Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, The University of Hong Kong

In recent years, contents showing deep knowledge about African countries and people have been increasingly popular in Chinese social media, especially on short video platforms. Such knowledge often contains insider business information and cultural understandings of Africa that are difficult to get without living in Africa for a long time. Drawing on a handcrafted dataset of streaming contents and short videos, I analyze some of the Africa-related short videos posted since late 2023, and address this question: how are Chinese content creators representing their deep knowledge of Africa in Chinese social media by short videos? I show that a key theme in the representations of China-Africa connections is marketing Africa to their Chinese audience by well-established Chinese entrepreneurs in Africa. These representations of Africa, much more precise and nuanced than the more widely circulated stereotypical if not racist representations of Africa, bring detailed and vivid information about Africa to many Chinese unfamiliar with the region. But at the same time, capitalist values heavily shape these representations in such a way that, in them, Africa appears almost exclusively as a source of profit. Further, I suggest that the capitalistic aspect in this knowledge comes from an increasingly popular imagination of Africa as a frontier of profits and the context of a fervor of “going overseas” of Chinese businesses.