The Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway, one of China's Belt and Road Initiative projects in Kenya. Image from Wikimedia Commons. License CC BY-SA 4.0

This article was submitted as part of the Global Voices Climate Justice fellowship, which pairs journalists from Sinophone and Global Majority countries to investigate the effects of Chinese development projects abroad. Find more stories here.

China has become a major investor across Africa, with its companies playing visible roles in infrastructure, mining, and energy development. In 2024, China-Africa trade reached USD 295.6 billion, marking a 4.8 percent year-on-year increase and setting a record high for the fourth consecutive year.

China’s massive domestic market continues to offer vast opportunities for African products. The environmental damage tied to some of these ventures — polluted rivers, razed forests, and displaced communities — has been extensively documented by African media and international journalists. However, one striking and underexplored phenomenon remains: the near-total absence of such reporting in Chinese-language media.

A search for Chinese-language stories on China’s presence in Africa leads overwhelmingly to celebratory narratives — high-speed railways, win-win cooperation, and brotherhood between developing nations. Mentions of environmental degradation are almost nonexistent. The explanation cannot be reduced to the word “censorship” alone. The silence runs deeper, embedded in China’s domestic media structure, commercial logic, and strategic global storytelling priorities.

The discrepancy on the ground

A screenshot from a state-owned CGTN (China Global Television Network) advertisement lauding Africa-China cooperation. Image from YouTube.

While the harmful impacts of Chinese development projects are increasingly covered by African press and international watchdogs, they are nearly invisible in Chinese domestic media. State-run outlets like People’s Daily, Xinhua, and CCTV instead push positive messaging about economic partnerships and “South-South cooperation.” If there are local faces, they are often African presenters and reporters hired by Chinese state media at higher-than-local pay rates, who are tasked with presenting upbeat narratives that reinforce official talking points.

Commercial Chinese media — often perceived as more independent — largely follow suit. If stories touch on environmental issues at all, they do so in vague, sanitized terms that avoid direct attribution of harm to Chinese companies or projects.

Chinese investment and the presence of Chinese companies in Africa, in addition to their visible infrastructure and economic impact, are rarely scrutinized in terms of environmental harm within Chinese media. When environmental damage is addressed at all within Chinese media, it is either omitted or framed as incidental, often blamed on African mismanagement or natural challenges. Local community members are rarely quoted, interviewed, or centered in the storytelling. Instead, they remain nameless, stripped of agency, and disconnected from the audience.

And yet, the consequences of mega-development projects are real. In many countries in Africa where China has implemented projects, environmental problems have been repeatedly denounced. Deforestation, displacement of populations, loss of biodiversity in the construction of dams has damaged Sudan, Ghana, and the DRC; water pollution, and resulting negative health impacts due to mining are impacting Guinea, the DRC, and Mozambique; expropriations and violence in the context of a hydrocarbon project have destabalazed Uganda and Tanzania; and more.

In Kenya, for example, the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) — one of the flagship projects in China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), its mega global infrastructure project — has cut through wildlife migration routes and alarmed conservationists. Some environmentalists have alleged “the railway has disrupted wildlife migration routes.” Yet despite its scale and promise, many Kenyans say they have seen little benefit from the railway, pointing to a deep disconnect between grand development narratives and realities on the ground.

In Nigeria, Chinese-run mining operations have been linked to water contamination and community displacement. In Rwanda, locals affected by Chinese-financed hydropower initiatives report land loss and inadequate compensation. A local source who requested anonymity said to Global Voices:

Ce barrage modifie à jamais notre quotidien. Aujourd'hui, nous n'avons plus de travail, nous n'avons plus de terres cultivables. La présence du barrage a modifié la trajectoire de l'eau lors des saisons des pluies, ce qui engendre des inondations qu'on n'observe pas auparavant. Aucun dédommagement venant de l'entreprise chinoise et de nos autorités.

This dam is changing our daily lives forever. Today, we have no work, we have no arable land. The presence of the dam has altered the trajectory of the water during the rainy seasons, resulting in flooding that we didn't see before. No compensation from the Chinese company or our authorities.

Faced with these consequences, in this 2022 article from the InfoNile, Prime Ngabonziza, Director General of the Rwanda Water Resources Board (RWB), a government agency, explains:

Des études de faisabilité sont réalisées avant la construction d’une centrale hydroélectrique. Dans le cas de Nyabarongo, le problème est l’érosion à laquelle nous devons faire face.

Feasibility studies are carried out before a hydroelectric plant is built. In the case of Nyabarongo, the problem is erosion, which we have to deal with.

The few mentions of corporate responsibility rarely, if ever, include Chinese firms operating on the continent. This silence is not accidental. It is structural, political, and strategic.

Former South African President Jacob Zuma talks with China's President Xi Jinping at the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in Sandton, Johannesburg. Image from Flickr license CC BY-ND 2.0

China’s domestic media environment has undergone a dramatic transformation under Xi Jinping, whose administration emphasizes tightly controlled narratives that advance national pride and global ambition. Criticism of Chinese companies abroad, particularly on environmental issues, is seen as undermining these goals.

A screenshot from a Chinese Global Television Network Africa program. Image from CGTN's YouTube Channel.

Meanwhile, China has aggressively expanded its media footprint in Africa — stationing more Chinese journalists across the continent and recruiting local African reporters to appear in state media broadcasts to provide “African faces” for Chinese narratives. These reports rarely diverge from official messaging. As one recent state-owned Global Times article framed it, “Environmental cooperation is not only a development priority but a symbol of the strong friendship and mutual trust between China and Africa.”

