A recent forum between the two nations has called into question what global ramifications the relationship between China and Africa may have. Dr Keith Suter explains why China has invested so heavily in this bond, and why debt may be the crucial factor in these international ties moving forward.
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This is Global Truths with Dr Keith Souter.

Join us each week as we break down 1 issue in global politics so that you can understand what is going on in the world right now and what's likely to happen in the future.

Keith Souda, is 1 of Australia's leading commentators on global affairs and geopolitics.

And thanks for your company today, Keith, as we explored China-Africa relations.

After the recent FOCAC, which is a forum between the 2 countries it might be something that's not high on Australia's radar given recent tensions between our 2 countries.

So to start us off, can you tell me a little bit about the current standing of relations between the African continent and China?

Yes, so this is from material from Deutsche Welle, the German news service, which I find very useful indeed.

So the issue here is that China and Africa are getting closer together.

Now, 1 of the manifestations of this is the development of what's called the Belt and Road Initiative.

This was very much linked with the ambitions of President Xi.

So Belt and Road refers to the railroad and road networks that have been established, and also the sailing routes.

And so we focus a lot, as I have in this program, you know, dealing with the fact you can now get on a train in eastern China on the seaboard and you get out in East London.

And the same thing is now happening in Africa and we've got to bear in mind the importance of the African continent.

So the Deutsche Welle article that we've been looking at, which appeared a few weeks ago, is looking at the way in which the Western world seems to drop the ball when it comes to China and Africa, and instead looking at what is going on now with what's called foreign direct investment, FDI.

So this is where you invest in other countries and China is catching up with the old imperial powers, particularly Britain, France and more recently the United States.

Remember Britain began its investment in Africa 2 to 300 years ago and tragically of course has got the slave trade, so I would say that it's got an even longer economic record with involvement with Africa.

China is coming along building railroads, building bridges, etc.

Now the problem for us in Australia is that ultimately China will want to diversify its suppliers.

So we have a good relationship with China when it comes to metals.

I know we've had problems with red wine and a few other commodities, but when it comes to iron, we are still an important provider of materials to China.

What China is saying is that we don't want to have all of our eggs in the Australia basket.

I warn people, of course, we shouldn't have all of our eggs in the China basket.

The Chinese are saying we shouldn't have all of our eggs in the Australian basket, which is why they're interested in opening up Africa.

And I am very aware that we don't spend enough time in this series dealing with Africa because it's a whole new world that's emerging.

If I could just perhaps give you the big picture on Africa.

Africa has still got a very quickly growing population.

So we talk in terms of what is called a demographic transition.

So we start off with death control and then you have birth control.

So death control means that you're able to keep people alive for longer and you have a situation in which children bury their parents.

So in previous societies, the parents would bury their children, which means they'd have a lot of children in the hope that a few would survive into adulthood.

Stan's example of this in Great Britain was Queen Anne, which is the subject of a recent movie.

So Queen Anne had a number of children, all of whom perished, and gave us a constitutional crisis in Great Britain 200, 300 years ago.

So in many countries we now have death control.

So we've been able to provide adequate health and parents know that their children will last and that the children will bury the parents.

So this is the beginning of what is called the demographic transition.

So Parents know their children will last longer, therefore they don't need to have so many of them.

And so we see in the Western world, China, India, a reduced number of people being born.

Africa has still got problems with implementing death control, let alone birth control.

And what I find interesting is the way the commentators are saying, well, people are very consciously having 12 children and the women wanna have the children.

So the standard reply from people like myself is you give women education, they will have fewer children.

And empower women so they get a chance to develop more time in their careers, they will have fewer children.

Well, it doesn't seem to be working in some African countries.

So we're looking eventually at there being more people living in Nigeria than in the whole of the United States.

So this is the new world that's opening up, and it's a new world that we need to give attention to.

I might just say that I came across another statistic from the Harvard Business School which says the United States economy is 9 times the size of Africa but Africa has twice as many mobile phones.

So what Africa is doing is jumping over a lot of technological developments that we had to go through.

So they do so much more with mobile phones.

We have looked at that in a program a few months ago, but it's worth repeating because it is a remarkable story, particularly M-Pesa, which was a British government finance scheme, part of its overseas aid program, to enable a telecoms provider to create a system in East Africa where you can do all of your banking through your mobile phone.

