Over the past week, sharply contrasting images of Chinese engagement in Africa surfaced online. Anger erupted on social media over the release of yet another violent video that shows Congolese soldiers brutally beating local miners purportedly at the behest of Chinese nationals watching in the background.
A controversial hour-long documentary by one of Zambia’s leading newspapers also sparked a lot of discussion over the labor and environmental records of Chinese mining companies in the country. The Chinese embassy in Lusaka denounced the program as “biased” and containing “hidden motives.”
Meanwhile, in China, a 15-second teaser of a new blockbuster movie also dropped this week that looks like it’s set in a fictitious North African country, while popular Chinese travel vlogger Zhang Jun released a visually stunning 2.5-hour-long documentary on the Congolese fashion scene known as “La Sape.”
Eric, Géraud & Cobus discuss the various clips and shows that emerged this week and what they reveal about the evolution of China-Africa media narratives.
Show Notes:
- Justicia ABSL: Violent beating of Congolese miners by FARDC soldiers
- News Diggers: China: The Good, the Bad and the Dangerous
- Movie Trailer: 用武之地/The Point of No Return
- The Fashion Bible: Congo’s “La Sape” Fashion Culture Through the Unlikely Lens of a Chinese Vlogger
Transcript:
ERIC OLANDER: Hello and welcome to another edition of the China in Africa podcast, a proud member of the Seneca Podcast Network. I’m Eric Olander. And as always, I’m joined by my good friends, Cobus van Staden, our managing editor in Cape Town, South Africa, and Jeroen Nima, our Africa editor, joining us from the beautiful island of Mauritius. A very good morning.
Good evening. Good evening. Good afternoon.
We’re all over the place today. Hi, guys. How are you guys doing today?
COBUS VAN STADEN: We’re doing all right.
GERAUD NEEMA: Good, thank you.
ERIC OLANDER: Well, today we’re going to be talking about a fascinating topic, and Cobus, this is one that’s been near and dear to our hearts going back to the early days of the show that we’ve been doing now for going on 15 years, where we’re going to be talking about media imagery related to the Chinese in Africa.
And this is something that has come up in a flurry. It’s been rather quiet in this space for, I’d say, a couple years, Cobus, but we haven’t seen a lot of blockbuster movies, we haven’t seen a lot of these horrible viral videos in Africa of beatings and violence between Chinese employers and local workers, and we haven’t seen a lot in the documentary space. But all in the past two weeks, that has all come together.
And Cobus, these media images have had such a durable impact over the years in terms of shaping how people, whether you’re in China and how you perceive Africans, and then in Africa, how you perceive Chinese. And things that have happened 10 years ago are still very much in the forefront of people’s consciousness.
COBUS VAN STADEN: Yeah, indeed. Like, these images and these stories tend to have very strong durability, and they tend to kind of keep going, even if, you know, situations on the ground change. You know, so it’s really important to keep tracking them, I think.
ERIC OLANDER:
Yeah. And Gerold, you’ve been following over the years the blockbuster movies, the viral videos. Where would you say we are today in terms of how media perceptions frame both in Africa and in China towards Africa?
GERAUD NEEMA: I think we’re still in that phase up and down. On the media front and blockbusters and all the documentary, because China has been engaged a lot into movie-making and movie-sharing cooperation with many media in Africa. We are still in that phase where China is trying to build its soft power, its image on the continent, really to punish how they perceive, how it’s perceived in China by the media, how it’s covered.
We have moments where we have positive coverage, even though it can be through, you know, media placement or through cooperation. But at the same time, we also have those loose moments where you have sometimes a video coming up, popping up here and there. But overall, it’s a very soul-like kind of approach for China’s image on the media front on the continent.
And I think there’s still a lot, a lot to have to do, a lot of ground to cover as well, if they want to be able to get to the point where the image becomes really highly positive on the continent.
ERIC OLANDER: Okay. Well, we have a mixed bag for everybody today. Some of the videos that we’re going to show, particularly one, is very, very disturbing.
I want to show it because I think it’s very important that we see it. This has been part of a continuum of videos that we’ve seen over the years of violence between Chinese and Africans in Africa. Giro, before we get to it, maybe you can set up what appeared on social media this past week.
It was a video shot on July 23rd that purportedly depicts a Congolese FARDC soldier beating a group of local miners. And you’ll see in the video, and I’m going to show it to you, and those of you who are listening to the audio podcast, you’ll hear the background noise. It will put links to this in the show notes.
And those of you obviously watching on YouTube, you’ll be able to see it. But Giro, since this happened in the Congo, it’s a space that you’re very familiar with. Maybe you can set up what we’re going to see before we see it.
GERAUD NEEMA: So basically, we are going to see a situation where we have Chinese on a mining site on a place where we still don’t know exactly where it is exactly.
ERIC OLANDER: Well, they said it was in Kalwezi. I mean, they said it was in Kalwezi.
GERAUD NEEMA: In Kolwezii, yes. In Kolwezi in southeast of the DRC, we’re going to see local artisanal miners being beaten by FRDC. The reports from the videos are telling us that Chinese have paid those FRDC soldiers to beat up those two local artisanal miners in the DRC on the ground.
So they don’t provide as much of a context of what happened, even though I’m kind of suspecting based on the coverage that we’ve made from the story and from what I’ve heard, I’m kind of suspecting what’s happened on the ground and how we led to that space. But this is what we’re going to see there. And we’re going to see Chinese there and some Congolese also around there, not really compelling, but watching basically how things are unfolding.
ERIC OLANDER: And very quickly, this was shared by an NGO called Justicia ASBL and purportedly shot on July 23rd in Lualaba province in the southeastern DRC, which is Kalwezi, which is the main mining cobalt belt of the DRC. Is that correct?
GERAUD NEEMA: Exactly. This is the capital of cobalt of the world.
ERIC OLANDER: And what do we know about this NGO, Justicia ASBL? Is that a well-known NGO? Is it credible?
GERAUD NEEMA: It’s a well-known NGO. It’s done a great and tremendous job when it comes to reporting human rights violations in the southern province of the DRC in Katanga and Lualaba. So it’s a really well-known NGO.
It really covers a lot of issues related to human rights in the DRC.
ERIC OLANDER: We’re going to take a quick look at it again. For those of you at home, we’re going to pause for just a second just to watch the part of the video. And then, Giroud, I’d like you to tell us a little bit about what we’re seeing here.
So again, you see the Chinese that are standing in the back. Now what was interesting, Giroud, is that normally in the past we’ve seen these videos come up and it’s generated huge outpourings of anger online. That really did not happen this time.
The reaction online was quite muted compared to previous times we’ve seen these kinds of videos. Exactly. And so why is it that we’ve seen this in the Congo many, many times, that soldiers, FARDC soldiers, are implicated in this?
I think this is very confusing for a lot of people.
GERAUD NEEMA: Exactly. Because in this situation, as in many places, in many mining sites in the DRC, we do have a lot of FARDC presence. Illegal, because let’s face it, FARDC are not allowed to be on mining site, on mining ground in the DRC.
