cross-posted from: https://baraza.africa/post/233717 > > China’s advantage in Africa lies in the policy tools at its disposal and structural incentives that have forced Beijing to prioritize Africa-China relations. In addition to direct government-to-government dealings, Beijing can lean on state-owned policy banks to lend money to Africa governments for projects on condition that they work with Chinese implementing firms. Chinese private firms and privateers, like Tecno Mobile or Huawei, have excelled in African markets by showing up and selling cheaper but reliable enough products. Finally, as a rising revisionist power, China has been hungrier for African support at the United Nations and other multilateral forums; and therefore made Africa a diplomatic priority. You see this not just in trade statistics but also in the manner in which Chinese officialdom treats their African counterparts at a personal level.

> Armed men killed nine Chinese nationals in an attack on a mine run by the Gold Coast Group, 25km (15 miles) from the town of Bambari, its mayor said on Sunday, according to the AFP news agency.

A repository which is behind https://cirosantilli.com/china-dictatorship/, including many links and debunking arguments by CCP shills. Keep in mind that being critical of the government of China is not being against the people of China. I am also critical of most other governments, especially the USA.

This picture (among others) has been circulating around WeChat and other social media today. Thousands of retirees protested in Hankou today, the second such protest since the one performed one week ago, over the government's sudden and arbitrary reduction in health benefits. ~~You can tell this is a protest in China because of the violence as the authoritarian state grinds those who dare speak out against its policies under tank treads and truncheon blows in clouds of tear gas and worse.~~ Oddly missing from this picture, given the image people have of Chinese governance: - Tear gas. - Truncheons. - Tanks. Oddly missing too from this picture for those who are familiar with protests of equivalent size in the USA or the UK or other such places: - Protestor violence. ~~You have to give credit to the survivors of the February 8th carnage. It must take some serious courage to come back a week later to be ground under tank treads and smashed under truncheon blows again.~~

> In early July, a Chinese woman named Dong Yaoqiong streamed a video of herself throwing ink at a portrait of China’s leader, Xi Jinping. In the video, Dong explains that the gesture was intended to “say publicly that I oppose the tyranny of Xi Jinping’s dictatorship and the brain-control oppression imposed by the Chinese Communist Party.” A little over a month later, Dong suffered a different form of brain control. According to **Radio Free Asia,** she has been confined to a psychiatric hospital in her native Hunan. Oh dear, the CIA is at it again I see… Good on the Chinese state to oppress that piece of shit.

The Mystery of Lam Qua consists of a gallery of oil paintings with contextualizing metadata that document a series of patients seen by Reverend Dr. Peter Parker, an American Presbyterian minister and physician whose 1835 hospital in Canton, China attracted a wide range of patients. These patients often had severe or unusual cases of pathology that significantly altered (some would say deformed) their appearance. Parker hired Lam Qua to make portraits of these patients as a substitute for photographs, which had not yet been invented. This gallery represents selections from those portraits and offers a fascinating (if not disturbing) glimpse into the history of medicine in China.