While much has been written on China’s media campaigns in the United States, Europe, and Asia, until recently Beijing’s Africa-focused propaganda has received comparably little attention. But it represents a model Beijing is building on to target the global south more broadly. Africa’s 1.48 billion people, set to hit 2.48 billion by 2050, are a critical part of the global community, and China is keen to win them over. Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda emphasizes positive changes in African societies that are attributed, whenever possible, to cooperation with, or learning from, China.
Beijing seeks to build an international coalition of like-minded partners to help further its “core national interests.” While there are various interpretations of this term, all assume three basic overlapping objectives: ensure the CCP will continue to rule China; maintain and defend China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, as defined by the CCP; and promote a stable international environment conducive to enhancing China’s comprehensive national strength. Beijing is working to develop compelling messaging and strengthen its capacity to reach African audiences, with so far mixed results.
On one hand, Africans generally view China’s presence on the continent favorably. China’s official news agency, Xinhua, has 37 bureaus in Africa, more than any other media agency; and China’s Africa-focused propaganda programs have successfully cultivated dozens of influential African interlocutors who help promote the country’s image and interests. Yet despite spending untold millions of dollars each year on its Africa-focused propaganda work, by some measures China’s favorability still lags behind that of the United States. Moreover, Beijing’s official media outlets have low levels of African viewership, and there is little overlap between the most common themes in their coverage and those in mainstream African media outlets.
Since the CCP’s founding in 1921, it has used propaganda to “educate the masses” and “mobilize friends to strike at enemies.” For non-Chinese—in this case Africans—China’s external propaganda work advances four mutually reinforcing messages: promote a positive view of the CCP and China; promote party policies and Chinese culture; counter hostile foreign forces; and assert and normalize China’s territorial claims over Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tibet, the South China Sea, and other contested areas.
While China has long focused on vanity projects such as stadiums and presidential palaces to court African countries, today Beijing also aims to create what Yang Jiechi, the director of China’s Central Foreign Affairs Commission Office, called “favorable public opinion for the friendship and cooperation between China and Africa.”
Since taking power in 2012, Chinese President Xi Jinping has spoken repeatedly about the need to increase China’s “soft power” by creating a compelling Chinese narrative and strengthening the party’s capacity to convey its political messages overseas. At the 2013 National Conference on Propaganda and Ideological Work, Xi emphasized the “use of innovative outreach methods to tell a good Chinese story and promote China’s views internationally.” In 2014, he introduced a new foreign media–management strategy intended to create “a new type of mainstream media” that would be “powerful, influential, and credible.” Chinese officials understood their marching orders, and worked to enhance the country’s capacity and breadth of propaganda.
Most recently, during his report to the CCP’s 20th National Congress in October 2022, Xi instructed the CCP Central Propaganda Department to “accelerate the development of Chinese discourse and narrative systems, effectively communicate the voice of China, and portray a credible, lovable, and respectable image of China.”
Although official figures are not available for China’s external propaganda expenditures, in 2017 David Shambaugh of George Washington University valued them at about $10 billion per year. Between 2017 and 2020, Freedom House’s Sarah Cook identified “a dramatic expansion in [China’s] efforts to shape media content and narratives around the world, affecting every region and multiple languages.” In 2020, she estimated that China spends “hundreds of millions of dollars a year” on external media propaganda. In 2022, Freedom House estimated Beijing was devoting “billions of dollars a year to its foreign propaganda and censorship efforts.” It’s unclear just what percentage of this is targeted at Africa—but China’s efforts there are extensive.
China’s party-controlled media outlets, sometimes referred to as the Big Four—Xinhua, China Daily, China Radio International (CRI), and the China Global Television Network (CGTN; CCTV International until 2017)—target African audiences in various countries, regions, and linguistic groups. All four receive an unknown amount of vast state resources that allow them to cover a wealth of stories using various types of media (i.e., print, television, radio, and online) in all six U.N. languages—Arabic, English, French, Spanish, Russian, and Chinese—four of which are official languages in at least one African country. They do not identify themselves as CCP-controlled outlets, and each has numerous multilingual, outward-facing social media accounts with millions of followers on platforms that are blocked in China, such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.
Within these outlets, the propaganda department’s cadres dominate the editorial process and ensure that stories glorifying CCP leaders receive top billing. Experts identify two types of Chinese staff working at CCP media outlets in African countries: officials from the propaganda department masquerading as journalists, and actual professional journalists. Although the former lack journalism training, they make editorial decisions and oversee both the African and Chinese journalists.
To give its broadcasts an authentic flavor, CGTN headhunts recognizable African TV hosts and reporters and offers them well-paid jobs. After joining a Chinese state-media outlet, however, they learn that investigative journalism is unwelcome if it casts either China or its partners in a negative light. Working in China’s official media means the African journalist must agree not to cover an ever-expanding group of topics deemed “sensitive” by the propaganda department. The editorial line looms over journalists, as one African reporter at China Daily put it: “Within the periphery of the editorial policy, you have every freedom …. Outside the editorial policy, it is impossible to do any story.” An African CGTN journalist concurred: “We know what is acceptable and what is not acceptable. These things will be made clear to you when you join as to what kind of reporting is expected of you and what direction you are expected to take.”
China uses local outlets and influential African voices to disseminate and authenticate its Africa-focused propaganda. Chinese interlocutors build relationships with prominent Africans across various fields, whom the CCP designates as “friends of China.” The objective is to match party-controlled media conglomerates with local content providers to disguise Chinese reports in ways that make them “appear native to the independent publication,” Cook observed in 2020. These “friends” regularly appear on air and provide quotations or write articles for China’s propaganda outlets. In return for pushing Beijing’s propaganda, they may receive material or financial support and, prior to COVID-19, all expenses–paid trips to China.