And when you see them there, it means that you do have a high political figure who was involved in this mining project, and that’s kind of got the FARDC to protect the mining ground. So as in the introduction, I was saying, given the context, I kind of now suspect what was happening there, because those who have been beaten up were illegal miners. They’re artisanal miners on the ground.
And there are now a situation where in the DRC, there are mining sites that are, according to different reports, NGO report and artisanal miners report, those mining sites have been controlled by President Chisekedi’s families on the ground. And then they’re kind of using Chinese to exploit those mining sites. And the Chinese, of course, because they’re working with the President’s family, they also have the FARDC support in terms of the security, in terms of how they maintain the security on the ground.
So they also have this tension between FARDC and local artisanal miners who believe that they have the right to be there. They want to keep on doing the mining activities. So I’m suspecting in this case, because we didn’t have much of a detail, I’m suspecting that those Chinese caught some artisanal miners on the ground and they called up the FARDC who are working and protecting them to beat up those artisanal miners on the ground, to beat them up.
Yeah.
ERIC OLANDER: So, Cobus, this was very reminiscent of a video that appeared three or four years ago in Rwanda where a Chinese boss was whipping a local employee for stealing. That individual, that Chinese national, received a 20-year jail sentence and presumably right now is serving time in a Rwandan jail. It’s unlikely that we will see severe consequences for the Chinese nationals in this video who purportedly, again, we don’t know much.
I just want to be very, very clear that you saw in the background, there were Chinese people who were waiting in the background. We don’t know what their role was. We don’t know if they were just observers.
We don’t know if they orchestrated this. We just don’t know much. But it does seem to fit a pattern over the years.
And I want to also make very, very, just abundantly clear, a very infrequent pattern. This by no means actually shapes, this is not a consistent thing that we’re seeing every few months that’s coming up. The last one that I can think of was three or four years ago.
So Cobus, it hasn’t been a very common occurrence, but nonetheless, it has been a consistent one over the years.
COBUS VAN STADEN: Yeah. And of course, it plays into very, very established narratives of China or Chinese entities as kind of new oppressors on the continent and frequently in league with unpopular governments as well. So either being the kind of oppressors themselves or working to strengthen and entrench state power.
So this is not great news, I think, for the relationship. But it was interesting for me that, as you mentioned, that the response to it was relatively muted. Geraud, I wonder, can you give us a little bit of context in terms of how artisanal small-scale miners are seen by the general public in the Congo?
Is there a lot of sympathy for them or is it a bit of a more of a mixed bag?
GERAUD NEEMA: This is a real question in the real debate because it’s really dependent on where you are. If you’re not from the local communities on the ground, your perception of small-scale miners are going to be quite different because, let’s face it, they’re kind of disruptive in the way mining activities are done on a larger scale in the DRC. And when you are a mining company, having small-scale miners, artisanal small-scale miners on your ground, they really can disrupt your operation to the point that you cannot run any operation smoothly.
So that’s why you have many mining companies having to use military FRDC and other military means to be able to protect themselves against them because otherwise it’s going to be complicated. So the receptions are really mixed because on the ground, you’re going to have a lot of people saying the Chinese, any company have no right to do that. But outside that context, you’re going to have very mixed feelings and mixed reviews.
And in this context here, I’m suspecting that this video did not really become viral because, let’s face it, the DRC now is battling itself against so many bigger issues, political issues that at the end, those kind of videos became like one of those many videos we don’t really pay attention to and people don’t really catch up on to that to make it a real debate because right now it’s much more politics, it’s much more DRC-run, the United States, all of that, that people aren’t really paying attention to that.
And I’m suspecting it’s a mix of all those contexts that made that video not to go viral.
ERIC OLANDER: Yeah. Two other points. One of the other reasons it may not have gone viral compared to in the past is the algorithms work very different today.
The algorithms are much more zeroed in on your specific interests and likes. And if you haven’t followed these things, whereas in the past, the algorithms weren’t as sophisticated. So 10 years ago, these things went super mega viral because everybody was more or less getting the same thing.
Today, your feed, my feed, Cobus’ feed, they’re all so different. We’re all in our own little silos that if it’s outside of our silo, it just doesn’t break in. Normally, this was posted by a very well-known Congolese journalist, Stanislas Boujakera.
And normally in the past, he has gone super viral on some of these things. And it only it didn’t get, I think even it didn’t cross even 100,000. But it is interesting.
It was shared around different channels as well. The other thing I think just before we move on, I want to put another very important disclaimer just to kind of piggyback on what Cobus was saying, that when we say the Chinese and we see Chinese nationals here, Geraud, you’ve pointed out in the past that there are Chinese actors up and down the supply chain in the cobalt mining sector. So these could very well be independent, even possibly illegal actors or unregistered actors.
And they’re nothing to do necessarily with the big mining giants like, you know, the CMOC groups and the CNMCs and the Tijin mining and these. So I think it’s very important that in this discussion that we don’t lump everybody together, the Chinese, just because we see one video with, you know, some people standing in the background. We don’t know who they are, where they’re from, what they are.
GERAUD NEEMA: Let me give you a context. It could be Chinese who are called up from China by Congolese politicians who brought them in Kuala Lumpur to do some mining in these mining sites. And that’s it.
And those Chinese are not registered in Chinese embassy. They’re not working with the big Chinese mining companies and all of that. But in the end, the reporting of it will be always the Chinese.
And of course, we’re going to conflate all of them in one single box. China, China, China.
ERIC OLANDER: We encourage people not to do. Yeah, really strongly encourage people not to do. There is a lot of nuance that’s needed in these kinds of discussions.
GERAUD NEEMA: Yeah, exactly. Definitely. But yeah, I’m suspecting that people won’t take the time to make the nuances between Well, we’re making the effort to put it out there.
ERIC OLANDER: OK, let’s move on to our next clip. And this one really. And so unlike the the first clip that did not generate a Chinese response, the Chinese embassy in Kinshasa did not issue a statement on this.
Normally, in the past, the embassies do comment on these things. And the statement that they usually issue is that Chinese nationals operating in foreign countries, any country are subject to the laws of that country. And the Chinese government does not support those nationals for violating local laws.
That’s typically the statement that they give in Kinshasa. They did not do that. We’re going to go up to Zambia now.
And in Zambia, it did provoke a very fierce reaction from the Chinese embassy. This next video that we’re going to talk about, this is an hour long documentary called China, the good, the bad and the dangerous, produced by a very reputable national publication called News Diggers. They’re one of Zambia’s largest independent news organizations.
They’ve covered the Chinese for a long time. Cobus, myself and Jiro have used their material for years in our own coverage. They’re generally very, very balanced and very reputable, hosted by a well-known journalist, Joseph Mwenda, who we are going to try to have on this program, right, Jiro, to talk about the film.
This documentary was originally supposed to air on May 23rd, but was taken to court by the Chinese Chamber of Commerce in Zambia and there was injunction put against it. And for two months it was blocked. Yet on July 29th, it aired.
And I’m going to play a few clips for you guys just to give you a flavor of the show. And then Cobus and Jiro, I’d love for you to comment after I kind of run through this. So the documentary starts out rather positive about the Chinese, kind of saying how instrumental and indispensable they are to Zambia’s development.
