Expert Conversation with Dr. Maria Repnikova on China’s soft power in Africa

​MERICS is delighted to invite you to an expert conversation with Dr. Maria Repnikova, Assistant Professor in Global Communication at Georgia State University. In this internal roundtable discussion, she will share insights from her upcoming book, “Competing for Soft Power: China’s Image-Making in Africa”.

Maria Repnikova is one of the most renowned international experts on China’s media politics, political communication and external propaganda. A fluent speaker of both Mandarin and Russian, Repnikova researches information politics in China and Russia from a comparative perspective. She is the author of the award-winning book “Media Politics in China: Improvising Power Under Authoritarianism” (2017), as well as “Chinese Soft Power” (2022).

Her soon-to-be released book reveals the ambitious but often disjointed Chinese diplomatic influence in Africa. Supported by in-depth fieldwork in Ethiopia, it identifies the core mechanisms of China’s image-making: enticement through tangible benefits, promotion of ideas and narratives, and use of censorial power. It argues that, perhaps counterintuitively, China’s engagement with Africa has also reinforced a shared longing for the West as a professional destination and standard setter, thereby challenging popular claims about China replacing the West in the Global South.