Author: Anton Harber.

China’s move into direct investment in South African media is a new phase in its ‘soft diplomacy’ strategy. There have been three signifi cant Chinese investments in this country in the fi rst half of 2013: the private company Star Times bought TopTV, the troubled pay TV channel; Chinese state institutions have part-funded the purchase of Independent News and Media by the Sekunjalo consortium, including an option to take up 20 per cent of the country’s second-largest newspaper publisher; and China Daily ’s weekly ‘Africa Edition’ is now printed and distributed in South Africa. Sekunjalo said mysteriously that its funding partner was ‘a Chinese consortium’, and the nature of their deal was not made public. The consortium is made up of CCTV, the state-owned broadcaster, and the China–Africa Development Fund, which promotes Chinese interests on the continent. The ballooning Chinese media presence in Africa in recent years is part of a ‘soft diplomacy’ strategy, where culture and information are used to spread China’s infl uence, and counter what it views as unfair treatment in the global media. It goes hand-in-hand with increased Chinese investment and deal-making across the continent. Yu-Shan Wu at the South African Institute of International Affairs describes the use of soft power (or ruanshili , to use the Mandarin term) as an ‘important instrument to help a state achieve its most desired goal with the least objection’. To this end, the Chinese have opened Confucius Institutes across the world, increased their participation in academic and cultural exchanges, and put up a giant billboard in New York’s Times Square.