Chinese investment in Zambia.
SOUNDBITE: From Livingstone to Nakonde. Mungu to Chipata. Chinese influence is etched in our infrastructure.
It’s rare to tell a story of infrastructure development in Africa without mentioning China. Chinese funding is easier and faster because it comes with less conditionalities. That’s a common justification as the country acquires loans, grants and signs state agreements which have given the country a new face.
These grants, loans and other bilateral partnerships in construction and infrastructure development have over the years opened up other investment opportunities for the Chinese in manufacturing, the extraction industry, including cultivation and export of precious Zambian timber. China is simply inevitable.
ERIC OLANDER: So you can imagine, Cobus, when the embassy started watching this, they thought, hey, this is pretty good. It’s off to a good start. And that’s a pretty fair assessment of their contributions in Zambia, wouldn’t you say?
COBUS VAN STADEN: Yeah. I mean, you know, kind of China has been a big investor, big infrastructure builder and so on in Zambia. I mean, that is itself a kind of a complicated position considering the things Zambia has been going through debt-wise and so on over the last few years.
ERIC OLANDER: But still, that was a sizable economic involvement. Well, I think if the embassy was watching, and I can imagine they were, they probably felt pretty good for the first three minutes of the documentary out of about 56 minutes. And then it went downhill from there.
And after about three minutes, they went right into the Kifuwe River disaster that happened. And this was 50,000 liters of toxic acid spilled from a tailings dam that caused horrific damage. Gérôd, maybe just for those who maybe not been following this part of the story, maybe you can tell a little bit of background very briefly on what happened with the company Sinometals and this tailings dam.
GERAUD NEEMA: So basically, a few months ago, around the month of, I think, around the month of May, there is the dam of this Chinese company, Sinometals, that bridge that was broken. The acidic water that the dam was keeping was spilled over the Kifuwe River, was kind of the Kifuwe that’s used by millions of Zambians across the country. So that’s part of the acidic river, kind of polluted the whole river, killing fishes and polluting agricultural land in that region.
And since then, there is an investigation open and they’ve been working to try fixing the issues. And local angels have been on the case of Sinometals to try to know and understand if what happened and how they’re going to fix it on the longer term. So basically, that’s the story.
ERIC OLANDER: So Joseph Mwenda, the journalist at News Diggers, was given unprecedented access to the site and to Sinometals personnel. Sinometals explained in the documentary that the reason why the dam broke was because the material that retained the wall was taken by locals who use it for housing and other purposes. This is, again, Sinometals’ explanation.
That came from both Zambian and Chinese stakeholders who Joseph Mwenda spoke with. Now, very interesting. One of the remarkable things about this documentary, and we will appreciate this, is that they managed somehow to get a lot of the senior Chinese stakeholders to speak on the camera.
And that was very, very interesting and quite impressive by Mwenda and the team to actually secure these interviews. Let’s take a listen now to the discussion that took place between a gentleman they call Mr. Wang, they didn’t give his full name, who is purportedly the director of Sinometals in Zambia. I looked up Mr. Wang and director. It’s actually very complicated. There’s a number of different directors and had bits of people I couldn’t find an exact. And there were several Wangs.
So I wish that they actually gave the full name. But I want to share this part of the discussion because a big part of the first part of the documentary was this interview. Let’s take a listen now to Joseph Mwenda’s discussion with Mr. Wang from Sinometals.
SOUNDBITE: Mr. Wang, has the government sanctioned you for this yet? Have you gotten any sanctions from the government?
Yes, that is the truth. So far, we’ve got the sanction from the my safety department and and and. I’m not sure whether it is from Wama or from the Zima.
Mm hmm. What kind of sanctions has this been? What kind of sanction has the government imposed on you?
Just a penalty.
A penalty. And has that penalty been settled? Yeah, already.
Was it pains, the penalty, or it was just a small. Ah, no, it’s painful. It’s painful.
Yeah, it’s painful.
Were you worried at some point to say, oh, this is what has happened, maybe we might lose our mining license? Were you worried about what was the government going to do about this whole problem?
Just according to the recent communication with the government authorities, I have realized the government still support the Sinometals in terms of their investment, in terms of the contribution of the taxation plus the benefit to the communities.
ERIC OLANDER: Cobus, what stood out to me was that’s some great journalism. And I think it really goes to show that we have not really seen this type of direct questioning of Chinese stakeholders the way that Joseph was doing to Mr. Wong. And it’s healthy.
It’s really healthy. I am not sure if the takeaway from this that Mr. Wong and the Chinese embassy in Lusaka and other Chinese companies is going to be very positive. I worry that they’re going to say, you know what, this is why we don’t talk to the media is because when we talk to the media, they make hour long documentaries that slam us.
But this type of engagement to me was very refreshing and very encouraging.
COBUS VAN STADEN: Yeah, I mean, they can also, you know, it’s also complaining about that is crazy, right? Kind of like because we’re talking about a massive environmental disaster, right? So that happened on their watch.
So in that sense, you know, they are on the hook to, you know, kind of respond publicly to this issue. So they can’t exactly say they were ambushed, right? Kind of like they were simply asked questions about a huge disaster that they were very, very central to.
So in that sense, you know, I don’t like in any kind of free media environment, that’s powerful, of course. Right. I think what I think this also shows is that there’s both a very strong need for greater engagement between African media and Chinese entities and at the same time, a very strong need for media training for Chinese executives.
I think because a lot of them are clearly not really used to a kind of a free media environment, not surprisingly. And, you know, and in this case, like, you know, there seems to be this kind of even in this little clip, there seems to be this kind of inability to hear what things sound like from outside of your perspective. Right.
You know, particularly when, you know, particularly knowing that it’s come it comes into an environment where there’s a very strong lack of trust between governments and communities, you know, kind of where communities feel that they’re kind of on their own anyway. You know, in that context, like even even a little bit, a little acknowledgement of him that it was, oh, it was a, you know, only a small penalty, that kind of that kind of, you know, implication. He did say it was painful, though.
That was his word. He said painful. Exactly.
Exactly. You know, kind of like any, you know, kind of any any kind of if I were a media training consultant, I would be telling him lean into the painful part, like kind of give us give us more details on the painful part, you know, kind of just to show that there was something, you know, but but, you know, kind of like one can see that there is a little bit of a deer in the headlights situation, I think, you know, kind of in these interviews.
GERAUD NEEMA: And I think maybe this is why this is why he didn’t want to lean on the painful part, because when I was watching, when I was listening to him, I felt that he kind of perceived that there was a sense where the journalists wanted him to show that the Zambian government really went hard on them. The Zambian government really so hard on them to the point where their mining license was under, you know, under danger. And as if if there was no such reaction from the Zambian government, there was not enough reaction.
So that’s why I think that he did not want to go that part of like how much they gave, you know, how much was the penalty, because, you know, that would open a old kind of wound debating how much Zambian government dealt with the situation. So that way, we only stopped it like, you know, it was painful. But I think he perceived the kind of game.
