China follows a well-trod path as it seeks more trade with Kenya

At 5:30pm on a Thursday evening the Confucius Institute at the University of Nairobi is bustling. Day classes are hardly over, but part-time students are already filing into the lecture theatre for a round of evening lessons aimed at them.

In 2005 the institute was the first of its kind to be set up in Africa, and it is a symbol of a subtle but determined cultural assault being carried out by China in Kenya and other African countries.

Activities to strengthen Sino-Kenyan cultural relations have not been detailed in President Uhuru Kenyatta’s itinerary as he begins his visit to the People’s Republic of China tomorrow.

However, Beijing is increasingly paying attention to investments geared at burnishing its image in Africa and combating the dominant narratives that have been portrayed in the the Western media.

“China has been going through a period of transformation in terms of projecting itself to the rest of the world. The idea is to get foreign publics to see the country’s good side and to clear the path for further economic co-operation,” said Prof Macharia Munene, an international relations scholar.

Between 2008 and 2012, the value of trade between Kenya and China grew 163 per cent to Sh172.6 billion. With the Jubilee government increasingly looking east and China’s growing hunger for resources and markets, the trade volumes can only go up in the coming years.

CULTURAL DIPLOMACY

So it is only logical that China would seek to have Kenyans understand more of its language and culture if only for the practical reason of enhancing trade and business negotiations.

Now that it has consolidated its hard power — economic and military might — Beijing is quickly rushing to fill a soft power deficit. To really cement its role as a superpower, the country needs the sort of intangible influence that is won not in the markets but in the perceptions of people around the world.

Increased focus on cultural ties became a foreign policy priority during the presidency of Hu Jintao. In 2004, China began setting up Confucius Institutes to teach language and culture. President Xi Jinping, as he promises to pursue a more assertive brand of foreign policy, also seems on a mission bolster China’s cultural diplomacy.

In Kenya cultural diplomacy is being pursued on two distinct fronts in education and in the media.

Following the establishment of the initial Confucius Institute, two more have been set up at Kenyatta and Egerton universities. In total, there are 38 Confucius Institutes in 26 African countries. Worldwide, China has set up more than 400 institutes over the last eight years.

“With growing business ties, Nairobi presented the highest demand for Chinese language and cultural lessons in the region,” said University of Nairobi Confucius Institute director Prof Sa Dequan.

At the university, the institute has grown from offering certificate and elective courses to students and is now running a bachelor of arts programme. Plans for a soon-to-be-launched master of arts in Chinese have also been completed.

Thousands of Kenyan students have gone through the Confucius system since the first institute was established eight years ago. The Kenyatta University institute established in 2008 claims to have trained at least 1,700 students in Chinese.

The institutes provide student exchange programmes to universities in China and scholarship opportunities. Prof Sa said the University of Nairobi institute has provided at least 300 scholarships over the last five years.

Funding for the institutes is on a 50:50 basis between the quasi-governmental Office of Chinese Language Council International, also known as the Hanban, and host institutions. However, the Hanban provides a constitution which all institutions hoping to carry the Confucius Institute trademark must follow.

“The obligations of Hanban include to provide teaching materials, courseware, Chinese instructors, the necessary start-up fund and to assess the teaching quality of the institute,” said Kenyatta University Confucius Institute director Dr Martin Njoroge.

Directly, the Chinese government has also increased the number of scholarships it offers international students. By 2020, the government hopes to educate at least 500,000 foreign nationals while offering 50,000 scholarships by 2015.

This has seen Beijing vow to give at least 50 scholarships a year to Kenyans for the next five years. Last year, 64 Kenyan students received full scholarships to Chinese universities.

“Education is a strategic way to spread cultural ideals. The Americans did it and so have the British. China is simply following the laid out script,” said Prof Munene.

CHINESE MEDIA

The Chinese media onslaught in Africa, especially, has been more high-profile than what is happening in the educational sector.
China Radio International was the first state-owned media house to establish its regional hub in Nairobi in 2006. Since then, other state-owned Chinese media have made Nairobi their regional headquarters.

Last year, China Central Television (CCTV) Africa expanded its Nairobi bureau from 12 employees to about 150, a process that involved a systemic raid of local journalistic talent.
Media engagement with Africa does not end there. China has also invested heavily in technical support and infrastructure. In Kenya, a Chinese-owned company PanAfrican Network Group was awarded a tender in 2011 to distribute a digital signal in the country despite opposition from local media owners.

“China is using the media for diplomacy, bringing a new, competitive element to influence states. China is actively introducing its culture and values, and distributing favourable images through its media to achieve its goals,” reads part of a June 2012 paper published by Yu-Shuan Wu of the South African Institute for International Affairs (SAIIA).

China had the unquestionable advantage of upping its investments in foreign scholarships and media at a time when its counterparts in the West are adopting austerity measures and cutting investments in these areas due to the economic crisis.

Academics who spoke to the Sunday Nation indicated that the cultural exchanges between Kenya and China are not a one-way affair. Chinese universities are also turning their eyes towards Africa and Kenya.

According to Prof Sa, the Confucius Institute at Nairobi University has also brought staff and students from Tinjin Normal University to Kenya to learn Kiswahili. Kenyan scholars are also travelling to China to teach local languages and culture.

In focusing on cultural ties, China is travelling down a well-beaten path. In pre-independence and post-independence Africa, the US provided scholarships for Africans. France’s influence in Francophone Africa has partly been attributed to its language and culture programmes while Germany invests heavily in its Goethe Institut.

But China will have to do more than offer language classes to win hearts especially in Africa where there are rising concerns over unfair exploitation of resources and the perception of Chinese work and products as substandard.

“The public relations campaign must be backed by tangible actions if China is to build its soft power,” said Prof Munene.
In Kenya, there has also been growing resistance to the Chinese presence from local businessmen who fear losing their markets.

In the end, many say, Chinese eyes are firmly fixed on trade and resources in Kenya and Africa. The current situation in the mining sector after the government cancelled several dozen licences then awarded a Chinese university the rights to survey and map Kenya’s stock of minerals is key example.