't have a Chinese background and pairs them up with Chinese journalists and researchers who reside outside China. Filip explained that the researcher-duo would then exchange their perceptions of China’s developmental projects and work together to collect information from both local and Chinese sources in their investigation.
Laís described the journalistic investigation as a challenging experience. The Chinese fellows helped her gain insight into the relationship between Chinese companies and the Brazilian market, such as the Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer BYD, which extended its market to Brazil and triggered a rise in consumer EV demand.
Desire found the project eye-opening as it helped him to go beyond his country and talk to different people and organizations in the African continent.
During the discussion, an audience expressed concern about China's influence in academia and asked how the issue could be addressed.
Filip pointed out that China's presence in universities in Central Europe is most visible in the science and technology sector, such as neuroscience and nanotechnology in Czech. These are innovative sectors in which China is lagging. However, the university administrators are unaware of the trend. Hence, in recent years, some European countries have started introducing new legislation or launching public campaigns to inform the public that certain academic cooperations are “interference” as they are not based on fair cooperation. Another example that Filip pointed to was the erasure of the word Tibet from “Tibet” to “Xizang” (in Mandarin) in several European museums because of Chinese donations. Such Chinese influence would erase the history of Tibetan people and reframe it with a Han-centred historical view that European children would eventually adopt.
Desire Nimubona. Photo by Global Voices. Used with permission.
Another audience member expressed concern that governments in developing countries were unwilling or unable to negotiate with the Chinese government on loan and investment agreements and wondered if that would be changed in the future.
Desire said that people in developing countries must first be aware that China is receiving more than it has given from business and investments and pressure the government to negotiate for fair terms. He stressed:
Africa has a history of fighting Western colonization and the next generation may have to fight for their economic independence from China.