But to your point, something that’s something that’s really quite commendable is the fact that, yes, he was willing to talk to the media, knowing that. And I know in the past that people were saying that Sino-Metal have been trying to kind of solve the issue and all of that. But if they don’t talk to the media, it’s going to all be they’re going to be portrayed badly.
So they need to talk to the media. And I think that, yes, it was like, let us try to talk to the media and tell our part of the story in this narrative.
ERIC OLANDER: The part that I was a little bit frustrated about was that this was originally supposed to air in May, and it’s aired two months later. The situation around the Kifuwe has changed considerably, quite a bit. And as you have documented, along with our colleague Obert Borey, there has been quite a bit of collaboration between Sino-Metals and the Zambian government on the cleanup.
That’s number one. It would have been nice to have a little bit of an update since they had two months to do this to give us some context, because right now the perception was that this was something that happened, you know, it’s at the two months ago level of talking about it, not where we are today. Number two is the Kifuwe River is very, very long, as you pointed out.
Millions of people depend on it. The horrific environmental damage was not done to the entire river. I would have liked to have some context as to how much of the river and how many people were impacted by that, as opposed to just saying the river, because these are massive rivers in that sense.
Yes.
GERAUD NEEMA: Also, to avoid us the headlines of like a Chinese, a Chinese mining company killed the river in Zambia.
ERIC OLANDER: That’s right. That was the Associated Press headline, which was exaggerated to, you know, to a great degree. The other thing was that right after that line of questioning that we just saw, Mwenda then went in to say, well, what is the Chinese government going to do?
What is the role of the Chinese government? And Mr. Wong was kind of looking a little bit perplexed. And there’s exactly, you know, like this doesn’t have anything to do with the Chinese government.
And he said, well, the Chinese government has many resources. Are they going to come and help us? And he was like, this is a company issue, not a governmental issue.
And I think this is something that we we deal with a lot around the world where there’s a conflation between the Chinese government and Chinese companies and Chinese individuals. It all kind of comes into one. And this isn’t the jurisdiction of the Chinese government to do anything in Zambia.
And so that’s just a little bit on the China literacy side there. So a little we talked about media training for obviously for Mr. Wong, which would have helped. But you know, we know from our own interactions that Chinese corporates are starting to use PR agencies.
They’re starting to get a little bit more savvy about this. But to Cobus is good advice. I think they would have benefited enormously from a lot of media training on that one.
Let’s now go to the last clip on this one. And this is where I think, again, I was a little bit, you know, skeptical or not skeptical, just kind of like wincing a little bit in the first part of the documentary. The second part of the documentary talks about some of the illegalities.
And one of the things I really appreciated about what Mwenda and the News Diggers team did was that they called out the Zambian government as much as they called out the Chinese. And one of the points that they called out for was the lack of enforcement of immigration laws. So they started to highlight some of the illegal mining operations that are being done by Chinese or allegedly being done by Chinese individuals several times or at least twice.
Some of these individuals were deported and then let back into the country again. This is something that we saw in Ghana with Aisha Wong and the Galamze Queen, where the you know, how is it possible that after she was deported, she made it back into the country again? Let’s take a listen now to the part where they’re talking about a company called Avocado Mining and a Chinese individual who is operating illegally.
SOUNDBITE: Mr. Chung Hua Ma is a famous Chinese investor. With his brothers, they run a number of businesses, among them a company called Avocado Mining Limited. They buy copper and process it.
But as revealed by the government, they do this business illegally while flaunting environmental laws. As we explain in the next chapter, several Chinese mine investors buy copper or cheaply from the black market, some of it stolen. Around 2016, Mr. Chung Hua was deported from Zambia after he was arrested in connection with the theft of copper belonging to a named mine. The circumstances surrounding his return to Zambia around 2019 are not clear, as the government record on this case have allegedly been expunged. How he had his deportation case overturned remains a mystery.
ERIC OLANDER: So, Cobus, there’s those governance issues that keep coming back again, that a lot of this illegality is allowed to flourish simply because the governance is not there to enforce the laws.
COBUS VAN STADEN: Yeah. And, you know, very, very frequently, you know, China, quote unquote, kind of stands in for, like, you know, for this kind of wider issue of how the government is selling us out, you know. And I’ve seen examples of this right across the continent, very, very significantly in South Africa and in many other African countries, too.
And it’s interesting that it is such as kind of an ongoing problem and that neither African governments nor Chinese entities have found a way of adding kind of nuance into that conversation or kind of questioning that point. Right. And they all end up kind of like, basically, it frequently feels to me that this conversation ends up kind of like just going in circles, basically, because it’s essentially allegations and complaints raised, like, hooked to the theme of the Chinese, the Chinese, you know, going to be in order to gain a lot of media attention.
And then it dies there somewhere, you know, and it basically goes dormant.
ERIC OLANDER: OK, so unlike in Kinshasa and the Congolese videos I mentioned, the Chinese embassy in Lusaka did respond and responded forcefully to it. Let me read the statement. And then Jeho and Cobus, I’d like to get your reaction to it.
I’m only going to be part of the statement because it was a very long statement that they posted on their Facebook page. We noticed with grave concern that News Diggers aired its documentary Chinese Investment in Zambia, The Good, The Bad and The Dangerous, which deliberately downplays China’s contributions to Zambia’s economic and social development while dwelling excessively on negative stories about China, including a number of criminal cases, not even remotely related to Chinese Investments, raising serious questions about and this is my favorite part, raising serious questions about the hidden motives behind it and professional competence of its production team. We urge the relevant media house to act as a responsible player, free of bias and correct its mistakes by covering Chinese investment stories in a more balanced, objective and fair manner.
Jeho, do you think that criticism and that rebuttal from the Chinese embassy was reasonable?
GERAUD NEEMA: It was. I think it was reasonable to a certain extent. It was reasonable in a sense where when you look at the documentaries, from what I see, of course, you have the beginning is the first three minutes where, you know, they’re praising China’s contribution to Zambia’s economy, infrastructure and investment, all of that.
But at the same time, also in the middle of the documentary, they also mentioned the fact that who are those Chinese who are ruining the reputation of China’s Zambia relationship and all of that. But in the overall narrative of the documentary, you kind of have the feeling there is a conflation between those Chinese individuals and the Chinese state. And this is the part in terms of reporting of the issues.
At the end, what people keep in mind is like China, China embassy, the China state, all of that, which at the end do not provide the necessary nuances when you cover the issue about Chinese engagement in Africa and who they are. And of course, I understand that the Chinese Chamber of Commerce in Lusaka really tried not to get that out, which I believe made the situation even worse, even worse by doing what they did. They should have let it air.
That’s right.
ERIC OLANDER: If they just let it go, nobody would have even noticed.
GERAUD NEEMA: But the fact that they really went to court to search to search for a court injunction against that just made a publicity for that. So when it was released, it was like, oh, that was a trick to hide.
ERIC OLANDER: I mean, yeah, news takers couldn’t probably believe their luck when this happened because it’s the best marketing that ever happened. Yeah, but it was much, much left in that needed to be added in the story, in the coverage. What I found interesting in the Chinese statement is that you and I have seen these over the years, and oftentimes there is an insinuation, direct or indirect, that the West is somehow involved in this financing.
