China Loans to Africa Database, Chinese NGO Internationalization Database, Biodiversity wildlife camera trap records, China International Import Expo commodity catalogue, and Brexit timeline
Source: China Africa Research Initiatives
Since 2007, the China-Africa Research Initiatives, a research project under the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced InternationalStudies, has collected, cleaned and analyzed open-source data to create a database on Chinese lending to Africa. The data sources include official government documents, contractor websites, fieldwork, interviews, and media sources. Between 2000 and 2018, the project estimates that Chinese financiers signed 1,077 loan commitments worth US$ 148 billion with African governments and their state owned enterprises. The figures are not equivalent to African government debt, as the project does not track disbursement or repayment.
2. Chinese NGO Internationalization Database
Source: Belt and Road Research Platform
Chinese non-governmental organizations have been undergoing a process of internationalization in the last 10 years, expanding their development and humanitarian activities overseas. This is increasingly a topic of interest, as the Chinese government regards these NGOs as a major instrument for building “People-to-People Bonds”, one of the five top Cooperation Priorities（“五通”）of the Belt and Road Initiative.
This dataset geolocates Chinese NGOs’ international humanitarian and development assistance projects or donations implemented between 2005 and early 2020. It captures donations/projects from more than 100 Chinese NGOs across more than 100 countries globally.
The database has been compiled by Ying Wang, PhD student at Leiden University. The Belt and Road Research Platform is a joint collaboration between the LeidenAsiaCentre, the Clingendael Institute and the Leiden University Institute for Area Studies.
3. Biodiversity wildlife camera trap records
Source: Wildlife Insights
Wildlife Insights is founded by a number of international animal protection and environment organizations as well as technology companies to provide big data of wild animals. The project combines field and sensor technology and analytics to enable people everywhere to share wildlife data and manage wildlife populations. Anyone can upload their images to the Wildlife Insights platform so that species can be automatically identified using artificial intelligence. This will save thousands of hours, freeing up more time to analyze and apply insights to conservation.
The database is showing 5,762,520 camera trap records taken in the whole world between 1990 and 2020.
4. China International Import Expo commodity catalogue
Source: China International Import Expo
The third China International Import Expo (CIIE) will take place on Nov. 4 in Shanghai. It’s a trade fair proposed by Chinese president Xi Jinping and held in November annually since 2018 in Shanghai. It will feature exhibitions of multiple countries and businesses and the Hongqiao International Economic and Trade Forum. The magazine, The Diplomat, says the expo has the purpose of replacing US products with products from other countries, and to ultimately upgrade Chinese products with technology imported from other countries.
The CIIE’s official website shows detailed exhibitors’ list and commodity catalogue.
Source: House of Commons Library
As Britain and the EU has been talking to reach a trade deal, Britain’s House of Commons Library rebased a report on Oct 9, detailing events leading to the UK’s exit from the European Union.
