Category: Media

The Chinese propaganda machine in Africa is cranked all the way up. Newspapers, radio, TV, Twitter, Facebook, you name it, the Chinese are there with a big bold message: "WE DEFEATED COVID-19! WE'RE HELPING AFRICA! NOW SUCK IT AMERICA!" OK, that's somewhat interpretive, but you get the ...

Chinese-owned African pay-TV giant StarTimes launched a new service on its StarTimes ON platform that is intended to help users determine if they are infected with COVID-19. Think of this as a sort of pre-diagnosis. ...

China added yet another channel to its propaganda media distribution network in Africa with paid editorial content in South Africa's leading financial newspaper Business Day. While paid Chinese editorial inserts are nothing new around the world (China Daily famously pays the New York Times, ...

Earlier this week I wrote a story about the reputational risks associated with China's so-called "Mask Diplomacy" initiative where it's donating millions of PPE to countries around the world. The basic premise of the story is that if everything goes well, then China wins, but ...

Chinese official media is actively promoting the use of Traditional Chinese Medicine remedies in Africa to treat COVID-19 despite the fact that the WHO is on record ...

China's typically non-combative deputy ambassador to Zimbabwe, Zhao Baogang, revealed his feelings about Donald Trump, accusing the U.S. president of being "arrogant" and "lying all the time." This is a rather sharp rhetorical escalation for Zhao, who has until now focused his social media account on ...

U.S. policymakers, journalists and other Washington, D.C. stakeholders have noted with growing alarm how China is leveraging the distribution of masks and other PPE used to contain COVID-19 to advance its diplomatic agenda around the world. There is a sense of ...

Quick update on the story we told you about yesterday regarding the fake news posts circulating around the African internet warning people that China is sending mattresses and clothing infected with COVID-19 from Wuhan and other cities. The fact-checking team at ...

Someone on either the social media team at the Chinese embassy in Harare or the Ministry of Health in Harare made a critical typo that prompted immediate speculation that Zimbabwean officials had fleeced the COVID-19 protective suits donated by Chinese billionaire Jack Ma.

China's ambassador to the Democratic Republic of the Congo met with President Félix Tshisekedi yesterday in Kinshasa and while they did maintain a proper distance from one another, the president's refusal to wear a mask prompted concern among Congolese Twitter users. ...

A Tweet by the Chinese state-run Global Times newspaper about a man dying from Hantavirus on a bus going to Shandong province in China sparked fears -- unfounded -- on African Twitter of "Coronavirus 2.0." ...

With COVID-19 now steadily making its way across Africa, misleading or downright false information is becoming an increasingly serious problem across the continent. Posts like this one warn Africans on Twitter and WhatsApp about buying used mattresses from China because they are infected with the deadly virus. ...