China on the global stage

Chinese state-affiliated companies are increasingly investing in Africa’s media infrastructure. This carries the risk of “diluted” journalism, particularly given the precarious state of the continent’s media industry.

China has undeniably come to play a key part in Africa’s development story. The crucial question now is whether African countries can shape this role in line with their own visions.

Since the early 1980s, China has become a country which leads the world in terms of exports. That was neither brought about by Communist dogmatism nor by free-market orthodoxy, but by the regime’s pragmatism, as Stefan Dercon of Oxford University argues.