China has unveiled its first firm target for limiting greenhouse gas emissions, two weeks before the global summit on climate change in Copenhagen. Beijing said it would aim to reduce its "carbon intensity" by 40-45% by the year 2020, compared with 2005 levels. But it does not mean China's overall levels of carbon dioxide will start falling.Yang Ailun, Greenpeace China's climate campaign manager, told AFP news agency: "This is definitely a very positive step China is taking, but we think China can do more than this." More

China has also invited key developing country partners for talks on climate change ahead of the UN negotiations that commence in Copenhagen on December 7. More

CHINA IN AFRICA

Zimbabwe and China have signed five investment deals worth US$8 billion, whose implementation can turn around the economy, ruined by years of sanctions, analysts said. More

Ehiopia and China signed a grant agreement amounting to about 112.5 million Birr [US$8.93 million">. Ethiopia’s Minister of Finance and Economic Development, Sufian Ahmed said the grant was secured under the agreement reached by the two countries at the 4th China Africa Forum held in Egypt from Nov.8-9, 2009. More

China and African countries should pay more attention to African regional integration in a bid to have the two partners benefit more from their cooperation, according to Zimbabwe’s deputy secretary for foreign affairs Godfrey Magwenzi. More

China Railway Construction Co. Ltd (CRCC), one of top 500 largest corporations in the world, has 209 projects in 35 countries, most of them in Africa where the CRCC and its sub companies employed more than 30,000 people and provided over 100,000 job opportunities in related industries, according to Zhao Guangfa, CRCC’s president and CEO, who was leading a delegation on a 10-day visit in Nigeria. More

Zhou Yongkang, a senior official of the Communist Party of China (CPC), has met leaders of the Seychelles during a stopover after visits to Sudan and South Africa. Seychelles vice president Joseph Belmont said he expected more investment from Chinese companies in the country's tourism sector. More

So far this year, the Beijing government has secretly awarded scholarships to study in China to the offspring of nine top officials, including to the daughter of Namibia’s president, Hifikepunye Pohamba. Two young relatives of Namibia’s former president and national patriarch, Sam Nujoma, also received grants. The disclosure of the scholarships, first revealed by a feisty Namibian newspaper, has unleashed a wave of fury from the nation’s civil society groups and youth organizations. More

INSIDE CHINA

German tire and car parts maker Continental AG is just the latest to join the long line of multinationals to open a R&D facility in China. The multinationals are way ahead of popular wisdom that technology is developed in the West and ripped off in the East. In reality, development has long left the building and has taken up shop in China. More

On Monday, the first issue of Caijing magazine following the departure of outspoken editor Hu Shuli and most of its staff hit the newsstands, featuring Obama on the cover and a letter from the editor by Wang Boming, the magazine’s longtime publisher. He pledged the ‘new Caijing’ would maintain the same values as the old. More

OTHER EMERGING POWERS

Africa's trade with the world's four largest emerging markets, namely Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC countries), has grown from $20.3bn in 2001 to about $162bn in 2008, said South Africa’s Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) in an economic report on Wednesday. More

At a joint South Korea-Africa cooperation forum in Seoul, South Korea pledged to double aid to African nations over the next three years. The government said that by 2012 they would double the $107 million in annual official development aid they gave in 2008. More

Africa has not benefited from its links with rich nations and should ensure economic interactions with others are not one-sided, South Africa's Economic Development Minister Ebrahim Patel told a conference on the continent's relations with China. Africa would continue to pursue relations which the United States and Europe, but the "centre of geo-economic gravity" was shifting to Asia and Latin America, he argued.More

India has pledged to expand and strengthen its relations with Cape Verde and has offered the sub-Saharan African country its continued support through technical cooperation and official development assistance in its quest for speedier development. The former Portuguese colony offered its support for India's candidature for a non-permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council for the term 2011-12, for which elections will be held next October.

India has offered a concessional Line of Credit of $ 5 million to Cape Verde for setting up of a Technological Park and a grant of Rs 10 million in the education sector. India also offered to set up an Information and Communication Technology Centre of Excellence in Cape Verde. More

India is rapidly losing one of its clear economic advantages over China, with the number of Chinese able to speak English on par with its neighbour and rival.
A new study published by the British Council says China may already have more English speakers than India, a remarkable development, given the language legacy of British colonial rule in south Asia.
More

Brazil is seen as an economic success story and its people revere President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva like a star. He is on a mission to turn the country into one of the world's five biggest economies through reforms, giant infrastructure projects and by tapping vast oil reserves. But he faces hurdles. More

LANDGRABS

Only a quarter of Ethiopia's estimated 175 million fertile acres is being farmed. Desperate for foreign currency, the government of former Marxist rebels who once proclaimed "land to the tiller!" has set aside more than 6 million acres for agribusiness. Lured with 40-year leases and tax holidays, investors are going on farm shopping sprees, crisscrossing the country on chartered flights to pick out their swaths of Ethiopian soil. Especially Indian companies, which have committed $4.2 billion so far. More

A recent Saudi-sponsored exhibition and Saudi-East African Forum in Addis Ababa seems to herald a drive by the Saudis to buy and develop Ethiopian farmland with support from the country’s Investors Support Directorate, which is responsible for giving large tracts of land to investors. More

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS
* Stephen Marks is research associate and project coordinator with Fahamu's China in Africa Project.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at Pambazuka News.