Between Principles and Praxis: Cultural Brokers in China-Africa Media Relations

Paper Abstract: The research on China-Africa engagements blossomed over the past few years. Beyond the numerous studies on economic and political interactions that dominated the first wave of researches, an important focus on migration and people-to-people relations have emerged, bringing to light the dense and multifaceted worlds of Sino-African mobilities and communities across China and Africa. Within this landscape, the analysis of processes of cultural brokerage remained relatively marginal. Beyond the analysis of the role of business and marital relationship between Chinese and African people, the impact of the expansion of Confucius institutes across Africa, or the experience of African students in China, other important cultural interactions and collaborations have developed, including in the field of media and cinema, which remain still largely unexplored. This presentation focuses on the experience of a few African film actors and cultural entrepreneurs from different African countries, whose career developed at the interface between Chinese and African screen worlds and audiences. As this analysis highlights, in an era marked by the tension between China and its Western counterparts, globally and in Africa, these actors are often caught in the middle of complex tensions, that oblige them to operate difficult choices and face uneasy personal and professional repercussions. They sit in the very place in which new images and perceptions of China-Africa engagements are produced and circulated: how do their experience this position? What perspective do they offer to better understand the future of Sino-African relations?