North Korea’s Processed Goods Push Meets China’s Cold Market Reality
August 31st, 2025
Via The Diplomat, a report on how Chinese traders want North Korean companies to continue to export raw materials, which conflicts with the North Korean regime’s policy of exporting processed goods: As North Korea seeks to develop its economy by exporting more processed goods, Chinese buyers still prefer raw materials, putting North Korean traders in a pickle. “Trading companies that work with China in […]
Read more »How Africa’s e-Commerce Giant is Fighting off Shein and Temu
August 25th, 2025
Via Rest of World, a report on how Jumia is capitalizing on the U.S.-China trade war as Chinese vendors are exploring new avenues to route their products into markets such as Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire: Competition has been steep for Jumiai, Africa’s largest e-commerce platform, especially from major Chinese companies like Temu and Sheini. Jumia is […]
Read more »Africa Is Buying a Record Number of Chinese Solar Panels
August 22nd, 2025
Via Wired, a look at how Africa’s energy-starved countries on the continent have reluctantly turned to coal and gas for decades. Cheap Chinese solar panels are now finally changing the calculus. From Algeria on the Mediterranean coast to landlocked Zambia in the south, countries across Africa have been importing significantly more solar panels from China this year than […]
Read more »China’s growing ties with Serbia point to new ‘Silk Curtain’ in Europe
August 20th, 2025
Via Nikkei Asia, a look at Beijing’s expanded Balkan presence, with Washington focused on Ukraine: Southeast of the “Iron Curtain” famously described by Winston Churchill in 1946, a new group of China-friendly nations is forming a north-south line that runs through the heart of Eurasia. While this “Silk Curtain” — which runs from Hungary in […]
Read more »The Secret Rise of China’s AI Desert Empire
August 1st, 2025
Via Bloomberg, a report on Beijing’s efforts to build a small city of data centers in remotest Xinjiang: There are approximately three dozen data centers spread across China’s western deserts that may one day have at their heart a cutting-edge processor made by Nvidia—the kind they’re not supposed to have. The US government has been trying […]
Read more »Chinese Car Giants Rush Into Brazil With Dreams of Dominating a Continent
July 27th, 2025
Courtesy of the New York Times, an article on how – as the likes of Ford and Mercedes retreat – Great Wall Motor and BYD are building factories and bringing affordable EVs and hybrids to one of the world’s biggest markets: A two-hour drive beyond the traffic jams of São Paulo, past the vast valleys […]
Read more »Focusing primarily on The New Seven Sisters - the largely state owned petroleum companies from the emerging world that have become key players in the oil & gas industry as identified by Carola Hoyos, Chief Energy Correspondent for The Financial Times - but spanning other nascent opportunities around the globe that may hold potential in the years ahead, Wildcats & Black Sheep is a place for the adventurous to contemplate & evaluate the emerging markets of tomorrow.