And remember, we saw in Zimbabwe that there was this whole meme about the U.S. embassy paying a thousand dollars for negative stories about China. We’ve seen this in a number of cases where they literally will name the West as code for the U.S. in particular. They can’t do that in this particular case.
And they did not, in their statement, mention the West. The hidden agenda is a possible reference to it. Not sure, but that could be anything.
Did that surprise you that there was no reference to the U.S. or the West for somehow being responsible or behind this? Because they’ve often portrayed any times there is criticism of China that, you know, and they do this in Asia and other parts of the world as well. This couldn’t be because of the people who want to do this because the people love China.
This has to be because of the malign influence of the United States that’s masterminding and controlling all of this. We didn’t hear that. Maybe the hidden agenda was a reference to that.
But what’s your take on that?
COBUS VAN STADEN: I assume that this is also a reflection of Newsdigger’s prominence in Zambia itself. You know, yeah, I wasn’t particularly surprised that you do not see it, you know. But, you know, at the same time, even though those kind of references were not in there, like the larger logic of kind of X documentary is there to undermine us rather than raising some concrete issues about our engagement in the country, you know, is ongoing, right?
Kind of. And, you know, that is less surprising to me. What I sometimes find a little frustrating about the African framing to the other side of this is like it is as if there’s this kind of ongoing treatment of Chinese engagement in Africa as somehow new, right?
Kind of all unique, right? So then rather than, you know, so there’s very little kind of comparison between China and other external actors in, you know, kind of in Africa. And there’s also this kind of weird, almost like implication of relations with China.
Yes or no? You know, as if as if there’s going to be a kind of a decision made and then they’re going to be cutting off all relations with China rather than how can we improve the relationship or how can we kind of keep this kind of nightmare from starting? But of course, as I say that, I understand one reason for that, which is that there’s a complete loss of faith in the government.
So the answer to that question is how can we keep this from happening again is better governments and better implementation. And no one believes that that will ever happen. So they need to then find a different answer to that question.
You know, so I think that it kind of reflects the larger kind of problem that I think a lot of a lot of African publics find themselves in.
ERIC OLANDER: Yeah, I think that’s a fascinating point there. Joe, I’m going to give you the last word on this Zambia documentary before we move on.
GERAUD NEEMA: I’m going to go back to the point that you raised about the influence, malignant influence from the U.S. I’m suspecting that you’re not mentioning because USAID is not there anymore because.
ERIC OLANDER: Yeah, I mean, and also the Global Engagement Center, which was the big State Department anti-China thing that’s been disbanded. You literally cannot accuse the United States now of funding media because it does not exist anymore. Trump doesn’t care about any of that stuff.
GERAUD NEEMA: Yeah, so I’m suspecting that would be something that was in the in the back of their mind. That’s why they don’t mention it. But something also caught my attention in the communique is the fact that at the end of the communique, they called out the Chinese themselves.
The Chinese embassy called out the illegal Chinese operation in Zambia, saying that reminding the Chinese you have to abide by the law in Zambia, you have to fall. And even encouraging the Zambian government to take action against any Chinese who are engaging in illegal activities in Zambia. So I kind of at the end, when I was reading the communique, I have that balance of like, we are not happy by the fact that there was an overwhelming negative coverage about what China does.
We’re not happy about the fact that we are kind of conflated individual Chinese with the China, China as a state. But at the same time, we also want to acknowledge that among us, among our citizens, there are some bad apple. And we are calling you out as Zambians and Zambian authorities, do your job, arrest them.
And we’re not going to stand in your way if you do your job to do that. So, yes, I found their reaction quite balanced. And at the same time, I thought it was not really needed to go against them.
And that’s hard.
ERIC OLANDER: And we have to be very clear here that the illegal activities of Chinese entities in African countries and elsewhere is a pain in the ass for these embassies. The Chinese embassy in Kinshasa was very outspoken during the previous ambassador. Who was the ambassador?
That was Zhu Jing, very frustrated with what was happening in the eastern Congo, in the south, in North Kivu, in Ituri province, with illegal Chinese mining, all the way to the point where they gave an ultimatum and they said, listen, guys, if you don’t get out, we’re not going to help you. And they’ve also expressed frustration in Ghana over illegal mining there as well. So, again, just to Cobus’ point, more nuance in terms of who the Chinese are and that they’re not all one big kind of, you know, monotonous group.
But the illegal activities is something that the Chinese embassies around the world have tried to distance themselves from those of local, you know, local actors. And also when Chinese are arrested for conducting illegal activities, the Chinese embassy does not intervene on their behalf to save them. So I just want to I think just want to make that kind of that point before we go.
GERAUD NEEMA: Allow me to add something on that point, I think, because I want to make I’m going to make a video on that. Those who are connected are going to see the video. I’m quite frustrated the way media and NGO report on those issues in a sense where when they call out Chinese embassy as if they want the Chinese embassy to police the Chinese citizen in our countries, which they cannot do.
And this is the part is like we have to become responsible. We know them.
ERIC OLANDER: Think about the logic of that. Did you go? If you had the Chinese embassy policing the behavior of their people, that would be a blatant violation of Zambia’s sovereignty.
Exactly. Exactly.
GERAUD NEEMA: We cannot be expecting they want they want embassies to be calling them. You know, you have to behave. You have to behave.
That’s not the job. We have to do our job as country, as host country, as government. We have to do our job.
Arrest illegal miners, arrest illegal activities. We have to do our job. We have to stop outsourcing our responsibility to foreign diplomat and embassies hoping they will, you know, pull the heels of the citizen and stop doing bad things on the country.
And this I think that there is a sense of like we have agreed we already accepted that our government is useless. So the only option that we have left is bashing the foreign countries because they are not doing enough to restrain the citizens on doing bad things in our country.
COBUS VAN STADEN: And in the process, using the prominence of the outsiders in order to then add heat on the government, because if you’re only covering government dysfunction, no one will even listen. No one in the public or the government will even listen. So the only way to draw attention to it is by hooking it to a China story, I think.
ERIC OLANDER: Exactly. Let’s move on to our next clip again. This is all in the space of 10 days that all these clips have come out.
A very fascinating kind of condensed period of time where we’re getting all these media images. Now we’re going to big blockbuster Chinese movies. Ever since, you know, Wolf Warrior came out, I think it was almost 10 years ago or more than 10 years ago.
Africa has turned into a very popular setting for Chinese TV shows and increasingly movies. We’ve had movies about the evacuation of Chinese nationals from Libya. Again, they didn’t say Libya.
They just kind of made it a fictitious North African country, which just so happens to be a same country kind of environment where Chinese were evacuated from the Libyan civil war. Then there was also during the period of Ebola, they did a Tencent did a whole series, like a drama series on Chinese doctors going to West Africa. Again, not mentioning the names, but that was called Ebola Fighters.
