Illusion of intimacy

Best friends, nodding acquaintances or complete strangers? A communications expert reckons there is more between Africa and China than meets the eye

As Africa and China move closer together politically and economically, the Chinese need to be aware of the reality of the cultural gulf that divides them and strengthen cultural communication with African countries, says Chang Jiang, a communications expert at Renmin University of China.

Chang, a globetrotter who keenly commits his observations and thoughts about the world to paper, says that Africa has always attracted him. As with many Chinese people, he is drawn by its age and its mystique, but he also sees it as young and dynamic, a land of constant change and opportunity.

A film that came out last year and the strong reactions to it have piqued his interest in finding out what the "real" Africa is like. The film, Kony 2012, produced by a US non-governmental organization, Invisible Children, spread virally on the Internet several months ago. It recounts the deeds of Joseph Kony and the militia group the Lord's Resistance Army, including the conscription of child soldiers, and looks at northern Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan, where the militia has been active. The film's stated aim was to have Kony arrested.

Chang says that when he showed Chinese students the film they were shocked at the murder and violence, which few had heard anything about before.

Later, Chang says, he learned from a reporter friend, Yuan Qing, who works in Uganda, that when the film was shown to Ugandans their reaction was entirely different.

"He told me that the audience were so angry at the film that some were even hitting the screen."

That was because Kony and his rebels had left the region years before, but the film aroused people's dreadful memories of suffering and of losing their children. "It reminded me that the Chinese probably know very little about Africa," says Chang.

Last summer he went to Uganda and Kenya, spending more than a month there talking with Chinese business people, locals who either work for Chinese companies or have visited China, local government officials, academics and journalists. These interviews finally became his book Babel Caution, which was published recently.

China's economic ties with the continent have mostly formed since the China-Africa Forum in 2000. After more than 10 years' growth, China-Africa trade stood at nearly $200 billion last year, while Chinese investment in Africa had reached $17 billion, says the department of African affairs in China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Despite the great achievement in political and economic cooperation, Chang says, culturally, Chinese people and African people do not have time to understand each other. So his interviews cover the existing misunderstandings between Chinese and Africans, how Africans see Chinese and Westerners, and their attitudes toward Chinese culture.

"I expected the answers might not be very nice, but it was worse than we expected," he says.

Chang says that there are sharp contrasts between Chinese values and African ones. For example, most Chinese cherish the values of hard work and thrift, but in countries like Uganda and Kenya, people are a lot more carefree, and many consider it acceptable to borrow money from companies and colleagues. When these two kinds of values come together, there will be collisions between Chinese and Africans, he says.

Moreover, Africans do not have a strong sense of time, he says, so when he was doing interviews, he was frequently forced to wait, and many simply did not show up. Some Africans also walk up to Chinese people and ask for money - at petrol stations, for example - which Chinese find baffling.

"Most Chinese go to Africa without the slightest idea of local customs and practices, so many will feel frustrated, wondering why there are so many hassles."

Chang says Chinese people's desire to make money fuels these misunderstandings and conflicts because they spend too little time communicating with locals, and some even regard it as unnecessary.

"Many who do business in Africa might consider settling in the country by marrying a local here, but very few Chinese people do that.

"For many Chinese, it's not a matter of a communication breakdown, but no communication at all. Some think, 'I have given you money, you work for me, and that's it.'"

Yuan says that China has done a lot on economic investment, building infrastructure and creating jobs for locals, but it seems that that has not helped with China's image and cultural influence on the continent. For example, China has helped with a lot of construction, such as the national stadium in Uganda. But in the stadium there is no sign that tells of China's contribution to the building, he says. The sole token of Chinese involvement is a plaque outside the stadium that is overgrown by weeds - a memorial to four Chinese workers who died building the stadium.

By contrast, Africans get along better with Westerners, Chang says. That it is because the Chinese have been involved in many one-off programs or projects, he says.

"What we do now is more government to government. We focus on developing major industries and building infrastructure, and trying to make profit as quickly and as conveniently as we can."

In contrast, Western countries' communications with African countries are more like people-to-people exchanges, he says. They have churches and non-governmental organizations taking part, carrying out many charitable programs for Africans. These include building orphanages, bringing up the country's next generation and opening schools.

They are also bound by a common faith, Christianity, and have had hundreds of years to adjust to each other's cultures, he says.

Chang says the Chinese government has gradually realized that the country needs to have more cultural communication with African countries, and it has been working on setting up Confucius Institutes in elite universities in Africa. However, this strategy is likely to influence only the elite and not reach "ordinary people", he says.

The problem with that is that when a businessperson opens a factory in Africa it needs to hire ordinary people, Chang says.

"Our cultural exchanges with African countries should be all-round from the beginning."

Chang says there are now more than 1 million Chinese in Africa, and the number is growing, However, before he went to Africa he tried to find research institutes to help him and found that there were only two in China that were doing Africa research on a large scale. No wonder ordinary Chinese know so little about African culture, he says.

Shao Ruosi, a student majoring in international relations at Renmin University, is a fan of Chang's work, and says there is very little Chinese material available on Africa-China.

"This book is the first that has wide-ranging research from the cultural angle on China and Africa, and I've got many answers I wanted to know from it," Shao says.

Chang believes the government should support colleges and institutes to do more research on African cultures.

"I think the real Africa is practical and beautiful, with its pros and cons. When you deal with them, you will have joy as well as hassles. It is not as ideal as you might think, nor as fragile as the Western world depicts it. There is a strong cultural system that has existed for a long time. You cannot change each other; what you can do is get close to it, understand it and find a way to harmoniously co-exists with it."

chenyingqun@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily Africa Weekly 08/23/2013 page28)