After the so-called Guangzhou racist incident, Africa-China relations suffered huge challenges, which have been rare in recent decades. Now it seems some narratives of China’s actions have been too negative. I have even read one piece of African editorial comparing China with South Africa during the apartheid era. Such negative opinions make me quite sad and even upset. It seems that they forgot or pretended to forget all the past good stories between China and Africa, for example, the TAZARA railway and medical teams to Africa since 1960s.

Not to mention today’s good stories, such as China’s ongoing assistance to Africa in terms of fighting the Covid-19 pandemic. I do not mean that China is proved 100% innocent in the incident, since it is too early to say that. But the one thing that is clear is that racism is never China’s official policy or so-called rising and popular public mood. On the contrary, racism is not widely accepted in China.

Eric Olander, the managing editor of The China Africa Project website, says social media played a huge part in how African leaders reacted. “We saw the raw power of social media that forced African leaders into action much faster than they probably would have reacted before.” But such fast action is sometimes at the expense of truth, since sometimes “to see is not surely to be true”. Fake video or news could be produced in just seconds or minutes, while proving its falsehood could cost days or even longer. What is worse is that, the most popular information about China spreading in Africa is not made inChina, but in the West. Most African news agencies or TV stations could not afford to send their reporters to China. In other words, most African images or knowledge about China are produced by and of the West. But as for the Western media industry, the mainstream paradigm is still “bad news is more worthy of being reported”. That is to say, the gap between a true China and de facto Western news covered China has been huge for decades. 

Now, mainly due to the rise of social media and fall of traditional media, even the Western elites have warned that we are living in the world of post-truth. The majority of the general public could not do the fact-check work without enough time, skills or knowledge. Even AFP took around two weeks to prove that many so-called racist evidence of Guangzhou incidents were fake ones. In other words, to some extent, China is innocent despite not all the evidence having been fact checked. Facing the post-truth world, if we watch or encounter a similar incident, what should we do? My personal advice is that we had better wait instead of rushing to make too quick conclusions without giving them a second thought. To defeat rumours, we need not only our eyes, but the other two “eyes”– the mindsets of “microscope” and “telescope” together. In many cases, a liquid of sea water could not represent the whole ocean. For example, even if some evidence were true, it involves only several relevant local restaurants, hotels, policemen and so on. Not all the local ones are racist, not to mention the whole of China. It is not fair to label the whole of China as a racist state. “Telescope” refers to the relevant and diversified information and knowledge. The more diversified information and knowledge we have, the more objective judgment would emerge.

A popular ancient Chinese proverb says: “More good advice makes people smart, fewer foolish.” (Jian ting ze ming, pian ting ze an.) We should not just take for granted that the materials from CNN, BBC,VOA or Facebook and Twitter are 100% true. Of course, it is a decades-long problem that the direct good communication channels between Africa and China is still quite limited. Many African friends of mine who have visited China could understand and identify many rumours about China’s roles and influences in Africa, because they have a bigger, more comprehensive and first-hand understanding about China. But most Africans have not visited China. The use of three “eyes” could take time, but it is worth it.

Because Africa-China relations have been proved more and more important or even essential to each side, not to mention that we are both facing the never-seen-before challenge of the Covid-19 pandemic. We need to try harder than before to better our ubuntu partnership and make it more inclusive to as many Africans and Chinese, instead of poisoning it by unchecked misinformation and disinformation.

Source of documents：The Mercury (South Africa), June 4, 2020