And so instead of people having to lay down cables and all the rest of it, which is what we did decades ago.

So the Africans have jumped ahead of us and they do so much on, you know, with M-Pesa or some other similar technology that they can buy the local newspaper using their mobile phone.

So it's a cashless society and it means that if they've got relatives who are living overseas who want to repatriate money, they can send the money back to the mobile phone.

So it's a remarkable development and is a reason why Africa is developing.

We only have bad news stories about Africa, usually the war.

But in fact, there are some very interesting good news stories.

As I say, it's including, defying this demographic transition by saying we want to continue having a lot of children.

Now it varies from 1 country to another, you know, there is a warning that we need to give that we shouldn't just talk about Africa as 1 uniform landmass because it does vary considerably from 1 country to another.

But China realizes that the future is in Africa.

And so the Chinese, to give them credit, are developing Africa in as many ways as they can, just for China's benefit.

Now they will say, oh, we were seeking to help humankind and all the rest of it, all this sort of flowery language that we get from Australian politicians on various other issues.

But clearly, this is part of China's new global strategy to make greater use of the vast resources that are in Africa.

I can say vast resources because looking back into the times of geology, there was 1 giant continent called Gondwanaland which then broke up.

So a bit of it went to what is now Australia.

Another was India, which is rapidly, in geological terms, moving north and has crashed into China, which is why you have the Himalayas.

So if you ever climb in the Himalayas, you will run across seashells because they were on the ocean bed as India is grinding its way into China.

And then another bit of that supercontinent went down to the bottom of the planet and became Antarctica and the other part is Africa.

So the resources that we have in India or Australia, we know will also exist in Africa.

And so the Chinese are giving a lot of attention to Africa.

And I guess a question I saw pop up while I was looking into this was, is it a two-way street with this relationship?

I mean we see China building infrastructure in Africa and so you know Africa is benefiting in that way.

What's China kind of getting out of this relationship on the other side?

As well as also electoral support at international organizations like the UN, for example.

And this is actually reflected in the war in Ukraine.

A lot of the African countries simply don't share the West's anger over Ukraine and the Russian invasion.

You know, for them, this is just simply a white person's war that is being fought out.

They don't really particularly want to get involved in these issues.

So China, which is obviously supporting Russia in the Ukraine conflict.

China enjoys broad support within Africa.

And remember, Africa was opened up to foreign exploitation by the British and the French and the Germans.

China's in there and they're getting the raw materials and ultimately will seek to be the alternative for relying on countries like Australia.

You're listening to Global Truths with Dr Keith Souter.

We are talking about the relationship between China and Africa this week and whether it's a mutually beneficial 1.

Keith, do you think Beijing has been buying up the continent?

Yes, I think that China has a very big strategic plan, very different from how we operate in the Western world.

You know, we just lurch from 1 crisis to the next.

There was after World War 2 in the United States, but the Americans gave that up.

Whereas the Chinese still take a very long-term view.

And so what the Chinese are seeking to do is simply to extend their control over Africa.

They would say they have no imperial ambitions.

And they're going to do empire differently in the same way they do capitalism differently, but it's still capitalism and it's still going to be imperialism.

What the Chinese are seeking to do is to win friends and influence people, be able to get access to raw materials.

It still has it as continent for some Chinese in which to work.

We've had examples of Chinese geologists and others being murdered.

Whereas they know in Australia we don't get that level of violence so you are safe to do your mining here.

But in terms of cost it's better off in Africa except of course for the cost of human life.

So Africa is not yet ready to replace Australia but we can see the drift, we can see the way that all this is heading.

A lot of criticism of China centres around claims that it's practising something called debt trap diplomacy.

Yeah, so with the debt trap, China provides you with a loan and then when you fail to repay that loan, because a lot of overseas loans just don't get repaid, in the Western tradition, a government will just write it off.

Now the problem is, I've got to say, the West are not completely with clean hands here.

You also have what's called vulture fund capitalism.

So in other words, you get vulture funds, mainly American, who will buy up debt at a reduced price, because if you're holding debt, you just sell it for, say, 5 cents in the dollar.

And then this new vulture fund, who has the money, will then go to that country and say, we now hold your debt and we want to be repaid.

So we've had examples of countries that receive foreign aid and it goes immediately back overseas to pay off these debts.

So the Chinese have seen this saga emerge over the last 30, 40 years in the Western world.

