In a small office at the Pakistani Television Corp (PTV) headquarters in Islamabad, producers are preparing to air a video interview of a Pakistani man and his Chinese bride.
The woman in the footage is dressed in traditional Pakistani clothes, sitting next to her husband who addresses her in fluent Mandarin, amplifying a message of trans-national love prevailing over differences in language, religion and culture.
The videos are the latest sign of China’s growing push to build up cultural “soft power” to complement the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), the US$60 billion infrastructure program it has launched as part of the Asian giant’s flagship Belt and Road Initiative.
Over the past year, China has sent state-owned PTV and other commercial television channels a series of documentaries, dramas and other television programming free of charge, officials from PTV told reporters.
Experts say China has been ramping up attempts to win the hearts and minds of citizens in Belt and Road nations through language, traditional media and social media campaigns, echoing the cultural firepower previously wielded by Western nations, which have leveraged everything from language centers to Hollywood and blue jeans to burnish global influence.
“We have learned from the experience of the United States, the UK, and other Western countries, but now, it’s time for the world to understand China,” said Chen Xiang (陳翔), a correspondent coordinating state-run China Radio International’s wide-ranging presence in Pakistan.
“We want to tell the people the truth about China, what real China is ... through radio programs, through TV and through other cultural activities we can do this,” Chen said.
China is boosting its Mandarin teaching through state-backed language and culture organizations called Confucius Institutes and spreading exposure to its arts and narrative media in a bid to engage everyday Pakistanis.
Earlier this year, PTV World aired its first Chinese cartoon series, titled Three Drops of Blood (三滴血), following its premier at the government-funded Pakistan National Council of Arts, where the Chinese embassy rented a large portion of the building to host a China Cultural Center.
Recent investments in TV and film follow Chinese interest in print media. Launched in 2017, Huashang (華商報), the first-ever Chinese language newspaper in Pakistan, now boasts a readership of more than 60,000 a week.
With about 25,000 Pakistanis learning Chinese at home and another 22,000 Pakistani students in China, there is some way to go before Mandarin challenges English in Pakistan, where the legacy of British colonial rule is everywhere.
Yet signs of China’s presence are increasingly visible, from expatriate engineers and their families shopping in city centers to a growing number of Chinese tourists visiting Pakistan’s rugged mountainous north.
Locals report an increasing appetite to engage using shared cultural touchpoints and language, sometimes with business in mind.
“China is interested in improving its soft power all across the world, “ said Kiran Hassan, a research associate fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, adding that Pakistanis are responding with enthusiasm.
“It’s an audience that is ready to receive the Chinese perspective as they feel that China is offering them an economic opportunity,” he said.
Awais Chaudhry moved from his home in the eastern city of Faisalabad to study at a Chinese language institute in Lahore for more than six months, hoping it would help his marketing job.
“China is our neighbor and a large number of imports is from there, and so with that business point of view, I tried to learn the basics of this language,” he said.
Everyday cultural contacts, while still limited, are expanding, although there is inevitably sometimes a darker side, notably in the periodic scandals over people-trafficking involving Pakistani girls sent to China to be married to men unable to find a wife at home.
There is a harder edge to some of China’s soft power, notably in its response to criticisms of the Belt and Road Initiative as a neo-colonial project, promoting environmentally damaging projects such as coal-fired power plants that benefit Chinese companies more than Pakistan.
Media and think tank officials from both nations plan to set up a “Rapid Response Initiative System” to counter negative perceptions and stop “fake news” about China-Pakistan projects, some of which have garnered increasing skepticism of their economic benefits and criticism of the environmental cost.
Run collaboratively by China Economic Net, a Beijing-based online news organization, and the Pakistan China Institute, a pro-Beijing Islamabad-based think tank, the system disseminates information to counter negative or “fake” views about CPEC and replace it with a message of a profitable alliance.
“We can’t take down information, so what we do is give correct information. All media tools are used,” said Mustafa Sayed, executive director of the Pakistan China Institute, adding that they spread messages via news anchors, newspapers and Twitter.
Last month, then-Chinese deputy ambassador to Pakistan Zhao Lijian (趙立堅) retweeted an article titled “CPEC is dead. Somebody tell Beijing.”
“Congratulations, this report has won the title called ‘joke of the day,’” he wrote. “The article is pure nonsense, fake news, groundless speculation. This article has become the largest laughing stock in China and Pakistan.”
Saudi Arabian largesse is flooding Egypt’s cultural scene, but the reception is mixed. Some welcome new “cooperation” between two regional powerhouses, while others fear a hostile takeover by Riyadh. In Cairo, historically the cultural capital of the Arab world, Egyptian Minister of Culture Nevine al-Kilany recently hosted Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority chairman Turki al-Sheikh. The deep-pocketed al-Sheikh has emerged as a Medici-like patron for Egypt’s cultural elite, courted by Cairo’s top talent to produce a slew of forthcoming films. A new three-way agreement between al-Sheikh, Kilany and United Media Services — a multi-media conglomerate linked to state intelligence that owns much of
The US and other countries should take concrete steps to confront the threats from Beijing to avoid war, US Representative Mario Diaz-Balart said in an interview with Voice of America on March 13. The US should use “every diplomatic economic tool at our disposal to treat China as what it is... to avoid war,” Diaz-Balart said. Giving an example of what the US could do, he said that it has to be more aggressive in its military sales to Taiwan. Actions by cross-party US lawmakers in the past few years such as meeting with Taiwanese officials in Washington and Taipei, and
Denmark’s “one China” policy more and more resembles Beijing’s “one China” principle. At least, this is how things appear. In recent interactions with the Danish state, such as applying for residency permits, a Taiwanese’s nationality would be listed as “China.” That designation occurs for a Taiwanese student coming to Denmark or a Danish citizen arriving in Denmark with, for example, their Taiwanese partner. Details of this were published on Sunday in an article in the Danish daily Berlingske written by Alexander Sjoberg and Tobias Reinwald. The pretext for this new practice is that Denmark does not recognize Taiwan as a state under
The Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan has no official diplomatic allies in the EU. With the exception of the Vatican, it has no official allies in Europe at all. This does not prevent the ROC — Taiwan — from having close relations with EU member states and other European countries. The exact nature of the relationship does bear revisiting, if only to clarify what is a very complicated and sensitive idea, the details of which leave considerable room for misunderstanding, misrepresentation and disagreement. Only this week, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) received members of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations