International Debate over China–Africa Media Engagements

Abstract

Chapter 2 examines international media and academic discourses around the rise of Chinese state-led media in Africa (the origins of Chinese media diplomacy in Africa, to be discussed in Chap. 4). It undertakes a critical content analysis that disentangles the various voices and their ramifications into three categories: the neo-colonialism hypothesis, the pragmatic hypothesis, and the information contra-flow hypothesis. The chapter compares African, Chinese and Western perspectives applicable to each category, and reveals the centrality of mediatized communication in the conceptualization of China in Africa in the countries’ respective public spheres.