A Study On The Influence Of Sino-African Relations On African Media Coverage

Sino-African relations has been a hotly debated topic in recent years.With the"Belt and Road" initiative increasingly expanded and implemented,the Forum on China,Africa Cooperation,as a mechanism of collective dialogue within the frame of South-South Cooperation between the People's Republic of China and African countries,has become a diplomatic issue that attracts high attention from both China and Africa.This research,conducted through economic and political perspectives and based upon the FOCAC,uses news reports from thirteen African countries as objects of study to explore the factors influencing the African media coverage of FOCAC.The research collects data from the Factiva database and uses SPSS 22.0 to analyse content and process data.The results show that first of all,African media are significantly influenced by the trend of pan-Africanism in their reportage of China-Africa relations.Secondly,the attitude of African media is influenced by economic factors,but political factors' influence is not significant.The attitude of African media coverage is more positive when bilateral development cooperation is well established and when China has more official finance projects in the country.In contrast,the attitude is more negative when Chinese capital has a higher level of existence in the country,which is demonstrated in greater investments and loans,a higher percentage of Chinese share in the country's imports,and a bigger number of Chinese labours in the country.However,the distance of political values on state level and policy proximity do not have significant influence on the attitude of African media coverage.As for the scale of reports,the research has looked into both the quantity of reports and the number of words in each report.When Chinese investments are higher in the country,the scale of reports is larger.Other factors do not have significant correlation with the scale of reports.The influence of political factors on the scale of reports is not significant.Apart from the influence of international relations,the level of economic development of the African country itself also has an influence.Countries that have a higher ranking of GDP tend to have more neutral or negative reports and the number of reports is also higher.To summarize,China should pay more attention to the existent problems of Chinese capital in Africa when developing Sino-African relations and promoting trades.While preserving the advantages of Chinese aid,China should reduce the negative influence to improve the image of China in African media.