China’s Media and Soft Power in Africa Promotion and Perceptions

TY - CHAP

T1 - China’s Media and Soft Power in Africa Promotion and Perceptions

AU - Zhang, Xiaoling

AU - Wasserman, Herman

AU - Mano, Winston

N1 - Funding Information: 1. The author acknowledges and thanks the China–Africa Reporting Project based in the Journalism Department of University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, for support in the course of writing this chapter. Funding Information: facilities have not delivered. The city’s roads have many potholes, broken traffic signals are common, and the city has experienced worsening electricity and water supply rationing. However, new Chinese restaurants such as The Great Wall of China are set to charm Harare citizens with exotic Chinese cuisine. The Long Cheng Plaza, for shopping and amusement, and the National Sports Stadium are prominent representations of Chinese soft power in Harare. The structures loudly “communicate” China’s huge intentions in Harare. The state-controlled broadcaster, ZBC, and the state-owned telecommunications company, TelOne, which are both headquartered in Harare, have benefited from projects worth several millions funded by China’s Exim Bank. Most of the Chinese interventions have been hotly debated in the Zimbabwean media, and because citizens of Harare are exposed to more media sources than other Zimbabweans, they tend to hold alternative views from the rest of the country. For example, in national elections, Harare residents tend to vote for opposition political parties because of what they perceive as poor service from Mugabe’s government. Apart from recognizing the alternative nature of Harare’s political makeup, one needs to locate China’s soft power within a broader context. Funding Information: May Tan-Mullins is Head of the School of International Studies and Director of the Institute of Asia and Pacific Studies at the University of Nottingham Ningbo, China. Her research interests include China–Africa developmental relations, poverty alleviation, China in global governance, and nontraditional security issues, especially environmental security. Her latest research projects are “Smart eco-cities for a Green Economy: a Comparative Study of Europe and China,” with the National Science Foundation of China, and “Poverty Alleviation in the Wake of Typhoon Yolanda,” with the Economic and Social Research Council and Development Fund for International Development, UK. Funding Information: The whole project would not have been possible without the generous financial support from the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation, UNNC’s Research Committee, the Institute of Asia Pacific Studies, the School of Contemporary Chinese Studies, and the Faculty of Social Sciences. The administrative team, particularly Tina Zhang, Yolanda Sheng, and Vicky Zhu, provided invaluable support to make the conference a success. Special thanks go to Prof. Stephen Morgan, Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at UNNC, for his enthusiastic and encouraging support; Nathan Stone, for his flexibility with working hours and efficient support for the organization of the conference and the edited volume; and Herman Van Bellingen, for design and maintenance of the project website. Funding Information: China’s interest in the Kenyan media sphere has also extended to the telecommunications sector as well as to the ongoing digital terrestrial television markets in the country. In 2007, three Chinese companies— Sagem, ZTE, and Huawei—also won contracts to lay down fiber optic cable in Kenya (Gagliardone et al., 2010). State-owned Chinese networking, telecom equipment, and service provider Huawei was also awarded a $6 billion contract in 2014 in the second phase of Kenya’s fiber optic plan “to build a national fiber optic infrastructure that will link Nairobi with other towns in the country through wide area network [. . .] The project is funded by the EXIM Bank of China through a concessional government-to-government loan agreement whose conditions include awarding the contract to the Chinese-owned firm Huawei” (Okuttah, 2014).

PY - 2016

Y1 - 2016

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85145947359&partnerID=8YFLogxK

M3 - Chapter

AN - SCOPUS:85145947359

T3 - Palgrave Series in Asia and Pacific Studies

SP - 1

EP - 33

BT - Palgrave Series in Asia and Pacific Studies

PB - Springer

ER -