Main constraint on the influence of Chinese news/propaganda is that it's boring

China is broadening its efforts to win over African audiences

China’s state-run news outlets are struggling to win African audiences

EVER SINCE the Kenyan government signed a deal in 2014 for a state-owned Chinese company to build a railway between Nairobi and Kenya’s main port in Mombasa, the project has attracted controversy. Its price per km was three times the international benchmark and four times the original estimate. Many Kenyans suspect corruption inflated its cost.

Unsurprisingly, such issues have received little airtime on CGTN Africa, a branch of China’s state television company, which opened its headquarters on the continent in Nairobi in 2012. When CGTN aired a package on the railway in July, the network praised it as “a case study” of China-Africa relations. In the Africa of CGTN’s imagination, every deal is “win-win” and, of course, “harmonious”.

Chinese media have a long history in Africa. The first bureau of the state news agency, Xinhua, opened in Cairo in 1958. Radio Peking, a state broadcaster, began transmitting to east Africa in 1967. But China’s presence did not grow markedly until 2008, notes Yu-Shan Wu of the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. The run-up to the Beijing Olympics of that year had been marred, in China’s view, by criticism of its policies of “non-interference” over atrocities in Sudan and Zimbabwe. “China realised it had to do more to shape global perceptions of it,” says Ms Wu.

As well as the opening of the CGTN bureau, 2012 saw the launch of China Daily Africa, a newspaper, and ChinAfrica, a magazine, both published across the continent. At least half of the staff of these outlets are African journalists, though it is clear where power lies. CGTN has two editorial meetings: one for all staff and another where Chinese editors seek approval for the stories from their bosses in Beijing. “Once it touches on Chinese state interests, censorship kicks in,” says Emeka Umeji, a Nigerian academic who has studied CGTN.

The main constraint on the influence of Chinese news, however, is that it is boring. “You never hear people saying ‘I saw this on CGTN,’” says Bob Wekesa, a Kenyan academic who studied for his PhD in China. When not showing footage of middle-aged Chinese men in suits talking in a room in Beijing, CGTN has middle-aged African men in suits talking in a studio in Nairobi.

The channel does not release viewership data. But research by Herman Wasserman of the University of Cape Town and Dani Madrid-Morales of the University of Houston suggests that in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa the number of viewers is many times smaller than for CNN, the BBC and Sky News. In another study using focus groups, they found that, among its Kenyan and South African viewers, opinions of China were “predominantly negative”.

Chinese influence on African media is nevertheless growing in more subtle ways. These efforts are not part of a master plan drafted in Beijing. But taken together, the three main techniques for gaining influence may be more effective than old-fashioned propaganda.

The first is a mass training programme for African journalists. About 1,000 reporters or others working in media firms attend courses in China every year. They are lectured on Chinese history and take trips. One participant recalls a visit to a village in Shaanxi, a relatively poor province: the aim was to win sympathy by showing that China “was still a developing country, just like us”, she says, her scepticism showing.

A second, nascent source of influence is via Chinese investment in private companies. In 2013, for example, state-backed Chinese investors (including a subsidiary of CCTV, CGTN’s parent company) bought a 20% stake in Independent Media, a South African company. Azad Essa, a columnist for the Independent, says that in August he was dismissed after writing about China’s abuse of Uighurs, a Muslim minority.

The third, and most important, development is the expansion of StarTimes, a private pay-TV company with close links to the Chinese government. Increasingly it is the primary vehicle for the expansion of Chinese soft power in Africa. Since it began operating in Rwanda in 2008, StarTimes has branched out to roughly 30 countries across the continent.

The nature of its presence varies from country to country. In about 20, StarTimes has carried out, or agreed to carry out, the switchover of television broadcasts from analogue to digital signals. These projects are usually done with a local partner, and funded via a loan to the domestic government from the Export-Import Bank of China. (Many of these deals have been criticised for a lack of transparency.) In roughly 25 countries StarTimes is delivering a project of the Chinese government to bring solar-powered satellite TV to 10,000 remote villages across Africa.

As well as providing infrastructure, StarTimes also produces and distributes content. It boasts of having 10m of Africa’s 24m pay-TV subscribers (though independent analysts are highly sceptical of the claim). Its bundles of channels include Chinese Super League football, kung-fu movies and soap operas. StarTimes even hosts competitions for African actors to dub dramas into languages such as Hausa and Swahili, a move few Western broadcasters have bothered with.

Entertainment can be more important than news in shaping mass opinions of countries, notes Mr Madrid-Morales, pointing to the importance of Hollywood to views of America after the second world war. Chinese efforts are, at least for now, on a small scale in a crowded market. But in the long run fictional dramas may prove more influential than fictional news.