Then there was another one during the COVID time where the Chinese doctors went to a country that was believed to be Tanzania or Kenya. And it was these these doctors sacrificing so much for them to go and save Africans from these devastating diseases. One of the things that we’ve seen over the years is how much more and I want you to look at this in the clip that we’re going to be playing next is how much the iconography and the imagery of Africa in Chinese blockbuster movies now starts to look at the very stereotypical caricature that we saw coming out of Hollywood for it for decades and decades.
Let me tell you about this new movie. In Chinese, it’s Yong Wu Zhi Di. There’s not an easy translation for it.
The official translation is the point of no return. Here is the setting. The film adapts and I’m going from their their handouts of their of their materials.
And I translate this from Chinese, so it’s a little bit weird. But the film adapts a harrowing true story of overseas hostages, a Chinese couple, a reporter by the actress Ma Xiao and a volunteer doctor. Again, there’s that doctor theme that we’re seeing again.
Pan Wenjia, a company engineer Miao Feng to repair a cell tower in a violent, unstable region abroad. By the way, that violent, unstable region just happens to have a lot of black people in it. So that’s the giveaway that we’re in Africa.
Suddenly the area erupts into conflict and they are abducted by an extremist group. By the way, this abduction theme is something that’s increasingly prominent in Chinese movies. In movies about Southeast Asia, being abducted into scam centers have been huge at the box office.
So this is a theme that is obviously playing into an anxiety that Chinese consumers have. Inside captivity, they meet Zhou Weijie, a fellow captive of Chinese descent. Together, they face escalating threats, gunfire, explosions, assassinations and endure brutal conditions as they attempt a desperate escape across a chaotic war zone.
The film explores their fight for survival against overwhelming odds. Let’s take a listen and watch it. For those of you again listening to the podcast, it’s very short.
Don’t don’t fast forward. It’s only 15 seconds. But for those of you watching on YouTube, here we go.
So North Africa, Middle East, a little bit of everything. Again, they don’t like to put the that’s the teaser, that’s the trailer that we’re getting there. Cobus, one of the things that we’re seeing in a lot of these movies is how vulnerable Chinese nationals are abroad while trying to do good.
That is the theme that we’ve seen in a lot of these. What’s your that 15 second take? What’s your take?
COBUS VAN STADEN: I think it’s a grappling, a part of a larger kind of media grappling around China’s international influence, like China kind of emerging a superpower in the world with with this kind of engagement everywhere around for a population that are that is, you know, while kind of outward immigration of Chinese is, of course, a very long, long term, you know, kind of process, a long term trend as a kind of a as a home population.
I think a lot of Chinese are not used to this full international role, you know. So and when one sees in moments in Hollywood cinema, a similar kind of grappling with, you know, with with trying to trying to work out what it means to be present everywhere as the United States in the past and as China now, you know, and of course, you know, that that is then kind of coupled with with a very rosy idea of, you know, of what this international engagement is, you know, it’s medical volunteerism and so on, which, of course, is based on, you know, there’s a lot of Chinese medical volunteers in the world, you know, but that’s not the only things that the Chinese actors do in the world.
But but, you know, it is a significant one. But then, you know, it is this kind of ambiguous, as you see frequently in Hollywood cinema as well, this kind of ambiguous play between inside and outside, right, kind of like where there is this kind of assumption that going out, being a being a global power is is a natural part of China’s DNA or, you know, kind of its mission in the world. But at the same time, there’s this very deep ambivalence about what it means to be out there.
And it’s, you know, kind of the characters almost never rewarded for being out there, right, because they always go through hell, you know, once once they’re out of the the kind of the safe fold.
ERIC OLANDER: That’s right. It’s either violent sacrifices or emotional sacrifices, but there’s always a big sacrifice. Gérard, go ahead.
But which was the question of like, why are they doing that?
GERAUD NEEMA: Because at the same time, you want to portray an image of like, you know, we are playing the hero on places where no countries are able to be there. But at the same time, you’re portraying you playing the hero being a dangerous thing. Do you want to to lead people to say what we don’t want to go play hero or if we play hero, if people are going to be ungrateful to us or what’s the message there?
Because at the same time as well, we also know that Chinese do not intervene military into going to free their people from those hostages because we have cases of hostage taking in Mali, in Nigeria, which is quite frequent. But we don’t see Chinese policemen or Chinese army going down to down the ground, which with Nigerian army trying to release them. So we have all those kind of complexity in the narrative they’re portraying about what they can do or what they want to do.
But at the same time, showing the outside world being dangerous. So when I look at it, I’m like, at the end, what’s the message here? What’s the goal here into the message that you are portraying here?
Because if you want to play hero, you have to play hero all through. At the end, you go, you’re abducted and you’re abducted. You show your might by sending military going to release your people.
But you don’t do that.
ERIC OLANDER: So, well, you remember at the end of Wolf Warrior, Wu Jing, who is the star, you know, said famously as he was being, you know, taken through the savannah, where it just happens to be there were giraffes, very conveniently. And I said, where’s your America? You know, China’s coming.
And then the last shot is of the Chinese fleet, you know, descending onto this fictitious African country. So, I mean, and I thought that was a very dangerous expectation to send, as I said, you know.
COBUS VAN STADEN: Well, the last, if I remember correctly, the last image was actually an image of a Chinese passport. And like with the kind of image of wherever, wherever the Chinese are in danger, like the Chinese state will come, right? Like that, that was, but the thing is, so, you know, that’s a dangerous expectation to set because the Chinese, as you know, says they don’t do that.
Well, the thing is also is that that’s not like Wolf Warrior was so notable because it was such an outlier in terms of fictional narrative, right? Really went full propaganda, basically, you know, full messaging, at least, you know, whereas like most kind of entertainment, that is what entertainment does, is it sets up a zone of ambiguity, right? Kind of way where you can play out different options, you know, in a kind of a gamified way, rather than imposing like, you know, meaning or at least not imposing it until the right at the end.
So, I think, you know, that seems like the nature of entertainment media itself kind of like adds a kind of a layer of complexity in there. That’s something that documentary or news messaging doesn’t.
ERIC OLANDER: It’s interesting, Coppice, because comparing Chinese image framing of the outside world or Africa and North Africa, in this case, we just recently had the anniversary of Live Aid. And, you know, in our circles, Live Aid is one of these things that is just kind of ridiculed because of how condescending and patronizing. Do they know it’s Christmas in Africa?
But it’s interesting in the West how they celebrate this idea of, you know, we did something good for the poor black people of Africa. That was it’s this charity, it’s the white savior kind of narrative is running very, very strong when Bob Geldof was interviewed in this. And I just I see some interesting parallels between the savior mentalities that were coming out of some of these Chinese media and then also this Live Aid narrative as well.
Coppice, I’d be interested to get your take on that.
COBUS VAN STADEN: Yeah, I mean, with that comes the, so definitely there is kind of white savior slash Chinese savior narratives in there. What comes with it, which is something that you also see in a movie, I don’t know if you remember, like there was a movie, I think, called Beyond Borders starring Angelina Jolie a bunch of years ago, where she’s is literally aid workers in love. You know, it’s like they, you know, they’re in a war zone, but they’re falling in love.
