Karishma Vaswani, Columnist

A Warning From Zambia About China’s Reach

May 10, 2026 at 7:00 PM UTC

Karishma Vaswani is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Asia politics with a special focus on China. Previously, she was the BBC's lead Asia presenter and worked for the BBC across Asia and South Asia for two decades.

Taiwan President Lai Ching-te in Eswatini last month.
Source: Office of the President of Taiwan

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China’s role as a lender and trade partner is giving it greater scope to shape the conditions of relationships with other countries. And economic dependence can make Beijing’s red lines harder to ignore.

The latest example has come in a canceled conference. Access Now, the New York-based group behind RightsCon — the world’s leading digital rights summit — called off its top annual gathering in Zambia days before it was due to begin last week.