Worth millions of words

Documentary aims to present fairer picture of China-Africa ties

A documentary now being made will tackle claims that China's investment in Africa has neo-colonialist overtones, with stories that highlight the good that such investment is doing to both China and the continent.

The six episodes of Big Chinese Enterprises will focus on the lives of people working for Chinese companies in African countries. It looks at the efforts of Chinese companies to adapt to the African societies in which they are present and their contributions to local economies.

"People have said bad things about Chinese companies in Africa, and bad things can and obviously do happen," says Jing Shuiqing, vice- president of China Intercontinental Communication Center, which is co-producing the documentary with e.tv of South Africa.

"But these bad things are the exception rather than the rule. International media barely give credit to Chinese companies for their contributions to local development, and we want to present the true picture."

E.tv was the fifth terrestrial television channel in South Africa, and its transmissions can be picked up in 12 other African countries. In addition to having a wide audience on the continent, e.tv is widely perceived as being politically neutral, Jing says.

The two production partners have chosen all the stories and those involved in them jointly based on artistic standards only, which ensures the documentary's objectivity, he says.

China Intercontinental Communication Center has worked with e.tv since 2008, when they co-produced Faces and Places, the first of series devoted to travel in China. In the documentary, a well-known South African TV presenter, Andile Zamokuhle Nkosi, stayed with three families, in Beijing, Zhejiang and Guangdong, and reported on what their everyday lives were like.

It was broadcast in South Africa in late 2009, and the sixth-part series is said to have had an audience of more than 1.1 million. Its success resulted in another series, Postcards from China, in which life in places like Shanghai and Shandong province were seen through the eyes of South Africans living and studying there.

"China and Africa are attractive to one another economically," Jing says. "But the cultural relationship is not that strong. On both sides people are a bit in the dark regarding the other's customs and the way they think."

In 2012 the two production partners filmed 10 Chinese living in different African countries who were from various backgrounds, including lawyers and singers, and who were making a life for themselves in Africa. The result was My Second Home: Beautiful Africa.

China Intercontinental Communication Center produced its first documentary about Africa in 2005. Through contacts with African TV stations Jing discovered there was a demand for information about China.

hanbingbin@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily Africa Weekly 05/16/2014 page26)