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African viewers have had access to Chinese satellite TV since 2015 but plans to broadcast via a Paris-based company’s service would extend its reach. Photo: Xinhua

China enlists European satellite for information campaign in Africa

  • Testing is under way with a Paris-based company to beam Chinese television programmes to the continent from Xinjiang antenna
  • Project team says China’s soft power growth in African countries has been supported by Western companies, despite their governments’ warnings
Science
China plans to buy the services of a European satellite to directly broadcast content from its state-owned television network to Africa, according to engineers involved in the project.
The intention is to send high-definition TV signals from a ground station in China’s western Xinjiang region to E7C, a US-made communications satellite owned by Paris-based company Eutelsat.

These will be relayed to tens of millions of users in sub-Saharan Africa, according to a paper published by Chinese journal Radio and Television Information on December 6.

Lead project engineer Liu Ming, from the National Radio and Television Administration, said the project is part of a strategic campaign launched by the Communist Party’s Central Committee “to strengthen international communication capacity and promote Chinese culture overseas”.

Liu and his colleagues said China’s rapid growth of influence, or soft power, in Africa has been supported by Western commercial satellite companies, despite the warning of their governments.

China has carried out at least three test runs with Eutelsat to verify the technical feasibility of the plan, they said. The French company has been approached for comment.

Xinjiang – home to more than 60 per cent of China’s deserts, including the Gobi – is not the best location for TV signal transmission, with its frequent strong winds rocking the giant radio antenna that needs to remain stable for long-distance communications.

But Xinjiang, which shares a section of its borders with Afghanistan, is the only part of China that can see the E7C, a high-power geostationary satellite more than 30,000km (18,600 miles) away in the western sky.

Liu’s study found the European satellite could relay high-quality Chinese television programmes to Africa, but not before some upgrades to the source station in Xinjiang, including a windscreen to reduce the risk of signal interruption.

Chinese TV programmes are already widely available in Africa, but their route to the continent is circuitous, travelling via optic cable to a ground station in Europe, which uses an uplink to a satellite owned by Luxembourg-based company SES, according to publicly available information.

In 2015, the Chinese government launched an ambitious project to install satellite TV terminals in more than 10,000 African villages. StarTimes, the Beijing-based company implementing the programme, is now the second largest digital TV operator in Africa with more than 13 million paid subscribers.

In Africa, China is building influence, brick by brick

Chinese television channels offer a variety of content for African audiences, including news, urban dramas and documentaries about mega infrastructure projects in local languages.

The rise of China’s soft power in Africa has not gone unnoticed, with French President Emmanuel Macron warning in 2019 that its increasing presence could threaten the historical partnership between African countries and the West.

“China is a great world power and has expanded its presence in many countries, especially in Africa, in recent years. But what can look good in the short term … can often end up being bad over the medium to long term,” he said on a visit to Djibouti.

China pledges to lift Africa’s space ambitions in race with US

China has launched similar satellite TV services to promote its image and narratives in other countries, especially those joining the Belt and Road Initiative, the world’s largest infrastructure programme.

China’s global satellite communication network is one of the largest in the world, with cutting-edge technology such as laser devices for high-speed communication, and mainly serves military and government users.

But a commercial satellite constellation – similar to SpaceX’s Starlink – is under construction to bring more media and internet access to civilian users around the world, according to scientists involved in the project.

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