Silenced perspectives on the ground

Environmental lawyer Zhang Jingjing, who has spent over a decade handling environmental rights cases involving Chinese enterprises in Africa, sees this erasure as both intentional and systemic. “Chinese-language and foreign-language reporting are like two entirely different worlds — Chinese reports are few, often absent, and when they exist, they’re pure praise,” she said in an interview with Global Voices.

Despite working in multiple African countries, she has never been approached by a Chinese journalist about her work. “Not a single Chinese journalist has interviewed me to understand what impact Chinese companies are having on local communities,” Zhang said.

即使我人在美国，也从来没有收到过中国媒体的任何一手采访请求。美国记者倒是经常找我。

Even though I’m based in the US, I’ve never received any direct interview requests from Chinese media. But American journalists contact me regularly.

She attributes the silence to a combination of censorship and inertia.

中国记者有没有这样的视野？有没有动力去报道中国企业在海外的环境影响？根本没有这样的群体存在，也就一两个例外。

中国NGO和媒体在海外都一样受限，受到严格监管。没有人力、没有预算、没有对世界问题的关注，甚至也没有愿望做这种报道。

现在所谓的‘讲好中国故事’，等于已经给媒体定了调子。很多项目明明有问题，但只要不是‘好故事’，就注定不能报道。

Do Chinese journalists even have that kind of perspective or motivation to report on the environmental impact of Chinese companies overseas? There’s basically no such group doing this work — maybe one or two exceptions.

Chinese NGOs and media overseas face the same restrictions. There’s strict oversight, no manpower, no budget, no concern for global issues, and frankly, not even the desire to cover this kind of story.

The state’s slogan about ‘telling China’s story well’ has already set the tone. A lot of these projects clearly have problems, but if they’re not ‘good stories,’ they simply won’t get reported.

She shared that in Ghana, an estimated 50,000 Chinese nationals were found to be illegally mining gold. However, the incident never made it to Chinese-language media outlets. Similarly, the media failed to report on the collapse of a Chinese-built dam in Zambia.

“These aren’t minor incidents,” Zhang said. “But inside China’s media system, they have no space to exist. These stories are predefined as unfit. If a story isn’t a good story, it simply won’t be told.”

She acknowledged that Western media are also flawed: “Some reports are exaggerated or based on limited fieldwork. But at least there’s some visibility. In Chinese media, unless it ends up on Facebook, the public sees nothing.”

Systemic barriers and narrative discipline

Independent or commercial Chinese media, on the contrary, find it nearly impossible to send reporters into the field to gather stories grounded in the experiences of local communities. There is little financial return and even less political cover for such reporting, as criticism of Chinese overseas ventures, especially in politically important regions like Africa, is discouraged or censored.

Chinese reporters who cross political red lines risk severe consequences, including censorship, job loss, surveillance, detention, or imprisonment under vague charges like “picking quarrels” or “subverting state power.” Some have faced public shaming, forced confessions, and threats to their families. When media organizations in China cross political red lines, their articles are swiftly deleted, and entire websites can be shut down. Editors and responsible officials are often removed from their positions. In the most severe cases, the media outlet itself may be permanently closed.

Without media scrutiny, Chinese companies face no domestic pressure to account for ecological damage. Citizens in China remain unaware of the real costs of their country’s global expansion. And African communities, though impacted directly, are erased from the dominant narrative.

As one Chinese journalist, who requested anonymity, explained, “There’s no editorial space, no audience interest, and no political protection to do these stories. Africa coverage is for soft power, not investigation.”

It wasn’t always this way. In the early 2010s, liberal outlets like Caixin and Southern Weekly invested in environmental reporting and maintained robust international beats. Reporters occasionally filed in-depth stories on pollution and social harm linked to Chinese projects abroad. But that era has faded. Since Xi Jinping’s consolidation of media control in 2012, alongside the decline of serious journalism and the rise of traffic-driven content on platforms like Douyin (China’s version of TikTok, a short-video platform known for viral content and livestreaming) and Xiaohongshu (a lifestyle app that blends social media with e-commerce).

The Hong Kong branch of the Chinese state-run Xinhua News Agency. Image from Flickr CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Overseas reporting is now largely confined to the state media giants: Xinhua, People’s Daily, CGTN, China Daily, and diaspora-focused outlets under state control. Environmental coverage only surfaces when it helps support China’s global image, rarely to probe harm.

African stories have become central to China’s “Tell China’s Story Well”  strategy, initiated by Xi Jinping himself as a way to boost China's reputation domestically and abroad. Wu Peng, Director-General of the Department of African Affairs at China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has openly called on Chinese companies to actively defend China’s image abroad.

我经常鼓励在非洲的中国企业要站出来讲中国的事情…… 我们必须用更加深、实的东西来加以反击.

I often urge Chinese companies in Africa to speak up and tell China’s story… We must counter [attacks] not with noise, but with deeper, more grounded facts.

A recent Chinese State Council article celebrating China–Kenya ties called the relationship a “shared destiny” and praised the BRI as “a shining example of cooperation.” This type of language dominates state broadcasts and shapes domestic understanding.

In Kenya, local authorities echo the rhetoric, eager to preserve investment and diplomatic warmth. But it comes at a cost: several Kenyan journalists describe growing difficulty in reporting critically on Chinese projects without editorial pushback or quiet blacklisting.

For Chinese media, the logic is simple: these are not stories that sell, politically or commercially. They are far removed from the interests of most domestic readers, and they risk undermining the carefully polished international image Beijing wants to present.

This one-sided narrative has profound implications for climate justice. It denies African communities the dignity of visibility and Chinese citizens the chance to understand the consequences of their country’s outward expansion. Real sustainability cannot rely on curated image-making. It demands transparency, access, and the courage to confront harm — not bury it.