Making the World Safe for Dictatorship by Alexander Dukalskis

Author:Alexander Dukalskis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2021-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

The idea is that these journalists can help “tell China’s story well” and show how much foreigners admire China. This starts on the trip itself. For example, a story reproduced in several of China’s official media platforms headlined “Visiting Journalists Give Glowing Report” summarized the 10-month program and quoted speeches at the closing ceremony.3 It highlighted two participants—one from Cameroon and one from the Philippines—who both spoke about China in glowing terms, even repeating CCP talking points directly. According to the speakers, the program would help counteract “persistent negative reporting by a section of the international media” and taught journalists that “China is prepared to become a close partner and friend of any country that aspires to economic prosperity for its people.”

When the journalists are in China, they produce stories that are then run in their home media outlet. The implication is that these will be positive, or at least anodyne. Returning to the example from Zambia is instructive. The Zambian Daily Mail is a partner and its journalists have been participants in these efforts.4 Stories from its web archive of China-related content are unrelentingly positive, in part because the paper reproduces Xinhua stories on a regular basis. However, many of its stories from Zambian journalists in China or about China are propagandistic in tone: “China Living Its Opening Up Dream,” “Traversing Beautiful China,” “Africa Unites to Stop Anti-China Crusade,” “Lessons from China,” “China: Reaching out to Africa,” and so on.

However, not all journalists who travel on junkets return home as unfailingly pro-CCP. Dorothy Wickham, a journalist from the Solomon Islands, reflected on her sponsored visit to China in The Guardian (Wickham 2019). Two months after the country switched its diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to the PRC, the Chinese government sponsored a “look and learn” tour for Solomon Islands journalists. Wickham revealed her complex feelings about the trip. She was impressed with the scale of Chinese development but wary of the fact that the trip was scripted to preclude the possibility of talking about personal rights or everyday life with ordinary people. Mostly she was concerned that her own country was not prepared to deal with China and stood a good chance of getting taken advantage of in this new relationship.

Like Wickham, interviews with three African journalists who participated in Beijing-sponsored programs through the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs between 2017 and 2020 reveal more complex views of China than propagandistic stories suggest. Of course, these are respondents willing to speak with an academic writing about the themes in this book, so they cannot necessarily be considered representative, but their perspectives do reveal that the people who encounter Beijing’s journalistic hospitality are sometimes skeptical targets. The interviews were conducted virtually, and to protect anonymity no identifying information will be given here. Because the programs generally select one journalist from each African country, even mentioning the person’s country of origin could be identifying, so interviewee characteristics or demographics will not be reported here.5

Journalists were recruited for their fellowship via the Chinese embassy in their home country.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.