Right. So so what what all of these movies tend to do is that is that it just it it just sets up these these these countries as just fundamentally unstable, fundamentally violent, fundamentally for for no real reason. Right.
Like there’s no there’s no kind of causation to explain how the country’s got this way. And so in that sense, I think there’s definitely an overlap between between ongoing kind of portrayals of Africa, because Africa has always played that role. Right.
And it’s always played the role of in Western imaginations of the space of no law, space of no no kind of logic even. Right. But it also it echoes representations of the Middle East, I think, coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan movies much more recently, you know, kind of where, again, like it’s a it’s a space of despair and lawlessness, but zero kind of interrogation of how those spaces got to be like that to begin with.
GERAUD NEEMA: But this is where you also see the contradiction between Chinese media and Chinese movie industry. Eric, I think you remember when we had a Chinese journalist on the show a few years back when they were still when they were telling us that it’s positive journalism. You know, Chinese media are doing positive journalism in Africa because we already know what’s the big media are doing about Africa.
Africa is a land of disease, instability, corruption and all of that. We don’t want to tell that story. We want to tell a positive story about Africa.
That’s why we don’t cover corruption, all those kind of issues. But at the same time, you go on the media front, you go you go on the on the movie front, you have a different story. They’re really leaning hard on the perception that Africa is the place where you have to go save people from disease, save people from instability, save people from corruption, from bad governance and all of that.
You kind of like at the end, as I say, what’s the messaging here? What’s what are you talking to and what the message you want to portray about Africa at the end? Because your media are doing something else and your movie industry is also basically leaning hard on the part of like where you can play hero.
You cannot pay you in Europe because there’s nothing there. You can only play hero hero in Africa, in the Middle East.
ERIC OLANDER: Well, you could not have helped me better with the segue in the transition, so we’ve talked about the official narratives, the narratives coming out of the embassies, the narratives coming out of main big blockbuster movies. But then there’s a whole other part of this, which is Chinese social media. And there’s a whole different story that’s being told on Chinese social media.
One of the things that we’ve showcased over the years are Chinese vloggers in Ethiopia and Kenya and other places that do what vloggers do. And just like influencers, they document their daily lives living in these places. And they’re telling very complex, textured, nuanced pictures about what life is like in Africa, far more accurate and balanced and detailed than anything that we see coming out of the movies.
And certainly from these extremely violent little clips where you don’t get any context of things. Obviously, when you watch an influencer, you follow their journey over days, months, weeks and years, you get a story. So just last week, again, again, very interesting.
And all this is coming at the same time. A beautiful documentary dropped on Bilibili. Bilibili, for those of you who are not familiar, is one of China’s largest social media, social video platforms.
And this is called Lesap. It’s a newly released two and a half hour documentary about Lesap, which is the fashion culture. It’s called The Fashion Bible by Chinese travel vlogger, former state media journalist Zhang Jun.
He’s known online as Uncle Bing. And this fascinating documentary is recorded in French, but subtitled in Chinese. And it documents his journey through the Lesap culture, which is a flamboyant, very beautiful fashion subculture in Brazzaville in the Republic of Congo.
Again, you can just see how beautifully shot this is. And again, this goes on for two and a half hours and it’s beautifully shot, beautifully told. And this is again, and it’s getting tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of views on Bilibili.
And there’s a lot of videos like this that are out there. Giro, this is very close to you across the river in Brazzaville. What’s your thoughts and reaction to this?
GERAUD NEEMA: I loved it. I loved it in every possible way, in a sense where Lesap is also something that really comes from Kinshasa with Papa Wemba and all those musicians. It’s something that those two capitals, Kinshasa and Brazzaville, do share in common overseas.
And I really liked it in a way that we have, for the first time, a Chinese vlogger going into talking about a topic that we don’t always cover about China, about Africa and China, you know, talking about the fashion culture in Africa. And when you bring that in Bilibili, you realize that from the comment, you realize that many Chinese were discovering that, wow, there is a fashion culture in the DRC. In Congo, Brazzaville, there is a fashion culture in Africa where people really are making it a point, despite poverty, despite hardship.
We’re making it a point to wear good clothes, to be really well, you know, well fashioned and all because we are really trying to be there. And in the covering of the story, it was really interesting how he leaned into the part where he started questioning on why the Western fashion became the standardized sense of luxury, you know, in terms of fashion, why people feel the need that if I have to wear a costume, I have to wear this to really feel that this is for me, my sense of like high level of luxury. Why not having your own?
What it’s really went into the identity of luxury, the identity of fashion, all of that in once in one single video. I really loved it. It was really a video where you learn when you see a lot of things you learn, you ask a lot of questions.
ERIC OLANDER: Yeah. I want to give a shout out to our China editor, Han Chen, who found this video and wrote about it on our site. So you can go on.
It’s not behind the paywall, so you can go check it out. And there’s a detailed she wrote a detailed story about it. One of the things that’s funny, and there’s Zhang Jun right there.
You can see him. One of the interesting things is that he took a lot of note when they looked at where the clothes were made. They took great pride, the Chinese team, that the fact that it was made in China and they said that this was part of the kind of China, Congo, Lesabre, you know, connection that’s there.
So they feel that the Chinese are integral to Lesabre. But there you see Zhang right on site explaining this subculture to a Chinese audience. This is not going through any Western prism, any Western interpretation.
This is as direct as you get when you’re talking about kind of engaging Chinese and African cultures. Yeah, this is fascinating.
COBUS VAN STADEN: It’s so beautifully made, so beautifully shot as well. So, yeah, this is phenomenal. I think it’s really interesting.
I think it’s also, to my mind, I think it’s an early indicator of something that if you live in Africa or particularly some African centers, it’s something that you already see happening on the ground, which is that Africa is producing a fashion and music youth wave that’s going to eat Hollywood whole. Like it’s that, you know, kind of this is the early, early green tendrils of what is going to be a continent, the kind of music and music and fashion wave you get when you have a billion teenagers at your disposal. This is only the very, very beginning of what is going to be the dominant pop culture kind of driver of the rest of the century.
We’re already seeing kind of like American music stars largely supplanted from African charts. You know, like Beyonce is popular, but Africa doesn’t need her, you know, because they’re producing, they already have Tyler, right? It was a very interesting moment, like the last Met Gala, which obviously was focused on black dandyism as a theme.
It was a very revealing kind of like moment just before the Met Gala, where New York magazine had this kind of like spread of like who’s going to be invited to the Met Gala and they had four celebrities there. Only Dolce was American, but obviously black American. But then are you Adibari and Tyler and Burnaboy?
All people with very strong first generation African connections and or still, you know, kind of living in Africa and some of the biggest pop stars in the world already. Right. So, you know, kind of the same thing is happening with fashion.
Like, you know, there’s a wave of designers coming up from South Africa, from Ghana, you know, and so on. That’s going to reshape how people dress coming, you know, kind of a few years down the line. It’s very interesting for them to see how China is going to picking up on that.
ERIC OLANDER: Yeah. And I think on this on this vein of fashion and culture, one of the things that I’m taking away from these Bilibili videos and this particular one is that a lot of young people in China are not consuming mainstream media either. And so their interpretations of Africa are going to be much more influenced and shaped by what they see on social media by this kind of stuff than even what they see in the Blockbuster movies that a lot of, you know, the movie business is struggling quite a bit.
