Western news coverage of China’s engagement in Africa often is confined to the business section, generally focusing on loans, resource deals, or other financial dealings. Moreover, ambitious international feature reporting, particularly from Africa, has becoming increasingly rare in today’s era of declining revenues at major international news outlets. So it was notable when The New York Times published an expansive front-page story in the May 2, 2015 edition of the paper’s Sunday magazine.
Shanghai-based journalist, and regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, Brook Larmer reported the story, “Is China the World’s New Colonial Power?” Rather than look at the China-Africa relationship from a broad, continental perspective, he instead chose to focus on the dynamics between the two players in one relatively small country: Namibia. Brook joins Eric and Cobus to discuss how he approached the story and what it was like to cover the China-Africa relationship on the ground from Namibia.
Recommendations
- “Is China the World’s New Colonial Power?,” Brook Larmer, The New York Times Magazine, May 2, 2017
- “A Chinese Journalist Reflects on Reporting the China-Africa Story,” Eric Olander and Cobus van Staden, The China in Africa Podcast, April 6, 2016