Now the Chinese approach is a little different.

What the Chinese would do is they will say, we will lend you money to develop your infrastructure.

Then the country fails to repay the money and the Chinese will say, well, we'll have the land.

And if you think back to how Britain developed its empire, including in Africa, they did it through trade.

The British never set out to be an imperial country.

It was only in the late 19th century they suddenly woke up and said, golly, we've got an empire here, particularly under Disraeli, the then Prime Minister.

So what had happened is that you had British traders, generally the second or third sons in a family, because in the British tradition, primogeniture, the son will inherit the estate, the firstborn son inherits the estate.

So the job of the mother is to provide the heirs and spares.

And so the spares have no real future, or would have had no real future in the United Kingdom.

And they were the ones who then opened up places like Singapore, today's Singapore.

And so what we're seeing then in the British Empire is merchants going overseas to buy and sell goods and eventually the British government realized, look, we've got this huge trading empire overseas.

We will nationalize that empire, nationalize those corporations, and we will call it the British Empire.

Now, the Chinese are doing pretty much the same sort of thing.

So they do it through providing loans to developing countries, which unfortunately developing countries sometimes can't repay.

So the Chinese are building up their own overseas empire.

They would deny this, but I think they are developing an overseas empire.

They've realized that the Western countries have dropped the ball when it comes to Africa.

And so they are just exploiting the failure of the Western countries to maintain momentum.

An example of this is the way that we treat overseas students.

What we ought to be doing is encouraging countries in Africa to send their students into this country or Great Britain or the United States and build up for these fraternal links.

So then they go back to their own country, they end up as a Prime Minister, but they have an Oxford degree.

We just see university education not as a way of trying to influence people, but as a way of trying to make money.

Talking on that, in terms of, you know, your thoughts and that of others, that the Western world's dropped the ball, What's the more specific implications, say, for a country like Australia that we're missing out on this opportunity in Africa?

Well, the most interesting thing about Africa, and it goes back to God want a land, a super continent, We are the only developed Western country which does dry land farming.

So we are specialists in getting the deserts to bloom.

And so we could actually be selling a lot more of our farming know-how because food security is the issue around the world.

It's being reflected as we speak, of course, with the tragedy in Ukraine, because we're going to end up with all sorts of political disruptions, because Ukraine will not be able to export its food to certain societies.

Our own politicians are just a bit slow to pick up on that.

I think probably some of the National Party politicians are aware of the food security issue, but a lot of our other ones, you know, they're based in the city.

When they think of food security, they mean going down to the local shop.

They've no idea of the food chain that's involved.

And we really could be working with African countries to transfer some of our knowledge to help them develop.

And my view is a rising tide lifts all boats.

That if you have Africa becoming richer, then they will want to travel overseas as tourists.

And remember, we have a 100% monopoly over Sydney Opera House or Uluru, etc.

So although we're sharing our farming knowledge, they have to come here if they want to be photographed outside the Opera House.

That's where we can actually achieve, I think, some sort of competitive advantage.

But that requires a certain degree of vision amongst Australian politicians and that's lacking.

Yeah, and I guess, Keith, we've touched on how it benefits China and the implications for the West and for Australia, but what does this relationship do for Africa?

Is it doing enough to make sure the relationship's going both ways?

I think it's a bit of an exploitative relationship.

Mind you, the British and the French were equally exploitative and I think the risk you run when you're going to team up with China is that, you know, China's not doing it for the benefit of humankind, they're doing it for the benefit of China.

And so that is the warning that the Chinese need to, well, they don't need to provide the world, the world needs to just be aware of China's ambitions and Africans need to be aware that they've got to keep an eye on what China is about.

And ideally, Western countries themselves rediscover Africa.

As I say, there will be more people living in Africa in 100 years time than in India and China combined.

Well, here's hoping then, I guess, that Australia picks up and pays attention.

Fascinating insights, and again, something I think not a lot of us knew about, so, appreciate your company.


Speaker 0: A Listener Production. This is Global Truths with Dr Keith Souter. Join us each week as we break down 1 issue in global politics so that you can understand what is going on in the world right now and what's likely to happen in the future. Our host, Dr. Keith Souda, is 1 of Australia's leading commentators on global affairs and geopolitics.