I’d say that compared to any of these movies, these videos on Bilibili get infinitely more views collectively on social media. You know, one of the things that took me by surprise was how much access Zhang got into these different cultures, which is not easy. You can’t just walk up into these cultures and say, I want to film you.
I mean, clearly he built relationships with them where they felt comfortable to talk to him and to let him in into their world.
GERAUD NEEMA: Oh, yes, there’s also that. But there’s also the fact that the subculture, the Saper, as the way we call them in Kinshasa and Brazzaville, the Saper, they like to be seen. They like to be filmed.
You know, when you have someone who say, I want to talk to you, I want to portray you, they’re going to be willing, willingfully, they’re going to take you to their houses, to their home, to show you what they were, to tell you the whole story, to tell you it’s not just for us, it’s not just a gimmick. It’s our identity, it’s our culture. This is how we see things, this is how we do things.
And I think they did it with so much pride that they were really happy. They used to see, you know, the France 2, France 24, RFE, but now they saw a Chinese, not a big media, but a Chinese vlogger. Oh, yes, definitely.
We’re going to talk to you, we’re going to show you what we can do and who we are. They were really happy about it. And that, for me, it was really something really interesting.
And mind you, this video comes a few weeks after another video from another vlogger walking on the street of Brazzaville, talking about food, street food in Congo, Brazzaville, which also sparked another debate in China. That was also different stories there.
ERIC OLANDER: Yeah, exactly. That’s right, that’s right. And Han Jun found that one as well.
Yes. And street food. So these fascinating videos which are taking place will have links to all of these in the show notes.
I cannot recommend this one on the Sapeur. It is in French and in Chinese, so it’s a little bit difficult. There’s no English version of it, but even just watching it is beautiful and it’s beautifully shot, beautifully produced.
And again, I think it should add to our understanding of how Africa is being presented within Chinese culture, which again is a very, very complex spectrum. Okay, gentlemen, we’ve seen a wide range of images that came through this past week, let’s kind of step back now and try and process all of this from the violent social video to the documentary in Zambia, to the blockbuster Chinese movie, all the way to the documentary about the Sapeur. Cobus, what’s your takeaway from these past two weeks of these images?
COBUS VAN STADEN: I mean, you know, obviously the range of them is very, very interesting and revealing. You know, it also, I think what it reflects is the broad range of audiences involved, right? Kind of because something like the Chinese blockbuster, there’s a strong overlap between the US and China in the sense that they’re both countries with huge home audiences, right?
And so therefore, the home audience perspective dominates. It’s, you know, even though like, you know, Hollywood and Chinese film gets, they get kind of sent around the world, the perspective that the narration takes is still from a home audience perspective. And that per definition means that when that home audience is taken to a foreign locale, their preoccupations rule the story and the foreign locale gets kind of flattered, right?
So that then stands, it’s very interesting to then contrast both to something like the Sapeur documentary, which is much more, you know, kind of involved in trying to explain what things are like or why things are like they are. But it’s also, it stands in an interesting contrast to all of the kind of entertainment media that’s being produced in Africa now, you know, where African audiences are the home audience and where increasingly there’s been a South African, you know, comedy recently that was taking place in Mauritius, for example. And it’s an early indication of a similar kind of like large home audience taking itself to a foreign locale, I mean, African locale, but still an off-continent locale, and flattening that locale in order to tell its own story, right?
Kind of a story about like, you know, romance and falling in love and will it work out and, you know, so on. So there is this kind of like ongoing kind of like interesting cycle of this, where a place gets flattened and then rounded, you know, kind of in different moments of this kind of like development of a mass media audience. That’s a fascinating thing to see.
ERIC OLANDER: Geraud, your perspectives on all of this and what we’ve seen today, help us make sense of everything.
GERAUD NEEMA: For me, it was, I see all of that and just wonder, what’s the part that we’re playing as Africans to tell our own story in Chinese media and elsewhere? So far, of course, we have the News Digger, much more destined to a local audience. But I think that we have to start to take advantage of social media to start telling the story of Africa on other, in other spaces, in China, for example.
So far, Chinese are coming to Africa, you know, vlogging and, you know, sharing videos of Africa in China. But I think that there’s an opportunity for us that social medias are offering to the youth, to the young content creators in Africa, to the media organization in Africa, to be able to start telling Africa’s story to a Chinese audience and what kind of story we want to tell. And we have the advantage here to have an audience that may not share the same level of bias from a Western media, from a Western audience where we have colonialism already playing in the background, the blackface, all of those stories already being bagged there.
We can have the opportunity, you know, to tell our own story to an audience that’s kind of eager to discover what’s happened on the continent. Who are those young Africans? What do they do?
What’s happening there? We’ve seen Amapiano classes being opened in Shanghai. What opportunity do we take into sharing our culture and our own image in those spaces?
And how do we do that? And for me, it’s going to be the big takeaway in terms of question how Africans are now taking the wheel and the conversation to portray themselves to a Chinese audience, not the other way around. And just remind us, what is Amapiano just before we go?
COBUS VAN STADEN: It’s a kind of a techno dance music that comes out of South Africa that has very specific and intricate kind of dance trends. Which, by the way, in South Africa, it’s like South Africans dance you off the table.
ERIC OLANDER: But and also just just by the way, Amapiano, I think it was a year ago and I’ll see if I can find it. There was a fascinating Fujianese rapper who incorporated Amapiano beats into it. So we’re seeing some of this fusion even taking place again.
This was in Fujianese rap, not even in Mandarin rap or canto pop, which is very popular. So these these these cross pollinations are happening at all levels. Gentlemen, we we went a little bit longer than usual, but we felt that there was so much to talk about today.
We wanted to do it. So thank you so much for taking the time today. Of course, Jiho and Cobus, they spend all their days working to help expand the understanding of these complex issues that really suffer from a lot of ignorance around the world and to support the work that they’re doing and everybody at the China Global South project around the world in Asia, Africa, the Middle East.
The best thing you can do is to subscribe. Go to China Global South dot com slash subscribe and you’ll get the newsletter that Cobus works very hard on every day to put together along with Jiho and the rest of the team. Your support and our Patreon supporters and everybody else is so important to be able to keep us going in this very volatile world that independent media does not stand a good chance in surviving, including us, where we feel like we’re the salmon swimming upstream every day.
So your support is very important. So we’ll leave it there, guys. And I’m just about to wrap it up.
Make it quick. Yes, I’m proud of us.
GERAUD NEEMA: We made three out of three roundtable. We’ve done that and we’ve been struggling to do that. We’ve done that three weeks in a row.
We did it three. So, yes, we’ll do it.
ERIC OLANDER: And I’m going back to Southeast Asia, so we’ll be on a more regular schedule and we’re going to do our roundtable for those of you on YouTube. And again, we want to thank everybody listening to us and watching us. And we’ll be back again next week with another edition of the China in Africa podcast.
Thank you so much for listening and for watching.
