China’s Public Diplomacy in Zimbabwe: perceptions, opportunities and challenges

Simon Matingwina

doi:10.7552/0-4-184

Abstract

Contemporary Chinese engagements in Africa have been described in many terms by scholars and media practitioners. One of the threads in the China-Africa discourse is the role of public diplomacy and the desire by the Chinese government to engage African governments and citizens. Using insights from the concept of public diplomacy and new public diplomacy, this study seeks to understand China’s public di-plomacy in Zimbabwe by analysing news stories from the Chinese Embassy Website in order to discern the key actors and instruments used. Furthermore, the study uses the media reports from the private and public media as a barometer to form valuable insights on how the Chinese engagements and public diplomacy initiatives are perceived. Focus is particularly placed on convergences and departures between official Chinese public diplomacy narratives and the local media perceptions. The study finds that China has maintained the traditional state-centred public diplomacy model and that it has extensively focused on relationship building in its public diplomacy approaches in Zimbabwe which is in line with new public diplomacy. However, there are divergences between the themes prioritised by China and those prioritised by the local media which points to a possible communication gap. The study, therefore, proposes a proactive approach by China for effective public diplomacy in Zim-babwe.

Highlights

Zimbabwe established diplomatic relations with China on 18 April 1980 after attainment of independence
This paper focuses more on perception analysis as some form of evaluation of Chinese public diplomacy in Zimbabwe with particular focus on the official representations against the local media representations
The case of China’s public diplomacy in Zimbabwe and the perceptions and representations from the local media offers a glimpse into its conduct and the challenges and opportunities that arise

Summary

Introduction

Zimbabwe established diplomatic relations with China on 18 April 1980 after attainment of independence. On the structure of China’s public diplomacy, d’Hoogle (2013) notes that the Chinese government has over the years selected some Western approaches and adapted them to the Chinese political and cultural context, resulting in ‘public diplomacy with Chinese characteristics’ To this end, a number of scholars agree that it is statecentred with a minimal role for non-state actors who are not fully independent (d’Hoogle, 2007; Melissen, 2011; Zhang, 2016). It was possible to distinguish between such themes such as ‘exchange programmes’ and ‘people-to-people relations’ by restricting the definition of exchange programmes to official visits and courtesy calls by officials from the two countries while people-to-people relations only focused on interactions outside official programmes such as cultural engagements This distinction was important in light of the observations earlier noted by Naidu (2010: 33) on the pitfall of the China’s emphasis on state-to-state model of engagement.

A State-centred model in China’s public diplomacy in Zimbabwe

Findings

Discussion and Conclusion

Conclusion