Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Africa on Saturday on a four-nation visit seeking deeper military and economic ties while his rival in a bitter trade war, the Trump administration, shows little interest in the world’s second most populous continent.
China is using all its resources to try to replace America as the leading power in the world, a top CIA expert on Asia said Friday, AP reported.
"Beijing doesn’t want to go to war, he said, but the current communist government, under President Xi Jinping, is subtly working on multiple fronts to undermine the U.S. in ways that are different than the more well-publicized activities being employed by Russia", he added.
“I would argue … that what they’re waging against us is fundamentally a cold war — a cold war not like we saw during THE Cold War (between the U.S. and the Soviet Union) but a cold war by definition,” Michael Collins, deputy assistant director of the CIA’s East Asia mission center, said at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado.
This is Xi's first trip abroad since he was appointed to a second term in March.
Xi arrived in Senegal on Saturday for a two-day visit to sign bilateral deals, the first leg of an Africa tour that will also take him to Rwanda and South Africa, the latter for a summit of BRICS countries: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, Reuters reported.
“Every time I come to Africa, I have seen the dynamism of the continent and the aspirations of its people for development,” Xi said. “I am very confident in the future of Sino-African relations.”