China also uses business transactions and content-sharing agreements to expand the reach of its Africa-focused propaganda. Some smaller African media houses use Xinhua’s international content, which they obtain via syndication agreements with larger African outlets or state broadcasters. For cash-strapped African outlets, Xinhua’s international reports and images can be an economic lifeline. For Beijing, these outlets’ tight budgets offer an opportunity to amplify and disguise its propaganda beneath a veneer of grassroots legitimacy.
This tactic, known in English as “astroturfing” and in Chinese as “borrowing foreign media” or “borrowing boats to reach the sea,” launders Beijing’s propaganda through either friendly or unwitting foreign media outlets. It has been observed across the global south, from Thailand and Laos in Asia to Peru and Panama in Latin America; and until recently such content had also appeared in some U.S. and European outlets. As of early 2023, news organizations in Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe are among those that have signed media cooperation and content-sharing agreements with Xinhua.
China’s firms have also used equity investments to enhance their influence over independent African publications. In 2013, for instance, China’s StarTimes acquired a majority stake in the South African satellite TV company TopTV. The firm’s partnership with TopStar, a Zambian state broadcaster, allowed it to obtain licenses for signal distribution and content provision. The China-Africa Development Fund and the state-owned China International Television Corporation own a 20 percent stake in South Africa’s Independent Online (IOL), which has become the official media partner of China’s embassy in South Africa. In 2018, IOL columnist Azad Essa was fired after he criticized China’s persecution of Muslims in his column.
Training African media is another powerful tool. In the 2018–21 Forum on China-Africa Cooperation Beijing Action Plan, China agreed “to hold training and capacity building seminars for African countries’ media officials and journalists, promote more exchanges and mutual visits between Chinese and African media personnel and support more exchange of correspondents by media houses.” The purpose of media exchanges and trainings is to foster more cooperation “in media operations, program production, technical services and personnel training.”
China also underwrites private bilateral and multilateral training sessions for African journalists and editors. These working-level seminars provide the optimal environment for building relationships. After being feted in China, many attendees naturally feel reluctant to produce content that impugns their generous hosts when they return home.
Before COVID-19, China’s rapid expansion of sponsored exchanges, syndication agreements, and media training programs for African journalists suggested it believed its outreach was working. By 2017, CRI had secured content sharing agreements with at least 70 overseas radio stations and 18 global internet providers. Indeed, dozens of African media professionals do republish or share China’s propaganda content. These cheerleaders legitimize the party’s rule over China, advance Beijing’s claims to lead the global south, deflect criticism of China and its African partners, perpetuate anti-United States narratives, and question the effectiveness of liberal democracy. As China’s African “friends” gain resources and influence, the predictable result is media in countries such as Kenya, Ghana, and Malawi are reprinting increasing amounts of Xinhua content—even as concerns about China’s intentions continue to mount in Western capitals.
Still, the reach of China’s propaganda in Africa should not be overstated. After analyzing China’s influence on media coverage in 30 African countries in the first half of 2020, scholar Dani Madrid-Morales concluded that Chinese sources appeared to be much less influential than French or British outlets, but more influential than U.S. media.
One reason may be their small audience size. In 2021, roughly 2 percent of Kenyans and South Africans listened to CRI or read China Daily, and about 7 percent of Kenyans and 6 percent of South Africans watched CGTN. (Not surprisingly, Madrid-Morales and Herman Wasserman found those who consumed Chinese media tended to hold more positive views of China.) This limited reach may help explain the decline in favorable opinions of China in these two countries between 2013 and 2019—from 78 percent to 58 percent in Kenya and from 48 percent to 46 percent in South Africa, according to the Pew Research Center—even before the pandemic impacted China’s global image. During the same time, the percentage of Nigerians holding favorable views of China fell from 76 percent to 70 percent.
As officials in a liberal democratic nation, U.S. policymakers cannot set a strict editorial line and enforce it by suppressing critical African voices. They have neither the bureaucratic apparatus nor the inclination to compete head-to-head with CCP propagandists. Instead, consistent with U.S. traditions and values, Washington should help support independent African journalism that holds governments and leaders accountable.
Yet, despite widespread recognition that long-term strategic competition with Beijing is unavoidable, the U.S. government has yet to overtly contest China’s anti-United States propaganda in Africa. The primary reason for this appears to be Washington’s long-standing bipartisan neglect of Africa. Instead of continuing with this laissez-faire approach, the United States should actively thwart CCP propaganda that wrongfully disparages it.
It can do so in various ways. For instance, Voice of America can adopt a well-resourced and coordinated “go where the people are” strategy that reflects emerging demographic trends and the ongoing transition to social media apps and streaming platforms. And U.S. entities such as the National Endowment for Democracy can work with local partners, such as independent fact-checking organization Africa Check, to identify false or misleading reports and shine a spotlight when Chinese officials or their African collaborators suppress critical reporting.
Additionally, to encourage African outlets to find alternatives to Chinese propaganda, U.S. news agencies such as the Associated Press and Bloomberg could cut the costs of their feeds for African media outlets, and the U.S. government can offer those agencies subsidies instead. Washington could also underwrite both short-term and degree-granting journalism training programs to help African media professionals develop the techniques and professional connections they need to resist China’s inducements and intimidation.
The same conditions that have precipitated China’s investments in the African media sector—the continent’s youthfulness and its growing population—should also be attractive to the United States. Despite decades of neglect and China’s best efforts, Africans in many countries continue to hold favorable views of the United States. By investing in objective, high-quality local reporting and juxtaposing this grassroots approach with China’s heavy-handed censorship, the United States can offer an alternative to China’s propaganda on the continent.
