Ethiopia: If Chinese Generosity Seems Too Good to Be True

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Deputy Minister Xu Lyuping of the International Department of the Communist Party of China (CPC) arrived in Addis Abeba, just last month, to hold talks with Demeke Mekonnen, deputy prime minister of Ethiopia. The aim was to strengthen party-to-party ties between the CPC and the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), for which Demeke serves as deputy chairperson.

The visit does not come out of mere diplomacy but a deep interest and relationship between the two countries that has manifested since the early 2000s. It is a sort of cosy relationship which prompted The Economist, that icon of the global liberal voice, to describe the EPRDF as "a good student of the CPC". It, in fact, brings billions of dollars annually in bilateral trade and an annual third of all the debt disbursed to Ethiopia from official creditors.

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