New Chinese television channel targets North Africa, Middle East

China is continuing to make inroads into Africa, now with a clear view of targeting the continent's Arab population as well as the Middle East more generally. Via the New York Times:

Chinese state television has begun broadcasting an Arabic-language channel for the Middle East and Africa as part of efforts to expand the Communist government’s media influence abroad. The 24-hour channel, which began operating Saturday, will air in 22 Arabic-speaking countries and reach nearly 300 million people, China Central Television said in a statement. The channel “will serve as an important bridge to strengthen communication and understanding between China and Arab countries,” a CCTV vice president, Zhang Changming, said in the statement.

[...] The Arabic channel will carry news, feature stories, entertainment and education programs and will gradually expand its offerings, CCTV said. The network already broadcasts in English, French and Spanish as well as in Mandarin.

Chinese soft power at its finest.

Reading between the lines

It's interesting to observe the varying ways in which the Iranian crisis is depicted in the global news. What aspects are being highlighted? Excluded? Altogether mischaracterized? James Fallows has a worthwhile post outlining several guidelines to bear in mind when reading Chinese (official) responses to the crisis. An obvious though important example:

It is worth remembering that the elements of the Iranian story that give it such drama and importance in much of the world are less automatically resonant in China.

One part of the narrative -- a massed populace standing up against state power -- is obviously anathema to Chinese authorities. And many of the other themes are also less immediate and compelling to ordinary people in China than they would be in North America, Europe, or parts of the Islamic world.

To most Westerners, everything about this story matters. It involves a people's struggle to make their voices heard; it follows other "color revolutions" in former Soviet territories and indeed popular movements for democracy and rule of law in Asia and Latin America from the 1980s onwards; it potentially marks a crucial moment in the evolution of modern Islamic society; it can have war-and-peace implications for US foreign policy and Israeli actions; and so on. Ordinary members of the Western viewing audience feel a connection to these themes. I assert that they seem more distant to ordinary people in China -- even if the themes were featured on the news. People's own problems, and their business problems, and the country's problems, are enough to worry about.

Several curious examples of the way in which the story is being played out in China can be found here (a classic example of the 'blame it on the West' theme), here (short and sweet, calling for 'solidarity'), and here (from China Daily). The China Daily story required a bit of digging: it was buried deep within the 'World News' section, after stories covering Berlusconi's 'party girls,' Japan's whaling tradition, the DC metro train crash, and at least a dozen others. Go figure.

Tehran, Tiananmen and elite politics

As protests in Iran continue to unfold, one can't help but wonder where all of this is leading. It's difficult to imagine Iran returning to status quo after such passionate uprisings, even less so given that Iran's most senior panel of election monitors have admitted "errors" in the vote count. Indeed, there doesn't appear to be any way of turning back - and rightly there shouldn't. Yet deciphering what will happen next is tantamount to uncovering the inner workings of the Soviet politburo. Middle East politics are de facto elite politics, with shifting loyalties and political expediency as the name of the game. What happens behind closed doors is anybody's guess.

In an attempt to shed some light on the matter (or to perhaps have something to say at all), scholars and casual observers alike have begun drawing analogies between the situation in Iran and previous pro-democracy movements elsewhere. While there certainly are parallels to be drawn, I often cringe at such comparisons: the domestic situations are quite divergent across cases, rendering such analyses gross - and often useless - generalizations at best.

That being said, I have stumbled upon a rather interesting post (both parts I and II are worth reading) comparing the protests in Tehran to those which took place in Tiananmen in 1989. The post is valuable precisely because it highlights the centrality of elite politics in such revolutionary movements, raising important questions which may prove useful in any analysis of the Iranian situation. In China in 1989, for instance, a split emerged within the Communist Party which limited the state's response and gave the movement political space within which to operate (until a point, obviously). Is such a split beginning to transpire in Iran? Has it already, perhaps? The leaders of the Tiananmen protests were largely inexperienced students, whereas Mousavi is an establishment figure. What difference will this make, if any at all?

While asking such questions will likely not lead to any concrete answers, it will endow us with a better understanding of the goings-on in Iran. For inasmuch as such anti-establishment movements are bottom-up, grassroots phenomena they are likewise played out from the top-down - and within the top itself. The question, I suppose, is what will it take for the current regime to crack? And what will happen if and when it does?

Note: On a somewhat related matter, there is a very interesting opinion piece in The Hindu, India's national newspaper, entitled "Beijing cautions U.S. over Iran." The subtitle reads: "The political class in Washington is clueless about the Byzantine world of Iranian clergy" ....

All roads lead to China. Even (especially?) those in the Middle East

In his recently released book, The New Silk Road: How a Rising Arab World is Turning Away from the West and Rediscovering China, Ben Simpfendorfer, chief China economist at the Royal Bank of Scotland in Hong Kong, examines China's rising popularity in the Arab world. This, marked in part by the migration of Arabic traders to the Mainland and what Simpfendorfer terms a "new silk road" emerging between China and the Middle East. The resurgence of such ties, however, is part and parcel of a much bigger picture:

The relations have already been strengthened by the Middle East’s energy wealth and China’s voracious appetite for oil and gas. Simpfendorfer forecasts that China will overtake the U.S. as the chief supplier of goods to the Middle East within a year or two. While the U.S. exports SUVs and Boeing airplanes to the Arab world, China has been providing DVD players, mobile phones and other consumer goods. The Middle East now sends more visitors to a single Chinese city, Yiwu, than to the entire United States (200,000 vs. 180,000 a year, according to Simpfendorfer). Before long, we may even see Gulf States moving away from pegging their currencies to the dollar, instead adopting a basket peg approach similar to China’s, he says.

But Simpfendorfer emphasizes that the relationship is not just economic, but also cultural. Islam, which came to China as early as the 7th Century, “is central to the silk road story,” he says.