China and Africa: A Century of Engagement

7. Media, Education, and Cultural Relations and Ties with Chinese Communities in Africa

7 Media, Education, and Cultural Relations and Ties with Chinese Communities in Africa The state-controlled media are China’s most effective conduit for information collection and distribution in Africa. Xinhua News Agency (Xinhua), China Radio International (CRI), and China Central Television’s (CCTV) coverage of China-Africa relations have grown apace with China’s engagement on the continent. At the same time, China’s universities have become the choice for increasing numbers of elite African students. They, along with vocational training and Confucius Institutes in African countries, have spread knowledge about China and Chinese language to African youth. Since the 1950s, youth conferences, film festivals, and delegations of artists and writers have been part of Sino-African cultural exchanges. Direct interaction between communities—a consequence of unprecedented numbers of Chinese in Africa and growing numbers of Africans in China—is a largely new element of interpersonal relations. Together, media, education, culture, and community represent the lion’s share of social interaction. Media China’s officials have long felt that their policies toward Africa receive unfair treatment in the Western press and that a disparity exists between China’s growing economic strength and its media’s relatively weak influence in Africa. As these concerns have grown, so has the government’s financial support for the expansion of state-owned overseas media outlets led by Xinhua and to a lesser degree CRI and CCTV. Over the last decade Ties with Chinese Communities in Africa 195 these media outlets have sought to project a softer, more cooperative image of China to Africans. Xinhua, which has the longest history and the most outlets of any Chinese or Western news agency in Africa, effectively functions as Beijing’s eyes, ears, and mouth on the continent. According to Xin Xin of Westminster University, Xinhua, the CPC’s most loyal mouthpiece, ‘‘is responsible for setting the official tone that other Chinese media outlets follow [and] has also been active in promoting China’s Africa policy and China-Africa relations.’’1 This section examines Xinhua and its radio-based sister agency CRI’s information collection and distribution activities in Africa. Xinhua’s Expanding International Presence Xinhua is the world’s largest news agency. In 2005, it had 8,400 employees (compared to Agence France-Presse’s 2,000) including 1,900 journalists and editors, and released more than 4,500 news items in seven languages every day.2 Between 2005 and 2010, these numbers have swelled, particularly in Africa, due to Xinhua’s investments on the continent. The official news agency has reporters in more than 100 countries and five regional offices, including the African regional office in Nairobi, and the North Africa and Middle East regional office in Cairo.3 Xinhua is a publisher as well as a news agency; it prints some forty different newspapers and magazines and supplies reports to publications in more than 130 countries.4 Xinhua ‘‘maintains the historical mission of ‘publicizing China and reporting on the world.’’’5 The agency adopted its current name in 1937 and after the founding of the PRC in 1949 became a ministerial-level state agency.6 In the 1960s and 1970s Xinhua published only a few regular periodicals for foreign readers but then propaganda workers were encouraged to build China’s image outside the country. During China’s reform and opening up period, considerable quantities of Xinhua propaganda materials were translated from Chinese into Western languages and ‘‘broadcast worldwide more than ever before and picked up by other news agencies.’’7 The reason for expanded foreign content according to Zhao Qizheng, head of Renmin University’s School of Journalism, is that ‘‘foreigners differ from Chinese in both languages and ways of thinking.’’ Zhao adds that to let foreigners understand thoughts, behaviors and values of Chinese people, both the language and culture should be ‘‘translated.’’ That 196 Chapter 7 is to say, to tell Chinese stories to the outside world, languages and manners that are understandable and acceptable to foreign audience should be employed. [SIC]8 Since 2000, Xinhua’s Leading Party Group, the agency’s top decisionmaking body, has worked to make the agency ‘‘more influential and bigger as soon as possible.’’9 Xinhua and other state media outlets expanded rapidly and by decade’s end had strengthened their ‘‘international crosscultural communication’’ capabilities through enhanced cooperation with foreign counterparts in news coverage, human resources, and information technology.10 Xinhua in Africa...