Africa Cognitive Twice Changes

To Chinese people, Africa is a continent both familiar and unfamiliar. Chinese people's cognition of Africa is not only on the continuity, but also constantly changing. Chinese people's awareness and understanding of Africa mainly come from the media, and People's Daily, because of its authority and strong representation of Chinese people, has played an important role in shaping Chinese cognition on Africa. Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, its foreign policies on Africa evolve as the situations change constantly in the past 60 years. And each time the change of the foreign policies will be reflected in articles of People's Daily, and in this way Chinese people's cognition on Africa reshaped. China's perception of Africa has gone through three stages in the past 60 years, and two big changes have happened: China shifted its focus of Africa from politics to economy and cultural and other unpolitical fields, and China's prediction to the future of Africa's development also experienced an evolution from optimistic view to pessimistic view, and then turned from pessimism to optimism again,which show a picture of Africa is changing.There are three reasons that cause the change of China's cognition on Africa, and they can be summarized as follows: Africa's changes itself, the impact of the international community and the changes of China's African policy. The first two factors—to some extent—change China's cognition on Africa, but the main reason is the change of China's foreign policy on Africa. The change of China's foreign policy on Africa cause a change of media's trait in reporting Africa, which makes China's Cognition on Africa to change.