My name is Sacha Barber-Gatt. I'm a journalist. And thanks for your company today, Keith, as we explored China-Africa relations. After the recent FOCAC, which is a forum between the 2 countries it might be something that's not high on Australia's radar given recent tensions between our 2 countries. So to start us off, can you tell me a little bit about the current standing of relations between the African continent and China?

Speaker 1: Yes, so this is from material from Deutsche Welle, the German news service, which I find very useful indeed. So the issue here is that China and Africa are getting closer together. Now, 1 of the manifestations of this is the development of what's called the Belt and Road Initiative. This was very much linked with the ambitions of President Xi. So Belt and Road refers to the railroad and road networks that have been established, and also the sailing routes.

And so we focus a lot, as I have in this program, you know, dealing with the fact you can now get on a train in eastern China on the seaboard and you get out in East London.

Speaker 0: It's mind-blowing.

Speaker 1: It is mind-blowing. And the same thing is now happening in Africa and we've got to bear in mind the importance of the African continent. So the Deutsche Welle article that we've been looking at, which appeared a few weeks ago, is looking at the way in which the Western world seems to drop the ball when it comes to China and Africa, and instead looking at what is going on now with what's called foreign direct investment, FDI. So this is where you invest in other countries and China is catching up with the old imperial powers, particularly Britain, France and more recently the United States. Remember Britain began its investment in Africa 2 to 300 years ago and tragically of course has got the slave trade, so I would say that it's got an even longer economic record with involvement with Africa.

China is coming along building railroads, building bridges, etc. Now the problem for us in Australia is that ultimately China will want to diversify its suppliers. So we have a good relationship with China when it comes to metals. I know we've had problems with red wine and a few other commodities, but when it comes to iron, we are still an important provider of materials to China. What China is saying is that we don't want to have all of our eggs in the Australia basket.

I warn people, of course, we shouldn't have all of our eggs in the China basket. The Chinese are saying we shouldn't have all of our eggs in the Australian basket, which is why they're interested in opening up Africa. So that is the context of this. And I am very aware that we don't spend enough time in this series dealing with Africa because it's a whole new world that's emerging. If I could just perhaps give you the big picture on Africa.

Africa has still got a very quickly growing population. So we talk in terms of what is called a demographic transition. So we start off with death control and then you have birth control. So death control means that you're able to keep people alive for longer and you have a situation in which children bury their parents. So in previous societies, the parents would bury their children, which means they'd have a lot of children in the hope that a few would survive into adulthood.

Stan's example of this in Great Britain was Queen Anne, which is the subject of a recent movie. So Queen Anne had a number of children, all of whom perished, and gave us a constitutional crisis in Great Britain 200, 300 years ago. So in many countries we now have death control. So we've been able to provide adequate health and parents know that their children will last and that the children will bury the parents. So this is the beginning of what is called the demographic transition.

So Parents know their children will last longer, therefore they don't need to have so many of them. And so we see in the Western world, China, India, a reduced number of people being born. Africa has still got problems with implementing death control, let alone birth control. And what I find interesting is the way the commentators are saying, well, people are very consciously having 12 children and the women wanna have the children. So the standard reply from people like myself is you give women education, they will have fewer children.

And empower women so they get a chance to develop more time in their careers, they will have fewer children. Well, it doesn't seem to be working in some African countries. So we're looking eventually at there being more people living in Nigeria than in the whole of the United States. Wow. So this is the new world that's opening up, and it's a new world that we need to give attention to.

I might just say that I came across another statistic from the Harvard Business School which says the United States economy is 9 times the size of Africa but Africa has twice as many mobile phones.

Speaker 0: How does that work?

Speaker 1: So what Africa is doing is jumping over a lot of technological developments that we had to go through. So they do so much more with mobile phones. We have looked at that in a program a few months ago, but it's worth repeating because it is a remarkable story, particularly M-Pesa, which was a British government finance scheme, part of its overseas aid program, to enable a telecoms provider to create a system in East Africa where you can do all of your banking through your mobile phone. And so instead of people having to lay down cables and all the rest of it, which is what we did decades ago. And still

Speaker 0: are doing in some instances.

Speaker 1: So the Africans have jumped ahead of us and they do so much on, you know, with M-Pesa or some other similar technology that they can buy the local newspaper using their mobile phone. So it's a cashless society and it means that if they've got relatives who are living overseas who want to repatriate money, they can send the money back to the mobile phone. So it's a remarkable development and is a reason why Africa is developing. We only have bad news stories about Africa, usually the war. There's always a war on somewhere.

