A joint approach to modern media

Is it accurate to continue characterizing China-Africa academic studies as being in a formative stage? Not quite, considering the dense networks emerging out of intensified cross-pollination of perspectives by a global China-Africa academic community.

Even as researchers generally have lagged behind interactions at the people-to-people and government-to-government level, academic analyses have in the recent past ratcheted up to an all-time high.

Scholastic engagements on a topic such as "China-Africa" can always be expected to trail behind engagements at the societal and official levels. This is because intellectuals always reflect on societal dynamics as they unfurl. Thus, it was no surprise that as Africa and China engaged ever more closely in economic, geopolitical and cultural spheres, scholars would notice such developments and create tools to analyze the motivations and implications thereof.

This past week, for instance, has seen researchers in the media and communications fields congregating back-to-back at two significant conferences. The first was held at the beautiful University of Nottingham Ningbo campus in eastern China. The title was China's soft power in Africa: emerging media and cultural relations. The second conference, held in Beijing, tackled a related theme, which was China-Africa media, communications and public diplomacy, and was organized by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in partnership with a Norwegian think tank, the Christian Michelsen Institute.

Several patterns and trends emerged that pointed to the convergence and divergence of the communications and culture fields and provide a window into other initiatives and studies going on in many parts of the world.

The first point to note is that one can identify several scholars who have increasingly dedicated themselves to making sense of Africa-China relations. After the Nottingham University Ningbo conference, a good number who attended took a few days to tour China before heading to the Beijing conference.

The networking and bonding opportunities from the conferences were such that scholars from worlds apart are now on a first-name basis.

The second key point to note is that scholars are increasingly concurring on certain theoretical and methodological tools for studying Africa-China relations.

For instance, Professor Helge Ronning, the long-standing Africanist who heads the Voice of China in Africa project based in Bergen, Norway, argued that the concept of soft power as conceived of by US international relations scholar, Joseph Nye, has many deficiencies when studying a phenomenon such as China in Africa.

His point of view is that soft power is too American-centric as well as being too inclined toward a rosy picture of "the power of attractions," without considering the hard power dimensions in relations between nations.

Scholars such as Professor Herman Wasserman of the University of Cape Town and Gary Rawnsley of Aberystwyth University in the United Kingdom argue that the soft power concept has grown to mean just about anything in both the international relations and communications. Underlying these assertions is the suggestion that Africa-China relations should be examined using the tools of international study concepts such as public and cultural diplomacy.

The third point to take home from the recent academic events is that analysis of Africa-China studies is increasingly being done through dedicated partnership projects. Important Africa-China communications and culture initiatives include the China-Africa Media Project, which draws scholars from the University of Westminster and University of Nottingham, both in the UK, and the University of Cape Town, South Africa.

As Winston Mano from the University of Westminster pointed out, this project is a response to a growing number of students in these universities studying Africa-China topics over and above the fascination with Africa-China relations generally.

A second key partnership brings together researchers from the Christian Michelsen Institute and University of Oslo, based in Bergen and Oslo, Norway, respectively; Makerere University in Uganda; the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; and the Institute of Social and Economic Research in Mozambique. This project provides an interesting trilateral configuration of how Africa-China relations should be studied.

By allying itself with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and noted Chinese Africanists such as Professor Li Anshan of Peking University and Jiang Fei and He Wenping, both from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the project gains a unique Chinese perspective often woefully missing in other perspectives originating from the West.

Between them, these two projects have generated a lot of literature on evolving communications-based linkages, as shown by fieldwork in several African countries.

Studying the works, one sees a clear distinction between scholastic findings and the suppositions of negative consequences that Chinese media would ostensibly have on the African media sphere, often seen in the popular Western press.

Indeed, some scholars have gone so far as to suggest that emerging global powers such as the BRICS countries are rising, not just as global economies of note, but also as media and cultural powers.

These media initiatives are joined by two other key communications initiatives, namely, the African Communications Research Center at Communication University of China and the China-Africa Reporting Project based at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. These two initiatives were represented at the recent conferences as were other institutions with a slew of Africa-China analyses.

While scholars agree on some points, such as the limitations of soft power as a tool for studying Africa-China relations, it would be a mistake to conclude that they agree on everything.

During these conferences, a key point that came across is the differences in Chinese and Western media systems. While scholars such as Rawnsley at Aberystwyth University conclude that Chinese media would have a challenge penetrating African media markets due to their overly positive portrayal of situations, Professor Zhang Yanqiu of Communication University thinks otherwise. Zhang points out that Chinese media seek to create a new approach, which she labels "constructive journalism", and which is underpinned by the need not just to point out negativities in society, but also to offer solutions to such problems.

The whole question of what the role of media is and should be is indeed sure to continue generating debate for the foreseeable future.

Most Africa-China scholars also agree that one of the items of unfinished business in the field is how to overcome the language barrier in these studies. For instance, a number of Chinese scholars cannot easily access English language journal papers, books and documents just as a great number of African and Western Africanists cannot access Chinese language works.

It has been suggested that greater efforts should be made to focus on interpretations and translations of works on either side of the Indian Ocean if a sharper understanding of the relations from a communications perspective is to be gained.

For China Daily

(China Daily Africa Weekly 09/12/2014 page6)