Today is a public holiday in South Africa – Human Rights Day. There’s a certain irony in spending the day focusing on China’s President Xi Jinping’s visit to Vladimir Putin, knee-deep in a human rights disaster.
What one makes of the Ukraine crisis increasingly maps on where one lives. This is made clear by a remarkable new set of polling data recently published by the European Council on Foreign Relations ...
Category: Television
No Blackface in This Year’s Spring Gala TV Show, Actual Africans Performed Instead
The producers of this year's Spring Gala television variety show in China appear to have learned from recent scandals around Chinese actors in blackface appearing in the hugely popular annual Lunar New Year program. Instead, Tanzanian singer Coronia Kila performed on ...
Here We Go Again… More Blackface on Chinese Television
The Hong Kong-based television network TVB is facing criticism following this week's broadcast of its popular drama series Come Home Love: Lo and Behold, which featured actors wearing blackface. The offending scene had a number of young Hong ...
A View of the Belt and Road from Southeast Asia
Western press coverage of China's Belt and Road Initiative is frequently filtered through anxieties about shifts in the West's own international influence. So it's very interesting to watch this new documentary about the BRI by Singapore's state-owned Channel News Asia. It gives equal time to the opportunities ...
Tucker Carlson: China is Colonizing Countries in the Western Hemisphere
Fox News host Tucker Carlson, the most popular cable talk show personality in the United States, is hosting his show from Brazil this week and warning that the "Chinese military is establishing a threatening new beach head" in the country and that the United States isn't doing ...
Israel’s Shakshuka Diplomacy in China
China’s efforts to promote itself to foreign audiences frequently take the form of stiffly-produced TV inserts on traditional cuisine and historical festivals. But China isn’t alone in this game - sometimes, it goes the other way. Behold the awkward glory of ...
Analysis from Cobus van Staden
Xi Bets on Global South in Moscow
The Chinese Future of African Television
In December 2021, the U.S. confirmed that President Joe Biden will boycott the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing in February. But already before the end of November, China had signaled it was working towards lessening the public diplomacy fallout of such gestures. As part of the ...
Ebola Fighters is a Hit With Chinese Viewers
A big-budget drama about Chinese medical teams working in a fictitious West African country during the 2014 Ebola outbreak is a huge hit with viewers in China. The first two episodes of "Ebola Fighters" drew 16 million viewers and was the fourth most-popular drama ...
Chinese-Owned African Pay-TV Giant StarTimes Launches New Propaganda Show
The Beijing-based African pay-TV operator StarTimes launched a new program on Monday that appears aimed at bolstering official Chinese government messaging on the continent in the run-up to the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation summit that will take place soon in Dakar, Senegal.
Chinese Propaganda Recruits CCP Allies in Kenya’s Ruling Party To Denounce U.S. Claims on COVID Origin
The Chinese Communist Party is turning to its friends in Kenya's ruling Jubilee Party to denounce the U.S.-led accusation that the COVID-19 virus originally leaked from a lab in Wuhan China. Last week, CCTV featured an interview with Jubilee's Secretary-General Raphael Tuju who blasted
China Plans to Ramp Up Digital Engagement in Africa
The Chinese government announced new plans this week to increase engagement in Africa's tech sector by expanding partnerships in a number of areas including digital economy, smart cities, and 5G mobile communications. “China will share the achievements of digital technology with Africa to ...