On April 10, China’s Special Envoy to the Horn of Africa, Hu Changchun, held talks with President Isaias Afwerki in Asmara. Four days later, Hu was in Addis Ababa for a meeting with Foreign Affairs State Minister Berhanu Tsegaye. The sequential engagements, spanning the two capitals at the centre of the Horn’s most consequential bilateral tension, reflect a Chinese diplomatic posture that has, in recent years, moved well beyond the economic terms on which its regional presence was originally built. The Horn’s sustained fragility has made that shift a strategic imperative.

The Asmara visit was itself the second in a short span. In December 2025, Hu had made a similar trips, meeting with President Isaias and Ethiopia’s Foreign Minister, Gedion Timothewos at a moment when tensions between Eritrea and Ethiopia had reached a register that prompted concern in several capitals. The recurrence of these visits points to something specific. Beijing appears to be engaged in active monitoring of the two countries’ trajectory, with conflict prevention as the likely animating concern. A deterioration of relations between Asmara and Addis Ababa would carry costs for Chinese interests across the region. The envoy’s presence in both capitals within the space of a few days suggests Beijing is not simply observing but attempting to shape the dynamic.

The position of Special Envoy to the Horn of Africa was established in February 2022, at the height of the Tigray conflict. The Chinese foreign ministry described its mandate as promoting peaceful development and helping the region achieve long-term stability and prosperity. The appointment was, in more direct terms, a recognition that China’s economic footprint in the Horn had grown too substantial to be insulated from the region’s political volatility. A dedicated diplomatic instrument was required.

For the preceding decade, Beijing had managed its regional interests through largely transactional engagement, centred on infrastructure financing, resource extraction, and trade corridor development. The region’s increasing instability, however, made that posture untenable. With major investments concentrated across the region, a military base in Djibouti, and commercial exposure extending from South Sudan to Eritrea’s mines, the costs of political disengagement became prohibitive. The Special Envoy role formalised China’s transition from economic actor to political interlocutor.

China’s interests in the Horn are anchored, above all else, in Ethiopia. The largest economy in the region and the seat of the African Union, Ethiopia is home to extensive Chinese investment and a depth of bilateral commercial relations unmatched elsewhere in the Horn. A stable and economically accessible Ethiopia represents Beijing’s primary strategic interest on this side of the continent.

China’s economic presence in Eritrea is, at the same time, substantial. The mining sector is the country’s primary source of foreign currency and its most significant economic domain. Chinese companies hold major stakes across that sector. The Bisha Mine, one of Eritrea’s most productive operations, has long involved Chinese capital. More significant in scale is the Asmara Copper-Gold Polymetallic Mine, currently under construction, in which Chinese interests hold a sixty percent share, with projected output of four million tonnes of ore annually upon completion.

The weight of this presence is compounded by Eritrea’s international isolation. Asmara has no meaningful economic engagement with western states, a condition that has concentrated external economic influence almost entirely in Beijing’s hands. China operates in Eritrea without the competitive pressures it encounters elsewhere. Hagos Gebrehiwot, head of the Red Sea Trading Corporation (RSTC) and the head of Economic Affairs within the  PFDJ, has made multiple visits to China over the past fifteen years, highlighting the level of priority the regime sets to its relationship with Beijing.

Asmara’s orientation toward Beijing has roots that predate Eritrean secession. The Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) received Chinese support during the its rebellion in the 1960s, before Ethiopia had formalised diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic in 1971. When Beijing shifted its regional policy, the institutional relationship was disrupted, but a foundational disposition toward China as a sympathetic power endured within the liberation movement.

Isaias Afwerki was among those sent to China for political and military training during that period. His exposure to the Chinese Communist Party’s ideological framework and to guerrilla warfare doctrine shaped his political formation in ways that have remained evident throughout his tenure. Senior figures in his circle have made repeated visits to China across the past decades. In 2023, Isaias himself made a state visit to Beijing, a clear signal of how Asmara prioritises the relationship. From Eritrea’s perspective, securing a more central place in China’s regional calculus remains an aspiration. Beijing’s engagement, however, has stayed measured, extending goodwill and maintaining its economic presence while treading carefully across a region where its interests are layered and at times competing.

Beijing’s position in the Horn involves a particular tension. It holds genuine leverage over Eritrea: the mining sector dependence, the absence of alternative partners of comparable weight, and the historical relationship Asmara has worked to sustain all concentrate influence in Beijing’s hands. At the same time, Eritrea’s pattern of regional destabilisation, its role in the Sudan civil war, its resumed hostility toward Addis Ababa, and its aggressive rejection of arrangements that would open the Red Sea coast to Ethiopian access, all sit in tension with China’s overriding interest in a stable Horn.

The question of Assab sits at the intersection of these competing pressures. Ethiopia’s interest in Red Sea access, with Assab representing the most historically significant and strategically proximate option, is a matter Beijing has reason to see resolved. A more accessible Ethiopian economy, connected to the sea and integrated into regional trade, serves Chinese commercial and strategic interests. Wang Yi’s visit to Addis Ababa in January 2026, arriving shortly after Israel’s recognition of Somaliland, adds a further dimension. China regards Taiwan’s international recognition as a core sovereignty concern, and Somaliland’s diplomatic relationship with Taipei has long complicated its status in Beijing’s view. Israel’s move raised the possibility of Addis Ababa, which maintains positive relations with both Israel and Somaliland, moving toward a port-for-recognition arrangement of its own. For Beijing, an Ethiopia that turns toward Somaliland for sea access carries both strategic and political costs. Wang Yi’s visit appears to have been, in part, an effort to gauge Addis Ababa’s position following Israel’s recognition and to signal Chinese preference for a settlement centred on Assab. On this question, Beijing’s interests and Addis Ababa’s primary preference find common ground.

For Ethiopian policymakers, China’s engagement with Eritrea is worth reading carefully. Beijing holds influence over Asmara that few external actors can match, and it has both the incentive and the disposition to manage destabilising dynamics in the region, even where it does so without public confrontation. Engaging Beijing with clarity about how Eritrea’s regional conduct affects the stability China has invested in sustaining, and framing that engagement around demonstrably shared interests, is a channel worth pursuing with deliberate intent. China’s diplomatic efforts are likely to ramp up. The question for Addis Ababa is whether it shapes what conclusions Beijing carries back from those visits.

By Mahder Nesibu, Researcher, Horn Review