Abstract
The Chinese online space is a social institution utterly different from yet complementary to Chinese state-owned media houses. Chapter 8 is devoted to social media and how Chinese people living in China express their perceptions of Africa through online writing and posting. The chapter posits that online discourses can be viewed as embedded in a greater dialog on negotiating national identity under globalization. Also explored are the ways in which the community of African traders living in Guangzhou has been portrayed in the Chinese online space. Contrasted with the official narratives on the China–Africa partnership in the Chinese media, resentment against the African diaspora in China found in online forums and social media is epidemic. The chapter establishes a general condition of racism and anti-racism in the Chinese web related to Africans in China, and gauges the impact cyber racism has for China–Africa relations.
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Notes
- 1.
Terry Flew, “Media Convergence”, June 18, 2013. Britannia.com .
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Dahlberg, “Computer-Mediated Communication and The Public Sphere”, read among other, Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity, Creative Common, 2004, Vincent Mosco, The Digital Sublime: Myth, Power, and Cyberspace (Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2005).
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CNNIC, “The 37th Survey Report on Internet Development in China”.
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CNNIC, “The 37th Survey Report on Internet Development in China”.
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Li, “The online public space and popular ethos in China”.
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Li, “The online public space and popular ethos in China”; see also Xiao Qiang, “The Rising Tide of Internet Opinion in China: Online discussions ‘now actually drive the agenda of official media’”, Nieman Reports, summer 2004.
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See David Bandurski, “Zhou Xiaoping, “sunshine boy”, China Media Project, October 2014. http://cmp.hku.hk/2014/10/24/36652/, as well as David Bandurski, “The CCP’s “positive energy” obsession”, December 15 2015, China Media Project, http://cmp.hku.hk/2015/12/15/39487/.
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One example is the video made by the Fuxing Road Studio: see Huang Zheping, “China’s craziest English-language propaganda videos are made by one mysterious studio”, Quartz, October 27, 2015, https://qz.com/533850/chinas-craziest-english-language-propaganda-videos-are-made-by-one-mysterious-studio/.
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Heidi Østbø Haugen, “Nigerians in China: A Second State of Immobility”, International Migration, 50 (2012), 65–80.
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Angelo Gilles, “The Social Construction of Guangzhou as a Translocal Trading Place”, Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, 44 (2015), 17–47.
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Netease.com, “Africans floating in Guangzhou”, Kanke, issue 97, 2013, http://news.163.com/photoview/3R710001/17436.html#p=7D86QVD03R710001; see also Min Zhou, “Meeting Strangers in a Globalized City: Chinese Attitudes toward Black Africans in Guangzhou, China”, presented at Wah Ching Centre of Research on Education in China, Hong Kong, 2011.
- 20.
Li Zhi-gang, “The African Enclave of Guangzhou: A Case Study of Xiaobeilu”, Acta Geographica Sinica, 63 (2008), 207–218.
- 21.
See Heidi Østbø Haugen, ‘African Pentecostal Migrants in China: Marginalization and the Alternative Geography of a Mission Theology’. African Studies Review 56 (2013), 81–102; Adams Bodomo, “The African Trading Community in Guangzhou: An Emerging Bridge for Africa” China Relations.” The China Quarterly, 203 (2010), 693–707; Brigitte Bertoncello and Sylvie Bredeloup, “The emergence of new African” trading posts” in Hong Kong and Guangzhou”, China perspectives, 1 (2007), 94–105; Gordon Mathews, “African Logistics Agents and Middlemen as Cultural Brokers in Guangzhou”, Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, 44 (2014), 117–144; Roberto Castillo, “Feeling at home in the ‘Chocolate City’: an exploration of place-making practices and structures of belonging amongst Africans in Guangzhou”, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 15 (2014), 235–257.
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Cheng, Yinghong, “From Campus Racism to Cyber Racism: Discourse of Race and Chinese Nationalism”, The China Quarterly, 207 (2011), 561–579.
- 23.
Barry Sautman , “Anti-Black Racism in Post-Mao China”, The China Quarterly, 138 (1994), 413–437.
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Cheng Yinghong, “Campus anti-black movement in China in the 1980s: On racism in China”, in China in Perspective (2009), http://www.chinainperspective.com/ArtShow.aspx?AID=4057.
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Li Anshan , “African Diaspora in China: Reality, Research and Reflection”, The Journal of Pan African Studies, 7 (2015), 10–43.
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Cheng, Yinghong, “From Campus Racism to Cyber Racism: Discourse of Race and Chinese Nationalism”, The China Quarterly, 207 (2011), 561–579.
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Tessa M. Pfafman, Christopher J. Carpenter, and Yong Tang, “The Politics of Racism: Constructions of African Immigrants in China on China SMACK”, Communication, Culture & Critique, 8 (2015), 540–556.
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Min Zhou, “Meeting Strangers in a Globalized City: Chinese Attitudes toward Black Africans in Guangzhou China,” presented at Wah Ching Centre of Research on Education in China, Hong Kong, June 15, 2011.
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Min Zhou, Shabnam Shenasi, and Tao Xu, “Chinese Attitudes toward African Migrants in Guangzhou, China”, International Journal of Sociology, Volume 46, 2016, Issue 2.
- 30.
Roberto Castillo, “Feeling at home in the ‘Chocolate City’: an exploration of place-making practices and structures of belonging amongst Africans in Guangzhou”, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 15 (2014), 235–257, https://doi.org/10.1080/14649373.2014.911513.
- 31.
Incitz China, “85 percent Weibo monthly active users from mobile in Q1 2016”, China Internet Watch, May 12, 2016, https://www.chinainternetwatch.com/17509/weibo-q1-2016/.
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Incitz China, “85 percent Weibo monthly active users from mobile in Q1 2016”.
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Andrew John Hutchison, Lynne Halley Johnston and Jeff David Breckon, “Using QSR-NVivo to facilitate the development of a grounded theory project: an account of a worked example”, in International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 13 (2010), 283–302.
- 34.
The 50 Cent Party is a colloquial term for a group of Internet commentators employed by the Chinese party-state to influence favorable public opinion.
- 35.
Castillo, “Feeling at home in the ‘Chocolate City’”.
- 36.
Interviews with Li Jianhong (Editor of China-Mozambique Bridge) in Maputo, Mozambique in December 2013 and October 2016; interview with Xu Ning (Chairman of Chinese Business Association in Angola), Luanda, May 1, 2015.
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Li, S. (2017). How Chinese New Media Portrays Africa. In: Mediatized China-Africa Relations . Palgrave Series in Asia and Pacific Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5382-5_8
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