2020 - Country Briefings
Philippines
Parker Song / POOL / AFP
In the Philippines, Duterte’s government is promoting Chinese news narratives while the media remains highly skeptical of China’s presence.
Autocratic allies
China looms on the shores of the Philippines. Since Rodrigo Duterte took power in 2016, he has pivoted closer to Beijing and Russia. Beijing has promised what some Filipino media report as 45 billion US dollars of worth of investment, and in exchange Duterte has taken a softer line on Beijing on the South China Sea dispute, stating he means to avoid conflict with China.
Journalist union survey shows a different picture
A survey of 131 media workers conducted by the National Unions of Journalists of the Philippines found that Duterte’s government cooperative attitude to China was not reflected among the press and its coverage of China. A massive 50.7% of respondents had a negative view of China’s influence on the media while only 7% had a positive view.
When it came to China’s media power since the covid outbreak began, 41.53% of those polled said that the Philippines government had pushed Chinese-sourced news stories, 31.54% said that more news stories were emanating from Chinese sources and 27.96% though that there was more disinformation. In a sign that China’s attempts to propagate its narrative on covid sometimes fall flay, 44.6% of journalists believed that coverage of China had been more negative since the covid outbreak began, 19.2% considered it more positive and 20.8% noticed no change.
Kenya
Perceptions of China are positive in Africa and Kenya is literally the headquarters of China’s foreign influence strategy.
Simon Maina / AFP
Kenya key to China Strategy
China has had a strong presence in Africa since the 1960’s, well before many western countries engaged with the region. The modern form of this engagement is embodied by the fact CGTN, China’s most prominent state-run television station, is headquartered in Kenya. CGTN offers two to three times more salary than local news outlets and employs about 100 people, mostly Kenyan.
Over the past six years, CGTN has steadily increased its reach across Africa. It is displayed on televisions in the corridors of power at the African Union, in Addis Ababa, and beamed for free to thousands of rural villages in a number of African countries, including Rwanda and Ghana, courtesy of StarTimes, a Chinese media company with strong ties to the state.
China’s media presence is multi-platform. The China Daily is printed in Kenya and then distributed as an insert by local newspapers. On radio, there is a partnership between Kenya Broadcasting Corporation and the Nairobi-based China Radio International to share studios and programs. Meanwhile, Kenyan journalists visit China every year under a variety of sponsored training programs. In this way, China is shaping the structures of Kenyan media and the minds of Kenyan journalists.
Italy
Miguel Medina / AFP
In March 2019, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Rome set in motion a series of economic and media cooperation agreements between the two countries which have had implications for how coronavirus was perceived and handled in Italy, Europe and beyond.
Beyond Marco Polo – China and Italy’s new ties
In March 2019, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s two-day state visit to Rome set in motion a series of economic and media cooperation agreements between the two countries. A total of 29 deals amounting to €2.5bn ($2.8bn) were signed during the trip and Italy became the first member of the G7 group to sign up to China's Belt and Road Initiative.
Nonetheless, the relationship between China and Italy was rocky In the early days of the virus, when Chinese state-owned website Global Times actually blamed the COVID-19 outbreak on Italy, twisting the words of Italian physician Giuseppe Remuzzi to broadcast a misleading statement on Chinese state broadcaster, CCTV, and its international arm, CGTN.
China’s strategy of blame was short-lived. China was one of the first countries to come to Italy’s aid with medical equipment and teams, and it wasted no time using that to recalibrate its image as friend and savior. China was able to share this narrative effectively by building strong connections with Italian media outlets after 2019, Sole 24 Ore signed an MOU with China Economic Daily, ANSA and Chinese state media agency Xinhua signed an accord to launch the Xinhua Italian Service and other MOUs were made between China Media Group and Rai, Mediaset, and Class Editori. These agreements, as well as public diplomacy and social media, allowed China to pump out a relentless flow of symbolic messages of solidarity and commitment toward Italy.
In a demonstration that public relations was valued higher than genuine assistance, China’s actual contribution of protective equipment and medical supplies accounted for a very small portion of Italy’s imported materials, the majority came from the EU. By the end of March, France and Germany combined had donated more masks to Italy than China, and Austria was up on China by 1.6 million.
While some polls have indicated that most Italians see the Chinese government positively, the Italian-Chinese relationship remains complex, mercurial and significant in both countries.
Serbia
Andrej Isakovic / AFP
Serbia’s foreign influence is historically from neighbouring Russia. Today, China is establishing a role in the country’s economy, politics, and media through providing billions of euros in soft loans for telecommuncations infrastructure and developing a “digital silk road” through Serbia.
Building Bridges
The China Road and Bridge Corporation, a state-owned enterprise, built the Pupin Bridge across the Danube River in Belgrade in 2014. Since then, China has built a great deal more in Serbia. In June 2019, Huawei partnered with Serbia to roll-out its first 5G base station in the Science-Technology Park Belgrade. Huawei also teamed up with Serbia’s Interior Ministry on a “Smart Cities” project involving the installation of over 1,100 surveillance cameras with facial recognition capabilities for traffic and crime control, raising concerns over public interest journalism.
State Sponsored Stories
China has benefitted from, but also abetted, an increasingly illiberal Serbian government which “welcomes Chinese investment as a boon to its political fortunes”. Serbian authorities increasingly control government agencies, the national security apparatus, and the media. An RSF report into Serbian media ownership found that the country’s weak economy and constant problems with liquidity enables the state to shape the media market through direct ownership and other models of state financing, such as tenders for media projects, procurement of media services and advertising contracts.
Unlike other countries, where China goes to great lengths to manipulate coverage through content sharing agreements and media procurements, in Serbia the government has decidedly controlled the narrative for them. As Serbian foreign policy analyst Vuk Velebit said, “The way the Serbian tabloids and state officials once treated Russia, praising it to the heavens, is the same way they now treat China”.
Tunisia
Miguel Medina / AFP
Chinese and Tunisian ties have never been strong, but China’s recent outreach shows just how far its media footprint extends.
Mutual Exchange?
The IFJ conducted a roundtable of journalists in Tunisia in February 2021. At this roundtable, some journalists said that they had participated in exchange programs offered and subsidized by China. These exchanges were considered important to get a better understanding of Chinese culture but other journalists also expressed concerns about the lack of impartiality exhibited by those who went on exchange programs after their journey.
As the birthplace of the Arab Spring, journalists at the roundtable asserted that the country enjoyed an environment of free speech and freedom of expression which does not match with Chinese government policies and approaches. For this reason, China has invested in technology infrastructure through supporting Tunisian engineering universities and through making deals with the government rather than financially supporting media outlets, as it did in other countries like Myanmar.
Roundtable participants also said that private media companies in Tunisia have made commercial and marketing agreement with Huawei. This has meant that television shows and advertisements had promoted Huawei's product and journalists have been given gifts, such as tablets, to journalists as a way of currying favour to the Chinese perspective.
The roundtable concluded that there was a single model of Chinese media presence in Tunisia but in the end, all media influence methods intersected.