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CHINA, DEVELOPMENT COOPERATION AND MEDIA COVERAGE
“China’s economic invasion of Africa” (The Guardian, February 6th 2011), “China’s ambitious bid for Southeast Asia hegemony” (DW, December 24th, 2019), “China in Latin America: partner or predator?” (The South China Morning Post, May 25th 2019). These are just few examples of titles that can be found on the web and that tell us something about the way the media portray China’s increasing involvement in many developing countries. With its initiatives aimed at trading with the rest of the world and obtaining precious resources for its development, the Chinese presence in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, Central Asia and South-East Asia has been causing for about two decades restless sleep in the so-called “Western world”, which sees its supremacy being eroded by China’s increasingly active role in these areas of the world.
China’s moves in the developing world must surely be kept under check, as well as those of the so-called “developed countries”. To achieve this objective, it is certainly necessary to acquire knowledge of China’s historical path - and in particular the phases that led the country to expose itself to the developing world. This is the first objective of this course, which will allow students interested in international relations, development cooperation and / or contemporary China to learn about some fundamental aspects of China’s presence and activities in the countries commonly referred to as “developing”. The second objective of the course, on the other hand, has a more “critical” character. It invites students to develop a critical analysis of how the media from different countries view and comment on the Chinese presence in various areas of the developing world. To achieve this goal, the course will introduce the first rudiments of discourse analysis, inviting students, at each lesson, to practice an analysis of media coverage of the Chinese presence in developing countries.
This exercise will be essential for obtaining credits. The module requires, in alternate lessons, the preparation of a presentation (single or group work, depending on the number of participants) that analyses the media coverage (newspaper articles, essays, documentaries). Credits will be achieved with the presentation and with the preparation of a term paper in which the students will have to reflect on what has been learned from the analysis of media and on the basis of the contents acquired in class and through specialised readings.
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