But in fact, there are some very interesting good news stories. Africa is developing. As I say, it's including, defying this demographic transition by saying we want to continue having a lot of children. Now it varies from 1 country to another, you know, there is a warning that we need to give that we shouldn't just talk about Africa as 1 uniform landmass because it does vary considerably from 1 country to another. But China realizes that the future is in Africa.

And so the Chinese, to give them credit, are developing Africa in as many ways as they can, just for China's benefit. Now they will say, oh, we were seeking to help humankind and all the rest of it, all this sort of flowery language that we get from Australian politicians on various other issues. But clearly, this is part of China's new global strategy to make greater use of the vast resources that are in Africa. I can say vast resources because looking back into the times of geology, there was 1 giant continent called Gondwanaland which then broke up. So a bit of it went to what is now Australia.

Another was India, which is rapidly, in geological terms, moving north and has crashed into China, which is why you have the Himalayas. So if you ever climb in the Himalayas, you will run across seashells because they were on the ocean bed as India is grinding its way into China. And then another bit of that supercontinent went down to the bottom of the planet and became Antarctica and the other part is Africa. So the resources that we have in India or Australia, we know will also exist in Africa. Right.

And the Chinese know that. And so the Chinese are giving a lot of attention to Africa.

Speaker 0: Yeah. And I guess a question I saw pop up while I was looking into this was, is it a two-way street with this relationship? I mean we see China building infrastructure in Africa and so you know Africa is benefiting in that way. What's China kind of getting out of this relationship on the other side?

Speaker 1: Raw materials. Right. As well as also electoral support at international organizations like the UN, for example. And this is actually reflected in the war in Ukraine. A lot of the African countries simply don't share the West's anger over Ukraine and the Russian invasion.

You know, for them, this is just simply a white person's war that is being fought out. They don't really particularly want to get involved in these issues. So China, which is obviously supporting Russia in the Ukraine conflict. China enjoys broad support within Africa. And remember, Africa was opened up to foreign exploitation by the British and the French and the Germans.

And we've actually dropped the ball. China's in there and they're getting the raw materials and ultimately will seek to be the alternative for relying on countries like Australia.

Speaker 0: You're listening to Global Truths with Dr Keith Souter. We are talking about the relationship between China and Africa this week and whether it's a mutually beneficial 1. Keith, do you think Beijing has been buying up the continent? Is that what's happening?

Speaker 1: Yes, I think that China has a very big strategic plan, very different from how we operate in the Western world. You know, we just lurch from 1 crisis to the next. There's no long-term planning. There was after World War 2 in the United States, but the Americans gave that up. Whereas the Chinese still take a very long-term view.

And so what the Chinese are seeking to do is simply to extend their control over Africa. They're building an empire there. They would deny this. They would say they have no imperial ambitions. And they're going to do empire differently in the same way they do capitalism differently, but it's still capitalism and it's still going to be imperialism.

What the Chinese are seeking to do is to win friends and influence people, be able to get access to raw materials. It still has it as continent for some Chinese in which to work. We've had examples of Chinese geologists and others being murdered. Whereas they know in Australia we don't get that level of violence so you are safe to do your mining here. But in terms of cost it's better off in Africa except of course for the cost of human life.

So Africa is not yet ready to replace Australia but we can see the drift, we can see the way that all this is heading.

Speaker 0: A lot of criticism of China centres around claims that it's practising something called debt trap diplomacy. Could you explain what that is?

Speaker 1: Yeah, so with the debt trap, China provides you with a loan and then when you fail to repay that loan, because a lot of overseas loans just don't get repaid, in the Western tradition, a government will just write it off. Now the problem is, I've got to say, the West are not completely with clean hands here. You also have what's called vulture fund capitalism. So in other words, you get vulture funds, mainly American, who will buy up debt at a reduced price, because if you're holding debt, you just sell it for, say, 5 cents in the dollar. And then this new vulture fund, who has the money, will then go to that country and say, we now hold your debt and we want to be repaid.

So we've had examples of countries that receive foreign aid and it goes immediately back overseas to pay off these debts. So the Chinese have seen this saga emerge over the last 30, 40 years in the Western world. Now the Chinese approach is a little different. What the Chinese would do is they will say, we will lend you money to develop your infrastructure. Then the country fails to repay the money and the Chinese will say, well, we'll have the land.

