Repnikova to Talk About Chinese Soft Power in Africa

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Maria Repnikova

Please join the International and Global Studies Program from 3:30-5 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 16, in CORD 349 for an engaging and informative talk by Maria Repnikova of Georgia State University about "Chinese Soft Power in Africa."

Her talk will explore the workings of Chinese soft power initiatives in Africa through the empirical lens of China-Ethiopia encounters. Specifically, her analysis will focus on how Chinese soft power is envisioned, deployed and received, including the varied and contested affinities that Chinese initiatives produce on the ground. In the talk, she will draw on 10 months of fieldwork in Ethiopia and China, including the study of China-led elite trainings, Confucius Institutes and state media operations in Africa. The analysis will introduce both the distinctive facets of Chinese soft power outreach in Africa, namely its pragmatic orientation, as well as the ambivalent reception towards it, including opportunistic engagement, along with alienation and cynicism vis-à-vis China.

Repnikova is an associate professor of communication with a comparative focus on China and Russia at Georgia State University in Atlanta. Her research examines the processes of political resistance and persuasion in illiberal political contexts, drawing on ethnographic research approaches and extensive time in the field. She holds a doctorate from the University of Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar. She speaks fluent Mandarin, Russian and Spanish. She is the author of Chinese Soft Power (Cambridge University Press, 2022) and Media Politics in China: Improvising Power under Authoritarianism (Cambridge University Press, 2017). 

This talk is sponsored by the International and Global Studies Program in Fulbright College. Please contact Assocaite Director Kelly Hammond at kah018@uark.edu with any questions regarding this talk or the program in general.