In his capacity as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on African Affairs, one of the things Senator Coons has kept close tabs on is China’s rapidly expanding influence on the African continent. Typically that means watching investments in highways and hospitals, low-interest loans and subtantially increased trade, but the New York Times this week took a look at another area where China is making in-roads: the news.
At a time when most Western broadcasting and newspaper companies are retrenching, China’s state-run news media giants are rapidly expanding in Africa and across the developing world. They are hoping to bolster China’s image and influence around the globe, particularly in regions rich in the natural resources needed to fuel China’s powerhouse industries and help feed its immense population.
The $7 billion campaign, part of a Chinese Communist Party bid to expand the country’s soft power, is based in part on the notion that biased Western news media have painted a distorted portrait of China.
“Hostile international powers are strengthening their efforts to Westernize and divide us,” President Hu Jintao wrote this year in a party journal. “We must be aware of the seriousness and complexity of the struggles and take powerful measures to prevent and deal with them.”
Beijing’s bid to provide a counterpoint to Western influence, however, is raising alarms among human rights activists, news media advocates and American officials, who cite a record of censorship that has earned China a reputation as one of the world’s most restrictive countries for journalism.
“We are engaged in an information war, and we are losing that war,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned a Congressional committee last year, citing the growing influence of state-backed outlets like Russia Today and CCTV.