Amid the flurry of news about the new variant, the New York Times ran right below the headline: “China Promises 1 Billion Doses of Covid Vaccine for Africa.” Then it disappeared.
It was on video by Xi Jinping at the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, which brings together the Chinese chancellor and his colleagues in Senegal. The meeting was preceded by the Beijing White Paper, “A Partnership of Equals”; made headlines in PC-linked newspapers such as Global Times and much coverage by the Xinhua agency.
In addition to Xi, among others, the president of Congo, Felix Tshisekedi, spoke. He described the partnership as “exemplary”, with projects that, in two decades, “promoted the economic and social development of the African continent”. In short, “Africans and Chinese are now side by side like old friends.”
So much attention is due to cobalt, a key ore for electric cars, and to US pressure on Tshisekedi to overturn exploration concessions made to China. A pressure that grew on the eve of the event, in a series of reports on the NYT and also on the American Bloomberg.
On the opening day of the forum, another one entered the NYT, with the title loaded “Blood Diamond Hunt” [Diamante de Sangue] of the batteries [de carros] impedes the impulse of green energy”, centering fire on the president of the Congolese state-owned mining company.
A day earlier, Bloomberg dispatched “Money from China flowed through Congo bank to former president’s friends,” with bank details provided by a Washington “anti-corruption” organization, against Tshisekedi’s predecessor.
It’s not just about Congo. The same Bloomberg reported, echoing a Ugandan newspaper Monitor, that the country would have lost or would be about to lose its only international airport to China, due to an unpaid loan.
“That was wrong, and the timing of disinformation is certainly interesting,” wrote Bill Bishop in Washington’s Sinocism newsletter.
‘AFROPHOBIA’
The Washington Post and some other American media highlighted that the president of Malawi, one of the African countries recently banned by the US and Europe, called the decision “afrophobia”.
‘YOUR AÇAÍ’
On the cover of the same WPost, above, with a statement addressed to American consumers themselves, “Children climb trees of 18 meters to harvest their açaí”.
Correspondent Terrence McCoy went to Curralinho, Pará, and listens to child workers like José, 11, stressing that many of them end up dying in falls in the forest.
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