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The media in African countries needs to partner with its counterpart in the People’s Republic of China to “offer guidance to public opinion” on the Asian superpower’s real relationship with the continent, said China’s ambassador-designate to South Africa, Lin Songtian.
A meeting of the China-Africa Media Forum in Sandton on Monday saw editors of several Chinese media establishments and the editors of several African newspapers bemoan the stereotypes perpetuated by Western media.
“In the face of vicious attacks and smearing from the Western media, our media should not dance to their tunes,” Lin said in an address to the meeting.
What has to be promoted is the “great cause of China-Africa win-win cooperation for common development”, he said.
“Our media should fully leverage their strengths in telling true stories of China-Africa traditional friendship and mutually beneficial cooperation to help build up the positive energy for China-Africa ties.”
Lin enumerated the several large rail and power projects undertaken in different African countries with Chinese funding and using Chinese contractors.
“Africa enjoys unique advantages of abundant natural resources and human resources, and a great market potential.
“We [China] have the comparative development advantages in capital, technology, equipment, capable personnel, successful development experience and abundant advantageous production capacity.”
Digressing from his scripted speech, Lin held up the Chinese “development miracle” as a model for the continent, saying that African countries needed to ensure “law and safety” if they wanted to attract investment.
The continent also needed more “concessional policies ... otherwise no one will come”.
“The public service is very important. In China we care about you very much. When you come here [Africa] it is sometimes very different for investors here.
“The most fundamental challenge is the lack of mutual understanding,” Lin continued.
“An important reason for this problem is that, so far, we have been getting information on each other mostly through Western media.”
The media bosses in attendance made short speeches, with the Chinese and African delegates taking turns.
Kang Bing, vice-president and deputy editor of China Daily, said that the Western media peddled bias and stereotypes on both the African and Chinese sides.
China Daily is an English-language newspaper with most of its claimed circulation of 900 000 copies outside China.
An Wei, deputy president of the Beijing Daily Group, bemoaned Western media “distortions” that make their way into African media, casting China as an extractive investor with a bad labour record.
Pang Xinhau, acting chief of Chinese Central Television’s (CCTV) Africa bureau, said the station’s idea was to “report Africa from a positive angle which is actually different from Western media represented by BBC and CNN”.
“On BBC and CNN, African political leaders are mocked,” he said.
CCTV’s African bureau started out of Kenya in 2012 and now has a of 150 staff members. According to Pang, it has set the pace for Western rivals.
“BBC never had an Africa report until they rushed to do it after we had done it. It overlaps with our broadcast time,” he said.
“They always used white reporters, but now they follow us [using African reporters].”
