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The Compass: Chinese Dreams: Chinese Dreams: Kenya

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Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

15/01/2020 GMT

Chinese Dreams: Kenya

Chinese Dreams

BBC World Service - The Compass, Chinese Dreams, Chinese Dreams: Kenya

How is China’s growing role in Kenya’s media scene changing perceptions of China?

China has invested heavily not just in Africa’s roads and railways, but also in the media sector. Frenny Jowi examines whether this is changing the way Kenyans see China.

There has been a lot of media focus on China’s investment in Africa’s physical infrastructure: but what about its play for Africa’s attention? CGTN, China’s state-run international TV station, has steadily increased its footprint on the continent from its African HQ in Nairobi – while Chinese-owned StarTimes is on its way to providing satellite TV access for 10,000 rural villages. Hundreds of African journalists have been trained in China. Does this represent a major shift in international focus, away from Western media sources (including the BBC) and towards well-funded Chinese outlets? Kenyan reporter Frenny Jowi hears of fears these developments will mean less scrutiny of China’s controversial multi-billion dollar deals with her country.  
 
Producer: Rob Walker

(Photo: Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Credit: Kenzaburo Fukuhara/Kyodo News Pool/Getty Images)

The Compass: Chinese Dreams

How countries across the world are responding to the rise of China.

In nation after nation, one issue has risen up the political agenda – often becoming a national obsession. The rise of China, and the ensuring benefits and harms of its influence, has become a contentious issue across every continent. This series looks at how Chinese power – whether economic, political or ideological - is affecting individual countries across the globe. As it has grown richer, China has inevitably worked to protect its economic and political interests, through creating alliances with governments and spreading its own values.
 
Many nations, especially poorer ones, have benefited from massive investment in roads, rail, ports and factories. They have also ridden a boom in sales of raw materials and agricultural products to the fast expanding Chinese market. China has provided a model of economic development which has been copied and adapted by other emerging economics, especially in Asia. Yet there has often been resentment: at material factors like floods of cheap Chinese imports, of exploitative and opaque deals, shoddy construction and the arrival of Chinese migrant workers. And there are deeper concerns: about undue influence on – even the subversion of - politicians and policy makers: the spreading of a Chinese-patterned ideology and a downplaying of human rights: and efforts to paint a rosy picture of China and to suppress criticism. In these five episodes, The Compass takes a clear-eyed view of how China’s money and power are influencing debate within five very different nations.

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