Speaker 0: Right, so then they have ownership.

Speaker 1: They will have ownership. And if you think back to how Britain developed its empire, including in Africa, they did it through trade. The British never set out to be an imperial country. It was only in the late 19th century they suddenly woke up and said, golly, we've got an empire here, particularly under Disraeli, the then Prime Minister. So what had happened is that you had British traders, generally the second or third sons in a family, because in the British tradition, primogeniture, the son will inherit the estate, the firstborn son inherits the estate.

So the job of the mother is to provide the heirs and spares. And so the spares have no real future, or would have had no real future in the United Kingdom. So they would then often go into trade. And they were the ones who then opened up places like Singapore, today's Singapore. And so what we're seeing then in the British Empire is merchants going overseas to buy and sell goods and eventually the British government realized, look, we've got this huge trading empire overseas.

We will nationalize that empire, nationalize those corporations, and we will call it the British Empire. Now, the Chinese are doing pretty much the same sort of thing. So they do it through providing loans to developing countries, which unfortunately developing countries sometimes can't repay. And so that is your debt trap diplomacy. So the Chinese are building up their own overseas empire.

They would deny this, but I think they are developing an overseas empire. They've realized that the Western countries have dropped the ball when it comes to Africa. And so they are just exploiting the failure of the Western countries to maintain momentum. An example of this is the way that we treat overseas students. What we ought to be doing is encouraging countries in Africa to send their students into this country or Great Britain or the United States and build up for these fraternal links.

So then they go back to their own country, they end up as a Prime Minister, but they have an Oxford degree. And we don't do that. We've dropped the ball. We just see university education not as a way of trying to influence people, but as a way of trying to make money.

Speaker 0: Right. Talking on that, in terms of, you know, your thoughts and that of others, that the Western world's dropped the ball, What's the more specific implications, say, for a country like Australia that we're missing out on this opportunity in Africa? What's that mean for our country?

Speaker 1: Well, the most interesting thing about Africa, and it goes back to God want a land, a super continent, We are the only developed Western country which does dry land farming. So we are specialists in getting the deserts to bloom. And so we could actually be selling a lot more of our farming know-how because food security is the issue around the world. It's being reflected as we speak, of course, with the tragedy in Ukraine, because we're going to end up with all sorts of political disruptions, because Ukraine will not be able to export its food to certain societies. Egypt is the prime example.

So we will end up with unrest in Egypt. So food security is a major issue. Our own politicians are just a bit slow to pick up on that. I think probably some of the National Party politicians are aware of the food security issue, but a lot of our other ones, you know, they're based in the city. When they think of food security, they mean going down to the local shop.

They've no idea of the food chain that's involved.

Speaker 0: You're right.

Speaker 1: And we really could be working with African countries to transfer some of our knowledge to help them develop. And my view is a rising tide lifts all boats. That if you have Africa becoming richer, then they will want to travel overseas as tourists. And remember, we have a 100% monopoly over Sydney Opera House or Uluru, etc. So although we're sharing our farming knowledge, they have to come here if they want to be photographed outside the Opera House.

That's where we can actually achieve, I think, some sort of competitive advantage. But that requires a certain degree of vision amongst Australian politicians and that's lacking.

Speaker 0: Yeah, and I guess, Keith, we've touched on how it benefits China and the implications for the West and for Australia, but what does this relationship do for Africa? Is it doing enough to make sure the relationship's going both ways?

Speaker 1: I think it's a bit of an exploitative relationship. Mind you, the British and the French were equally exploitative and I think the risk you run when you're going to team up with China is that, you know, China's not doing it for the benefit of humankind, they're doing it for the benefit of China. And so that is the warning that the Chinese need to, well, they don't need to provide the world, the world needs to just be aware of China's ambitions and Africans need to be aware that they've got to keep an eye on what China is about. And ideally, Western countries themselves rediscover Africa. As I say, there will be more people living in Africa in 100 years time than in India and China combined.

Speaker 0: Well, here's hoping then, I guess, that Australia picks up and pays attention. Thank you, Keith. Fascinating insights, and again, something I think not a lot of us knew about, so, appreciate your company.

Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Speaker 0: Listener

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The history of China-Africa relations