Monday, May 6, 2013

Links I Liked

(1) The relatively liberal Chinese magazine Caixin did an interview with me on April 7, 2013.  (Sorry, it's all in Chinese but if you use Google Chrome, it will translate for you).

(2) The stirring video, complete with "Exodus" soundtrack, of the China Eximbank-financed Kribi Deep Sea Port in Cameroon, Phase I. More on Kribi: here. This one notes the problems with compensation, disruption, pollution, and also that the construction is being overseen by Louis Berger, a US company. Interesting.

(3) Chinese companies are increasingly cognizant of the risks they face overseas. That's why it was so interesting to me to see that in December 2012, huge Chinese construction company CCECC joined with British partners to improve its risk-assessment capacities: "With the support of China Commerce Ministry and China International Contractors Association, CRCC, CREC, Shanghai Construction Group, CCECC, CHEC, Sino-hydro and Shanghai Jiaotong University as Chinese sponsors together with ICE, British Imperial College, Mott McDonald Consulting Company and SIP as British sponsors initiated the mission of Sino-British Overseas Projects Risk Management Task."

(4) China's appetite for illegal timber, in a report by the Environmental Investigation Agency.

(5) Good data from the US Government Geological Service on Chinese and Western mining in Africa. Would be useful for comparison studies. 

(6) An interesting commentary on the blog "Africa is a Country" : the micropolitics and sociology of Chinese shopkeepers and Basotho media in Lesotho. A hat tip to Winslow Robertson.

2 comments:

erwin said...

I like the Caixin interview. Prof Brautigam, do you have any plan to create a Chinese Weibo account? I think many Chinese will be interested to know more of your excellent work.

wei

Anonymous said...

Deborah, there is one more link that you may like to look at ...

http://eusoils.jrc.ec.europa.eu/library/maps/africa_atlas/index.html

Someone apparently has "mapped" the soil of Africa and published an "atlas"

The details are downloadable in the form of three large PDF files

http://eusoils.jrc.ec.europa.eu/library/maps/africa_atlas/Documents/JRC_africa_soil_atlas_part1.pdf
http://eusoils.jrc.ec.europa.eu/library/maps/africa_atlas/Documents/JRC_africa_soil_atlas_part2.pdf
http://eusoils.jrc.ec.europa.eu/library/maps/africa_atlas/Documents/JRC_africa_soil_atlas_part3.pdf