The Ministry of Commerce released its first guidelines for overseas investment by Chinese companies on Friday. The document, encompassing some twenty countries approved by the central government to receive Chinese investment, are part of the ministry’s strategy to assist Chinese companies abroad and come on the heels of last month’s relaxing of government requirements to invest abroad.

The ANC’s T-shirt suppliers are all South African, the ruling party protested yesterday after reports that its election campaign T-shirts, totalling millions of rands, are from China. “We needed two million T-shirts, that was the order. We used the services of a group of people who buy and print them. The suppliers bought the T-shirts, not the ANC,” said ANC spokesperson Jessie Duarte. “All our suppliers are South African. I don’t know anything about the Chinese.”

On April 6, “Win Far 161,” which is a deep sea fishing vessel home-ported in Kaohsiung, was hijacked by Somali pirates at gunpoint near an island in the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean. Maj. Gen. Lee Yueh-chang, who is deputy assistant chief of staff for operations at the Ministry of National Defense, responded by saying that the ROC’s navy was “carefully considering” whether to escort and protect the island’s fishing vessels in the Indian Ocean.

The Democratic Republic of Congo was born into crisis and, for its nearly 50 years of existence, it has more or less stayed there. From a civil war that nearly destroyed the newborn nation in the wake of independence, it descended into decades of parasitic rule at the hands of a strongman, Mobutu Sese Seko. As he raided the coffers of state mining companies, the desperate and starving masses occasionally looted what was left of the country’s rotting infrastructure. In 1994 inflation hit nearly 10,000%: small by today’s standard in Zimbabwe, but enough to help end Mr Mobutu’s rule three years later.

The title of this article is borrowed from what President Isaias Afwerki said in an interview with China Business Weekly Magazine in 2007, talking about Chinese and Eritrean relations and with particular reference to what Chinese investors see when they look at Eritrea. Indeed, Sino-Eritrean relationship goes far beyond what appears on the surface. Eritrea and China's friendly relationship dates back to 1993. China was in fact the first country to establish diplomatic relations with sovereign Eritrea in May 1993, and it has been contributing a great deal to various aspects of the Eritrean endeavors for economic rehabilitation and national reconstruction.

At the G20 meetings in London, finance ministers agreed on an unprecedented package of financial support for emerging countries: US$250 billion in new direct G20 financing commitments to the IMF, with a commitment to come up with another US$250 billion; around US$100 billion in new Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) for emerging market (EM) countries as a part of a US$250 billion global allocation (at the risk of oversimplifying, the IMF is essentially “printing money” and handing it out in proportion to member quotas.

The biggest winner at the G-20 summit in London on April 2 was the International Monetary Fund, which received pledges for US$ 1.1 trillion, including US$ 500 billion from member countries and US$ 250 billion through the IMF’s special drawing rights (SDR) currency. But rounding up the cash and overcoming political obstacles within IMF-member countries will be difficult. Despite the summit’s grand promises, some funding details are fuzzy.

At least 20 million rural migrants have lost their jobs and returned to their home villages over the last year. Many have subsequently returned to the cities to look for new employment, but for many of those who remain behind, readjusting to life in the countryside can be a real challenge.

The establishment of not-for-profit, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in China is becoming increasingly popular as the necessity of providing private alternatives to social, economic, political, and cultural issues becomes apparent. Indeed, if China is to continue to flourish and expand, NGOs will play a critical role in making sure that it is done in a socially healthy and constructive manner that will be beneficial to all.

This was supposed to be a spring of soup kitchens and breadlines in China’s manufacturing heartlands, the potential precursor to a long, hot summer of industrial unrest threatening the government’s vision of a “harmonious society”. Times are hard in China’s export sector, the hardest in memory. Exports from southern Guangdong province, which account for a third of the country’s total, fell 21 per cent in January and February as western retailers ran down their inventories.

When corporates venture into other countries, the success of their businesses ventures, to a great extent, depends on the quality of services offered by banks and financial intermediaries in those countries. Hence, having a banking partner whose services are reliable is of utmost importance. HSBC, which has been in the forefront of helping Indian businesses find their feet in foreign lands, is of the view that Indian businesses, including SMEs, can look at Mauritius as an investment destination as well as a gateway to other African nations.

South Africa, the self-acclaimed rainbow nation, is in the news again and for all the wrong reasons. The authorities of that country recently barred the Dalai Lama, the spiritual head of Tibet from participating in a peace conference slated for South Africa. No cogent reason was given for their action which has drawn an outcry from the rest of the world.

Seardel’s decision to close Frame Textiles, with the loss of up to 1400 jobs, illustrates both the deep flaws in SA’s industrial strategy and the futility of trying to insulate the country from the global economic crisis by means of protectionist policies. Frame, the biggest textile operation in southern Africa, has been struggling for years to compete with cheap imports, soaring input costs and — for the past six months in particular — the collapse of export markets globally.

The tiny desert town of Abeche, in eastern Chad, offers a curious sight: Sandwiched between the mud huts that most people call home and the compounds belonging to international aid workers is a humble Chinese restaurant catering to Chad's growing population of Chinese engineers and managers. Significantly, no equivalent American-style restaurant is to be found.

China isn't in Africa merely to snap up raw materials, exploit African labor, or build geopolitical influence. Rather, its goals blend a combination of all the above with a need to beta-test future global brands, open new markets, enhance its soft power through international organizations such as the International Standards Organization - where African votes carry more than a third of the weight - nurture a new diaspora and build a resilient microeconomic bridge by exporting entrepreneurs

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's seizure of a ministry controlled by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) is casting more doubt on his commitment to the fledgling power-sharing deal. The birth of the unity government on 11 February 2009 was designed to dilute the powers accumulated during Mugabe's nearly 29-year rule, which has reduced the once prosperous nation to penury.

“Training in ICT skills gets the community to start thinking differently and to consider the sources of income available to them more clearly. From a commercial standpoint, they become aware of the fact that their products have to meet certain standards of quality in order to be sold at higher prices,” says Aura Elena Plaza from Villa Paz, an Afro-Colombian community in the Cali region. Dafne Plou reports for APCNews on her first-hand experience of the impact access to information has had on the lives of people in remote villages in Mali, Africa and Cali, Colombia.

Five developing countries have received US$18 million in funding to plan how to implement a proposed scheme to reward countries that protect forests and reduce deforestation. The Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Tanzania and Vietnam will share the funds, which will enable them to prepare national action plans to take part in the proposed Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD) mechanism — likely to be agreed upon at climate talks in Copenhagen in December this year.

Farmers' and peasants' organisations, landless workers, rural women and youth are mobilising on April 17th for the International Day of Peasant's Struggle. This year, more than 100 actions including demonstrations, street theater, video screenings, direct action, conferences, art shows, local food markets, publications and exchanges... are being organised *by the international farmers' movement Via Campesina, its friends and allies.

Multinationals accused of human rights abuses can no longer feel safe now that the oil giant is facing allegations of complicity in the execution of Nigerian activist Ken Saro-Wiwa. Could this be the beginning of the end of the age of impunity? Fourteen years after the judicial murder of the Nigerian novelist, environmentalist and human rights activist, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Shell is about to go on trial in New York, accused of complicity in his execution.