News organisations from Western allies of Kenya and other East African nations once held sway over the information flows in and out of East Africa. Now it is China that occupies that role in the region, and more broadly across Africa.
Xinhua, China’s largest and State-run Chinese media and broadcasting organisation, currently boasts 37 Africa-based news bureaus across the continent. The BBC and The Washington Post have only two apiece, with a range of smaller offices.
Can organisations such as the China Global Television Network (CGTN), or Xinhua, which are so overtly coupled to the foreign policy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), be taken at face value?
Of course, there are several other State-affiliated media organisations, such as Voice of America and the BBC, which have been active in Africa for decades. In some regions within Africa, they are so familiar that they are part of the furniture.
Their presence is not a common cause of controversy, even though they are State-managed, and over the last decade, their management has been increasingly led by African voices from within Africa. Whilst they are State-owned, they are not perceived as mouthpieces or policy tools. Why, then, is Chinese media activity in Africa a cause of concern for some observers?
Some Chinese media organisations, such as CGTN, which sits directly under the Central Propaganda Department of the CCP, are an extension of the CCP’s foreign policy. This is a critical difference between organisations like CGTN and the BBC.
The BBC, although government-owned, is independent of government management and is regulated by an independent board of ethics and standards whereas some Chinese outlets are explicitly designed to serve party needs.
President Xi Jinping described CGTN’s mission at the launch of the channel after it rebranded as to “tell China stories well, spread China stories well, spread China’s voice well, let the world know a three-dimensional colourful China and showcase China’s role as a builder of world peace”. This quote neatly sums up the function of media outlets such as CGTN; they exist as platforms that ultimately serve the interests of Beijing by transmitting narratives to achieve those ends.
After the myriad problems colonialism created, is the rise of Chinese media outlets in Africa not part of a rebalancing of the African media ecosystem? There is no doubt that additional and more varied perspectives within the media on the continent would be useful in introducing more balance. But outlets such as Xinhua or CGTN, whilst non-Western, are not providing balance. They are filling the rapidly expanding African media ecosystem with their own narratives that actually unbalance it. A former Kenyan editor referred to this imbalance in Chinese media output, describing the editorial position of CGTN as “the prerogative of the Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party.”
So why do African nations, and indeed newspaper editors, put up with such an overt display of propaganda from a foreign actor on their soil? Partly for practical reasons.
With the vast resources and reach of Chinese State-run media, some African media houses see partnering with these organisations as a way to obtain much-needed resources to tell their stories effectively. Even if those resources come coupled with an understanding of restricted topics and watered-down control — or no control at all — of the editorial position.
But other financial, training, and equipment incentives for African media houses sweeten the deal of partnering with a Chinese State-run media outlet. DW reports that Chinese media outlets helped struggling Kenyan newspaper houses out of a financial slump, offering them a “supplement every fortnight” in return for publishing stories through China’s lens.
In one instance, this partnership foundered when one of the newspapers published an expose about corruption in the construction of the Standard Gauge Railway in Kenya, which was built by Chinese partners. This led the Chinese Embassy in Nairobo to cancel its advertising spend with the newspaper.
China also offers journalists a huge range of professional opportunities, from courses and qualifications to work experience trips. These opportunities are ostensibly an excellent method for African media organisations struggling with limited resources and underfunding to upskill their ambitious staff.
But the other side of this coin is that training African journalists in China provides China with an excellent conduit to project its perspectives into the continent.
There is an expectation that, in return for the free training courses and qualifications, China-positive stories will be frequently published. One mainstream editor commented that he had erected a whiteboard to track which of his journalists were in China, and which were available to report the news; such was the scale of China’s training programmes for Kenyan journalists.
If the BBC and Voice of America are well-known outlets for soft power, then perhaps Chinese media activity in Africa can be described as hard soft power.
The cynical nature of Chinese partnerships with African media houses is characterised by quid pro quo arrangements in which editorial independence is partly relinquished to their Chinese partners in exchange for resources that help their newsrooms keep pace with the ever-increasing speed of the modern news cycle. The question this raises is: Can the African media survive China’s bid to use them as another realm in which it can promote its interests?
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